Page 78 of The Last to Let Go
“They’re coming back,” I tell him, my voice clearer, louder, trying to cover the fact that this is one more thing I don’t know for sure.
“Okay,” he concedes. “But let’s just say they don’t. What would that mean?”
I shrug. I reposition myself in the chair so I can see the clock on the wall. It’s 4:40. I follow the slim red second hand all the way around the circumference of the clock to 4:41.
“Brooke?”
I look up again. The clock suddenly says 4:45.
“Why do you think they left?” he asks.
“I told you, they’re coming back!” I nearly shout, though not quite. “Aaron’s only out of town, doing this job thing. And Callie is only at Jackie’s until Aaron gets back.” Except I think Dr. Greenberg doesn’t even believe me. I check my volume, force myself to turn it down a notch before answering his question. “I think they just wanted to give up.”
“Give up on...?” he prompts.
“Give up on us—our family, our mom.”On me.
“But you don’t want to give up?”
“I’m trying not to. I mean, isn’t this what family’s supposed to do? You’re supposed to be there for each other through anything.” I stop because I can feel my head starting to pound.
“Well, I think there’s a difference between giving up and letting go.”
No there’s not.
“What would happen if you let go?”
A tiny bell chimes from somewhere behind Dr. Greenberg’s desk.
Time’s up.
I pick up my bag and prepare to stand up, leave, and possibly never come back again.
“Wait—wait right there. We have time. What were you about to say? What are you feeling right now?”
A few moments of silence pass between us as I try to find a way to express all that I’m feeling right now. But no words can make sense of how much I want things to go back to the way they were, even when things were bad. Or how much I want to leave—how sometimes I wish I could burn the whole place down, take a wrecking ball to it. No words to explain how I feel all those things at the same time, all the time.
“If I really let go”—my voice catches, even though I’m trying so hard to be brave—“I’ll never have ahomeagain, that place you hear people talk about—that safe place to land. That’s over for me.”
“I’m curious, is that really what it felt like before?” he asks.
I think about it for several moments, but I refuse to give him the answer I know he wants, the answer that I know deep down is true.
“I have to go to work,” I tell him, rushing out, not even bothering to ask about those damn doctor’s notes.
TINY STORM
THE SMALL COWBELL STRUNGto the door with Christmas ribbon dings softly as two cops walk through. I see their uniforms before I see their faces. The air is suddenly sucked from my lungs. Because for a moment, a millisecond, a nanosecond only, my mind forgets and I think that one of them is my dad. But then my brain kicks in and I realize for the millionth time, in the millionth way, it can’t be.
I return my attention to the woman in front of me. She gives me that passive-aggressiveI’m in a hurryscowl I’ve come to recognize so well. “I’m sorry, what was that again?” I ask her.
“Large coffee and one of those cinnamon rolls. To go. Please,” she adds, looking down at her wallet.
I pull a sheet of wax paper from the cardboard box underneath the counter and grab the cinnamon roll farthest back, squeezing my fingernails gently into the dough as I shove it into a paper bag. The coffeepot crackles and hisses like a tiny storm as I place it back on the burner, and it’s more like that is what’s happening inside of me.
I snap the lid on snugly and tell her “Three seventy-five” as I slide the cup and bag across the tile countertop.
She lays down a five, mumbles, “Keep the change.”
