by Claire Adams
“You did?” I asked, unable to keep the surprise from my voice.
“I did. And quite frankly, he had no idea what I was talking about, which is what I expected. It was so long ago that I don’t think you can really expect to have an accurate memory of it, either. You were probably upset about something—do you remember how turbulent your teenage years were? And he was just doing what any normal father would do, and that was comfort his child. You’ve always had an overactive imagination, and I’m sure that you took it to mean something that it didn’t.”
I opened my mouth to say something, but then I decided not to. There was no point in getting into an argument with her; this wasn’t going to go anywhere. I knew this even before I had told her, which was why I hadn’t wanted to tell her in the first place. But she was crazy if she thought I was just going to pretend like none of this ever happened, and that we were all going to just come down to the city and hang out with them for the day, like we were one big happy family or something.
“You know what, Mom?” I said finally. “I’m actually happy right now. I am happy with the way my life is, where I’m living, and what I’m doing.”
“I’m glad to hear that!” she said. “You’re acting like I’m actively trying to sabotage you or something. I’m not, Allie. I am happy for you. I just don’t see why you don’t want to come down here and spend a little time with us here, let Cole see what your life was like in the city. Don’t you want to share that with him?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t.” I hung up the phone.
Chapter Twenty
Cole
Once a month, I made house visits. This was an arrangement that the doctor I had taken over the practice from had with some of the patients who preferred not to make the drive to Chapin, patients that would not otherwise see a doctor. These visits took me to the more rural parts, deep in the woods where the houses were spread out, sometimes by half a mile or more. A lot of the people lived as off the grid as they could, and even coming to town for a doctor’s visit was more than they wanted to do.
My first stop took me deep into the woods, near the foot of Bear Claw Ridge. The house was really a log cabin, set deep in the pine trees. There were two cars parked in the gravel driveway when I got there, and there was a woman getting out of one of them.
I recognized the woman as soon as I go out of the car, but by then, it was too late to get in and drive away. Plus, I had to see the patient, Mr. Geary. But what was Sam’s sister doing here? For a second, I couldn’t remember her name, but then it came back to me: Shannon.
“What are you doing here?” she asked when she saw me, her eyes narrowing.
I regarded her. “I could ask the same of you.”
“I’m Mr. Geary’s home health aide.”
“You are?”
“I just started a few weeks ago.”
“I’m his doctor.”
“I didn’t know that. I don’t know if I should even be around you right now. I don’t know if that would be a good idea.”
“If you’d feel more comfortable waiting outside while I go in with Mr. Geary, you can. But that’s not necessary.”
She was giving me a wary look. “I’m not sure about that.”
“I think we can be professional, don’t you? I’d like to think that everything that has happened is in the past now and that we can all move on.”
We stood there for a moment, neither of us saying anything.
“That’s easy for you to say,” she finally said.
“It’s not, actually. You seem to forget that Marissa was my sister.”
“Yeah, and my brother loved her more than he even loved himself. And your sister was a damn good person, which is surprising considering the family that she comes from. You and your parents just couldn’t get past the idea that she might end up with someone who wasn’t from the same fucking socioeconomic class as you. You guys couldn’t stand the idea.”
“That’s not true,” I said, all the while feeling surprised that someone like Shannon would even know the word socioeconomic. I sighed. “Look, Shannon, I just came out here to do my job, okay? I’m not trying to start anything with you, I’m not trying to reopen old wounds, I’m not—”
“There are no wounds to reopen,” she snapped. “Because they never healed in the first place! How can they heal when we have to deal with what you did to our family every single day of the year? Yeah, your sister died, and you can go visit her grave and remember her on her birthday and during the holidays, and then the rest of the time you can get on with your life. But Sam didn’t die—his whole life just got completely destroyed because of you.”
Somewhere above us, I heard a chickadee. The wind ruffled the white pines; the sun dappled the ground. Mr. Geary was probably sitting inside, wondering what the hell I was doing out here, wondering what Shannon and I were talking about. The thing was, she was right—her brother’s life did get completely upended because of me, though that hadn’t been my intention. My intention had been to give him enough of an ass-kicking that he’d get the idea through his head to leave my sister alone, that he’d decide dating her simply wasn’t worth it if he had to deal with me.
But Sam, I had underestimated. He was wiry, not very muscular, but somehow quick and very strong, and though I’d been expecting him to fight back a little, he had gone all out, bruising my ribs and splitting my lip.
“Your brother was a drug addict,” I said. “A drug addict who also got my sister addicted to drugs.”
“So you’re blaming him. This is all his fault. He ended up addicted to drugs because a fucking doctor prescribed him Oxys. He put his trust in a doctor and got completely screwed over, and then another doctor comes along and beats him within an inch of his life.”
Maybe you could just...rough him up a little. That was how my mother had put it when she came to me that night. Your father doesn’t know that I’m talking to you about this, she’d said. He wouldn’t be okay with this sort of thing at all, you know that. But what else can we do, Cole? What other choice do we have?
No other choice, really. I knew that my parents had tried to pay Sam off. Unbeknownst to my sister, they’d given him $4,000 in cash—probably more cash than anyone in his family had ever seen at one time—if he would just disappear from my sister’s life. Had they told me they were going to do such a thing, I would have told them not to, because all Sam was going to do would be to buy drugs with it. Marissa had only just started using at that point; it was still early enough that she could’ve gotten clean without being sent off to rehab. But with Sam’s newfound wealth, the two of them were able to take off, hole up in a cabin somewhere for a few months, and have all the drugs they wanted. When Marissa finally reappeared again, she was hooked, and it was because they’d been able to afford all those drugs with the money my parents had given them.
And so my mother, my prim and proper mother who objected to the use of pesticides on the front lawn because it would kill the earthworms, had come to me that one night, at her wit’s end, not knowing what else to do.
And I had agreed, because I thought a good ass-kicking would make Sam realize that dating my sister came with too much shit for him to deal with.
I was wrong, though.
My parents hired the state’s top criminal defense attorney, and the charges against me were dropped, Marissa was sent away to detox, and we thought that we’d be able to begin the healing process.
Again, though—we were wrong.
“My brother said he saw your parents at his job a few weeks ago,” Shannon said. “They ignored him. Big surprise.”
“They might not have seen him,” I lied.
“Not that there would be anything to say other than an apology. Are you even sorry for what you did in the least? Do you care? Do you ever think about that?”
“Of course I think about it,” I said. That was not a lie, though I’d thought about it less and less as time went by. It was just the nature of things. I could say the same a
bout Marissa, too—I’d thought about her every single day for months after she died, but then I’d realize, here and there, that a day had gone by, then another, where I hadn’t thought about her. I’d never forget her, of course, but things that were once front and center have a way of shifting, drifting back to the shadows, once enough time has elapsed. “I do think about it,” I repeated. “No one wanted any of this to happen; I can promise you that. This was not how anyone pictured things working out.”
“But you just get to go on with your life like nothing ever happened,” she said. “While my brother is struggling with his day-to-day reality. Simple things, like remembering to brush his teeth or how to scramble an egg. It’s been a blessing that he’s managed to hold onto this job for as long as he has, but who knows if that’s going to last? Nothing for you has changed, though.”
Oh, if she only knew. But what would she do with that information, if I told her, if I was honest with her, about just how much my life had changed?
“How long are you going to be with Mr. Geary?” she asked.
“Half an hour to 45 minutes,” I said.
She nodded tightly. “Then I think I’ll just plan on coming back then. I don’t think I can be in your vicinity.”
“I understand,” I said.
I felt far more shaken up after my encounter with Shannon than I cared to admit. I tried to push it out of my mind after she left, and I went inside to listen to Mr. Geary’s list of complaints, but I was distracted, unsettled. After I left Mr. Geary’s, I had a 20-minute drive to the next patient’s house, and I was glad for the time in the car, nothing but the pavement in front of me, the tall trees rushing by. There weren’t many things that I wished I could have done differently in my life, but that whole thing with Sam was certainly one of them. After the charges were dropped, my mother and I never talked about what had happened either, and as far as I knew, my father didn’t know that she had been involved at all. It was better that way; it was better to let him think this was just something that an overprotective brother had done on his own—and maybe I would have, even if my mother had never brought it up—but I still sometimes wondered how things might’ve worked out if my mother had never come to me that night and suggested I do that.
Chapter Twenty-One
Allie
I could tell that something was bothering Cole, but he didn’t seem to want to talk about it, even when Declan ran off to play with a couple of boys he knew in the sand box. We’d ridden bikes down the bike trail and made a stop at this playground so Declan could get out of the trailer and stretch his legs. Cole and I sat on one of the benches, drinking water and eating an apple. I took my shoes off, pushed my toes through the wood chips, and stretched my calves.
We’d gotten an early start that morning, leaving right after we’d had breakfast, so at first, I just assumed that Cole was still waking up and he’d be in a better mood once we had been riding around for a little while, but that didn’t really seem to be the case at all. He had me ride in front, and though he never got too close behind me or anything, it felt as though I could sense this simmering eagerness in him to just pass me and pedal as fast as he could, even though he was pulling the trailer with Declan in it.
Since we weren’t riding side by side, it was harder to have a conversation, though it wouldn’t have been impossible. He was mostly giving me one-word answers, though, so I eventually stopped saying anything and just rode my bike, enjoying the scenery. The bike trail wound its way through the woods, and the smell of pine was strong in the air. It wasn’t too humid out, which was nice, and the people that we passed, going in the opposite direction, all smiled and said hello.
That was nice, but I still wasn’t sure what was going on with Cole.
As we sat there next to each other, a running commentary had started up in my head with a litany of possibilities over why he was acting like this. I’d done something to upset him. I was being annoying without realizing it. He just realized he didn’t actually like me that much. I tried to ignore this little voice, but it was proving almost impossible. I also hated the fact that almost all of the possibilities I was coming up with were about me—that I was unaware I was doing something irritating, that I’d done something to make him mad—as though I didn’t have the self-esteem to just accept that maybe he was having a bad day.
“Is everything all right with you?” I finally asked.
He’d been looking off in the distance, not in the direction of the sand box, where Declan was still playing, but toward the field that had a track going around it.
“Yeah,” he said after a few seconds, finally pulling his gaze away to look at me. “Things are fine. Why?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know, you’ve just seem a little...off, I guess?” Suddenly, though, I was doubting my previous thought about there being anything wrong. The whole thing was making me feel incredibly flustered, like I couldn’t even trust my own feelings or perceptions of things. Was this what it was like when you liked someone? I didn’t know if I’d be able to handle this.
“I’m sorry about that,” he said, and he gave me a smile, which seemed genuine, and reached over and took my hand. “I’m not trying to come across like that. I’ve just... I’ve got a couple things on my mind, is all. But you’re right—I shouldn’t let that affect my day, especially since I’m spending it with you guys.”
I knew he was saying it to make me feel better, and a part of me did, but another part of me also felt like a nagging, insecure girlfriend.
“If it was anything I did, I’d want you to feel like you could tell me,” I said. The words slipped out of my mouth before I could stop them—what I really wanted to do was just move on from this conversation, but I couldn’t seem to stop talking. “You can trust me, you know. I am not someone who can’t take constructive criticism, and I understand that people might want their alone time. I mean, I’ve never even had a boyfriend before, so I definitely get how nice it can be to have your own space and not have to—”
“Allie.” He had a bigger smile on his face now, which turned into laughter. “Sweetie. Can I call you sweetie? Stop. This really has nothing to do with you. And while I appreciate you understanding the importance of autonomy, trust me when I tell you I’d much rather spend my time with you than not.” He leaned toward me. “In fact,” he said in a low voice, “I’m hoping that later tonight we can spend some time together in my bed.”
I felt a warm tingle of happiness spreading across my chest, unspooling in me as he spoke.
“I would like that,” I said. “And there’s no one that I would rather spend my time with right now, either. But if that ever changes—I want you to feel like you can tell me that, and I won’t lose my shit or anything.”
“I will keep that in mind,” he said. “But I can assure you that as of right now—and certainly the foreseeable future—there’s really no one else I would rather be around with, either. I’ll try to snap out of it, okay? I don’t want to ruin anyone’s day.”
“Oh, you’re not!” I said, immediately feeling bad that I had let my own foolish insecurities get in the way. “You know, if there’s something bothering you, you can let it. That didn’t sound right, but... what I mean is, I totally understand if there’s something that’s bothering you and you don’t want to talk about it. I’m not saying that you need to pretend that everything is just fine if you feel like it’s not.”
“I know what you meant. I don’t want to be acting like things aren’t fine though, especially since what’s on my mind doesn’t have anything to do with you, so it shouldn’t affect us.”
I nodded, part of me hoping he’d elaborate and tell me what was going on. He didn’t, though, and I wasn’t going to push it. If he wanted to tell me, he could.
And Cole’s mood did seem to improve as the day went on. It was just a lot of fun to be out and riding around, getting to see new places. The bike path took us through several little towns, each with a bustling Main Street. We sat on the benches
outside a general store in one of these towns, eating penny candy from paper lunch sacks. We took a turn off to Soft Shell Pond and went swimming; when we were done, we rode into Gardner and had lunch at a diner.
My leg muscles were pleasantly sore, like they’d gotten a good workout in. And we still had a decent ride ahead of to get back, but I was perfectly happy to do so. Getting to spend the whole day out like this, with Cole and Declan, was more fun than anything else I could’ve been doing.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Cole
It had been almost a week since I’d run into Shannon at Mr. Geary’s, but I still couldn’t shake the feeling I had. There was no way that I was going to mention it to my parents, though, so the only other person I could talk to who would understand the impact of the situation was Ben.
“What was she doing there?” he asked.
“She’s a home health aide. It just caught me completely off guard seeing her like that.”
“Yeah, I’m sure you weren’t expecting that shit.”
“It went about as well as you’d expect.”
“Did you tell your parents?”
“No. My mother wouldn’t be able to handle it. She’s got so much guilt as it is; I don’t need to add to it.”
“Well, hopefully you won’t see her again. Shannon, that is. Not your mother.”
“It’s just...bothering me. I mean, I feel like it’s bothering me now as much as it was when I ran into her that day.”
“You didn’t say anything to her about...?”
I shook my head vehemently. “No. There’s no point. It would only complicate things by a thousand. She obviously still hates me and wishes her brother had never met my sister in the first place. Not that I blame her for hating me. I just wasn’t expecting to see her, I guess, and then knowing that my parents saw Sam at the grocery store... I mean, I still think about that shit.”