We sat for hours. Most of it in silence. I watched tensely as Rory's head would bob, and then he would bounce up. He was stubborn as always. I stared at the clock, watching my new life slip away with each minute.

At ten-twenty-one the phone rang. Rory and I made nervous eye contact.

“I'll pick it up. I'm supposed to be here.”

I answered as Peggy's voice on the other line updated me on Barbie's condition. I'm not sure I even said much. I think I just nodded and hung up the phone. Maybe I said thank you.

Without looking over at Rory, just gazing aimlessly into the emptiness of the world in front of me, I uttered the words that would change my life; not in the way I had planned hours ago.

“Barbie's dead.”

In retrospect, maybe I should have lied to Rory. Maybe I should have held on to the knowledge of Barbie's death. But I was in shock, too. I was angry with Barbie, but she was a friend and her death hurt. At first Rory took the news in silence. It was a deep silence. The kind you can only achieve by being underwater. In that bedroom, not a bird chirped, not an insect trilled, a sheet did not rustle, a throat was not cleared. I couldn't even hear the grandfather clock taunting me down the hall. It was like a vacuum sucked the noise out of the space as Rory sat there, contemplating how he was responsible for a woman's death.

But that silence only lasted seconds. Like the receding of the ocean before a tsunami. Or the eerie quiet breeze before a devastating storm. Rory stood up and without a word, he exploded, swiping everything off of the closest dresser to him. I recoiled as the objects flew every which way, but Rory didn't see me. It was like I wasn't even there. He unleashed a storm of curses and phrases of self-pity. Not once did he say he say her name. It was at that moment that I realized that I believed him. He didn't love her. He was mourning the shift in his own life. How this accident had affected him. Maybe how it affected us. Perhaps in his mind, Rory really was on the path to getting better, having his last hoorah with Barbie before moving us to Minnesota to start fresh. But it didn't matter anymore. I had made my decision before I walked through the door that night.

When there was nothing left to curse or punch, Rory collapsed to the floor and sobbed, his chest heaving in sharp thrusts as he finally mumbled “sorry” over and over again. I wasn't sure to whom. The dizziness from the fall had nearly subsided, and I cautiously approached him, kneeling next to him, and wrapped my arms around him. He turned and buried his head in my chest like a lost, scared boy.

10:34a.m.

We stayed in that position for a while, until his sobs were muted, and then they stopped altogether. He stood up, nodded once, and left the bedroom without saying a word.

The deadline to meet Bobby was approaching quickly and I didn't see a way out other than to run. Maybe the phone was my better chance. Rory would probably catch me before I ever made it to the front door. I tried not to make a sound as I tiptoed back to the bed to try the motel again. But Rory's footsteps halted my plans for the second time.

I could hear the glass in his hands clanking before he even made it up the stairs. In one hand he managed two bottles: one of whiskey and the other scotch. In the other hand, a highball glass already gleamed with the topaz-colored liquid.

“I don't want to hear it, Lilly,” he professed as soon as he saw my eyes rest on the plunder. “I just need to get through today,” he sighed, tilting the glass on its end against his lips to take the remaining sip of his first drink.

I tried to think of a rebuttal, but my mind was consumed with what Bobby would think when I didn't show up. Would he leave me? Would he think I chose Rory over him? If he left, would I get the chance to tell him I didn't? Or would he break his promise and vanish again?

I was certain of nothing, except for the fact that Rory was in a state unlike anything I had ever seen. Despite the drinking and the arguments, I had never feared him. I had known him almost my whole life, and for most of those years, he was a stable person. He grew up in a good home with loving parents. I never thought he could become the man in front of me. But on this day, under these circumstances, cornered like a frightened animal, something dark came out of him.

He was scared. He would never admit it, but I could see the terror in the way his hands trembled as he lifted the glass to his lips. As he mumbled to himself, and sometimes to me, how “we were going to get through this,” reciting his plan over and over.

I had no choice but to go with his plan or pray Bobby would come and save me from my captivity. But Bobby promised me he wouldn't force me. That he wanted me to make this decision with a clear head. I had to come to him to tell him I was ready to leave it all behind.

At 11:55, my hope of making it to Bobby in time had died. Rory had slowed his drinking pace, not because he was moderating his drunkenness, but because I think he was on the verge of being sick. So when he could not distract himself with drink, he brought the record player upstairs for entertainment.

Rory begged me to dance with him. I agreed, thinking this would calm his nerves and keep his hands occupied with something other than a glass of liquor.

And like some sick, twisted joke that confirmed to me that god did exist and he was cruel—the record he grabbed was something I didn't even know we owned.

I recognized the melody right away. It was a different arrangement, a little quicker and peppier, the voice a little higher in the throat; more old-fashioned.

“What's this?” I asked through a clenched throat as Rory pulled me in to dance.

“Uh, Ruth...” he glanced back to the record sleeve and almost lost his balance. “...Et—ting. Ma and Pa used to play her all the time,” he added, his face droopy from the copious amounts of alcohol he had ingested.

Rory tried to lead, but his feet kept tangling into mine, and his body rocked haphazardly like a boat docked in a storm.

“Let's just go slow,” I suggested, pulling him in close and resting my head on his shoulder.

I listened to the words of the song. The story of who I had become. I rocked side to side with Rory as I looked at the clock on the nightstand, the second hand rapidly approaching the twelve.

The chime of the grandfather clock that had become white noise during this time of turmoil, rose back to the surface. Taunting me as it always did. This was the inevitable. This was the countdown I had always known was imminent.

The last time I heard this song, sung by Billie Holiday, the words were bittersweet. A love note. A little boy watched his parents dance and thought of a little girl. He didn't know yet what that meant, but on a warm summer night, they swam in the lake under the moon and they understood. One day he left the little girl, now a woman, taking all the good parts of her when he left. But he was back. And so, she was back.

Now, the song was an elegy. The sad story of a girl who loved the wrong boy. Of a boy who tried to run away to make things better, but instead left with best pieces of that girl. So that every time she looked in the mirror she saw skin, and hair, and eyes and lips. But she didn't see herself.

Tick. Tock.

The second hand pointed to the 12, and I buried my face deeper onto Rory's chest to mask the tears, bracing for the feeling of loss like a grenade had been dropped onto what was left of my soul.

Bobby thought I had chosen Rory again.

And if he left again, there would be no putting me back together.