by PJ Sharon
I reached out and took the hat, examined the letters and handed it back. “You keep it.
His eyes flashed. “You sure?”
“Yeah.”
He nodded. “Thanks.”
“Why didn’t you write to me?” I asked, my throat tight and dry.
I could see I’d caught him off guard. He opened his mouth and then closed it. Seconds ticked past. Finally he sucked in a breath and exhaled slowly. “I thought if anything happened to me over there, it would be easier for you if I didn’t…encourage you.” His shoulders had straightened again and I saw the Marine appear before me, cool, controlled and maddeningly distant.
“Encourage me?” I asked, my voice rising “So it would have been better for me to have you die, forever wondering how you really felt about me? Not having one memory to hold onto to let me know if you loved me or…” I couldn’t utter the “not.” The word caught in my throat. I hadn’t meant to say anything about love, but there was the word, hovering in the air between us.
A flash of hurt crossed his face, and then he composed himself and stared past me. “I didn’t want to make promises I couldn’t keep.” His tone shifted and sadness seeped in between the words. “You say you forgive me for what happened to Lee. But I don’t know how you can, and I don’t know if I can forgive myself.” He looked down at me and let the mask fall away, the grief and guilt taking over again. “Don’t you understand? I can’t look at you without seeing him. I wake up every night, screaming over something hiding under the surface in my head—something I can’t quite reach. I look down at my leg and I relive the moment I woke up without it, and realized I would never again be the same person I used to be. I had an AK47 blast my leg off and I don’t remember it. I ordered my best friend to walk into an ambush…and I don’t remember why.” He turned his back on me again, this time to hide the emotion that rode to the surface. “I am no good for you, Jordie. I am way too messed up right now and you have to leave me alone to figure it out.” He headed for the car again.
“C’mon Coop. Please talk to me. I can help you.” The desperate part of me, the little girl who couldn’t take
Being abandoned one more time, called after him. “Coop, wait!”
He stopped. “Let me go, Jordie.”
My throat burned with tears. “Why did you kiss me yesterday?”
After a long silence, he looked over his shoulder, his expression achingly cool, “It was the only way I could think of to keep you from saying something that would make this so much harder for both of us.” He turned away again. “I have to go. Please don’t follow me. And don’t call me.”
I stood glued to the spot, shocked, hurt, and angry. A deep sense of loss paralyzed me as I watched him get in the car and drive away. He didn’t look back. Numbness overtook my limbs. I wanted to run after him. I wanted to scream and cry at the injustice of life—how unfair he was being. My insides felt like they’d been torn out and left on the ground. I hurt for him, for me, for Levi, for my mother, for Brig. Grief washed over me and I fell to my knees sobbing in the driveway, the dust from his tires settling into a cloud around me.
Chapter 18
I don’t know how I made it through the next few days. I felt like I had lost Levi all over again. Maybe my mother was right. Maybe I needed to be close to Alex so I wouldn’t have to deal with my grief over the loss of my brother. But I knew there was much more to it. I loved Alex so much; my whole body ached at the thought of not being with him. I had lost my best friend, and my throat was so sore from crying, I felt like I had swallowed broken glass. I went through the motions of my life, realizing on the third day that I should eat and shower and come back to the world. I couldn’t sulk over Alex forever. I had a life to live—as desolate and pointless as it seemed.
I ran, avoided Mom and Brig as much as possible, and kept to myself, or hooked up with friends. I tried to stay busy. Work at the antique shop occupied my afternoons and each night I sat quietly through dinner. Mom and Brig eyed me with concern and watched me pick at my food. The days turned into a week and gradually two, but every day seemed endless and horribly lonely. I’d stopped texting and e-mailing Alex after the first week when I got no response. Maybe he had never really cared about me at all. My heart broke apart in increments, day by day, hour by torturous hour. Sometimes my stomach churned, burning with anger, and then I was swamped with a case of acute sadness from missing him.
Life continued on and I was dead, I decided. This is what a ghost must feel like, wandering through a life that is no longer theirs. I wondered if Levi was close by, watching me struggle to just keep breathing every day. Is this how he felt—desperate to escape the pain of living? But I suppose if I were dead, I wouldn’t hurt like I did. I wanted my life to make sense, but nothing made any sense without Alex.
I excused myself after dinner and dishes and hid away in my room again. I stuffed my ear buds in and sprawled on my bed, letting the music take me away. Tears spilled from my eyes and ran down my temple as a Lady Antebellum song came over my iPod. ‘I need you nowww…’ I was in the throes of a really great cry when I heard pounding on my door. I rolled over and yanked the ear buds out. “What?”
“Can I come in? I’d like to talk to you.” Mom’s voice echoed on the other side of the door.
Crap. “Come in,” I grabbed a tissue and sighed. I really did not want to hear anything she had to say. She had gotten what she wanted. Alex was guilty and out of my life. It must have killed her not to gloat.
She opened the door slowly and inched her way in. I realized she hadn’t been in my room for a very long time. Months, years maybe? I couldn’t remember the last time. The room was a mess. I hadn’t had any energy or desire to clean up after myself when I could barely walk in a forward direction. Mom gazed around the room, taking in the pictures of me sprinting over the finish line at last year’s state championships, the medals and trophies, the stuffed animals hanging in a net in the corner. My laundry covered most of the floor, causing a brief crinkle of my mother’s nose.
“I need to say something to you.” She moved the stack of books and sat in the chair in front of my computer.
“What is it?” I asked, preparing myself for an “I told you so.”
“I’m sorry about Alex…about your friendship. I know how much he means to you.” She reached out with a shaky hand and touched mine.
Part of me wanted to pull away, but another part—the part that craved some connection, some bridge back to my mother, kept still. I glimpsed the mother she had been when my father was alive. It occurred to me that in some ways I had lost them both the day my father died. I held her hand, wondering why she had suddenly changed her mind about me and Alex. “Are you sure?” I asked. “I know you wanted us apart.”
“I thought I did.” She glanced down, her eyes brimming with tears. “I thought if I knew for sure Alex was responsible, I could find peace in Levi’s death…but that didn’t happen. I feel terrible for Alex—and for you.” She let out a sigh and pulled away from me.
“I don’t understand,” I said. I kept my own tears in check, not quite trusting this unfamiliar version of my mother. Maybe her counseling was finally helping her.
She kept her gaze focused on my feet and caught some tears on her knuckles. “You loved and accepted your brother for exactly who he was, something I could never do. He changed from a sweet little boy into a young man I had no control over. He refused help. I couldn’t undo the damage that had been done.” She broke into full tears, her hands covering her mouth. “It was my fault.”
I grabbed the box of tissues and handed one to her. She took it gratefully.
“You blame yourself?” I tried to make it a question and not an accusation.
“Do you remember when we lived with Auntie Theresa?” she sniffled, blowing her nose hard into the tissue.
“I remember a little. I was pretty young,” I said. I had the feeling I was about to learn a new piece of the puzzle that was my brother.
“You’re old enough
, now. You should know what happened.” My mother swallowed and gulped in a breath, and then let it escape with a shudder. “I caught Uncle Ted touching Lee…inappropriately.” She put her hands over her face, breaking down again. “I confronted him…he denied it. He threatened me…he threatened to have you taken away from me…he was a police officer. I didn’t know what to do. I called Brig and he came to get us.” She sobbed and wiped her eyes with a handful of tissues. “Theresa divorced him and Ted disappeared.”
I stared blankly for a long time, both stunned and saddened about how Levi must have felt, what he had been through. How could I not have known? A new level of guilt and grief dug its way into my soul. “Do you know if he…” I couldn’t say the words. I couldn’t even let myself think the thought. But I already knew the answer. “Did it happen more than once?” I asked, my throat so tight I could barely breathe.
“Yes,” she whispered. Her shoulders shook as she sobbed.
I couldn’t cry. Tears seemed beyond me, like I’d known this ugly truth all along and had buried it deep inside with all of the emotion and confusion that went with it. All that was left was to fill in the blanks so I could see the whole horrible picture. “Did he…what about me?” Bile rose in my throat. I was so young, what if I didn’t remember…
“No.” My mother’s hand tightened around mine, an urgency in her voice that gave me a moment of relief. “No, it was only Lee.” Her face flushed with anger and disgust. “He only wanted boys from what I understand.” She couldn’t meet my eyes and I watched her struggle to gain control.
I needed to understand how this could happen. “Didn’t you try to get Lee into counseling? Didn’t you talk to him about it?”
“I just wanted to put it behind us. I wanted him to forget. I thought he would get over it…I couldn’t deal with …after your father died…I just couldn’t face what a failure I had been. When I finally tried to get him help, it was too late. He refused to go, and I couldn’t force him. You know how he was.” She broke into another round of tears and sobbed uncontrollably, uttering whispered regrets. “I should have protected him…he was my little boy…”
The look on her face as she moaned the words ate a hole through the hardened shell around my heart. Tears found their way to the surface and spilled silently down my cheeks. My mother shook and rocked back and forth, holding her arms across her chest as if hugging an invisible child against her. “I’m sorry…so sorry…”
I let the tears fall, a crushing sadness moving through me like a boulder rolling down hill, gaining speed and momentum and heading straight for my very foundation. Everything shifted when the truth hit me. I let out a sob and my mother fell into my arms, sitting next to me on my bed and holding me as we both cried and cried. The rush of emotion lasted so long; I thought we might both collapse from exhaustion. Eventually we let go of one another.
My mother looked at me hard, taking my face between her hands to force eye contact. She looked tired, worn out by carrying this secret for so long. But something in her eyes seemed different—a resignation maybe—like telling me was the last piece of some puzzle that promised to put her back together.
“I’m sorrier than you will ever know that I wasn’t stronger…that I wasn’t a better mother to you and your brother…but I can’t change the past. I just hope you can forgive me.” Her tears stained her cheeks but she looked sturdier than I’d seen her in a long time. I hadn’t had time to process all that she’d said and my emotions were too close to the surface to say what she needed me to say. I stared quietly down at my hands waiting for her to take up the silence. Even so, her next words came unexpectedly.
“I know Alex would never have done anything to intentionally harm Lee. And I know how devastated he is. I’m so sorry I didn’t understand sooner. I never should have blamed him.” Mom wiped the tears on my face with a fresh tissue and tossed the handful into my over-flowing trash bucket. They landed in the corner. She looked around the room again. “We really need to redecorate this room.”
I smiled weakly. “I’ll be leaving for school next year. I don’t see the point.”
“Don’t remind me. It’s going to be hard to have you gone.” A sad expression flashed across her face. She shook it off, swiping at her cheeks and squaring her shoulders. “I love you, Jordan. I only want what’s best for you.”
“I’m not sure what that is anymore,” I said, my insides feeling raw and battered. “Medical school seemed like a good idea. I thought I would specialize in psychiatry, hoping it would help me understand Lee better.” My limbs felt so heavy, all I wanted was to be left alone to lie down and cry over the tragic events of my brother’s life—a life that I finally understood. Down deep, I knew that there was nothing I could have done to help him. But a part of me still held on to my own role in keeping his secret and the consequences of all of us failing him.
“I don’t know what I’ll do,” I said after a moment. “Besides, I don’t even know if I’ll get into the schools I applied to. It all seems so unimportant now.” I sighed, surprisingly warmed when my mother rubbed circles on my back.
“You’ll figure it all out. You still have your senior year ahead of you to think about it. Since school starts next week, why don’t you and I take a little trip? We haven’t been anywhere in ages.” Her face grew somber. “If we don’t do it now…I’m afraid I’ll have missed my chance to make things right between us.” She took a long, tired breath, her regret palpable. “Besides, I think a change of scenery will be good for both of us.”
The thought of spending time alone with my mother for several days made my stomach spasm. I hadn’t had time to make sense of all she’d said. She had known my brother had been molested. She had run away from it. My brother buried the pain and she let him live with it all alone. It hurt that he’d never told me, but I understood. He couldn’t have told anyone if his own mother wouldn’t acknowledge the truth.
“Mom…did you know about the cutting?”
Her face darkened and she stared down at her hands. “I knew. I took him to see Roger…Dr. Stevens. We tried to stop him…get him help, but…” She took another shaky breath. “The past is the past. I will have to live with my regrets for the rest of my life. You’ll never know how sorry I am that I didn’t do more.”
Now that she confessed her sins to me, I was just supposed to forgive and forget? She had failed my brother miserably and she was willing to let Alex pay for Levi’s death. Her offenses loomed before me, and a fresh seed of resentment took hold. “I’ll go on vacation with you. But only if you do something for me,” I said, my voice going colder than I’d intended.
“Why do I think I’m not going to like this?” Her brow furrowed.
A smirk of satisfaction crossed my lips before I could stop it. I’d heard those words before and it usually meant I had the upper hand. “I want you to talk to Alex. Explain what you just explained to me and apologize to him. And apologize and make up with Mrs. Cooper. Then I’ll go with you.”
“That is blackmail, young lady,” she said sternly.
“Maybe, but those are my terms. If you want a one- on-one girls’ week—maybe our last chance ever—you’ll do it.” I resisted the urge to fold my arms, knowing it would not help my case, and might, in fact, cause her to dig in her heels.
“You are way too much like your grandfather.”
“Not an insult, Mom. So, is it yes, or no?”
Chapter 19
Of all the places we could go for a vacation, Mom wanted to take me camping and to the beach. “We could both use the fresh air,” she’d said. She promised me she had been to see both Mrs. Cooper and Alex and had delivered on my demands, calling me “an emotional terrorist” as we packed up the truck. Knowing that she had forgiven Alex and told him about Levi’s past somehow made my burdens a little lighter. It had to have made a difference for him to know the truth and know that Mom wasn’t going to hold a grudge.
I’d insisted Brig go and check on Alex to make sure he was okay an
d that he knew Brig didn’t hold him responsible either. Brig hadn’t come back this morning and I hated to leave not knowing how things went. I packed my sleeping bag, pillow, and Levi’s old duffle bag with a few days’ worth of clothes in it. It said ‘DUNN’ in large block letters across one side, the USMC eagle and anchor emblem on the other. Mom eyed me crossly when she saw me stuff it into the back.
“Why didn’t you use the luggage I gave you last Christmas?” She loaded the cooler into the back seat. I could see this trip wasn’t going to be easy for either of us. Mom cringed as she placed her bag on top of the army green duffle. I guess she had a right to try not to think about Levi. Everything seemed to be a reminder.
We hadn’t been camping together in years. Brig took us several times the first few years we’d come to live with him, but once I hit my teens, I’d resisted camping like flesh eating bacteria. Bugs, dirt, and sleeping on rocks, not my idea of a good time.
“I’m saving it for school next year. I didn’t want to ruin it by bringing it camping,” I snapped. The thought of leaving home had excited me at one time, now the idea terrified me. I couldn’t imagine moving away from Alex, not seeing him again. My stomach felt sick when I thought of the expression on his face when I’d seen him last. He seemed so beaten, so far gone. He’ll be all right, I reminded myself. He just needs some time. I chucked my pillow on top and climbed in the front seat, wondering if I could wait for him if it took months or even years for that time to come. Whether I went away to school or not, I needed to let him go. I forced the thought to the back of my mind.
Mom wanted to drive, which gave me a chance to text Penny and ask how her mom was. Last I had heard, she was nearing the end of a long battle with cancer. Penny must be freaking out. I’d call her when I got back. I looked over at my own mom, struck by a sharp pang of gratitude that she was still here and still healthy—other than some scary bouts of clinical depression. Not lost on me was the possibility I might have one more chance to get to know her without the heaviness that clung to her like a demon. Maybe unburdening her conscience had helped her in some small way because she seemed more centered and grounded the past few days. It was the last long weekend of the summer and I would spend it trying to relax on the beach and attempting to make conversation with my mother without ending up in an argument.