by Graeme Richmond Mack

“What are you running away from, Pat?” Carolynn asked, smiling, the contours of her face faintly lit by the sun spilling through the coffee shop window.

I leaned forward and cupped my coffee mug with both hands.

Every time I try to explain, I find myself telling a different story. I don’t know why that is.

Carolynn’s overheard many explanations for my moving out West.

If I’m happy? It’s as if lightning struck at just the right moment and sent me here.

If my ghosts are haunting me? I’ve got a standard refrain. “I moved away to start college,” I’ll say, hoping there are no follow-up questions.

After all, starting college, at this age? And at this two-bit institute?

“What’s the real reason?” Carolynn asked me again, leaning toward me, playfully grinning. “What are you running away from?”

“Truthfully,” I said, simply shrugging. “It was depression.”

Depression. A million other words could have landed but did not. It was “depression” that tumbled out onto the table, mystifying me raw with honesty.

Carolynn was one of the first in class to ask about me. Ever since then, we’d talk often. We liked to talk. But still, my response to her surprised me. Apparently, I didn’t know how to lie.

“Depression,” Carolynn nodded and repeated it slowly as if to better process what that meant.

She turned and looked out the window.

The past is a collage of memories. Emotions frozen in time. I can’t help looking back. All of those days. Gone to drugs. Gone to bouts of boozing. The numbness. The nameless desire. That feeling of hurt in my little heart.

I remember longing for something else in my life. I remember when the longing stopped.

“Depression,” Carolynn said again, turning to look at me.

“But that’s not something you can really run away from,” Carolynn said—in a way that suggested we both already knew.

Sunlight glistened like golden dots upon her tassels of brown hair, illuminating her amber eyes.

“What am I running from?” I repeated, if only to buy some time for myself to think.

I remember how I loved Jesse, my small-town girl, despite the hurt in my little heart. Even though I knew of her dedication to dulling out all feeling with drugs and alcohol. Even though I knew there was little room left inside her to give and receive love. I remember thinking I’d love her no matter the consequence.

I remember thinking we probably wouldn’t make it out.

“Hey, Pat, sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you . . .” Carolynn began to say. I shook my head.

“No, you didn’t,” I say, smiling. “I’m fine. Really.

“You’re right. Depression’s not something you can run from,” I continued. “It follows you as long as you keep on running from it.”

I remember the night before her death—Jesse met me at the bar. I called her drunk and slurring.

“I can’t come meet you. I’ve been up for days, babe,” she said, sighing.

I knew she’d been out that week. But I didn’t know she’d gone that far. I didn’t care. I wanted the evening flesh, the brief vitality. I begged her to come.

Forty-five minutes later, she arrived, fidgeting with her hands; her eyes, wild, desperate.

“Will you take my phone? Just take it. I can’t help myself,” she said, after taking a seat at a booth, looking out the bar window. She was hoping, I assumed, to spot the familiar green car in the parking lot. When she realized I was on to her, she turned to me. “Don’t look at me like that.”

She reached for my pint and drew it down deeply, her eyes closed. When she’d finished, she looked up at me and her eyes darkened. She’d made up her mind about something.

As if in a dream, I stared back at her. “Don’t, Jesse, please don’t,” I wanted to say. But I didn’t. I sat silent, a feeling of dread pinching at my insides.

“You’re right, Carolynn. You can’t run from the past. You have to face the regret, the pain. You’ve got to let yourself feel, really feel it,” I said, looking down at the table, my eyes tearing up.

A kind-looking server topped up Carolynn’s coffee and looked up at me inquisitively. “Why didn’t you do more to save Jesse?” her eyes seemed to ask me. Ashamed, I averted my eyes. “No more, thanks,” I pleaded.

“Sure thing, hun.” She smiled and carried the coffee pot away, the aroma of fresh coffee trailing behind her.

I looked over at Carolynn. Sunlight illuminated her face as she gazed out the coffee shop window. Soon it was contrasted by a thoughtful expression that shadowed her face, suggesting a sorrow of a pain faraway.

“Does depression really encapsulate the feelings? All that goes into learning how to live?” She asked, turning to me.

I sat there, thinking on what she said, unsure of what to say. I didn’t know. I had spent so much of my life trying to drink away these feelings.

“Life,” she said, after a short pause, “That is what you have been running from, isn’t it?” She leaned in. “So why don’t you stand up and face it?”

I had the impulse to rise from my seat and kiss her. I didn’t. I sat and watched her.

Steam was rising from her cup of freshly poured coffee. Mine sat opposite it; cold and untouched.

I turned to look out the window beside me. The sun flickered through the distant meandering clouds. Several hours ago, it had rained in Vancouver.

The storm.

The rain, the wind, the lightning.

The thunder of early morning had faded away.

These ghosts, these things of pain and regret, had passed. This much, I understood.

And, as I sat there, I watched Carolynn’s rainbow appear in the far away distance.