Page 68 of Broken Bayou
“Dr. Watters?” Rita says.
I refocus. “Yes?”
“I’d like to talk about you now.”
Any importance I placed on myself and my public humiliation has been overshadowed in a big way. It takes me a second to understand why Rita even cares about me anymore. But this is Rita Meade. She cares long after others don’t.
Sometimes I wish I could freeze life at one moment in my childhood when Mabry and I were happy. Ironically, that moment would be in Broken Bayou. One of the summers we caught fireflies or bobbed in the bayou, splashing water on each other, smelling the sunscreen in her hair the next morning.
Other times I want to skip over my childhood entirely, pretend it never happened. The sweet pain too much to bear. But my pain is what Rita wants, a twist to her story. And for reasons I can’t explain, I want to give it to her.
A story with a twist is the best kind.
Chapter Nineteen
“TheFort Worth Liveinterview?” I say.
“We’ll start there,” Rita says in a soft voice. “What happened?”
I exhale a long breath. Cross my arms over my chest. “You know what happened.”
“I mean,whydid it happen? What triggered you to come unwound enough to rip off your shirt on live television?”
The heat in the front room feels suddenly unbearable. I rub the back of my neck.
“One minute you were fine,” Rita continues. “Then that caller came on, and”—she snaps her fingers—“a switch flipped. I’ve watched it several times.” I cringe, and she keeps going. “Was it the caller’s voice? Was it what you thought she was saying? There’s obviously something there. And I have a feeling I know what, or rather who, it pertains to. I live for stories, Dr. Watters. I live for research. And Emily Arceneaux isn’t the only person I’ve been researching lately. I know you’ve suffered. And I have a great respect for people who turn their suffering into success.”
I let out a sharp laugh. “Success? I’m not sure I know what that is anymore.” I look down. I don’t feel strong enough to go where Rita is leading.
I look up, sigh. “The caller. She sounded like my sister.”
Rita gives me the slightest nod. “I thought so. Do you want to talk about your sister?”
I weigh the question. My knee-jerk response is hell no. But I remind myself I’ve done it before, talked about her before. Rarely, but I have done it. And these questions are bound to come up again. I’ve made sure of that by my stunt on live television. Maybe if I lay it all out for Rita, I can somehow control the narrative. I glance out the front windows at the large knotty oaks. Birds flit through the limbs. Squirrels scamper up their thick trunks. Everything is as it should be. And yet, in this room, everything feels completely off kilter. But I can’t keep running from the topic of Mabry. It’s too exhausting.
I meet Rita’s gaze. “Where do you want to start?”
Rita’s hand lights on my arm. “The day you found her.”
I turn from the window and face Rita and say out loud what I’ve thought every day for the last five years. Since I discovered Mabry, lifeless and floating in my mother’s tub. “I couldn’t save her.”
The house is warm and still when I shut the front door behind Rita. I’m alone again with my heavy heart in a place where every wooden slat holds a memory of my sister. I press my back against the door and slide down to the floor. My eyes sting as tears course down my cheeks. I managed to tell the story to Rita without a tear falling. Now that she’s gone, they won’t stop.
Sweet Mabry. Saying it all out loud to Rita has weakened the wall I constructed to protect myself from that day five years ago. Now, the images break through, and I can’t look away. Mabry’s doe eyes frozen open. Her wet hair. The weight of her body in my arms as I grabbed her and tried to force life back into her mouth. The last thing she said to me was to leave her alone. She was angry at me for getting married, deserting her, leaving her to fend for herself with Mama. I tried to reconnect so many times. When my marriage failed, I thought I could win her back, convince her to come live with me. I left her pleading messages, promising I’d take care of her again.
And she took every last prescription pill in Mama’s bathroom, crawled into the tub, and left forever. No note. No closure. Nothing.
I push off the floor and make my way to the kitchen. A fresh bottle of wine awaits. I open it, pour a glass. Drink it standing. It was so hard to accept what Mabry had done. To accept my part in it. I failed her. I help children every day, but I couldn’t help my own sister.
I fumble through my tote on the counter and pull out my cell.
Here I am at the top of my game, a successful podcast, a new self-help book, and a phone full of calls to my dead sister’s voicemail. I even kept her phone. It has become some sort of talisman. Another unhealthy thing I’m not ready to let go of. Every year I swear I’m going to throw away her phone and quit paying the bill. But then her angel voice would be gone, too, her laugh. Something else I’m clinging to.
I gulp another sip of wine. Of course, that caller on the show wasn’t my sister. I knew it wasn’t. But she sounded so young, so helpless. When I watched the clip, the voice sounded nothing like Mabry’s. But that morning, in that moment, I heardher. I heard the silly safe word I gave Mabry. Like how a crack of sound can trigger an avalanche, that word triggered me.
My eyes fall on the thermos next to the metal dolls from Eddie. I didn’t tell Rita all my secrets. The saddest one still exists. Hidden in plain sight. A hard knot forms in my throat. The tears build again. I lock my jaw to try to stop them, but again they fall. This time for me. For my foolishness. My toxic fucking foolishness.
The high-rise condo, the podcast, the kitten heels. Those are the things I’ve presented to the world. But becoming a therapist, helping others, lecturing the masses, writing a book calledHonest Healinghasn’t snapped me out of my delusion. If anything, it’s made me justify it.
