Page 14 of The Last to Let Go
She nods. “Yes. She has been.”
“Yeah, but she’s talkinga lot,” I whisper.
“I know.”
“Well, why doesn’t she talk to us like this?”
She shakes her head. She doesn’t have an answer.
I jerk myself back in my chair. I should be happy that she’s talking, I guess, but I’m starting to really resent the fact the she still hasn’t said a word to me.
“It’s better than nothing,” Jackie points out.
“I know,” I tell her, my voice tight and closed off.
“I was thinking maybe you should try talking to Dr. Greenberg too, Brooke,” she says cautiously, adding in that rehearsed way of hers, “And you know, it just so happens that he has an opening after Callie, so if you wanted to meet him and—”
“Oh, it just so happened that way, huh?” I interrupt, my tone all saccharine, so mean I can taste it on my tongue.
Jackie scoffs, shifting in her seat.
“Is this how it’s going to be?” My pulse is gaining speed with every word. “Every time you don’t like what I have to say, you’re going to threaten to send me to therapy like I’m crazy or something?”
“Come on,” she says, turning her head. “No one said that. It’s sometimes helpful to talk to someone who’s objective.”
“There’s no way somestranger”—I emphasize that word—“is going to understand anything about anything.”
“Are you talking about me or Dr. Greenberg?” she asks, hurling some of my own attitude back at me.
I roll my eyes and mumble, “Forget it.”
“Brooke, I’m trying to help you, that’s all. Don’t you see that?”
“I don’t need to see some doctor. I need to see my mom, which is what I’ve been saying for weeks now.”
Jackie looks at me like she wants to say something else, but she doesn’t.
“I’ll be in the car,” I finally say after a long moment of silence. I walk out of the office without another word.
THE VISIT
THE COUNTY JAIL ISforty minutes away. I keep looking at the clock on the dashboard in Jackie’s car, my mind performing endless calculations of how long it will take to get there, as I double-, triple-, quadruple-check the traffic report on my phone.
Our appointment time is eleven o’clock, and we get only a half hour, so we can’t be late, because Mom can have visitors only once a week. Yet Jackie drives too slowly, first navigating out of the twists and turns of her bizarre green-grassed, hedge-lined, subdivided world, and soon enough the scenery begins to look more familiar as we cross over the bridge and back to our side of town. We stop at Jackie’s shop on the way, which isn’t far from our old apartment—I could get out of the car and walk only a few blocks and be there in seven minutes, or cut through the park and be there in five. We keep the car running so we don’t lose time. As soon as we pull up, a guy in an apron jogs out of the store, carrying a pink cardboard box to the car.
“Thanks, Owen,” Jackie tells him as he deposits the box into Callie’s hands through the window of the passenger-side door. “So how’s everything going in there, or do I not want to know?” she asks, like we have extra minutes for small talk.
I look up when I hear the voice that answers her. Owen Oliver. We had the same homeroom last year. He’s the superstar of the Riverside Ravens. Anytime he entered a classroom, there was always a crowd of people to yell his nickname: O. O for Owen or O for Oliver, I’m not sure. “O—O—OHHHHH,” they yelled, like they yelled on the field at the Friday-night games. I think both the guys and the girls worshipped him—when he started growing his dreads out in freshman year, so did about ten other guys on the team.
Their chanting always made my head throb. Even now it pounds in my ears so loud I can barely hear what they’re saying. When I look up again, he smiles at me. I quickly look back down, duck my head, try to escape any kind of recognition, focusing instead on texting Aaron:
Running late. There in two mins. Be ready.
My phone vibrates in my hand as the car shifts into reverse.
Aaron:K. I’m outside already
“One thing I learned a long time ago,” Jackie says, her tone calm and cheerful as I meet her eyes in the rearview mirror. “Good old-fashioned comfort food can make any situation feel just a little bit better.”
