After I Jumped, I Saw He'd Loved Me for Ten Years

The last thing I ever said to my husband was bye. Same as any other morning. Then I went to the Halloran Bridge and jumped off it. Two reasons.

The doctors had stopped pretending I was going to get better. And I knew he didn't love me. So that morning I told him bye, like always.

He was leaning on the doorframe, watching me with that loose, unbothered look he wore in the mornings. "Goodbye, Elias," I said. He raised an eyebrow. Ten years.

I chased that man for ten years. I brought him a hundred bouquets. I told him I loved him a hundred times. He never said it back. He didn't say goodbye either.

And then I was gone from his world. Chapter 1 "You look beautiful today." "Have a good trip." "Come home early.

I want to see you." Those were the three things Elias said to me that morning. He had his chin in his hand and his head tilted, watching me from across the table.

He kept it up until my ears were burning. I didn't have anything to say to that. Sunlight was coming in behind him. He slouched there for another second and then snorted out loud.

He laughed so hard he doubled over, and even like that his face was ridiculous. "How many years have we been married?" "Eve.

Could you please stop turning red every time I look at you." I grabbed my keys and got out of there. I never told him I'd already decided to jump off the Halloran Bridge.

Not that it would have mattered. He wouldn't have asked me to stay. So I died. Turns out I could still think. Now I was a thing that drifted. Here's the strange part.

I couldn't hold on to a single face. I'd look at someone and it would rinse straight out of me, like water over a stone. Everyone except him.

There was nowhere else for me to be, so I went where Elias was. Which turned out to be a hotel ballroom with far too much gold in it. Finding him was never hard.

Elias was born with the thing that makes a whole room turn its head. He was the center of it. It was always like that. Standing next to him felt good.

He knew exactly how to make people love him. Whether or not he meant a word of it. They'd thrown this party for him after the award. His career was finally going somewhere.

The more the public saw of him, the more obvious it got. That voice. That face. He was built for this.

He wasn't the guy crammed into a walkup with me anymore, playing bars for tips until his voice gave out. "Mr. Vance.

Let me buy you a drink." "I really hope we get the chance to work together someday, I—oh!" A girl in a long dress came over with a glass in her hand. Maybe she caught her hem.

Maybe somebody bumped her. Maybe none of it was an accident. She went straight into his chest. He turned a few degrees and caught her by the waist.

The second she had her feet under her, his hand was gone. The glass was already steady in his other hand. The champagne wasn't.

A pale stain was spreading down the front of his shirt. Her lipstick was there too. Bright.

Impossible to miss. "I'm so sorry, I—" "It's fine." He took the rest of the sentence out of her mouth.

She looked up into a pair of eyes already creased at the corners. "Don't let this ruin your night." "Honestly." He bent down a little and blinked at her. "A pretty dress on a pretty girl, ruined.

That's the real tragedy. Right?" The color climbed all the way to her ears. The man who'd just done that to her didn't appear to notice.

He gave a small nod, said something about finding a clean jacket, and stepped away.

Then he turned, and the second he was out of everyone's sightline, it came up in his eyes and he didn't bother hiding it. Flat. Irritated. Sick to death of all of it.

I tilted my head and drifted after him. Still putting on the show, Elias. He changed his jacket and didn't go back in. I followed him. Ten years.

I'd watched the back of that man ten thousand times. This was the only time he didn't know I was watching. Chapter 2 He found a corner of the garden and lit a cigarette.

Somebody online wrote this about him once. [Elias Vance came from somewhere above us. He's an angel. He was born already lit.] I always thought he belonged to the dark.

With the guard down and the mask off, there was nothing gentle about him. He was mean. He was cold. It got worse than that. Like the nights he'd haul me in front of the mirror.

Ask me what we were doing. Ask me who I was. Make me look at what I looked like and ask me what I reminded him of. I used to search those black eyes for him.

All I ever found was a heavy kind of quiet, with something restless moving under it. Smoke blurred his face. His head was down, thumb moving on his phone. He had our thread open.

Oh. Right. I hadn't texted him. I loved texting him. It never mattered whether he wrote back. If he did, my whole day was made. If he didn't, I just kept going.

Which is why he told me, once, that he'd muted me. What I didn't know was that I was pinned to the top of his chats. Muted. And pinned first. Elias. What exactly were you doing.

Our last messages were from the night before. Me: [Do these two cats look like us] Me: [This one's me.

Rubbing on you over and over] Me: [You only write back when you're in a good mood] Me: [I'm very sad about this] Ten minutes later, from another room in our own apartment, he answered.

Him: [No] That was the last thing he ever sent me. That's where the thread stopped. He looked at it for a while. Then he killed the screen. Heels on the path behind him.

He put the cigarette out and turned around. "Mr. Vance, I know this is out of line, but I—" "I've been in love with you for a long time." It was the girl with the champagne.

The moon was all over the garden. Her face was flushed and she'd had exactly enough to drink to get the words out. He looked down at her and let his eyes crease.

The moon moved in them. "Sorry. I'm off the clock right now." "So maybe save that for the meetandgreet." He always did that. Always left people a door to walk out of.

He could be gentle and still take you apart with a dull blade. She started to panic. "No, that's not what I meant. Not like a fan. I mean—" "You're drunk." He cut her off.

Nothing warm left in the voice, and nothing in the face either.

She shook her head fast. "I'm not, I swear I'm not drunk, I—" "If you're not drunk, then you can see the ring on my hand." He lifted his arm and turned it so she'd get a good look.

The band caught what little light there was and cut a bright arc through the dark. Then he turned his head and was finished with her. He left her out there in the wind by the doors.

That wasn't like him. I figured he'd keep the act running a while longer. I drifted after him and leaned in close. He walked to a corner and did something with his phone.

After a minute he put it to his ear. Leaned back against the wall. Half his face disappeared into the shadow. He was calling me. It rang. And rang. And then the line gave up.

I didn't pick up. My phone was somewhere at the bottom of the river by then. Here's what he didn't know. The slowest I ever answered him, in my entire life, was five hours.

I spent those five hours in a hallway outside an operating room, waiting for them to wheel him out. This was the first time. Elias couldn't find me.

There was a time I would have bet my life that Elias loved me. Chapter 3 Why else would his hand have been the one holding mine the night we got out of that group home.

I used to think that if I ever told Elias how I felt, he'd have to say yes. Why else would he have given me all the good food back when we were sleeping wherever we could.

We came out of the same group home. The year I turned six, Elias took me and ran. The house manager there used to say I was a dog. He'd put me on the floor and make me eat like one.

The day Elias got me out, I think I used up every tear I had for the rest of my life.

He pulled me into his chest and said it like it cost him nothing. "I'm not good at talking people down." "You've got me now.

So quit crying." After that my whole world was one person. Later Elias said he'd found somebody who could feed us both. The tall skinny man looked me up and down. "Fine.

I'll put the girl down as a foster placement. There's a check in it every month." Then he showed Elias a mouthful of yellow teeth. "Check's mine.

Rules say she goes to school, or people come knocking." "You. You work for me." So the man put me on paper as his foster kid. And I got to go to school. Elias didn't.

The man filed homeschool paperwork on him. One form, and nobody ever asked again. He left with that man early and came back late. What they were doing out there, I never knew.

The way I saw it, the math was simple. Elias gave up school for me. He'd give up anything for me. When he ran, mine was the only hand he took. I couldn't help it.

Every year I loved him more. Then puberty got hold of his face and stopped playing fair. He liked to smile. Everything he did pulled at you somehow.

He'd come past the school gate on those long legs and half the girls out front would lose the thread of whatever they were saying. People kept asking me for his number.

I'd shake my head and say I didn't have it, and wonder how one person could be that easy to want. Every memory I have from those years is him.

Him, wrapped up in a crush so sour it ached. Until one summer with the cicadas screaming. I was leaning on the windowsill of the old walkup, tearing open a popsicle.

He came out of the bathroom toweldrying his hair. Water was running down over his stomach and the evening light made a whole production out of it. I forgot I was holding anything.

The popsicle started melting onto the floor. Sugar water on the boards. Then he was standing in front of me. He leaned in. Close. Closer than he had any reason to be.

Then his tongue came out and went from the bottom of it all the way up to the tip. He watched my face the entire time. The last of the sun sat in those long, heavylidded eyes.

I couldn't see anything after that. My pulse went off next to my ear. "Zoning out?" "If you're not eating it, I am." His voice came into my ear with a feather on it.

The popsicle was already gone. I stared at the pink at the corner of his mouth. That was it for me. I shoved him back onto the bed and pinned him there.

The popsicle hit the floorboards. I went for his mouth and he turned his head away. Neither of us was breathing right. We just looked at each other. "I'm in love with you," I said.

He tipped his chin up. Nothing in his voice at all. "What." "I'm in love with you." I said it again. The whole sunset had collected in his eyes.

He moved them off me, slow. "Sorry." I stared at the side of his face. It was so goodlooking my chest hurt. "I think I gave you the wrong idea." That was his ruling on me.

I couldn't leave it there. I kept asking my angel. Chapter 4 "You don't love me. Then why were you always so good to me?" "Was I?

I'm like that with everybody." "Then why did you come get me out. Why did you take my hand." "Because you slept closest to the window we went out of.

I only had room for one." "Then why was I the one who got to go to school." "Because I don't like school." I didn't have anything left to ask. He meant all of it.

No hedging, no softening anywhere. That gold light sitting right in his eyes. It was the opening curtain. The curtain on the ten years I spent chasing Elias Vance.

He called me three times. I didn't answer any of them. Obviously I couldn't. My body was drifting somewhere I couldn't have pointed to on a map. The party had mostly cleared out.

It was deep into the night. He stared at his screen for a long time. Then he pulled up a different number and started dialing again. I could see the name. It was my boss. "Hi, Ms.

Marsh." "Sorry to be calling this late." His voice was made for singing and it was made for this too.

Warm, easy on the ear, impossible to be short with. "This is Evelyn Shaw's… husband." "I wanted to ask. Did everything go all right on the trip today?" He went silent. "Oh.

There's nothing on the department calendar this month." "I understand.

No, no, it's the other way around, we're the ones who owe you, Eve says so all the time…" The rest was politeness. He handled it without a crack anywhere in it.

His eyes had gone somewhere darker than the sky behind him. He walked while he talked, and somewhere in there he flagged down a car. The driver asked him where to.

He hung up, looked up, and named one place. "The precinct." He was going to report me missing. The officer asked how old she was. He said twentyseven.

The officer asked whether she had any history of selfharm. Any signs of it. He opened his mouth. Three seconds went by.

Then he said, "…I don't know." I was drifting right behind him and it stopped me where I was. Elias never said I don't know. That man knew everything. His whole life.

They took the report. Logged it. Put it in the system. Then they told him what the law says. Adults are allowed to disappear.

Without a clear sign of danger, nobody escalates tonight. There was an old guy by the door who'd come in about a stolen scooter.

He heard all of that and wandered over for the entertainment. "Look, kid.

I'll tell you what this is." "Girlfriend's mad at you, right?" "Took off in a huff, won't pick up while she's steamed.

Happens every day of the week." Elias sat down on the steps outside the precinct next to him. He was still in the suit. Nothing about him matched the building.

He had beautiful eyes and right then there was nothing behind them.

The old guy was going, hey, hold on, aren't you that singer, the one who's everywhere lately— And Elias said, mostly to himself, "She wouldn't not answer my call." He said it without a flicker in his face, headlights from the street sliding through his eyes.

He said it the way you'd say one plus one is two. "She answers me from the shower." I didn't have anything to say back to that. He was right.

That first pure year, there was no stupid thing I wouldn't do for Elias. Senior year of high school. The worst stretch of studying in my life.

And I still found the hours to research recipes for him. Because somebody, somewhere, told me the way to a man's heart is through his stomach.

So he never came home to the same dinner twice. I kept notes on what he liked, what he pushed aside, and folded it all into the next one.

He told me he wasn't good at talking people down. Fine. I'd do the talking down. I'd do all the taking care of. So I picked the bones out of his fish. I shelled his shrimp.

I warmed his milk to exactly the right temperature. I did that for ten years. Today I'm in the river.

He's standing in line at a precinct, filling out a form for somebody who isn't there anymore. Chapter 5 That night he came home for dinner like always. Three dishes and a soup.

Everyone in my class was studying practice tests. I was studying recipes. I was certain every single thing on that table was something he loved.

He set his fork down and smiled at me. "Evelyn." "Mm?" "Shrimp's too salty." I nodded. "Okay. Less salt next time." "Soup's too strong." "Really?

I thought you liked it strong…" "Eggs are too spicy." It took me until the third one to catch it. I hadn't put a single flake of chili in those eggs.

And I'd tasted everything before I carried it out. All of it was fine. He sat there looking very comfortable and watched me work it out.

It got to me more than it should have. "Are you sick of my cooking now…" "Evelyn." He said my name again.

Head tipped back, looking up at me, the light doing something nice along his nose and his brow.

His voice came out soft and low, almost like a kid whining. "My shoulders are killing me." I was up and behind his chair before he finished the sentence. "Is this too hard?" I worked my thumbs into the back of his neck and asked it quietly.

Only a strip of that neck showed above his collar and even that was pretty.

I always thought Elias could stand next to anybody on TV and hold his own. "Evelyn." "Mm?" "When you're done eating, clean the kitchen." "Okay." "Wash the dishes." "Okay." I said yes to all of it. "And send me two thousand dollars." My hands stopped. "Two thousand… I don't have that right now." I kept my head down and asked it very carefully. "Can I send it once I'm in college and making money?" The lamp swayed and the light moved in his eyes.

Everything and nothing in there. All that shine, and I could never find one single thing in it. Then he laughed, reached out, and touched me. One touch. My cheek.

Gone as fast as it came. Then he said: "Evelyn. Go outside for a minute." "I want a cigarette." I didn't argue. I waited at the top of the stairwell like a good girl.

The fall wind was just right and you could count stars in it. I got to sixtyseven before I understood he wasn't going to call me back in. So I opened our door myself.

There wasn't any smoke in the apartment. The kitchen curtain was drifting. The dishes were washed and stacked, every last one of them.

There was a sheet of paper on the table with an envelope next to it. His handwriting was on the paper. Very neat. I never did find out when he'd practiced. Do well on the test.

It's okay if you don't. I'm leaving. I won't be home for the next few months. Don't look for me. You won't find me. I opened the envelope and counted with my head down.

Loose bills, all different, stacked together. Two thousand dollars. The year I graduated, I tested well. I was already first in my grade, and I overshot on the SAT.

Not many people out of our town had ever put up a number like that. It didn't make me happy at all. Not until Elias came back. He'd turned in the man who took us in.

The guy ran a decentsized theft and fencing operation in that county, and the federal side doesn't play. What they handed down, he was never walking back out of.

I heard he spat at Elias in the courtroom and cursed him down to the last branch of his family. Too bad Elias never had one.

Elias acted like none of it had happened and brought me a present. Congratulations on being a legal adult. Congratulations on getting into the school you wanted.

I never worked up the nerve to ask where he'd been sleeping those months. Or why he waited until my last test was over to make the call.

Chapter 6 That was the second time I told him. He was smoking beside me and he looked down at me without lifting his eyes much. "Hey. Evelyn.

Could you maybe not go straight for the sore spot." Elias called me again. By then my phone had shut itself off.

I think it was the first time in my life I'd gone that many hours without answering him. Before, I couldn't stand to make him wait a second. He was scrolling our thread again.

I don't know what he thought he'd find in there. It's almost all me.

Me: [I'm bored] Me: [Elias what are you doing] Me: [Keep me company] Me: [I love you] Me: [Don't ignore me] Me: [Jerk] It always ended the same way, with me accusing him of something.

Sometimes he wrote back. Sometimes he didn't. I never minded. He'd gotten used to it a long time ago. Used to me making noise at his elbow.

Used to me biting his collarbone when he had an arm around me. "Elias." "Could you care about me a little." This time he scrolled all the way to the bottom.

To the message he'd sent me. The one I hadn't answered in five hours. His two messages sitting there in blue. Impossible to miss. Him: [You said you'd be home early.] Him: [Eve.

It's evening already. You're so late.] In college, his work and my school were in the same city. We lived together. The rent was cheap and the building was falling apart.

There was a roof you could get onto, and in the evenings that's where the two of us ended up. "Elias. What kind of girl do you actually like." I asked him about his type once.

He was slouched against the railing, and he turned a little so his body took the wind off me.

Half that face was painted in by the sunset. "Rich, I guess." "Someone who can bankroll me. Doesn't need me to talk her down. Low maintenance." "And no criers.

Can't stand a girl who cries." I never once doubted that Elias's whole life goal was finding some rich woman to keep him. He didn't look like a man with big ambitions.

Or maybe it's that people like him get most things by crooking one finger. After that, though, the thing I cared about most in college turned into exactly one thing. Money.

My brain is good at school. Problems that took other people two or three minutes took me thirty seconds.

It didn't take long before I got in with a company two guys a couple of years ahead of me had started.

They gave me the title of cofounder and put a stack of paperwork in front of me to sign, one page after another. I was thrilled. After that I had real money. I remember the day.

It was Elias's birthday. Snow coming down hard all night. I carried out the cake I'd bought him. A $459 cake.

At the time I thought that was the kind of cake only rich people got to eat. "Elias." I pulled stack after stack of cash out of my coat. Months of paychecks. A lot of it.

I set it down in front of him. "Look. I have money now." "You don't have to work so hard anymore, I—" Then the sirens started getting closer.

Red and blue went sliding across all that snow, and I was still trying to hold his eyes. "Elias." "Can you take one bite of the cake." "I planned this for a really long time, I—" "Happy birthday, Elias." Then they took me.

The company I'd joined was under investigation for securities fraud and tax evasion. In plain English, they were paying the early people with money from the new people.

And I was the only officer listed on the incorporation papers. So I was the first one in cuffs. Chapter 7 Word was the two of them had been gone a long time.

Out of the country, supposedly. I was the only one they got. That was when it clicked.

The reason they'd been so warm about bringing me in was so that I'd be the one signing that stack of paper. I don't like to think about the stretch I spent in county.

They picked the two of them up eventually. And I'd kept enough documentation on my own that the DA finally dropped the charges against me.

The day I walked out of Marren County Jail, Elias was the one who came for me. Nothing about the way he looked at me had changed. I was the one who'd stopped talking.

He lifted his coat and laid it over my shoulders. We got in the car.

He asked me like the two of us had never been apart at all. "You want hot pot?" I spent a lot of my life trying to find something in Elias's eyes. Never did.

At the restaurant I watched his face through the steam coming off the pot.

I remember thinking that a person really could have lashes long enough to lay a shadow under their own eyes. "Eve." He said my name.

My heart went up and down with the slice of meat on the end of his chopsticks, which he was moving around out of pure boredom. "This thing where you got arrested." "Just so we're clear.

I'm not taking responsibility for this." He propped his chin on his hand and looked at me, and those beautiful eyes had nothing in them except beauty. Smiling with his eyes.

Gentle and thin as ice. "Don't guilttrip me." Then he reached into the pot and started moving everything that was cooked into my bowl, one piece at a time. Piled it past the rim.

Piled it until nothing else would stay on. Then he put his chin back in his hand and watched me eat. "Officer, sorry to keep at you.

I think something's actually happened to my wife." That was the third time Elias checked his watch before he said it to the officer working the desk. "Sir, your wife is a competent adult.

We've entered her in the system and we've put out a BOLO. But honestly, in most of these, the person turns up the next day on their own. Dead phone, bad service.

Try not to spin out on it…" That was the answer he got, and it was the first time I ever saw Elias look lost. "Our situation is a little different." "I'm… important to her.

She doesn't not answer me.

I just went back through our entire thread, Officer, I don't know whether this counts as evidence, but the slowest she ever answered me in her life was five hours. Sorry.

I know you're going to say dead phone. There's a charger on every block downtown…" The officer had already gone back to his paperwork with a tired smile.

It was the old guy who'd lost his scooter who couldn't resist coming over to pour gas on it. "You two had a fight.

That's all this is." "All that business about being important to her…" "Face it, kid. Your wife's done with you." Elias stopped.

He was about to answer him, and right then a gust of fall air came through the doors nobody had shut all the way. Something in it made him pause. He turned and looked behind him.

At that same moment the line at the front desk lit up. "This is the Marren County Medical Examiner's Office. We just pulled a female body out of Eastlake.

No ID on her yet." "We wanted to check whether anybody's filed a missing persons report recently…" I wanted to watch Elias cry