My sister in prison, where she belonged. Still breathing, but unable to hurt anyone else again.
Yeah, I would be able to sleep at night with that reality.
"My heart hurts," I admitted, eyes closing tight, trying to fend off another round of tears.
His hand reached out, resting over it. "We can work on repairing that," he told me.
"How do people do this?" I asked, thinking out loud.
"Do what?"
"Go on with their lives when there is evil related to them? All these wives and children of rapists and pedophiles and serial killers. How can they force themselves out of bed? How can they go on without that constantly on their minds every moment of the day?"
"I think they do it day by day, sweetheart. Step by step. Make baby steps toward normalcy. Until, one day, things are normal again. Mostly."
"You say it like it will be easy."
"No. Not easy. But possible. It is possible. And that is what matters. You feel this way now. And you might feel this way for a while. But you won't feel this way forever. And I think you need to keep reminding yourself of that. Every wound hurts when it is fresh. You have to let it heal. You have to be an active part in that process, taking care of it, working toward recovery. And then, one day, it will be healed. And there will only be a small scar as a reminder."
"It doesn't seem like that is possible."
"Not right now, no. You have a massive hole carved into you right now, Romy. It's going to take a good long while to heal from that. Physically and mentally. But I'm here. We can work on this together."
"I can't ask that of you. You've already done so much."
"You're not asking. I am offering. And I am asking you to let me help."
"I don't even know what kind of help I need," I admitted.
"Well, when you figure that out, I can be that. Or I can help you find that. Nothing needs to be figured out tonight. There is time," he told me, curling me back onto my side, so he could look at my face. "Say you'll let me help you recover."
"I will let you help me recover," I told him, nodding. "But you can back out at any point if you want. It's not your job to fix me."
"Fix you, no. That's your work. But I can be there for you while you do that work."
I liked that.
I liked that he didn't act like some idiot, macho jerk, claiming he could make this whole situation right by brute force alone. I appreciated that he understood that this was complicated, multi-faceted, something that would take inner and outer work, something that would be challenging at the best of times, something that would take a lot out of me.
And that no one but me could go through that.
He was right, though.
He would be there.
It seemed too soon to admit aloud, but I needed him there. I needed his calm reassurance, his words of honesty, his encouragement, his warm chest, his deft fingers, his good nature.
I needed all those things.
More than I ever could have anticipated.
More than he could ever understand.
And there he was, offering to be anything and everything I needed him to be.
If that wasn't a good man, I didn't know what was.
No.