Page 120 of Pieces of Me

And in the end… I don’t know if I ever did.

50

Jamie

“Why do you think he did it?” Maggie asks, sitting behind the wheel of the company truck.

I bring my feet up to sit cross-legged and stare out the windshield. “I don’t know.”

“Do you think it was like… like he was so overwhelmed by the instant grief of realizing that, without a doubt, your mom was gone forever that he just… wanted to be with her in the afterlife or something?”

I shrug again. “I have no idea.” And it’s not as if I haven’t thought about it. I’ve probably lost months’ worth of sleep over it. For a long time, I blamed myself forhisdeath, too, because if Maggie’s assumptions are accurate—which I’ve often thought myself—thenIwas the reason she left him. I pushed her, begged her to where she probably felt like she had no other choice, and it wasmyfault that they could no longer be together.

Or, at least, that’s what the old me would believe.

I’mtryingto lose those thoughts, and I’m doing better, but I’ve also come to accept that I’m still a work in progress… and that’s okay.

It’s been two months since everything came out, and it’s taken me that long to work up the courage to tell Mags the whole story—from the moment Tammy and Joseph walked into the diner until… well…now. Because, in a way, I still feel like this chapter in my life is unfinished. And Iknowwhen it will end—when I feel like I can finally face Tammy without feeling a certain way. It still hasn’t happened, obviously, and I’m not sure when it will. But that’s the good thing about being in control of your life—youget to make the decisions. And I’ve decided that I don’t need a deadline because, according to my therapist, the most important thing is that I heal, and I overcome this—whateverthisis.

“No offense, Jamie,” Maggie says, “but their relationship seemed toxic as hell.”

“No shit,” I almost laugh.I’m pretty sure that if I hadn’t met Holden as young as I did, I’d be repulsed by the concept oflove.But hewasthere, guiding me, shining light on all the possibilities love had to offer.

“God,” she groans, running a hand through her hair. “After all of that shit, how the fuck are you so stable?”

“Hundreds of hours of therapy,” I deadpan, watching the pedestrians moving around the sidewalk. We’re parked at a strip mall in Justice, waiting to meet one of their clients to pick up a check.

“Howistherapy going?” she asks. “Are you still doing that weekly video call?”

I nod, turning to her. “Yeah. It’s been helpful, but I still like going back once a month when I visit Gina and doing it in person. Holden and I do a session together when we’re there.”

“You do?” she asks, eyebrows raised.

Another nod. “I think it helps him more than it helps me.” I pause a beat. “You know what I find really helpful?”

“What’s that?”

“Pottery and hanging out in Paul’s studio. It’s kind of therapeutic.”

“That’s not a surprise,” Maggie says.

I raise my eyebrows in question.

“That you find art therapeutic…” she clarifies. “I mean, drawing helped you when you were little, so…”

“That’s true.”

“Is it a man or a woman—your therapist?”

“Woman.”

“Hmm.” She taps her fingers on the steering wheel. “I thought about studying psychology.”

“Before you got your applied mathematics degree?”

“No, I mean, as well as. Like, I could go back now and do it.”

I smile over at her. “I think you’d make an amazing therapist.”

---