- 1. What Once Was Lost
He felt a lot better when he drove passed the ‘Welcome In Atlanta’ road sign. In the 90 minutes it had taken for him to drive, he’d calmed Baylee down, which he considered a miracle. As he drove on, he felt that familiar nervous feeling in his stomach. Almost there.
After a while, he had stopped panicking and started thinking about everything else. He’d convinced Baylee to call his mom, because he knew Leighanne needed to know what happened. One day, he thought, I’ll become responsible. In the meantime he’d called his own fiancée and explained what was going on. He wasn’t sure, but she sounded almost like she was proud of him, so he felt proud himself now. He knew he’d made the right decision. Baylee couldn’t handle this on his own much longer and if Nick had known what was happening, he’d called a lot sooner. I could have.
Still, there lingered the guilt. Guilt always made everything so much more difficult.
“Shut up Nick!”
“No, you shut up! Don’t pretend like you’ve ever even tried to contact him! Or have you already declared him dead?”
He still regretted saying that out loud. Howie didn’t really wanna talk to him anymore now. He hadn’t told anyone about his plans to call Brian, and now he’d screwed things up even more by doing so. You did not wanna upset Brian, things went terribly wrong when Brian got upset.
“Bay?”
“Yeah?”
“You called your mom?”
“Uhmmm, I tried,” the young child answered and Nick sighed.
“What happened?”
“She didn’t pick up, must have been busy,” Baylee replied quickly. Nick wasn’t sure whether he believed the kid. He felt that Baylee was strangely reluctant to call his mother. But he could imagine that the child had no idea what to tell mommy. Baylee told him Leighanne hadn’t wanted to leave, feeling that she should stay and take care of her family, but her husband and son had persuaded her into going to Los Angeles. Telling his mother now that everything was going wrong probably wasn’t on Baylee’s list of favourite things to do. And as Nick thought about it, they didn’t really know what was going wrong.
Baylee had said he’d taken Brian to the living room, planted him on the couch and went to make tea for him. He’d assured Nick that Brian had gotten back to normal for the biggest part. Apparently this hadn’t been the first time it had happened, and he knew it would certainly not be the last.
“Okay Baylee,” he said when he knew he wouldn’t press the matter further, they would have to deal with Leighanne later.
“You’re here yet?” Baylee asked nervously, as he had done for most of the time he’d been on the phone with Nick.
“Almost, I just drove into Atlanta,” Nick reassured him, once again thankful that he hadn’t been pulled aside by the cops. Yet.
“Good, I’ll make you some tea!” Baylee called out.
“Sure,” Nick said and he wondered what he’d done to deserve Baylee’s tea.
When he pulled into the long, solitary road that led to the house, he felt like turning around and leaving. He knew he couldn’t do that though. He stopped by the gate and hung out of the window of his car to reach the gate’s intercom, pushing the button, forgetting he still held the phone in his hands, which fell gracelessly to the ground. He paused and stretched out his hand to grab it, while still holding the button.
“Shit!”
“Nick!” he heard a male voice call out to him and send a silent prayer of thanks up.
“Brian!” he yelled, a little too loudly.
“What are you doing here?” he heard his friend say, surprised.
“I’m paying you a surprise visit! Now, would you mind opening the gate for me?” he asked as sweetly as he could, not mentioning the fact he’d already told Brian he was coming.
“Oh yeah, of course! Hang on!”
Nick waited. A minute. Two minutes.
“Brian, you still there?”
“Course! Why wouldn’t I be?” his friend said, unfazed.
Nick didn’t miss a beat, “Would you mind opening the gate?” he asked again.
“Oh… yeah…” Finally there was a buzz and the gate’s slowly but surely opened and created a passage.
“Thanks, bud!” Nick smiled and drove up to the front door, parking in the driveway.
He got out of his car and, as the door opened, he did something he should have done a long time ago. Without a word, he walked up to his brother and, wrapping his arms around him, he pulled him in for a tight embrace.
