Did he say “married”?

I knew that I shouldn’t even focus on that right now. The words probably just slipped out as an off-the-cuff comment or something that he was just being sarcastic about. But he said it; he said married. No matter what the reason was behind it; he couldn’t take back the word. That meant that he had, at the very least, considered the idea. I never thought in a million years that I would ever get married. Hell, I still didn’t even think so now. But I felt something inside of me when Michael said it. It wasn’t restricted just to my chest, or my stomach, or any exact location in my body; it was everywhere. And the feeling grew and grew until the word echoed around inside my skull and the thought of being tied to Michael in every known way, suddenly usurped my focus and made me dizzy.

Before I had a chance to actually pass out or anything equally as dramatic; I heard the locking mechanism on the safe start to click and move. Michael glanced back at me momentarily.

“Looks like she did care about you in some way or another,” he said.

The door to the safe opened.

As soon as Michael pushed the heavy, metal door to the side, I ran inside the safe and saw Adam and Rob lying on the floor. Michael lifted Adam’s head and opened his eyelids with his fingertips.

“Oh god, please let them be okay,” I said in a panicked whisper.

Michael gave Adam a light tap against his face and Adam made a small groaning noise,

“They’re alive,” he said.

I reached down and tried to shake Rob awake. The two of them were both alive and not visibly injured, but both were also severely dehydrated and the safe had been nearly out of oxygen. The two guys looked delirious.

“It’s the lack of oxygen, and also probably whatever drug or tranquilizer Naomi used to get the from The Sanctuary all the way here,” Michael said. “They’ll be okay after some rest and hydration. We need to get them back to the house and flush out whatever is in their system.

Michael lifted Adam up onto his shoulder and I struggled to lift Rob. When I was able to get Rob up high enough for Michael to grab, he put him on his other shoulder, and we draped his body between us. It was a very slow and careful walk back to The Sanctuary and we had to stop several times because the guys kept sliding off Michael’s shoulders. They weren’t small guys to begin with and I could see that all the muscle mass that Michael was carrying was not without difficulty. When we finally reached the house, we put each of them in their own bedrooms, on top of their own beds, to rest. I went to the kitchen to pour pitchers of water to keep in their rooms and then grabbed glasses to bring with me.

“You’re back,” Sarah said as she seemed to somehow randomly appear in my path as I left the kitchen.

“Yes,” I smiled. “We found them.”

“Who?” she asked as if she had completely forgotten our discussion of just a couple of days ago.

“Rob and Adam,” I answered.

Michael was right, even though I would never comment on anyone’s mental health in front of them; this woman was strange. And not in the cool, trendy sort of way, but just flat-out weird. She didn’t say anything at all. She just poured herself some water and started to walk back to her room.

“Sarah,” I said, wanting to get a better read on her. “How have you been liking it here so far?”

“It’s nice,” she said.

I was going to ask her something else, like if she needed anyone to talk to since she had essentially been here alone most of the time. But she didn’t give me the chance. She disappeared into her room and closed the door. That was fine because I didn’t want to deal with her right now anyway. My focus was on getting Adam and Rob well again.

It didn’t take too long before they were back to their normal selves, maybe a couple of days at most. Adam and Rob slept a lot and drank a lot of water, then had a few bites to eat and slept some more. While we were in there talking to them, Michael and I told them about what had happened with Naomi. Rob seemed entirely relieved that she was gone and was no longer a threat to be considered. Adam seemed a little bit more subdued. I think he was equally as glad that Naomi was gone, but he also knew how much I had wanted to feel close to my mother in any way that I could.

Watching her sister kill herself and take all the unanswered questions that I never had time to ask with her; well, that was tough.

Maybe Adam was more tuned-in to those sorts of things because he knew my mom and knew what a great woman she was.

The two guys then told us about what had happened that night while Michael and I had been at the aquarium. They described how they were talking while standing guard outside of Naomi’s room, and the next thing they knew, there was something hard and heavy hitting the back of their head. After that, they figured that Naomi gave them some sort of drug to keep them knocked out and subdued, because they don’t remember anything else until we came to rescue them. It was lucky that we found them when we did, and lucky that Michael remembered the walk-in safe at Lineage. If he hadn’t; they likely wouldn’t be alive to sit here and talk with us now.

After we discussed everything that had happened with Naomi, we shifted the focus to put toward moving on with things.

“Well, that part of my mother’s wish has failed,” I said, referring to my Aunt Naomi.

“Maybe not,” Adam said as he got up from the bed for the first time since he started feeling better.

“What do you mean?”

“Your mom wanted to fix people,” he said as he stretched out his arms and back.

The muscles on his shirtless chest rippled when he flexed, and I looked away to keep from being tempted. There were at least a million reasons why being tempted by Adam right now would be a really, really bad idea. I think that he saw me divert my eyes because I heard him let out a small chuckle.

“I think that you did fix Naomi,” he said with a completely serious look on his face.

“And if by fix, you mean dead, then yeah I guess so. But I’m pretty sure that’s not what my mom had in mind.”

Adam came closer to me and he didn’t stop to pick up the shirt that was hanging off the side of his bed.

“Hear me out,” he said as he reached down to hold my hands. He seemed less angry with me now than he had been before all of this happened. “Naomi is dead, that can’t be undone, and what’s more, she took her own life. Those two things are awful; I’ll give you that. But she took her own life because she had changed. She was upset enough about being betrayed that she preferred death to facing life.”

“Adam, this is all just making me feel a whole hell of a lot worse,” I frowned.

I had just started trying to believe that Naomi’s death wasn’t my fault after listening to what Michael had said to me, and now I was right back to feeling like it was.

“It shouldn’t,” Adam said. “It should make you feel at peace with it. You gave Naomi back her humanity. In her twisted mind, after all the abuse that she suffered and all the horrible things that she came to do as a result of her screwed up childhood that made her oblivious to the feelings of being human anymore; in the end, she felt things. Real things. In the end, she felt compassion and connection, remorse and betrayal, compassion and sorrow. You saved your aunt more than years of living inside this building ever could. You made her human again.”

I wasn’t quite sure how to feel about that. I understood what Adam was trying to say and a part of me wanted to believe it and cling to the idea of it as a comforting solace that my mother hadn’t made a mistake in entrusting all of her vision with me. But the fact remained that Naomi was still dead, and logistically that part of the vision wouldn’t play out. Still, it was a nice thought to entertain. Maybe Adam was right. Maybe my mother would come to me in one of my deep dreams and tell me that I had done something right and that Naomi was with her in the afterlife somewhere; the two of them free to finally be themselves. It didn’t matter right now though, because there was at least part of this vision that still needed to be realized; The Sanctuary.

Since the four of us were all together again and everyone seemed to be feeling well, both physically and emotionally; we decided that moving forward with the group home was a good idea. There had been a few applications of interest that had been dropped off after we had the welcome party for the community, and I sat down with the boys to look through them. There were still several bedrooms available and so we would be able to approve and house all of the applicants that had submitted thus far.

It felt a little strange sitting at the table with the guys while no one said anything about my choosing Michael. Michael and I had talked about it, but neither Adam nor Rob had brought it up again. It was the giant, looming thing in the room that seemed like a smoke that hung in the air just waiting for someone to move in order for it to swirl around our heads. But, since none of them seemed to want to bring it up right now, then neither did I. Honestly, I was hoping that I wouldn’t have to talk about that decision until we were done filling The Sanctuary. I was starting to feel like my brain was trying to hold onto too many things at once, and that if I didn’t stop burdening it with more and more things to think about, that stuff was going to start falling out of it.

The next few days were spent talking to the newest residents of the home and welcoming them. They all seemed like nice people and I had a good feeling about everyone getting along. One of the guys was just down on his luck, recently fired and had no place to go; no family, no friends, and was quickly running out of hope. He was just looking for a place to gather his thoughts and his few remaining dollars, before being ready to try again. That guy was someone that this place could help; I just knew it. There were a few women that had left abusive spouses, one of which even brought her teenage daughter along with her.

This would be a place for them to heal and feel safe, to regain courage and strength and self-worth.

Then there were a couple of people that had self-diagnosed mental issues that kept them from feeling like they belonged in mainstream society. Whether or not they did, I couldn’t say. I was definitely not a mental health professional, nor did I want to play at being one. All that I wanted to do was give this little group of people some hope, and maybe the chance to start again, this time for the better. The guys and I talked to everyone in depth (more so than I had done with Sarah because she kind of jumped on moving in so quickly the same night as the party; in hindsight I probably should have interviewed her more thoroughly). We didn’t want to pry into anyone’s personal lives; we just wanted to make sure that we weren’t bringing anyone dangerous or manipulative into the building with everyone else.

“It’s a good group of people,” Rob said to me as he helped me put some dishes away in the kitchen.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “I think they’ll do well here together, at least until they decide that it’s time to leave and move on. Then I suppose that others will come and take their place. I’m thinking about hiring a couple more staff members to clean and take care of the shopping.”

“Is there enough money for that?” Rob asked as I handed him some glasses to put away in the cabinet. “I thought you said that it was almost used up.”

“There’s tons,” I said. “I put some away and only marked a certain amount for the budget on this place. That amount is pretty much used up, but there is more in other places.”

Money wasn’t ever going to be an issue here. The inheritance amount had been so large, that even when we had used most of it up on The Sanctuary, I made sure to put some in high-interest-bearing accounts that would continue to accrue enough interest to replenish the expenditures taken out of it.

“Well, good,” he said with a smile. “So now that this place is off to a good and solid start, and your mother’s dying wish seems to be coming to fruition; I want to talk to you about something.”