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My stomach churns, and dropping on the sofa I leave the untouched pack of chips on the coffee table. Raph soon joins me. He takes off his jacket and bends down to slip off my shoes.
“Maybe,” I reply hesitantly.
“Why don’t you tell me how you feel?”
“Stop trying to psychoanalyze him, Meg,” Raph quips, pulling my feet on his lap and massaging them.
“I’m not. I just…”
“Okay. So, explain to me why you both sound upset,” Linda interjects.
Raph laughs caustically. “I’m fucking upset because you kept Michael away from me.”
“We had to. We did it to protect him…fromyou.”
“What?” I hear myself ask.
“Raph, when we found you, you were a mess. A fucking violent, feral mess—with good fucking reason. But for months, nobody could even come close to you,” Linda explains.
“All I needed was Michael!” Raph barks back. “And you knew it, since I kept saying his name… number.”
“Do you remember what happened with Rague? Huh?” Linda counters vehemently. “You almost killed each other. Not to mention Uri and Rami’s state. Even Sari. It was a shit show. Michael looked fine in comparison, even though we knew he wasn’t. We did what we thought was best, for all of you.”
“I cut myself. My arms… I cut my skin,” I confess, my voice soft and fragile compared to theirs.
“That… No!” Meg’s choked mumble makes me feel bad for her.
“Why?” Linda asks.
“Because his fucked up religious family let him think he was a monster,” Raph replies for me. His large, warm hands like anchors on my calves keep me grounded to reality. I hear a sob coming from the line and feel the need to stop Raph. But I don’t. “They were wrong for him, because I’m his fucking family. We all are.”
“Fuck,” Linda swears. “Megs!” There’s the sound of a chair tipping over and then footsteps withdrawing.
“Damn, Raph. How many times have I told you to think before talking?” Linda scolds him.
“I have been thinking a fuck of a lot, Linda.”
“Listen to me. The deal we had with the sheriff was to keep Michael for a while and then we’d have taken him back with us.”
“They adopted me,” I retort.
“No. They fostered you in the beginning. Meg came six months later to take you back. But when you saw her, you started crying hysterically… without stopping. Meg thought your brain linked her to what happened to you, even though you couldn’t remember. She talked to your therapist and the Caldwells, and decided the best thing was to let you go. She was devastated when she came back, Michael.
“You were—still are—one of our kids. But we had to make a hard decision. Your parents adopted you and moved to another state, but we put a P.I. on you. He gave us information about your life every other month. You looked happy.” Linda sounds upset now.
“Well, he wasn’t. He fucking wasn’t.” Raph’s tone has turned to ice.
“That’s not what Meg told me. And why did you wait all this time? I’m thirty years old. Why not come to me earlier?” I half-yell. Guilt, unfairness, disbelief, anger; they form a ball that is lodged inside my throat. I can barely breathe.
I grab Raph’s arm and then climb on top of him for the second time tonight. But I feel like falling, and I need to secure myself to his solid body. He wraps a hand around my shoulders, and with the other he takes the phone from the table.
“I just thought…” Meg’s voice is small.
“Wethought,” Linda interrupts her. “We thought you were both doing fine… apart. And we didn’t want to disrupt that. We had no idea how deeply attached you became while imprisoned. Raph, after you got better you never asked for One… Michael ever again.”
“Because I thought he was dead. And that’s what you both made me believe.”
I nuzzle my head further into his neck and slide a hand behind his nape, trying to get myself even closer to him. If I could open his chest and tuck myself inside, I would. To make him feel that I’m with him. Always.
