by Emma Salah
“You’re seeing a therapist,” she said, slowly, trying to wrap her mind around it.
“A friend recommended me to him after I told him I was having some issues.”
Alarmed, she bit her lip. “Issues? What kind of issues?”
“I don’t think—”
“Dad! Come on! You can’t tell me that and not expect me to ask.”
“It’s nothing. I’ve been having some trouble sleeping. It’s not something new, but it was easier to manage when you were all younger. Not as easy now.”
She’d had no idea. Reagan wrapped her arms around her knees and drew her legs to her chest on the sofa.
“I’m so sorry, Dad. What can I do?”
He waved a hand. “The therapist is helping me manage and thankfully it’s working.”
“I’m glad,” she said truthfully.
She didn’t like the idea of her father being plagued by nightmares. Of not talking to her about it. God, why wouldn’t the men in her life just talk to her? How can I know what he’s going through if he doesn’t tell me? She always thought if she was patient enough, cared enough, they’d come to her and trust her with their feelings. For him to consider getting help, let alone actually going to see a therapist of his own accord, showed how bad the nightmares must have been.
“But that’s not why I came here. I came here because I had a talk in my sessions today about you.”
“Me? Why?” Her head jerked back.
His cane tapped away on his knee. “Because we don’t talk enough.”
“Well, there’s a reason for that.” The words slipped out without her thinking about it.
Fuck. Shit. She should not have said that. What’s the point of keeping it all in anyway? she thought tiredly. He was right, they definitely didn’t talk enough and she was sick of feeling like it was all her fault when it wasn’t.
The tapping stopped.
“What are you talking about?” he asked.
“You know.” She sighed.
He shook his head. “I don’t.”
“Don’t make me say it.”
“Say what?”
“You know.”
“Reagan, I have no idea what you are talking—”
“I killed Mom,” she blurted out.
Another silence descended upon them, but there was nothing comfortable about this one. Her dad shook and it took her a moment to realize he was shaking with anger. Reagan tensed. He dropped his cane to the ground with a loud thud.
“You did not kill your mother,” her father said harshly.
“Forget I said anything—”
“Reagan. You did not kill your mother.”
“Dad—”
“You didn’t kill her!”
“You don’t need to lie,” she snapped. “I know what happened.”
“Do you? If you did, you would know that your mother made the choice to save you.”
“Yes, but if I hadn’t—”
“If you hadn’t what? You were just a baby. It was not your fault that you went into distress and the doctor had to do a cesarean.”
“It was my fault. She had the choice between whether to save herself or to save me. She should have saved herself. There was so much more she had to live for. You. The boys. All those lives for the possible life of one. She had no idea if I was going to live or who I would become.”
“Not for a possible life. For you, Reagan. Please don’t think like this. Don’t dishonor your mother’s sacrifice.”
The words he used plunged her back to that night with Zac. “Your mom wouldn’t want you hating yourself, there are better ways to honor her.” What he said had meant everything to her. It had made her realize she needed to stop focusing so much on her dad’s reaction and start focusing on making the most out of life to honor her mother’s last wish that she lived instead of her.
“I don’t want to dishonor Mom’s sacrifice,” she whispered. “But I see the way you look at me, Dad.”
“How do I look at you?”
“Like you’re looking through me. Or sometimes, it’s like you can’t even bear to look at me at all. Like now.”
“Reagan.” He turned and faced her.
She was the one who couldn’t look at him now. She kept her face averted.
Her dad didn’t touch her and she wondered what he was going to say—if he was even going to say anything. When he finally did speak, he spoke so low and the words sounded like they were being dragged out of him.
“You look like her so much.”
Her eyes flickered up to his. For the first time in a long time, he met her gaze.
“Malcolm and Dean look like her a little. So does Aidan and Callum. But you, you look like her the most. Your hair, the way you smile, the way your eyes say everything you are feeling, even the way you move. Sometimes I don’t notice it. Other times, I look at you...and it hits me right in the gut. And I can’t breathe. Every time. It feels like I’m losing her all over again.”
She swallowed. “I’m sorry. I know how painful it must be.”
“No, baby girl. I’m sorry.” He reached out and touched her hair. “For making you feel less than you are. For hurting you.”
“I know. I know you don’t mean to. You can’t help how you feel.”
“Doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt any less.” He smiled ruefully.
Yeah, it hurt and it hurts hearing it too.
“I loved your mother from the moment we met and I’ve never stopped since. And I probably never will, not until the day I die. But she’s gone and you’re here. I wouldn’t wish it any other way. I’m not just glad for the sacrifice she made that day, I’m grateful because I have you. If she could see the woman that you’ve become, she would be so proud. Almost as proud as I am. I see so much of her in you, but don’t think I don’t see you, Reagan. I do. I see my bright and beautiful daughter.”
Reagan couldn’t stop the tears then. She buried her face in her hands and sobbed, her chest shuddering with the force of her crying. Her dad patted her awkwardly on the back and it was enough to make her laugh, because he had never done well with tears.
Slowly, she began to rein it in, wiping her face with the heel of her palm. Her dad pulled his hand back.
“I think it’s time for me to leave.”
She giggled. “What? You don’t want me to cry on you some more?”
“I can’t promise that I won’t do it again,” he said, quietly. “But I’m trying.”
“Just knowing that you love me and are proud of me is enough, Dad.” She smiled.
He smiled back at her as he stood up. She stood along with him. Together they went to her front door. He turned to her and opened his arms.
She threw herself at him. And just like when she was younger, he lifted her up and cuddled her close. Reagan burrowed her head in his chest, breathing him in deep.
“Thank you, Daddy,” she whispered.
“You’re welcome, baby girl.”
He gently lowered her to the ground and shifted back. Reagan took the hint and let go.
“I hope when you are ready you can tell me what put that sadness into your eyes.”
“I...” Her throat clogged up. She swallowed painfully.
“Maybe soon.” He tapped her chin once and walked away.
Reagan shut the door and rested her head against it.
The conversation with her dad left her feeling exhausted, but in a good way. Like finally something had healed between the two of them and they could finally move forward. Then, why did she still feel so hollow? She slowly lowered herself to the ground.
Wrapping her arms around her knees, Reagan cried. She cried about how deeply Zac had been hurt by the people in his life who should have protected him. She cried because he didn’t love her the way she loved him. She cried because
she had lied to him when she told him they would be able to go back to being friends. They were never going to be friends again, because things would never ever be the same between them. Mostly, Reagan cried though because it hurt so much and she knew it was a wound that was going to take a long time to heal. If ever.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Zac sat in his childhood kitchen, wondering what the fuck he was doing here. The house looked exactly the same. It was one of those typical suburban houses with the wraparound porch. Small, but comfortable. The kitchen, other than the living room, was probably the biggest room in the house. Nothing had changed in here, either. His mom’s favorite purple curtains still hung over the back door leading to the garden. The tiled floors, stainless counters and old refrigerator were the same.
But something felt different. He ran his hands through his hair, before dropping his hands onto the dining table. Maybe it wasn’t the house; maybe it was him. His stomach churned just being here. He had promised when he had left at eighteen years old, about to go to college, that he would never have to set foot in this house. After avoiding his mother’s calls for the last two weeks, he’d finally answered. But he never did things halfway. Now here he was. Sitting in this kitchen.
His mom placed a cup of coffee in front of him. He looked up at her. She definitely didn’t look the same. Amy Quinn had always been pretty. Even when she had black eyes and purple skin, but too many years of being knocked around and taking painkillers had washed away that natural prettiness. Now her plain summer dress hung off her, showing how skinny she was. Her hair had more gray in it than blonde and it hadn’t been styled in years. She’d been seventeen years old when she had him, too young to know how to look after a child and too young to know it was a bad idea to marry a man nearly ten years her senior who couldn’t control his anger. She looked older than forty-four years old, with deep grooves around her mouth and eyes. Her eyes were the same though. The same warm and nervous blue eyes, staring down at him.
He hadn’t seen her in a few years, but when he came knocking she had greeted him like he had only been there yesterday. Another thing that had unsettled Zac.
“Do you need more milk?” she asked him, wringing her hands.
Zac shook his head. He took a sip, swallowing the bitter coffee. He didn’t have the heart to tell her that he drank his coffee with sugar and with no milk. It was Sheriff Quinn who liked his coffee white and bitter.
His mom took a seat beside him, close enough that their knees touched. It made him want to run his hands through his hair again, but he kept them clenched around the cup.
“I’m so glad you’re here, Zachariah.” She reached for his hand but started to pull it away.
Without conscious thought, he extended his hand and she put hers into his. It was rough, with age spots and even more calluses than he had. Her little finger was crooked and would always stay crooked since she had broken it twice. Both times Sheriff Quinn’s fault. Anger choked him.
“I’ve been watching you play on TV.” She smiled. “You always were lightning fast, even as a child. I could barely keep up with you. Thank you for sending me those tickets. I will come and see you play as soon as I can get some time off.”
“I didn’t come here to talk to you about hockey,” he said.
She gave him a bewildered look. “Did you want to talk about something else, Zachariah?”
He turned his head and looked at the woman who had tried to raise him. Layers upon layers of the past intersected with the present. He’d left this house to get away from it all and now he was back where he’d promised he’d never go. I promised to never hurt Reagan either and look how badly I fucked that up. But he realized the past wasn’t a physical place, because he’d never truly escaped, had he? I’ve been carrying it with me everywhere I go, every day thinking that...what? One day it’ll just disappear if I wish for it hard enough? He might not be that scared little boy anymore, dreaming of the day he could finally punch his father, but for him to heal, he had to stop running. And there was only one way to do that. To face it head on.
“Why are you still here, Mom?” Zac asked.
“What do you mean?” She laughed nervously. “This is my home.”
“This place has no good memories.”
His other hand clenched the cup tighter, his knuckles growing white. He tried to relax, but there were too many thoughts running through his mind for him to focus.
“Doesn’t it?” She patted his hand. “I know you don’t understand, but all my memories of you are here.”
“Mom...” He trailed off.
His stomach continued to churn.
“This is the place you told me your dream of becoming a hockey player for the first time. This is the place where you lost your first tooth. Where I bandaged every scrape and bruise you got at practice that day. Where I made marble cake with you and you accidentally mixed up salt and sugar. Where you grew taller, stronger and bigger than I ever managed. I see all that every day and they are the best memories a mother could wish for. Hopefully one day, I will get even more memories of future generations here, crawling around, growing big and tall like you.”
Zac stared at the wistful smile on her face. He didn’t want to take away any happiness from her, but he couldn’t hold it in. The anger he’d kept bottled down deep inside was rising up from his stomach into his throat, until he couldn’t do it any longer.
“Do you know what I see when I look around?” He pointed with his chin at the kitchen counter. “I see the place where Sherriff Quinn slapped you so hard you fell back and banged your head into the counter. Knocked you out cold. Blood everywhere. It took hours for me to clean it up and still there are smudges on the wall. You wouldn’t wake up for so long I wondered if you ever would. Five minutes went by and I had no idea if you were alive or dead. And I had no idea what to do since he forbade me from calling the ambulance. Instead, I sat with you, with a rag pressed against your head to try and stop the bleeding while I counted the seconds. Do you want to know how long it took you to wake up?”
Tears streamed down his mother’s face as he spoke to her. Her breath hitched when he asked his question.
“480 seconds.” He pressed on, driven by the anger. “Eight whole minutes. That’s what I remember when I come to this house. And I have hundreds more of those moments seared into my mind. Of helping you with your bruises and cuts. Of seeing you unconscious, surrounded by nothing but blood. So much blood. Of having to listen to his fists pounding against your skin and your screams. I hear them at night sometimes. I remember all of that. The moments of being helpless, hungry, afraid and alone. He did that. He was always taller, bigger and stronger than me. You say that I grew up to be tall, big and strong, but I don’t need that now. I needed to be that back when it meant something. When I could have fought him and made him stop destroying us. The irony is I can’t even confront him now and make him face me, because he’s not even that man anymore. He’s just this sad, old drunk who can’t even look after himself. I can’t hit him. I can’t scream at him for doing this to us, I can’t let this all out because what happens when I do? What does that make me?”
He shook his head.
“I never knew what it was like to live in a world where your father didn’t beat you and where your mother wasn’t beaten every day. Not until the day I met Aidan and he took me home. For the first time and every time I went over, I realized that what was happening here at home wasn’t normal. That my reality wasn’t like the reality of most people. That it was fucked up.”
Zac took a deep breath. “It fucked me up. It fucked me up a lot. Meeting Aidan and the Thomas family changed things for me in the best way possible, gave me a family I never even realized I craved, but it also made me realize that I was nothing like them. Love. Family. These emotions come easy to them, but they’re not easy to me. I don’t even know if I want them...or if I even deserve them. He did
that. He made me feel alone and less than a person, every single moment of the eighteen years I lived here. And the only reason I stayed for as long as I did was because of you.”
He looked her in the eyes as he said these next words, trying to tell her exactly how he felt. He tightened his grip on her hand when she tried to struggle away.
“Because I was terrified of what he would do to you if I left. I love you, Mom, but whenever I think of you, I think of him and I don’t want to think about him. I don’t want to feel this helpless rage anymore. I don’t want to keep carrying it around and letting it poison my life. I don’t want to feel this guilt of not having helped you when I should have. I want to be able to think about loving someone without letting fear grip me and thinking of all the ways I could fuck it up or not being able to trust that love doesn’t mean the person isn’t going to leave me alone or destroy me.”
His mom’s bottom lip quivered.
“I never wanted you to feel alone,” she said, quietly.
“I know.”
“I wanted to raise you to be everything I wasn’t. To give you all the things I never had growing up poor and alone.”
Amy brought his hand to her cheek. She laid her head on top of it and began to weep.
“Everyone told me not to have you. That it was going to ruin my life, but from the moment I was pregnant to this day, I was sure that I wanted you. I never wanted anything more than I wanted you. But I never knew that it wasn’t me who needed saving, it was you. Someone should have saved you from me. I did this.”
“Mom,” he whispered. “You didn’t do this.”
Tears slid down, in between his fingers, to drop onto his palm.
“I did. I hurt the only thing precious to me,” she cried.