The Good Guy on my Porch (Catalpa Creek #3)

by Katharine Sadler

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Oscar

  I stopped at the end of the walk, next to the mailbox. Dilly was sitting on the porch. She was looking in my direction, but it was clear she hadn’t seen me, she was deep in thought. There were dark circles under her eyes and her mouth was set in a firm frown. I stepped forward, rolling my suitcase behind me, but she didn’t flinch. She kept petting Buddy, her hand moving mechanically in his fur, as she stared straight ahead and past me as I moved forward.

  “Dilly,” I said, when I was right in front of her. She flinched and looked up at me, and the pain in her expression nearly cracked my heart right in half. Molly’s wedding had been beautiful and perfect, not because of the location or the service, but because of the intense love between her and Daniel, the kind of love a person will swim through shark-infested waters for. The kind of love I saw between all my sisters and their spouses. It mirrored what I felt for Dilly.

  “You’re wrong,” she said, like we were in the middle of a conversation.

  I sat down on the other side of Buddy. “What am I wrong about?” I wanted to pull her into my arms, but I knew better than to rush things, knew better than to push.

  “I’m not hiding behind my mother. I’m facing reality. The reality is that I’ll always have to go to her when she calls, I’ll never be free to leave town. I’ll never be free to get serious about any guy, because I don’t have anything to give. Everything I have I’ve given to my mother, will continue giving to her.”

  I didn’t answer right away, because what she was saying was true. It would never be easy to date her, especially with her mother needing so much of her time and, if I was going to take that on, I needed to be in it one hundred percent. “What if I don’t ask you for anything? You don’t need to give anything to me. Let me help you, let me give to you.”

  She looked over at me, her eyes watery, but lit with some bright light that hadn’t been there before. “You don’t really want that.”

  “I want you,” I said. “More than anything. I’m willing to do whatever it takes to have you in my life.”

  “As your friend?”

  “I want more than that. I want you to let me love you. I know you don’t love me, but I know you feel—”

  “I do love you.” Her words should have lifted me up with happiness, but the sad voice in which they were spoken made it clear she wasn’t happy that she loved me. “That’s why I can’t offer you more than friendship. I can’t love you, Oscar. My mother loved my father, so much, and losing him was what sent her into this hell of fear and loneliness. If you and I got serious or had a child…I don’t want to become my mother, Oscar, but I can’t be sure I won’t. I’m not going to risk hurting anyone I love the way she hurt me, I’m not going to be a burden on anyone I care about.”

  Everything clicked into place. “You aren’t your mother, Dilly. As far as I can tell, you aren’t afraid of anything.”

  She turned to me, her expression stricken. “I am afraid, Oscar. I’m afraid all the time. It’s why I force myself to do the things that scare me, like I can build up my resistance.”

  I reached for her but stopped when she flinched. “Everyone’s afraid sometimes, Dilly. It’s when you let the fear rule your actions that it becomes a problem. You don’t let anything stop you.”

  She shrugged, unconvinced.

  “And even if you did get sick,” I said. “I know you wouldn’t refuse treatment. You are so independent, so determined to do everything on your own, you’d never fight against anything that would give you a shot at keeping that independence.”

  “You deserve better.” Her voice was little more than a whisper. Nothing I was saying was getting through to her.

  “I don’t want better. I want you. But I’m not going to settle for being your friend. I can’t sit here next to you and watch the sunset without holding your hand, without pulling you into my lap and kissing you.” I pushed to my feet and stood. “Whenever you’re ready to be with me, as my girlfriend, I’ll be here. I’ll be waiting for you.”

  She didn’t look up at me, she stared out at the mountains, her jaw set in a hard line. I watched the side of her face for a moment, feeling like the worst kind of jerk, before I went inside and closed the door behind me.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Dilly

  I knocked on Mary’s door and waited. It had been a week since she’d ambushed me in the library. A week since I’d seen Oscar’s face, heard his voice. A week of Carrie refusing to call me back or answer my texts. A week of taking care of my mother alone, because Aunt Melly was out of town again. A week of me realizing maybe I was being stupid to ignore the offer of help from Mary and the others.

  Mary opened the door and gave me a gentle smile. “Dilly, it’s wonderful to see you. How are you doing?”

  Maybe it was because I’d been lying for so long, or maybe it was because I hadn’t slept a full eight hours in more than a week, but I couldn’t lie to her. “Not so good.”

  She placed a warm hand on my shoulder and pulled me in for a side-hug. “Come in. Let’s figure this out.”

  I followed her inside and took a seat on her floral couch. As soon as my butt hit the soft fabric, I popped back up. This was wrong. I couldn’t betray my mother. Couldn’t go behind her back to plot about what to do with her. She was a person, an ill person, not some burden I was forced to carry. “You know what? I should go. I just remembered I have—”

  “Don’t go,” she said, her expression gentle, calming. She took both my hands in hers and gently pushed me back down on the couch. “Just listen for a bit. If you still want to go, if you decide the way you’re living now is what’s best for you and your mother, I promise to never bring this up again. I promise to let you go on however you choose.”

  I wrapped my arms tight around myself and I sat. It felt like parts of me were leaking out, like I was letting go of the one thing I was supposed to hold on to the tightest. But it also felt somehow right.

  “I remember your mother more every day,” she said. “Every time I see you, I remember something new about her, because you look so much like she did.”

  I nodded. She wasn’t the first person to say that, though I couldn’t see it myself when I looked at old pictures.

  “She wasn’t like you in any other way, though, Dilly. She and my daughter were best friends. Liza was so sad to hear how your mother is doing now. She wants to visit her next month if it’s okay with you?”

  “I don’t know—”

  She waved a hand. “I’m sorry. That’s not what I wanted to talk to you about. Your mother was smart and she had a lot of friends, but she was timid. Whenever Liza had a plan to go flirt with some boys or take a midnight swim at Eagle lake, your mother pulled her back. As a mother, I thought she was the perfect friend for my Liza. She kept her in line, she kept her from getting into too much trouble. When I talked to Liza and told her what had happened to your mother, she wasn’t surprised. She said your mother had always been afraid of so many things. Had always worried about the worst-case scenario.”

  “That didn’t start until after my father died. She had tons of friends. She had parties.” I was certain of that, had based so many choices on that certainty.

  “She did.” Mary nodded. “But none of those things required risk. Maybe she got worse after your father died, but she was never like you, Dilly. You see a challenge, a risk, and you march into it. You’re more like your father, running full-speed at life and damning the consequences.”

  Tears sprang to my eyes. My mother never talked about my father. I remembered bits and pieces about him, but nobody had told me I was like him. “I’m scared sometimes.”

  “You’d have to be insane not to be,” she said. “But you are not your mother. You are not heading for a fate like hers.”

  The tears slipped down my cheeks as Mary voiced my biggest fear. “How did you know. . .?”

  She patted my hand. “Just a guess, dear. It’s what I would fear in your place.
I’ve been thinking for a while that maybe that fear is the reason you’ve held your secret so tight, kept everyone at such a distance.” She sighed. “My Liza, she and your mother had a falling out their senior year. Your mother didn’t want to go to a party that Liza had promised her crush she’d attend. Liza felt that your mother never supported her, that she thought only of herself. As a mother, I saw your mother as someone who’d keep my daughter safe, but Liza had begun to see her as someone who’d hold her back.”

  “She was sick,” I said. “She can’t help what she does, couldn’t help her fear.”

  “Maybe not. Or maybe she was so afraid that all she could think of was her own fear and she didn’t care that Liza wanted and needed the support of her best friend in that moment.”

  The criticism of my mother hurt. “It was just one dumb high school party. It’s not like Liza was drowning and my mother didn’t jump in to save her.”

  She smiled. “Think back to high school, Dilly. Think about that one stupid high school party where you’d see your crush, a boy who’d finally noticed you. It might not have been a life or death situation, but it was huge to Liza. And it wasn’t only the one party, your mother had been saying no to Liza for a while. Liza finally got tired of it and got angry.”

  “And that was the end of their friendship?”

  “Liza thought so. She went to that party and it turned out she wasn’t the only girl invited by the boy she’d been crushing on. She found him kissing another girl, and she ran out of the house, planning to go home. She ran right into your mother on her way in.”

  “She went to the party after all.”

  She nodded. “She hugged Liza and wiped away her tears. Your mother convinced Liza to stay at the party and the two of them danced and laughed and had a wonderful time. Your mother met your father at that party.”

  “But he wasn’t from Catalpa Creek.”

  She patted my hand. “He was visiting a family friend.”

  I bit my bottom lip and wrapped my arms tighter around myself, because I felt certain whatever Mary was going to say next wouldn’t be something I wanted to hear. “What are you suggesting?”

  She rubbed my back in a slow, comforting circle. “Maybe pampering your mother, giving in to every one of her fears and allowing her to hide from life, is not helping her, Dilly. Maybe she needs your honesty, needs to have to fend for herself for a while to accept that she needs real, professional help.”

  “I did that. I left her alone for a week to go on a spring break trip and she almost died.”

  “Your aunt told me about that, but things are different now, Dilly. You have me and Norma Jane and Leah and even Betty and we’ll all go and check on your mother and make sure she’s eating.”

  “But she gets so upset. No one can calm her down but me.”

  “Your aunt told me that, too. But what’s the alternative? Do you just keep doing what you’re doing? Just keep enabling her to never get treatment for her illness?” Her expression hardened, and she stopped rubbing my back. “Every time she has a bad feeling and you lie and tell her that you’ve stayed home, you’re allowing her to believe that her bad feeling was a true omen of impending doom and that she saved you by warning you.”

  Her words pierced me like knives, even though they were spoken in a gentle voice. “You think I’ve made her worse by lying to her?”

  Her silence was enough to confirm the truth. I considered her words, rolling them over, trying to free myself from blame. Everything I’d done had been to help my mother, all the sacrifices I’d made, all the…But she was right, I realized with a sickening crack of my heart. I’d allowed Mom’s fears to control not just her life, but mine as well as far as she was concerned. I’d made her worse.

  “You did the best you could,” she said gently, the back-rubbing resuming. “You did the best you could in an un-winnable situation. I’m not faulting you for that. I’m just saying, maybe it’s time to try something different. Maybe she needs a little push.”

  “But what if she stops eating? What if I do something different and it kills her or sends her into a complete mental breakdown?”

  “We’ll all be there to help her. And your aunt has found a good doctor who’s willing to come to her if she agrees to it. We won’t let her get to the state she was in when you went on spring break. You can go to New Orleans with Oscar, give your speech, spend a few days in the city, have fun and not worry about her.”

  My heart pounded, and my palms got sweaty. I loved the idea of a trip with Oscar, was excited about the idea of having some help with my mother, but I doubted it would work. I’d been disappointed too many times before. “I can’t leave her—”

  Mary’s circles turned to pats. “I’m not asking you to leave town tomorrow. How about we start by going to see her and telling her the truth? About everything. Let her know the real you.”

  “Tell her the truth?” The words felt like a prayer and an absolution. Like the purest kind of freedom and the biggest risk. Like letting go of something I’d been clinging to tightly for years and letting in the possibility of a better future.

  She smiled. “It’s time to stop lying, Dilly. To everyone. Even yourself.”

  ***

  “Mom,” I said, ignoring the severe frown on her face. “Do you have time for a visit?”

  Mom might never leave her apartment, but she hadn’t forgotten her manners from her more social days. “How are you, Mary?”

  “I’m just fine,” Mary said. “Would it be okay if I came in? Dilly and I would like to talk to you.”

  Mom looked down at her over-sized sweatshirt and sweatpants and ran a hand through her tangled hair. It looked as though she’d just gotten out of bed, which could mean she was having a bad day or could mean she’d just taken a nap. “I’m not feeling well. I think it would be better for y’all to come back later.”

  I felt bad for her, felt that I was ganging up on her in a way by bringing Mary with me, but I was also determined. If Mary was going to help me, Mom needed to get used to her being around and I was out of ways to help my mother on my own. We couldn’t send her to the home in New England unless she agreed and nothing else I’d been doing had helped her. She was getting worse and I was burnt out. It was time for something to change and the small hope that Mary had given me, the hope that a little push might be all it took to get my mother to step out of her comfort zone, felt like the first light I’d seen in weeks.

  “We just want to talk, Mom. We won’t take much of your evening.”

  She scowled but stepped back from the doorway and shuffled to the couch. “Well, come in, then.”

  Mary followed her, and I shut and locked the door behind us. Mom would freak out if I left the door unlocked and I didn’t want to give her anything else to get upset about. Taking a seat in an armchair across from Mom and Mary, I stared at Mom, trying to put the words together.

  Mom narrowed her eyes and clenched her hands tight in her lap. “Can I…Would either of you like something to drink? A snack? I don’t have much, but—”

  Mary patted her clasped hands. “We don’t need a thing, honey. Just listen to your daughter.”

  Mom flinched from Mary’s touch, but didn’t move away. She looked back to me. Antsiness flowed over me. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t intentionally hurt her. I stood and paced, running a hand through my hair.

  “Just start at the beginning,” Mary said in a low voice. “Tell your mother what’s it been like for you.”

  I drew in a deep breath and glared at Mary, annoyed with her for making this sound so easy, for giving me hope. This was going to tear apart both me and my mother. Mary smiled back serenely and nodded. “Just start. That’s the hardest part.”

  So, I started with something easy. “I had so much fun on that spring break trip, Momma. I laid on the beach every day and swam…The water was so clear and gorgeous. It wasn’t as crazy as you might think…It was kind of wonderful. I met a guy there. A sweet, funny guy and I…I lost my virgi
nity to him in one of the most romantic, perfect moments of my life.” I smiled at her, but she was staring at me, her expression hard and closed off, like she wasn’t hearing what I was saying. “He was going to college up North and we talked about me driving up there to see him and him driving down here to see me. I’d never felt so free and…Happy.” I pulled in another deep breath and glared at Mary again. She was wrong, starting wasn’t the hardest part. Every moment of this was hard. It was like peeling off my skin, inch by brutal inch. “And then I got home, and I went to see you. I wanted to show you the pictures and tell you about it, to let you know I was safe, that I’d never been in danger. But you…” I choked on the words, the memory of seeing her on the couch, so still and pale, like she was already gone, still the worst moment of my life. Still able to choke me up. “You were so sick, Momma. I’d done that to you. I hurt you by leaving you, by going off and having fun and not thinking of you.” I met her gaze, but it was vacant. She was holding Mary’s hands now, gripping them. “I called Aunt Melly and 911, and we got you to the hospital and it…Every moment of pleasure I’d had away on spring break was laced with guilt and turned ugly. I hadn’t been free, I’d been selfish. I hadn’t been losing my virginity to the sweetest boy I’d ever met, I’d been betraying my mother. I never spoke to that boy again, because it felt like it would be a new betrayal of you. And I swore I’d never leave town again, I’d stay here and protect you.”

  My mother shook her head, her eyes glassy now with tears. “No. I need to protect you. You need to stay here, so I can protect you.”

  I laced my fingers together and pressed them against my stomach, holding myself in. This part was going to hurt. I knelt in front of her and placed my hands on her knees. “I’ve been lying to you, Momma. Just about every day since that spring break trip, I’ve told you at least one lie. All those times you had a bad feeling and I told you I stayed home or drove to work or walked to work or even slept on the couch because you had a feeling something bad would happen in my bedroom, I lied to you. I’ve been walking full-speed into every one of your bad feelings for the past ten years and I’ve never, not once, had anything bad happen to me as a result.”