The motel ceiling has become the most intimate relationship I've had in the past week, I know every crack, every discolored patch, every tiny imperfection in the plaster the way a man knows his own face.
I'm sprawled across the bed with my arms out like I got dropped from a great height, still wearing yesterday's jeans because changing clothes requires a level of motivation I haven't quite located yet.
A week, I think. Maybe eight days. Maybe less? Honestly, I've lost the thread on that one. Time moves differently when your entire life fits inside a room that smells like industrial cleaner.
I found a lawyer to help me finally follow through on my divorce. Some guy named Larkin, works out of a strip mall office between a nail salon and a Subway, but he came recommended by the NA hotline and he didn't look at me like I was crazy when I laid the whole thing out. Summer's voicemails, Taevion, Jonah, the drugs in the orange juice, all of it. He listened the way lawyers listen, with his face perfectly neutral and a yellow legal pad filling up with notes.
"The voicemails are promising," he told me, which sounds better than it actually is. He followed it immediately with the part that isn't promising, which is that Taevion died in what is officially documented as an ICE operation gone sideways. No Summer. No Jonah. Just a gang leader reaching for a weapon that appeared conveniently after the fact. Larkin's exact words were "that particular avenue may prove difficult to pursue," which I've come to understand is lawyer for don't hold your breath.
He says with the evidence we've got I can probably get a protective order first, then we see what else sticks.
I roll onto my side and stare at the wall.
The withdrawal symptoms have been manageable so far. No comparison to the last time I detoxed, back when I was sweating through two shirts a night and hallucinating my mother standing in doorways. This was mild. A few bad days of anxiety and nausea, the phantom itch under my skin that never quite becomes a real craving.
Whatever Summer was dosing me with, she was at least being careful about the quantities.
When I figured that out, I actually sat on the edge of this bed and laughed for a while.
Then I cried for about the same amount of time.
For three days straight, my phone wouldn't stop ringing. Unknown numbers, different area codes, sometimes local, sometimes not, sometimes three in a row at two in the morning. I'd lie here staring at the ceiling and watch the screen light up and go dark, light up and go dark, like a buoy in bad water. I never answered. I knew who it was without answering.
Then a few days ago, it just stopped.
I've been trying to figure out the logistics of that. Summer must have been calling from burners, which means she was buying burners, which means she had money, which opens up a whole separate question I haven't been able to answer.
She never touched my accounts. Not once since she left me at the very beginning of all of this. I used to checked, compulsively, the way I used to check my pockets for pills I knew weren't there. Bank account untouched. Credit cards clean. Whatever she was living on while she was gone, whatever she used to buy those phones and keep herself fed and mobile during her time without me never came from me. Which means that must have come from Taevion, too…
My phone lights up.
Unknown number. Local area code this time, but still not one I recognize. The screen glows against the dim room like it's trying to get my attention, which I suppose it is.
I pick my phone up. I decide I'm done. That I'm calling Larkin tomorrow and telling him to push the paperwork through. That whatever Summer Adams is, she stopped being my wife somewhere between the orange juice and Taevion's front porch.
I swipe to answer.
"Summer," I say. Not a question. I don't have the energy to pretend otherwise.
"Hello?" A woman's voice, confused, professional. Not Summer.
I sit up slightly. "Summer?"
"No, I'm sorry." A brief pause, careful. "Is this Scott Adams?"
Something shifts in my chest. "Yeah. This is Scott."
"And your wife's name is Summer Adams?"
"For now."
Another pause, longer this time. "Mr. Adams, I'm calling from Riverside General Medical Center. Your wife was admitted last night." She takes a breath. "I'm very sorry to have to tell you this. She attempted to take her own life."
I close my eyes.
There it is.
I sit with it for exactly two seconds before the annoyance arrives, clean and sharp as a paper cut. This new Summer Adams does not do anything without a reason, and the reasons are always about me.
The thought arrives fully formed, no preamble, no deliberation. I'm going to the hospital.
Not because I'm worried. Even if a part of me is. Not because some buried piece of me still loves her enough to come running. I'm going to walk into whatever room they've got her in, and I'm going to say it out loud where she has to hear it.
I'm filing for divorce.
I'm done.
Goodbye.