I felt rage coursing through my entire body, burning with the knowledge of what was in that letter that she had written before she died. That he was the one to dig it all up again, to make her more false promises that he obviously didn't deliver on. Finally finding out that it was his fault that she broke again.
"He talked to her, Derek. He did it to her. She was okay, she was moving on, she had her life with me and then he had to go and screw it all up! Why? Why did you do that?" I demanded, even as Derek tried to drag me out of the room.
“Come on,” Derek said, attempting to calm me.
"Why?" I didn’t even realize tears were welling up in my eyes. "Did you enjoy seeing her suffer? Why did you have to open it all up again? I knew it didn't seem right. I knew she wasn't crazy. If she was, it's because you drove her there."
"Get out!" Mike said.
"Go to hell!" I screamed. "You did it! For years I've been living with the stigma, and you're the one that set her off! You took her away from me! I loved her, unlike you, and because of you she's gone!" I accused. "She loved you so much; how could you do that to her? What did you do? Did you sleep with her? Did you think you could just toy with her a little more? Did you ever really even give a damn about her? Did you tell my mother you would leave Sarah for her?"
Derek yanked me out of his father's room, making a quick stop in his room to get his keys before he led me out of the house by the arm, as if I might run back in and attack Mike.
And I might have. I was pretty pissed off at that point.
"I'm not done here," I told Derek, trying to pull my arm free. "I want to go back in. I want answers."
"Not right now, Nikki," Derek said, p
utting his hand on the small of my back to make sure I kept walking. "I'm taking you home."
"You don't even understand. I know you lost your mother, too, but nobody made you pay for it. Not only did he ruin her life and cause her years of suffering, but he passed it along to me. I've had to listen to people disrespect my mother's memory for years—"
"What she did was still wrong, Nikki," Derek stated, cutting me off.
"What he did was wrong, too!" I fired back. "Don’t you dare defend him. It had been years, Derek. She wouldn't have just flipped out and taken her own life and someone else's if he wouldn't have triggered her. But he couldn't leave well enough alone. He made the wrong choice in the first place, so he thought he'd take my mother's heart off the shelf and kick it around a little more. This all happened because of him."
"He didn't make her do it," he replied.
"Yes he did," I said lowly. "He may not have been in the car with her, but if he wouldn't have started screwing with her emotions again she would still be here right now. So would your mother. My mom had given up," I said, the angry tears starting to fall. "She was trying to heal her broken heart, and she did to the best of her ability. We were happy. It didn't make sense. But it does now. And he just gets to keep on living his life, marrying someone else, raising a child, while they just died." I laughed mirthlessly, thinking how ridiculous it was. "All over one damn man," I said, almost to myself. "Do you see now why I hate love?" I asked, glancing up at him. "Do you see what love does?"
"That isn't what love normally does, Nikki," he responded quietly.
"Yes, it is," I returned just as quietly, turning my head to gaze sightlessly out the window.
For the rest of that night I stayed in my room with my mother's journals, trying to make sure I had put together the pieces of the puzzle correctly.
By my understanding, my mom and Mike had had their little relationship before I was born. When she found out about me, she decided to rebuild her life, but building it around me instead of Mike. I understood all of that, because I had always known about it.
It was the new part I wanted to make sure I understood.
She said, "You're married now," so it was obviously a letter from years later, because Mike and Sarah didn't get married until a year before the accident. Also, the letters were kept in Wuthering Heights, which was kept hidden in a corner, the only book Mike actually seemed to own. As far as I was concerned, he absolutely had to be the person she had given the book to, telling him, "You might relate."
I wondered, then, at the context. When I had read her final line initially, I didn't think anything of it. But thinking of Wuthering Heights, of the tortured lovers, obsessed even beyond the grave, the line seemed a little more important.
But what had happened between them to make her snap? How, after so many years, had they even found themselves together? Why was she talking about Mike leaving Sarah? She insinuated that he had told her he was going to, given her new hope.
I could only assume, given that she killed herself the next day, that he had backed out again. She could only take so much, and having her heart crushed again must have just been too much for her.
The next day was Saturday, and I wasn't sure if I should expect to hear from Derek or not.
Normally we talked and hung out every day, but I had just yelled at his father and told him to go to hell. I wasn't sorry, not by any means. Telling him to go to hell was the very least I could have done. I would have liked to say much more, but Derek didn't let me.
I worked until three and at the end of my shift I still had no voicemails from Derek. Even though I hated to admit it, it made me kind of sad to think Derek was mad at me. When would he talk to me again? When he did, was he going to be mean? I was getting so accustomed to Derek being nice, I really didn't want him to be mean to me again.
It wasn't until a little after five that Derek finally called. I couldn't tell at first if he was mad at me or not, because he was talking lowly, which made me a little nervous. Then he asked me if I wanted to go to the park. I really didn't, because of the park's history with my family, but I agreed anyway, and he said he would come pick me up.
He barely spoke to me the whole time we drove to the park, which made me uneasy. We weren't even dating, but I somehow felt like he was about to break up with me.