“Departures” is a supernatural thriller and love story published as a serial novel with new episodes dropping every Tuesday morning. Anyone can read or listen for free. Paid subscribers gain early access to new episodes. Watch the trailer or visit the table of contents to browse all the published episodes.
Previously…
In the last episode, Gerry was beginning to unravel as he came to terms with the fact that he has less than a year to live according to Wild’s prediction. A visit to the doctor and a comprehensive battery of tests indicating a clean bill of health did nothing for his peace of mind so he returned to his big empty house to drink heavily and try to rebuild his wall of denial. He finds some comfort in dreaming up ways he might make Wild suffer.
The small plane hit another patch of turbulence and Millie gripped the arm rest. Her father had insisted on sending the private jet to bring them home. Had she talked to him? She barely remembered the conversation other than the fact that he had been dangerously worked up. He didn’t sound like himself.
Was it possible she was still coming down from her trip even though it had been twenty-four hours ago? She couldn’t get comfortable. The whiplash of going from a psychedelic state in the middle of the jungle where she was covered in dirt and sweating through her shirt to the climate controlled cabin of a luxury aircraft was too much. In the seat next to her, Raina was reclined all the way back and sleeping under a blanket. Wild sat across from her and peered out the small window. The flashing red light on the wing illuminated the planes of his face and was periodically interrupted by the strobe of lightning from the storm they were passing through. The effect made her feel like she was still with Wild in the thrall of Mother Aya. The veil between what was real versus imagined was translucent, a vibrant membrane that covered the world of common things with a shimmering sheen that revealed another dimension. Millie had never done drugs, barely drank alcohol, and was obsessive about her diet so nothing had prepared her for the experience itself much less the subsequent ripples through her psyche afterward.
She tried again to close her eyes, seeking the comfort of darkness, but instead, visions of the night before began to play in a languorous loop, the people in her life bobbing up and down and in and out of view like figures floating on a neon carousel that somehow moved at a faster speed creating a blur of spiraling light trails beneath its passengers. Millie had not inherited her mother’s love for the literary and ephemeral. She was a practical person. She didn’t think in metaphors and symbolism and yet, here she was, recovering from a tumble down the rabbit hole of a waking dream after her uncle Wild. In her memory of the vision he was much younger and he was far away on the carousel, always just beyond her ability to fully see. When she opened her eyes, he was sitting right there across from her, a weary-looking old man, and equally distant.
Wild had taken the dose with her so she wouldn’t be afraid. Raina thought it would be good for them, a way to deepen their connection. The Shaman had advised against it given the intensity of her uncle’s previous trip, but Wild had insisted. They laid next to each other on the mat, holding hands. She had been more than a little bit scared and apprehensive but she had concealed it. This was a skill she had mastered. Whether it was her mindset going in or just the nature of it being her first trip, the journey had not been peaceful. She didn’t feel connected to the universe, but rather like she was falling through it toward some unknowable end. The falling sensation was interrupted abruptly by periods of stillness like stepping out of a hurricane into a library. Wild was present in many of these and it was unclear when he spoke if he was speaking in the vision or from the body that lay next to her. Sometimes it was unclear if it was even Wild who was speaking. It was maddening to replay any of it because her analytical mind kept trying to construct some tidy lesson from the experience. Her instinct was to extract data that could be charted in a way that would make it orderly and sensible, but she understood that wasn’t how this kind of thing worked. She groaned in exasperation and opened her eyes again.
“You okay?” Wild asked, leaning forward in his seat.
She shook her head. He moved his book and patted the seat next to him. She unbuckled her seatbelt and moved to sit by him. He put his arm around her and she put her head on his shoulder.
“I’m scared,” she said. “I have this terrible feeling but it’s nothing more than a feeling. Nothing’s changed. Nothing’s happened, but something’s wrong.”
“I’m sorry this trip wasn’t what you were hoping for. I wish I hadn’t allowed you to get all wrapped up in my mess…”
“But then I never would have gotten the chance to know who you really are.”
He nodded and squeezed her arm. “So what do you feel is wrong?”
“I can’t put my finger on it because it’s too big. It’s like my whole life. Do you know what I mean?”
“I do.”
“I think all the drug did was peel everything back so I could actually see what I’ve been denying for so long.”
“And what’s that?”
“What you’ve been trying to tell me. All this,” she said, gesturing to the luxurious cabin of the jet. “It’s worse than meaningless, it’s a kind of prison but it’s all I’ve ever known. I’ve felt this heaviness all my life, like I’m some kind of alien. My mom didn’t feel it, at least not in the same way, and my daddy sure doesn’t seem to lose any sleep.”
“It’s hard to see and accept things as they truly are instead of what we’ve been programmed to believe. Most people don’t even try. But you’ve always done this, even when you were a little thing.”
“Yeah, but look at you and look at me. I’m running the goddamned prison now. I just did what everyone expected me to do and now I’m the warden. What, why are you smiling?”
“I’m just thinking what June would say. She didn’t cut me any slack. Anytime I started talking like poor little rich boy, she set me straight.”
“I know I sound awful…”
“No, that’s not what I meant. If anyone can identify, it’s me. When you have what everybody seems to want and you’re miserable, you don’t have a lot of company.”
Millie looked out the window and neither of them spoke for a time. There was a comfort she felt being next to her uncle, a kinship that transcended blood. She wondered how different her life might have been if he had raised her.
“Can I ask you something?” she said, softly. “Why didn’t you and June have kids? Was it because you knew she would die so young?”
“We actually tried. I didn’t want to for all the reasons I’m sure you can imagine, but she wanted kids so badly, I couldn’t deny her.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing happened. We tried but we couldn’t conceive. It happens with some couples. Some things just aren’t meant to be, I guess.”
“Does that make you sad?”
“It used to, but time heals things. Plus, getting to be your uncle gave me some of what I missed.” He scratched his beard, thinking. “What do you want from your life? Forget about everything you’ve been told. What do you want?”
Millie had not spent much time in her life pondering this question. She had always just performed the next task in front of her and done what was expected. She didn’t answer him right away, but studied the woman she loved sleeping across from them. With Raina she felt loved in a way she had never imagined possible. Maybe it was because Raina had spent much of her life having to hide who she was or maybe not really even knowing who she really was. They were both imposters.
“I want to be free. Really, that’s all I want. Just to be free. Free to love who I want and be who I want without worrying about what is expected of me from my daddy or you or the board of directors. I don’t want to carry all the baggage I inherited.”
“Free is hard. It takes courage to be free. Letting go is a lot harder than holding on, I think. At least that’s been my experience. Where would you start?”
“I think I want to blow it all up.”
“What are you saying?”
“I mean, what if I could completely dissolve Thorne and give it away?”
“Has anyone ever done something like that, I mean at this scale?”
“I don’t know, honestly. It’s kind of an insane idea, right?”
“Your daddy’s not gonna like it.”
“No, he won’t, but he’s an old man now and this year he has plans to finally retire and pass the torch to me.”
Just then, she felt something very strong pass through Wild. The expression on his face didn’t change and there was no other tell, but she felt a dark surge of something moving fast just below the surface. There was a connection between them now that hadn’t been there before.
“What?” she asked, pulling away from him so she could see his face. “What just happened? Is it something with my dad?”
Wild held her gaze for a few seconds before he looked away. He didn’t answer.
“He’s going to die soon, isn’t he? That’s why he’s been acting so weird. You told him, didn’t you, when you were on the fishing trip?”
“He didn’t give me much choice,” Wild said, turning back to face her. “He found one of my journals in your purse the night your mama passed.”
Millie felt like the wind had been knocked out of her. It all made sense now, how her father had been behaving, the uncharacteristic sentimentality, and the weird outbursts during some internal meetings last week.
“How long?” she asked.
“Millie, I….”
“How long? Tell me.”
“Less than a year. I’m sorry, honey. I should have lied to him or just not answered him. It was cruel of me. A better man would have…”
“Oh, stop it, Wild. This isn’t about you. It’s about me and my dad. You just told me I’m about to be orphaned– alone in the world.”
“You’re not alone. I’m right here.” He put his hand lightly on her back.
“Why? Fucking why? Why now, right after mom? Maybe you’re wrong. Maybe it’s a mistake.” Hot tears spilled down her cheeks.
“Anything’s possible sugar, but sadly, I’ve been wrong about most everything in my life but these dates.”
Millie felt the weight of his burden in a way she hadn’t when she first learned about it. He squeezed her hand, willing her to look up at him.
“You shouldn’t do anything to rock the boat with your dad. Why torment him with this in the last year of his life?”
“No, don’t you see? It’s more important now than ever. Daddy has time left to make better choices, to do something really meaningful. This could be his true legacy.”
She could clearly see her uncle’s skepticism and it was well-deserved when it came to her father.
“So what does this look like? I don’t think it’s in the COO’s job description to just blow shit up.”
“There’s a lot of details to figure out. I don’t want to hurt anyone. That would defeat the purpose. I have to find a way where everyone wins.”
“I’m not sure we live in a world where that’s possible.”
“Anything’s possible when you have money and you decide to use it the right way.”
Wild chuckled and she looked up at him.
“Now you really sound like June.”
“I take that as a compliment. I’m going to need time to research and plan. There are a few companies I’ve admired who built an equitable model from the ground up, but none I can think of who restructured in that direction. What we have in our favor is the fact that we’re not public.”
“I don’t have to tell you this, but your daddy aside, you’re going to run into a lot of resistance from all the others who’ve been living high on the hog.”
“Oh, I know.”
Millie went through some mental calculations. Last count there were about 120,000 souls working somewhere inside the machine of Thorne Enterprises. Like most companies, sixty percent of the earnings went to less than ten percent of the employees– the executives, directors, managers. Most rank-and-file employees would spend every month of their lives forced to make impossible choices like buying groceries or getting the car fixed, making the copay for their insulin or paying the December heating bill. And it would never get better. They would work until they couldn’t then be forced to retire and take a job as a greeter at Wal-Mart because social security and Medicaid wouldn’t be enough. She felt an intense shame that made her face flush and sharpened her anger to a fine point.
“Blowing it up’s not really a good metaphor,” she said. “That implies everyone loses. The last thing I want to do is liquidate everything so some other company can come along and do the same shit we’ve done for decades under a different logo. Spreading it out is a better metaphor for what I want to do. That’s going to take a lot of planning. Leaders in every division and company we own will get a choice to come on board with a full employee-vested profit sharing model or we will liquidate them and distribute the proceeds equally as severance for all employees, not just management.”
“You’re talking way over my head now, but I like the sound of it. You can’t take this on alone. Who’s gonna help you?”
“I know just the person. Do you know anyone smarter than Eileen McClarin?”
Wild didn’t say anything. He nodded, distractedly and appeared to be lost in thought at the mention of Eileen. Millie knew there was a history there, but she didn’t fully understand it. It didn’t matter. What mattered is that she felt, for the first time in her life, like she was excited about something. She had prepared her entire life to take on this kind of a worthy challenge.
“I’ll help any way I can but you know I’m mostly boobs on a chicken when it comes to this stuff and I’ve given up everything but a token stake in the family business. I can try to help you manage your daddy. That’s gonna be tough.”
She nodded. “I have a feeling I’m going to need that a lot in the coming days. We’re going to land in a couple of hours and he’s going to be all over me. I think he senses something’s up.”
“I’m sure he does. I hope he’ll come around for your sake.”
“I really hate him sometimes. I feel awful saying that, but I do.”
“I understand, sugar. I felt the same way about my dad, but you’ve got to remember that your dad is not like mine. I know he loves you in his way and he’s spent a lifetime having to pretend to be someone he’s not. That does things to a person.”
“I know you’re right. I’ll try to appeal to him with this. I don’t want to fight him, especially not now, so close to the end.”
“My advice? Take it slow and don’t show your whole hand to anybody until you’re ready to call.”
“You sound like a Kenny Rogers’s song, but I take your point.”
“I’m a simple man.”
“My ass, you are.” She laughed and jabbed him in the ribs. “I’m gonna try to sleep. You should too.”
She moved back to her seat and reclined. This time when she closed her eyes, the carousel was gone and her mind was hers again– a library of orderly stacks where she could search for what she needed, pull it from the shelf and find the answers.
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