“I’ve already forgiven you,” I said.
“You have?” he asked in surprise.
“Yes. We’ve all done awful things that we wish we could take back, myself included. We’ve been through so much, and sometimes we do things without thinking because we’ve just reached our limit. I understand that. Trust can be rebuilt over time; I’m just glad that you’re okay.”
Adam reached out and held my hand as I sat on the edge of his bed beside him.
“Can we come in?” Michael’s voice was accompanied a small knock against the open doorframe.
“Yeah,” Adam said with a nod.
“Look, I owe you both an apology,” Adam started to say again. “Michael, especially you. I—”
“Not necessary,” Michael said as he extended his hand out for Adam to take. “We heard everything you said from the doorway. And just like I told Lisette, I would have done the same thing.”
“Nah,” Adam said. “You’re a better man than me. You wouldn’t have done that.”
“Well, I would have done something similar,” Michael said, still holding his hand out to Adam.
Adam took his hand and with one solid shake, their friendship was on its way to being mended again.
“So what’s this idea that you have about how you could’ve gotten poisoned?” Rob asked as he sat down in one of the chairs in the room.
“Right before I went to bed, Sarah brought me a glass of whiskey. She told me that it was from Michael; an apology for bashing in my face.”
“Yeah, sorry about that,” Michael said.
“It’s okay,” Adam replied. “I deserved it.”
“Wait, so you’re saying that Sarah was the one who poisoned you?” I asked as a pit formed in my stomach.
“Yeah.”
“Why would she do that?” Michael asked.
“I told her that I was going to tell you guys the truth. She had seen me upset a couple of days before and she asked me about it. I wasn’t thinking clearly and when she told me that she was pregnant and then asked if there was anything that she could do to help, I came up with the stupid plan of lying about Michael having slept with her. As soon as I did it, I knew it was wrong. I knew that I would regret it and almost immediately wanted to tell you guys the truth. But the longer the lie went on, the deeper it got, and the more difficult it was to crawl out of. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore and I told Sarah that I was going to come clean. She seemed angry and upset about it. She told me that she liked it the way things were, and she wanted to keep pretending that Michael was the father of her baby. She tried to convince me to keep playing along with it, but I told her no. I told her that I was planning to talk to you guys about it the next morning. At first, she seemed mad, but then she calmed down and just said okay. I thought it was over at that point. When she came in to give me the whiskey and told me that it was a peace offering between Michael and I, I was so hopeful about fixing the relationships that I had damaged, that I didn’t give it a second thought. I drank it and fell asleep, and that’s when the crazy nightmares started happening.”
This was bad—really bad. Sarah was not only psychotic, but she was dangerous. She actually poisoned Adam and she could have killed him. She had intended to kill him.
“We need to get her out of that house before she has the chance to hurt anyone else,” Michael said.
“Agreed,” Rob said. “Do you want to press charges?”
Adam looked at the two of them, not knowing what to do about her.
“No, I don’t think that would do any good,” Michael said. “Sarah is mentally insane. She needs help. She needs to be locked up in a mental institution, not a prison.”
“I’ll call some of the guys at the precinct and ask how we should go about removing her from the house and getting her into a place where she can’t hurt anyone else, and where she can get the care and medicines that she obviously needs.”
“We need to stop,” I said.
“Stop what?” Michael asked.
“All of this. The Sanctuary, trying to manifest my mother’s wishes. It all needs to stop.”
All three guys looked at me with concern and confusion on their faces.
“But this was what you said you wanted,” Michael reminded me.
“Yeah, I know. But this,” I said as I motioned toward all the tubes poking out of Adam’s arm and stomach, which had helped flush his body of the poison that could have killed him. “This craziness and damage are not what I wanted. I was a fool to think that this was going to work out. We’re in over our heads and we need to end it.”
“And by end, you mean what?” Michael asked.
“I mean give it all up, hand it all over to someone else to deal with and be done trying to fulfill my mother’s wishes.”
“You sure you want to do that?” Adam asked. “You’ve been trying to avenge and honor your mother ever since the day she was killed.”
“I’m sure,” I said.
After Adam was discharged from the hospital and we were all back at the house, the first thing that the guys wanted to do was to get Sarah out of there. I did too, but I also wanted to know why she had done something as horrible as trying to kill someone. The guys protested, but I wanted a couple of minutes to talk to her alone. Of course, Michael still stood right outside of the closed door to Sarah’s bedroom, just in case I needed him so that he could be within earshot. But when I asked Sarah why she did it, she simply stared at me and had no answer to give at all.
When I left her room, I knew that my decision to walk away from all of this was the right one. I realized that I couldn’t try to be like my mother any longer, and that I couldn’t run this place the way that my mother would have wanted. I had spent so long trying to fulfill the empty hole in my heart that my mother left behind when she died. I had tried to fill it by chasing after anything that reminded me of her, including trying to be her. I tried to do the things that I thought would make her proud of me and that would honor the memory of the kind of woman that she was. And I now realized that I had finally found closure in letting go. I let go of my mother’s wishes and came to terms with the fact that my mother would just want me to be happy and to live my own life. Maybe I had to go through all of those other things first, so that I could finally know that it was okay to let go and to move on.
It wasn’t nearly as difficult handing The Sanctuary over to someone else, as it was getting it all set up. In fact, the process was so fast and simple that it was symbolically like closing a door. Rob had managed to get a friend from the precinct to arrange for Sarah’s transport to a nearby institution. They made an agreement that as long as Sarah was being confined to the institution and being treated for her mental illness, that no charges would be brought against her. Ownership of The Sanctuary was transferred, and the four of us got packed and ready to head back up to Asheville. This time, it was unlikely that all of us would remain there for too long. We talked about it and decided that all of the guys would stay together at the cabin for a little while longer to decompress from everything that had happened here and rebuild our relationships to bring everyone back to a good place. Then, Adam and Rob would find their own places to live somewhere nearby so that we could still all hang out as friends. Michael and I would stay together in the cabin.
It didn’t take long to get things packed up and ready to go. We didn’t have that much in the way of material things that we cared about anymore. Really, all that any of us cared about and wanted was just to leave together and get back to the place that we loved. This time, before we got in the car, we stopped to take our last breath of Charlotte.
