Page 7 of The Last to Let Go
“I was only wishing that I could finally stand up to him once and for all. By not coming back. Like, if I could not give him the satisfaction, the opportunity. I was just thinking...” He trails off, shaking his head. “I don’t know, how much more am I expected to give? How much more am I expected to take?” he asks, like there are answers to these questions.
“Yeah,” I whisper. “I know.”
He nods, and then we’re left in our silence again. I let my head fall back against the couch and stare at Jackie’s popcorn-textured ceiling.
I don’t tell him about any of my wishes, any of my secrets.
Like how often I imagined what it would be like if Dad weren’t around. Not necessarily if he died, but if he’d never even existed. Mom would be safe. Callie could have sleepovers like a normal twelve-year-old, without worrying if that would be a night Dad would start some explosive fight and go batshit on us. Maybe Aaron would be graduating high school in just a few days like he was supposed to have been. Maybe he’d still live at home with us. And me, maybe I’d finally have some time to worry about myself instead of everyone else, and maybe I’d actually have a life—friends instead of a GPA.
Dad was the problem, his absence the solution to everything that was wrong with our whole world. If he were gone, things would finally be the way they were always supposed to be. But I was wrong. This is not the way things are supposed to be at all. This was never my wish, either. I don’t tell Aaron any of these things, though.
At last Jackie hangs up the phone. She shuffles into the room, looking as if there’s a hundred-pound weight on her shoulders, and then she falls down onto the couch next to Aaron with an enormous sigh. Placing her hand on his knee, she gives us both a weak smile. “How you guys holding up?”
Aaron shrugs.
I don’t offer a response.
“All right. So...” She rubs her forehead for a moment before continuing. “My cousin gave me the name of a colleague of his who’s going to work with us. Apparently, he’s very good and this is exactly the sort of thing he specializes in. Criminal law.”
“She’s not a criminal,” I mutter, but no one hears me.
“Okay,” Aaron says, leaning forward. “That’s good news, right?”
“Right,” she answers. “But the bad news is it looks like your mom has to wait until Monday, until the arraignment.”
“What?” I hear myself shout. I turn to Aaron, wanting him to share in my outrage.
But he just sits there quietly next to Jackie, shaking his head. As he drags his hands across his face, letting the heels of his palms dig into his eye sockets, he murmurs, “Shit.”
Jackie stares at me for a moment, opens her mouth, but then closes it, averting her eyes like she’s tryingnotto say something. “Look, it’s been a long day for everyone. It’s going to be okay,” she attempts to reassure us. “Let’s all try to get some rest.”
“Right,” Aaron agrees, letting his hands fall to his lap. “I’m gonna take off. Brooke—you’re okay here? For tonight.”
I look at him as he stands, and I open my mouth to answer, this sickening panic sinking its familiar roots deep inside of me, stealing all the words I need to be able to tell him how much I’m not okay here by myself. Jackie meets my eyes, seeming to understand, which I both appreciate and despise somehow.
“Aaron, you know you’re welcome to stay. I mean, if you don’t feel like schlepping back into town at this hour.”
“Uh, I don’t know,” he says uncertainly, blinking his eyes tightly, like he’s only just now letting himself feel how tired he is. “You sure?”
“Of course. Let’s regroup in the morning.” She turns to me. “Sound good?”
I hate the way she’s looking at me. Like she has X-ray vision and can detect all the terrible stuff that was never supposed to see the light of day, like she can see all the secret places it lives inside of me. It’s like having a thousand bandages ripped off simultaneously, exposing a thousand open wounds. Her pity and her charity and her gentleness are the salt that only makes it all hurt a million times worse than I ever thought it could.
“Sounds good,” I lie.
I raid Jackie’s bathroom for some ibuprofen, aspirin, Tylenol... anything. But her medicine cabinet is filled with things like Saint-John’s-wort and vitamin C and valerian root. As I lie down in one of the spare rooms, which Jackie made up for me, in this bed that should be really comfortable because it feels nice and new and clean and safe, I am awake.
It’s too quiet here. I’m used to the gentle hum of traffic or voices drifting in through open windows, or muffled television sounds traveling through the walls and floors and ceilings of our building, or, on an extra-quiet night, the lapping sounds of the river that runs alongside the park across the street. This kind of quiet doesn’t feel peaceful at all. It makes me focus on my thoughts instead, which is the last thing I want right now. I hear them mobilizing, feel them lining up one after the other into formation, building a loop, a reel that begins playing in my head before I can stop it. Frames of Mom in handcuffs, Dad on the floor, Callie in the ambulance, Aaron running, Jackie, Tony, the doctor, police car, ambulance, fire truck. Going over everything, repeating, repeating, repeating, again, again, again.
I pull the pillow over my face and hold it there, hearing my own pulse thumping in my ears. I try to think about something else. Anything else. I think about my exam, all those right answers I knew by heart. I think about Darwin and evolution. Survival of the fittest and natural selection. I think about cellular processes. And genetics. Chromosomes. Kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species. I think about this time next week, this time next month, this time next year, five years, ten years from now, measuring out the distance to a time when things will be normal, when things will make sense, when things will be right again.
LOCAL WOMAN
STUPID. PATHETIC. WEAK. LOSER.I think I’ve heard my mom called every name imaginable. From cops to ER nurses to grocery store cashiers to waitresses and bus drivers—all strangers who could see through her lies and her constant cover-ups and outlandish excuses. They shook their heads and silently cursed her, dismissing her as someone who deserved what she got. Whispers from people who thought they knew, thought they understood something even though they didn’t have the slightest clue what it was really like, their words always some variation of “Why doesn’t she just leave him?” or “Ever hear of a restraining order?” or “What kind of a mother would let her kids witness X, Y, Z?”
This is the first time she’s been called a killer.
Last night’s news: “Local woman awaits arraignment after being arrested for allegedly stabbing her police officer husband to death.” Jackie immediately grabbed the remote, pressing a few wrong buttons before the TV went black. “We don’t need to hear this,” she said.
