By the time I was done, I was a mess, both emotionally and physically. I’d cried until I was dry, and my body hurt from the act of it. But all she did was offer me a tissue and then a small piece of advice that changed the course of my life forever. “Now that you’re done blaming everyone else for your troubles, we can start working on the root of the problems inside of you, Audrey. Let’s figure out where those come from.”
It was the inability to understand the origin of that—where those issues arose from—that had confounded me so deeply. I had no sense of who I really was or where I had truly come from. Now the only people who knew the truth were a few adults who were paid to know my secrets or were trying to pretend they didn’t exist.
Then I got assigned Cara, the voice on the other end of the phone. My weekly check-in to make sure everything is still okay. A twisted kind of pen pal or internet friend, but we’d been relegated to speaking only by phone and for the express purpose of my mental wellbeing.
Sitting in the car with Elliot as we drive back into Alabama, I wonder if there will come a time where I can tell someone else how I’m feeling instead of depending on a Tuesday night call. I wonder if this plan that my therapist set in motion, where I let go of these preconceived notions about the guilt I associated with each person I blamed for having a hand in what happened all those years ago, will actually make a difference. I wonder if I’ll come out on the other side like some sort of monarch butterfly. Maybe I’ll end up like that confused moth in the bathroom, bumping into everything and trying to escape a bathroom stall instead.
I wonder how September will be as a psychologist when she finally establishes her own practice. When we were up on the cliff and I was melting down, she was so kind and reassuring. She knew before I even said anything. It must have been the fear in my eyes. Or the way I curled up into a ball and started freaking out about how there was no way in hell I was going over that ledge. She told me it was all in my head. Her touch was so tender and reassuring. Her voice was so calm and soothing. Her eyes held mine while we spoke and she encouraged me to face my fears.
A smile plays at my lips as a thought hits me suddenly. With the way Cline has become interested in her so quickly, would she end up practicing as September Worley? Or September Somers?
“What are you smiling about over there?” Elliot asks as he pulls up to a red light. September and Cline pull up beside us, and I look over to see the two of them talking with the windows down, huge, stupid smiles on their faces. They’re so into each other it’s ridiculous.
“If those two get married, then her name will forever be September Somers.” I say without any sarcasm at all.
“They’ve known each other for all of three days. I don’t think you can start planning a wedding for them yet,” Elliot says as the light turns green.
We pull ahead of them at least thirty seconds before September even realizes that the signal has changed, and I turn to glance back over at the boy sitting to my left. “I have a hunch about this one. I know we’re not close anymore, but he’s pretty easy to read when it comes to girls. I haven’t seen him this into someone before. Not even Kelsey. And I’m pretty sure his twelve-year-old brain thought he was going to marry her one day.”
Elliot’s shoulders raise a bit and he grips the wheel tightly, eyes still on the road. “Do you think you’ll ever trust me enough to tell me what actually happened between the two of you?”
I shrug and look back out the window, unsure of my answer. “I don’t know. Because the answer is that nothing happened between us. That’s the problem.” It’s still unclear how I’m supposed to apologize for walking away from a friendship without any explanation, because it was best for me at the time, and best for him in the long run.
I have three days to figure out the words to say it, though.
There’s a part of me that has wanted to look at Wendy’s journals when Audrey has left them unattended so that I can see what she’s reading while I drive or when she’s having one of her quiet moments. I know how bothered I would be if I found anyone looking through my dad’s stuff though, so I don’t.
The first letters he sent weren’t much, just blue pages saying how much he missed my mom. They’d always start with “Roseanna baby,”and they’d always end with “All my love, Pete.” That first deployment was directly after 9/11, and his unit was one of the first ones in—mobile and unestablished—so we couldn’t call. Couldn’t send mail. We could only receive it. He’d send small letters for me, too, but they weren’t much, just enough for me to read that he missed me.