Part Seven:
The next six months passed with Bo spending his days and most of his nights at the station searching for another driver who once again turned his life upside down, but this time the search was done alone, done without her.
Nora’s life continued to spin out of control also, sinking deeper and deeper into herself. She went to her office every day but never saw clients or returned phone calls. Jessica came in to the office each day after school for the first few months but eventually there was nothing left for her to do.
On the nights that Bo came home before midnight it was usually because he had received a phone call from any number of bartenders, asking him to come and pick up his wife. He would bring her home and put her to bed and most nights sit up and watch her as she slept.
~2000~
Another few months have passed and the holidays have come and gone. They’ve rung in a new year, a new millennium, but life was the same for them now as it has been since the accident.
One night Bo was sitting behind his desk when his cell phone rang. He picked it up off his desk and held it to his ear with his shoulder, “Buchanan.” Bo let out a deep sigh, “Thanks Jimmy, I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
Bo pulled into Rodi’s ten minutes later. He parked his car beside hers and took a minute to compose himself before he walked into the bar for the second time that week. He walked through the door and over to the bar. He walked up behind her and pushed the glass away from her and sat down beside her, “Last call, Red.”
Bo handed Jimmy the money for her drinks and stood up. He took her arm trying to help her out of the chair. She took her arm out of his grasp, “I’m not going home with you.” She turns to Jimmy, “Call me a cab, please.”
Jimmy looked between Nora and Bo, “Mrs. Buchanan, your husband is already here. Why don’t you just go home and get a good night sleep.”
“I don’t need him and the only reason he’s here is because you,” pointing her finger at him, “you called him. If you hadn’t he’d still be sitting behind his desk.”
Bo took her elbow and turned her around so she was facing him, “You’re coming home with me now, on your own, or I’m carrying you out, choice is yours.”
She stared at him as though daring him to do it. He knew what that look meant, he’d seen it a hundred times before. Before she knew what was happening he had her in his arms and he was carrying her out of the nearly empty bar.
He carries her over to his Jeep, depositing her in the front seat. He climbed in behind the wheel and backed out of the parking lot. Fifteen minutes later they were pulling into their driveway. Bo barely had the car in park when she opened the door and jumped out. He had taken her keys from her back at Rodi’s so she used the spare key to let herself into the house.
He walked into the house, dropping his keys and his cell phone on the table behind the couch. He threw his coat over the back of the couch and looked up the stairs. He ran his hands through his hair and down his face, taking a deep breath before walking upstairs to their bedroom, preparing for what was to come.
Bo walked into the room and looked around, noticing the suitcase sitting open on their bed. She walked out of their closet, carrying an armful of clothes. She dumped the clothes in the suitcase and started to walk back towards their closet when he grabbed her elbow, stopping her. He turned her around and held onto her arms, “What the hell are you doing?”
“I’m leaving.”
“Just like that, you’re walking out?”
She pulled her arms out of his grasp and walked over to the armoire on the opposite side of the room. She turns around suddenly, “Why do you even care?”
“What? How can you ask me that? Of course I care that my wife is packing a bag, preparing to move out of our house!”
“Our house! This hasn’t been OUR house in a long time, Bo.”
Bo raises his hands in frustration, “What the hell does that mean?!”
“I’ve been living here alone for months now, Bo. You’re either at the office until after midnight or you’re…”
“Dragging you out of bars!” he yells, cutting her off.
She walks towards him, “Well it sure beats the hell out of sitting at home alone, Bo! Wondering when you’ll be home, wondering IF you’re coming home.”
“Well working on finding the bastard that killed our daughter is something I thought you’d want!”
“What’s finding the driver going to accomplish?! It’s not going to bring her back; it’s NOT going to make the pain go away!”
“And you drinking yourself into oblivion does?!” he shoots back.
“Yes!” she yells, “Yes, okay, it makes the pain go away even if it’s just for a little while! It helps me forget! And all I want to do is forget!”
“Well I don’t want to forget! I don’t want to forget about her!”
She looks at him, the tears finally falling for the first time since the day she left the hospital, “I could NEVER forget about her! She was a part of me for eight and a half months. She lived under my heart; I felt her move inside of me! I will NEVER forget about her, but the pain, the pain over losing her, over never being able to hold her again, that I can make go away, that I want to forget, and living here, being here night after night alone…I just can’t do it anymore!”
“So you’ll live somewhere else alone!?”
She walks over and closes her suitcase, “If I’m going to be alone, I want to be alone without the memories!”
“Drinking away the memories and the pain is NOT the answer, Nora!”
“And neither is becoming so obsessed once again with finding a phantom driver that you” she pauses and shakes her head, “You know what, this is getting us no where. I’m going before we both say something we’re going to regret.”
She picks up her suitcase, stopping when Bo grabs her elbow, “Where will you go?”, he asks quietly.
“The Palace, I guess,” She looked down and then back up at him, the fire in her eyes now gone; “I promise I’ll call you when I get there.”
He just nods, taking her suitcase from her. They walked out together to her car. Bo placed her suitcase in the trunk of her car and walked over and held the door open for her. She slid behind the wheel, rolling the window down. Bo stuck his head in the window and laid a hand on her cheek. She closed her eyes and leaned into his touch. She opened her eyes and looked at him, “I…”
He just nods, “I know, Red…me too.”
He stands up and moves away from her car. She raises the window shutting out the cold. He watches her back out of the driveway; and the words of love they said to each other are never heard by the persons that needed to hear them the most.
TBC…