“The new baby’s coming. Whether she’s good or evil remains to be seen.”
17
From the first questions he asked, I saw immediately that what interested Troy the most was how I arrived at agreeing to consider forgiving my sister. Troubling him for years was a similar question. Could he ever forgive his father? How do you get to that place? How do you overcome the anger and, yes, the fear in order to even give it a chance?
Hating is so much easier than loving, and hating someone you’re supposed to love or you have loved is often more painful for you than it is for them. Like me, whose memory was filled with happier times Haylee and I spent together, before his incident with his father, Troy also had his mind crowded with good memories of him. Little, seemingly insignificant things—like the time his father let him steer the car or when he gave him a tennis lesson or when he carried him on his shoulders on a beach or simply when Troy stood beside him and saw the respect his father commanded from other people—all made it harder to despise him. How he wished he had just walked by his sister’s room that day. But of course, there was his sister to be concerned about, and that was impossible to ignore.
When he picked me up, we went for a drive with no specific destination. We simply wanted to be off campus to talk. Even if we sat in a corner in one of the lounges or lobbies, we’d feel the eyes of the other students studying us, and if Marcy, Claudia, or some of the other girls saw us, they wouldn’t hesitate to barge in, hoping to fish out something they could pass on like breaking news reporters.
“It wasn’t as if Dr. Alexander cornered me into feeling guilty if I didn’t agree,” I began. “I believe she means it when she says she is looking forward to my opinion of Haylee. And she made me consider what good it will do now to continue hating my sister.”
Troy nodded. “I don’t know if she really came up with this,” he said. “But a quote attributed to Marilyn Monroe that I like is ‘If you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best.’?”
“My sister should get a T-shirt with that on the front.”
“Maybe she doesn’t need it; maybe it’s there but invisible to most. Anyway, I’m not saying you did wrong by agreeing to celebrate Thanksgiving with her at home. Actually, I’m jealous that you have the strength to make that choice after all you’ve gone through.”
I sat back and wondered myself where I had found the strength. “You’ll find your way through it, too, Troy.”
“Will I? Maybe with you as my copilot.”
He sat forward when a turn was approaching.
“Hey, there’s a pretty good old-fashioned diner about half an hour ahead. Nothing fancy, just good food, and I like their music. It’s as if they’re stuck in the fifties and sixties. But I warn you, the youngest customers are in their fifties and sixties.”
“Sounds fine with me. For now,” I added.
“What do you mean, for now?” he asked, turning to me because he sensed something critical in my tone.
“You can’t keep running away from today, Troy. I love every place you’ve taken me and the people, too, but you have to find your way to face reality and fully experience what’s out there for today.”
“Oh. That. Rejoin society? Become a card-carrying member of the human race again?”
“Joke about it, but yes. That’s what I’m hoping to do. What I’ve been trying to do and what I want you to try to do, too,” I added, and reached for his hand.
He held mine for a few moments and drove quietly in deep thought for a while. Had I said too much? Was I pushing him too far? Did my session with Dr. Alexander make me arrogant, an overnight expert on psychological trauma? Who was I to take on someone else’s burdens while I still carried so many of my own?
“It’s not something I haven’t thought about,” he said, releasing my hand. “I’ve watched everyone else enjoying what I should be enjoying for too long. I’ll admit it, but it’s that first step that’s the hardest. Maybe I should be seeing a therapist, too, after all.”
“Maybe. What about your sister?”
“What about her?”
“Besides that day when you questioned her, have you ever spoken about it with her?”
“No.”
“How is she?”
He looked at me, clearly deciding whether he wanted to continue the conversation. “Wounded,” he said. “Like me.”
“Then maybe it’s time you had another talk with her. You have to look out for each other, and you can only do that by ending the see-no-evil, hear-no-evil syndrome.”
“Is that what you’re doing?” he asked, a stream of tormenting rage bubbling beneath his words, not directed at me as much as at himself, at the place in his life he wanted to escape.
“Maybe,” I said.
“Don’t take on too much, Kaylee, and don’t let any of the guilt shift to you. That’s the way my mother made me feel the day I told her about my father.”