First, check into the hotel. Second, go for a walk to loosen things up. Maybe find a sandwich. Third, start hunting down that bitch to give her the slow and painful death she deserves for making me suffer immeasurable grief and pain and torture and indignity. Fourth, hot tub.
My grin widens as I enter the lobby.
Every year on the anniversary of the crash that killed my brother and nearly took me too, I claim another life. She’s the final prize of my annual expeditions for justice. My most coveted trophy.
This is going to be a fucking amazing vacation.
There’s no one at the desk when I drop my bag on the crimson carpet, but a gentle snore comes from a darkened room to the left, behind the counter. I clear my throat, but nothing happens. The snores continue. I say, “Excuse me,” but there’s still no response. That’s when I notice the framed sign next to a little brass bell. RING THE BELL OR I’LL KEEP SNORING, the sign says in large print. And below it in smaller font: I’M NOT LYING. RING IT OR YOU WON’T GET YOUR KEYS.
I ring the bell.
There’s a snort in the dark. And then, “I’m here. Hold on to your britches.”
Shuffling footsteps come from the direction of the room. A short, elderly woman makes her way to the reception desk, breathing on the lenses of her glasses to polish them on an embroidered apron as she draws closer. Her cloud of white hair sways with every sliding step, her smile carving trenches into her sepia skin. When she finally stops at the desk, she slides her glasses on, then lets her cloudy eyes travel over the details of my face. Everything takes her longer than it should. Every blink. Every breath. She clears her throat. Audibly swallows. And finally: “Checking in?”
“Yes,” I say, passing my license and credit card across the counter. “Reservation for Nolan Rhodes.”
The woman takes my cards with crooked fingers and sets them down as she opens a leather-bound book. “Welcome to Cape Carnage,” she says, flipping through pages. “I’m Irene.”
“Nice to meet you, Irene …” I reply, though Irene doesn’t really acknowledge my words. She starts repeating my name as she trails a finger down the ledger. She leans closer to the book, and closer, and closer. Then she picks up a magnifying glass and leans closer still.
“Nolan Rhodes,” she says with a note of triumph as she finds my name. “Checking out July fifteenth. Room one-seventeen.”
“That’s the one with the hot tub, right?”
“Yes, indeed.” She turns away to a board on the back wall where keys hang from brass pegs. “You’re here on holiday?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Come to see the Carnage?”
I cover my snort with a cough. “Something like that, ma’am.”
“Water’ll still be pretty cold, but it should be clear. Wallie rents winter wetsuits if you don’t have your own. You’ll find Wallie’s Watersports by the marina. Take Harborside Road along the cliff and then follow the signs, can’t miss it,” she says as she points in the general vicinity of the sea.
I know the map of the town by memory, and she’s definitely not pointing in the right direction, but I just nod. Satisfied, she passes me the key. “Breakfast is served daily from six to ten in the dining room. There’s a kitchenette in your suite, but there are some good spots to eat out at too.” She slides a pamphlet across the counter, then rings up my credit card, declaring that she’s given me the off-season rate because she “likes the cut of my jib,” whatever the fuck that means. I just take my cards back with a bright word of thanks and then grab my bags, heading down the hall to my room.
Though run by someone who’s truly ancient, the inn gives off a traditional but sophisticated, timeless vibe. My room is a suite with pale blue walls and mahogany furniture and French doors that face the sea. There’s a small patio with a privacy fence and a hot tub that gurgles beneath a cover. I stand outside and face the cliffs for a long moment before I head back into the room, stop in front of the bed, spread my arms wide, and flop down onto the plush duvet. The handle of the knife strapped to my belt knocks against my ribs, a reminder of the amazing time I’m about to have. I wrangled a whole fucking six weeks off. Not an easy feat when you work in Search and Rescue, by the way. I’ve imagined this trip so many times over the last four years. And now I’m finally here, about to grasp the one thing I’ve been hunting for. The thing that kept me going in the darkest hours: revenge.
I pull the blade free of its sheath and turn it over, testing the sharpness with my thumb. When it nicks my skin and a bead of blood appears, I smile.
“You can’t hide from me. Not anymore.”
I set the blade on the nightstand, and I get up to fish a Band-Aid from my luggage before I unpack. I set out fresh clothes. My wash bag. My laptop and charger. And then, with a last glance around the room as though someone else could be watching, I pull out my prized possession.
My scrapbook.
I flip to the first page. I’m not the kind of guy you’d look at and think, Yeah, he’s into scrapbooking. But when you spend two months in the hospital consumed by sorrow and suffering and the need for revenge, sometimes you take up new hobbies. The first pages are a little haphazard. Photos and memories glued down with ripples in their edges or bubbles beneath their surface. Laid down by an unsteady hand. But as the pages go on, the work becomes cleaner. There are photos of my first steps as I relearned how to walk in rehab, me standing with a walker next to my sister and parents. I remember what my dad said that day with tears in his tired eyes. “We’re proud of you, son. There’s no one on this earth more determined than Nolan Rhodes.”
Perhaps it was a little hyperbolic, but he’s a good dad, and that’s the kind of thing good dads say when their son survives a hit-and-run. And he’s got a point about determination—I definitely have a lot of that. Maybe just not the way he would expect.
Most people will probably tell you that you need to find light in the darkness to recover from the kind of suffering I endured. They expected me to embrace positive ideals that would keep me moving forward after my life-altering accident. Like acceptance of things I couldn’t change. Liberation from hurt and anger. Catharsis. Forgiveness. But the idea of forgiving anyone was repulsive.
That is not what I did. Hope and positivity were not what drove me to wean myself from pain medications, or to relearn to feed myself, or to overcome the indignity I felt at having others bathe and clothe me. They’re not what helped me survive what I lost.
I never found light in the chasm of pain.
What I did find was the deepest, most lightless void in myself. A place where the man I once knew faded away, and a new one took shape.
Why should I forgive the four people who were in the car that night for crashing into me and leaving me to die a slow and painful death alone in the dark? Why should I forgive them for the brother they took from me?
“Billy.” I press a hand to my chest where it still aches every time I say his name out loud. I hardly ever do anymore. Every time my brother’s name passes my lips, it’s not our childhood memories that appear first. It’s not the sound of his lighthearted laugh. It’s not the image of his smile that I remember.
It’s his unseeing eyes fixed to mine. It’s the crimson rivulets that drip from his mouth to pool on the asphalt. It’s the quiet hiss that escapes from his parted lips. Just a final whispering breath to warm the blood in the night.
No, I will never forgive them.
So I cling to the dark. I nurture it. I give it all my bitterness. All my hate. And in turn, it nurtures me.
It gives me purpose. Strength. A goal to work toward. A mission to fight for.
I turn to the next page of my scrapbook.
