Page 104 of Finding Jack
Chapter 39
Ranée drove me home, and true to his word, Sean had managed to put a muzzle on her. She didn’t ask me about anything besides the weather even though I could feel every atom in her straining to squeeze the details out of me. When we got back to the apartment, I headed straight for bed. “I need to sleep.”
“Hey!” I turned around in my doorway, waiting for her dam of questions to break. Instead she ran down the hall to grip my shoulders. “You going to be okay?”
“Eventually.”
“Then let a nap do its magic.”
It was three hours before I woke up and stumbled out again in search of food.
Ranée smiled at me from the sofa. “Hi, sleepyhead. I’ll order Mexican.”
And somehow, an hour later, we’d settled on the sofa, a shared blanket spread across our laps with a dozen tacos between us. She pulled the whole story out of me before we even got to the flan.
“So he’s living his stupid hermit life with his stupid hermit hair in his stupid hermit town,” I concluded.
“Team Jack,” she said.
“Ranée! You’re supposed to be on my side.”
She fell quiet, shadows chasing each other across her face. “You okay?” I asked. I’d never seen this expression on her before, like she’d lived a decade in those quiet moments.
She sighed. “I thought I understood how hard Sean’s job was because we talked a lot while he was working at that hospital. This was before I even met you. He’d call to decompress, and I’d come up with these motivating pep talks to help him get back in there. So I thought I got it, and that I was being supportive. Now that I work at the barn…”
“I thought you loved volunteering there.”
“I do. But it’s only been four months and we’ve already lost some kids. The idea is that they’re at-risk and we’re trying to connect them to a supportive community, or with these horses because they’ve been let down by so many people but the animals, they don’t judge. Then maybe they can connect to the human part of the community. It works sometimes. But a lot of times it doesn’t. These kids, it’s not enough for them. The damage runs too deep, and we can’t reach them. I mean, how stupid to think we can. We haven’t lived a fraction of what they deal with. So they don’t die like the kids Sean worked with, but it feels like that a little. One of the caseworkers came in last week and told us this girl I’ve been teaching every week got picked up by police when they found her half-dead of an overdose under the freeway. They gave her Narcan, so she survived the moment. But for how long? The caseworker says the client won’t be back. And it makes me sick inside. Could I have done something else? Become her mentor?”
She pushed the blanket off and gathered up our empty food containers. “But I can’t do anything. And all it showed me is exactly how much I didn’t understand what Sean was going through, how much harder it was than I knew.”
“But you’re sticking it out. You’re there and you’re feeling and you’re trying. Jack isn’t. I can’t do anything about that.”
“Yes. Because I think it works for some of them. But talk to me if I ever get word that one of the kids I’ve tried to help actually dies. It’s hard enough knowing it might only be a matter of time.”
She climbed back onto the couch with me. “Look, you know I’ll have your back forever. But I don’t think it was fair to say Jack isn’t trying when you haven’t fought the same kind of fights.”
“That’s not fair. You’re acting like I don’t understand what it feels like to work hard and fail.”
She was unmoved. “I’m not saying you don’t work hard. You do. You’ve faced a lot of challenges, but I don’t think you’ve ever had to face real failure, the kind that cripples you because there’s nothing in the world that you can throw at it to fix it.” She sighed and smoothed her side of the blanket. “I’ve only had to deal with that for the first time in the last few weeks, and unless there’s some major life story you’ve told me, you’ve never faced the kind of stakes that are so high that it’s win or die.”
I wanted to tell her she was being dramatic, but something about the quiet way she said it stopped me. Her words about high stakes had echoed Jack’s. We sat in silence for a long time, and she didn’t try to scrub away the sadness and put on her cheerful face. Finally, I broke the silence. “I had no idea that it was so hard for you sometimes.”
“I know. Because I didn’t tell you. But Jack tried to.”
An ugly, gray feeling crawled up through my stomach and spread through my chest. It was shame. “Ranée…I think I basically told Jack he was weak for running away.”
Her gaze sharpened. “Weak? Did you use that word?”
“No, but I basically implied that he was because he was…”
“Being a stupid hermit?”
“Something like that.” The shame crawled up the back of my throat like acid reflux.
“But you didn’t say that he was weak. And you can come back from that.”
“I need to call him and apologize.” The urge was overwhelming, almost like panic. “What should I say?”
