Caleb

If you're still listening, Hailey probably told you her version of how I stalked her for a little while and drove her half crazy.

The thing is; she left out a lot of details. She does that a lot, but don’t tell her I said that. It’s been six months and she still hasn’t stopped giving me grief about disappearing on her. She never says it out loud, but I’m pretty sure she thinks I did it on purpose.

For the record, I didn’t. It's not like I wanted things to happen that way, but sometimes life doesn't work out how you want it to.

Except when it comes to her.

Even as mad as she's been at me lately, we've been making things work for almost half a year, and for the first time in a long time, I'm feeling pretty lucky.

Don't get me wrong, getting here wasn't easy. It still isn't.

We fight sometimes, mostly ‘cause she thinks I don't wanna tell her what happened four years ago. But it’s not that I don’t want to, it’s just—I can't. Witness Protection’s got a lot of rules. I haven't even told Georgia anything. But if you can keep a secret, I'll tell you, just don't tell Hailey or she'll kill me.

I died on that night four years ago. No joke.

The cops shot me up good enough to flat line me at UVA's Medical Center for about a minute-and-a-half. I guess that was long enough for the ambulance chasers to go running to the press saying I was a goner. News went crazy over it. They weren't lying, they just didn't follow up on the truth. Not for a while, anyway.

Took a couple weeks in the ICU for my doctors to be sure I wasn't gonna clock out on em’. Once they had the official word that I was gonna pull through, a whole laundry list of lawyers, cops, and Witness Protection people came around to figure out what the hell to do with me. Should they take back the statement in the papers that I'd died? Should they keep it? A whole lot of arguing between strangers, but hardly anybody talked to me. 

For a while back then, I thought a lot about dying. I thought about my family every second and had to wait for visiting hours to be over just so I could to cry alone. I thought a lot about how ending up like my brothers had would’ve been easier than living in a hospital room for months with nobody but suits coming to see me.

But there was this one social worker, Annie, who came by in the evenings when everyone else cleared out. She didn't ask me any questions, instead she talked me like I was a person, not some story or suspect. She was a lot like Hailey in that way, and I liked that.

Come to think of it, Annie and I talked a lot about Hailey, except I didn't tell her that the girl I was mentioning was Hailey 'cause she would've thought I was crazy if I did. Annie was an old timer, but she knew a thing or two about girls. She kept telling me that things would turn out, even if it took a while. I bet against her. Turns out she knew better than I did.

Guess I owe her that dollar.

On the last day she visited me, a couple cops and lawyers from the state police department came in with her. They told me they saw Liam's tape, had launched a whole investigation, and were ready to take Anderson to court.

When it came down to it, the only reason they showed up was to ask if I wanted to testify against him. I didn’t want anything to do with it, so I turned them down until they came up with something I couldn’t turn down—a second chance.

Some greasy looking law guy said he could swing a plea deal for me so I’d serve less time for my kidnapping charges. Lawyers are always liars, so I trusted my gut and asked him and the other guys to leave, but Annie stayed back to try to talk me out of being stupid.

She only said one thing to me that night, and I still feel indebted to her for it ‘cause she saved me from a bad decision.

She sat down on the edge of my hospital bed and told me that good men take the time to make things right, and if I wanted to be the kind of man who was good enough for the girl I’d been talking about, I'd testify. So I did, even though the idea of going to court made me so sick I dropped a couple pounds in the few weeks leading up to the trial.

It took a whole security entourage just to make sure I made it to court without being caught on camera. I don’t like thinking about that day too much. Trying to stay hidden from a hundred reporters is one thing, but having to sit and watch the man who took your world away smile at you while you testify nearly killed me.

I threw up all over the suit Annie bought me after that. She didn’t even yell at me for it; she just took me out of courtroom and cleaned me up while I cried.

There wasn’t a day back then that I didn’t think about everything I’d lost, but Mitch’s trial was the first time I really felt it. Annie said I did the right thing, I guess I just didn’t expect it to hurt. Maybe one day down the line, the quiet part of Hailey that still misses her father will forgive me for it.

Not too long after my court date, the hospital released me, and the cops carted me off to serve my sentence. Greasy-looking lawyer kept his word and cut my time down to two and a half years.

I ended up in this protective custody program, which meant spending everyday in solitary confinement just in case Mitch hired anybody in prison to get to me. The guy pulled my family's strings pretty easily, so I didn’t put it past him to try it again with someone else's.

Thirty months is a long time to go without hearing a word about the one person in the world you care about. It’s even longer if you can’t talk about her to anybody.

On good nights, dreaming about her kept away the night terrors. On bad nights, I’d usually end up in the medical ward with an IV just to get me calm enough to sleep.

The loneliness ate away at me after a while. I had too much time to think, and nothing but half-empty hope to hang on to. Couple months in, I got so depressed my prison guard, Sal, started bringing me comic strips he’d cut out of the paper. Comic strips turned into full newspapers once he worked out a solid sneaking system.

On a regular Sunday Sal slipped me the Charlottesville Chronicle with an article about Hailey’s first year back at college.

I cried for three hours after reading that, but don't tell her I told you or I'll never hear the end of it.

I still have her article framed on the wall in the barn. She doesn't know why I keep it, and she hates the picture they used, but I don't. That little piece of paper kept me hanging onto this world, so I figured I owed it a place in my house.

The only part I didn’t like about her interview was that the reporter who wrote it spent most of the time flirting with her. The last question was him asking if she was on the market.

I cut that part out.

Hailey's a pretty lady, I get it, but flirting with my girl is my job. Period.

In the last couple of months of my sentence, I wrote a bunch of letters to Hailey. They never got sent anywhere but it gave me something to do. Once I got out, Witness Protection gave me three suggestions on how to restart my life, "Move out of state, change your name, and cut all contact with anyone associated with Hailey."

I took about half of what they said to heart.

Good news is, the program can't do anything but make suggestions and tell you the risks if you decide not to listen. But I'm used to risks.

I moved up to Midland, which is so far away from anything it might as well be in another state. The program helped me find work, and once I got a steady job in town, I called Georgia. We played it off like we didn’t know each other.

My officers still think she's my landlady, but I haven't paid a penny for my place in the barn since I moved in. Georgia gets free furniture; I get a roof over my head. Just don’t tell anyone I said that.

Weirdest thing is, I'm not an Evans anymore, but an O'Donoghue, my Ma's maiden name. I was supposed to switch my first name, but no good Irish son gives up the name his Ma gave him—especially, me.

As for the whole, no contact thing, you can probably guess what I told them to do with their “stay away from Hailey,” suggestion. I kept my distance for a while, working to make a living, saving up, and following the rules. But her graduation wasn’t something I was gonna miss, even if it wasn’t the safest thing for me to go to.

She probably told you how I showed up at her speech and at Mel's, but what she doesn’t know is that I followed her a couple other places, but that's not important. The important thing is that I got to see her again. Otherwise, I probably wouldn't be here.

Witness Protection kept me safe, but only Hailey could keep me happy.

For about a month or two after we met up, her and I didn’t know how be around each other. We started out small. She got an internship at a teen counseling center in Midland and came to see me whenever she got off work.

She was so great with the kids she snagged a job at the end of her first month. I was with her when she called her Ma about it. Mrs. Anderson cried when she heard the news, and I tried not to get too excited about Hailey finally moving up full time.

I stayed out of the house on the day Maria drove up to help move Hailey’s things into the barn. Hailey didn’t mention me, she couldn’t. So she’s single as far as her Ma knows.

Maria fell in love with the loft. Hailey told me how her Ma went on about how much she loved the view, and the furniture. She even fell asleep on the bed just looking out at the scenery.

If she knew what we did on that mattress, she probably wouldn’t feel the same way about it, but that’s between you and me.

Now that me and Hailey are settled in, we’re figuring things out as we go. It gets complicated sometimes. We didn’t exactly meet the way most people do, and a lot of our relationship from before was under pretty bad circumstances.

But we lived through it.

Both of us lost a lot, and went through a lot back then, and we don’t always know how to talk about it. Luckily, Georgia’s pretty good at helping us get through the rough patches.

Hailey needs her space sometimes, and I try to give it to her when I can. Every now and again there are nights I stay out driving just to think about things on my own.

But we’re good, we’re trying, and there’s so much I’m outta this world in love with about her that most days I can’t believe I have her waiting for me.

I like knowing that she worries, and that she stays up late just so she can welcome me back when I walk in from work. I like going to bed every night ‘cause I get to watch her fall asleep and listen to her complain when I keep her up from staring. I like kissing her, ‘cause nowadays I can do it whenever I want, and she’s damn good at it. I like fooling around with her ‘cause every time we do, it just gets better.

I like life.

I like living.

I love her.  

And if things fall apart somewhere down the line, and we don’t end up getting married, having kids, or kidnapping somebody else’s, I’ll be alright with that. ‘Cause even if life only lets me love her for a little while, it’ll be more than enough.

And you can tell her I said that.