by Nicole Deese
Though I worked to guard myself against his every word, the cramp in my chest expanded. If the man could watch his own brother be beaten and thrown down a staircase, he certainly wouldn’t think twice about using the Bible for ulterior motives. “A meeting won’t be possible.”
“I’m telling you the truth, brother. Call my sponsor, please. His name is Peter Rosario. He works at Applegate Community Church in Bellingham, and he’ll vouch for me. For everything I’ve said. I’m not asking for anything more than your time. For just an hour or so to talk. To start to catch up on what we’ve missed. Nothing more.”
Nothing more? Surely he didn’t actually think we could catch up on all we’d missed in an hour or so. We’d missed a lifetime. And not by my doing. By his.
I worked to keep myself in check, to stay in control of the guilt card Carlos loved to play. My temples began to pound, blurring my vision enough for me to reach out for the office chair I’d carried in for Molly earlier. I kneaded my right temple with my knuckle.
“I won’t be calling him.” It was hard enough to pray for Carlos most days, much less track down all the trails his lies would lead me to. I’d taken that dead-end path before and lost.
“Silas, brother, I’m not the same addict you remember. Things are different now. I’m different.” The catch in his throat ratcheted the throbbing in my head to a new level. “You’re the only family I have.”
That sentence never failed to hit me in the gut, no matter how many times I’d spoken it aloud or written it down or tried any of the tactics my therapist had insisted would release the stress my body refused to let go of—long after my concussion and broken bones had healed.
I slammed my eyes closed, seeing and hearing it all again. The lure of lies he’d used to draw me in for the last time, to a drug house full of addicts, money, and nauseating sin.
I’d been arrogant enough to believe I could save him. To think I could rescue him from the same clutches he’d willingly run to once again. The D. A. had said I should count myself lucky. That often altercations involving an enraged addict ended in a fatality. Much less six enraged addicts. And even though my brother wasn’t the one to throw the first punch or steal my wallet or shove me down a flight of cement stairs and leave me for dead, he also hadn’t been the one to stop them.
He’d been too high to do anything but watch, much like the way he looked at his sentencing trial, where the paranoia behind his erratic, shifty eyes matched the panic that spewed from his mouth—accusations and explanations too disgraceful to repeat as the judge demanded his silence.
I’d changed my entire career and future for this brother. But not even The Bridge could fill what he’d stolen from us both that night.
“We aren’t family anymore, Carlos. Please don’t call me again.”
I dropped the phone to my lap, cutting off his voice with a single tap of my screen, knowing without a doubt it wouldn’t be the last I heard it. Because even if Carlos honored my wishes, his voice was forever locked in my memories.
With elbows pressed to the desk in Molly’s office, I dug my knuckles deeper into my temples, exhaling hard—
“Silas?”
I started at the sound of Molly’s voice in the doorway and tried to stand, but I immediately collapsed back into the chair as the mixture of light, sound, and movement crashed over me at once.
“Oh my goodness, Silas.” She rushed toward me. “Are you okay?” I felt her hand on my back. “It’s a migraine, isn’t it? Ocular?”
How she knew that, I’d—
“My Mimi used to get them. Do you have a prescription somewhere?”
“Top drawer of my desk. Right-hand side. It’s locked.” Gingerly, I reached into my pocket and handed her the key ring. “The small silver one.”
“Okay. Be right back.”
I could hear her feet patter across the hallway to my office, and then she was back just as quickly, with the pills and a bottle of water I’d left on my desk earlier.
“Here, take this.” She placed a single pill in my hand and unscrewed the water, bringing it to my mouth for me to take.
“Thank you,” I said after I swallowed it down.
I heard her rummaging somewhere behind me—in a bag? Her purse maybe? A moment later she was beside me again.
“Okay, so this might sound weird, but since I don’t have a rice compress to warm for you, I swear this is the next best thing. All you have to do is inhale.”
“Inhale?”
“Trust me. I lived with my Mimi during my senior year of high school and this was the remedy that helped her most. Take three deep, slow breaths in.”
The powerful fragrance of lavender filled my nostrils as I did what she asked.
“The other thing that helped her was . . .” But her words faded out before she finished the sentence.
I hated that it hurt too badly to open my eyes, but I was next to blind until the pressure passed. The impairment to my vision didn’t usually last longer than thirty minutes, but I felt every sightless second with Molly more acutely than I thought possible. Interpreting her facial expressions had become a critical factor to the way I communicated with her.
“What?” I probed. “What else helped her?”
“It’s just, I’d have to touch you. On the back of your neck, I mean. Is that okay?”
A prickle of heat climbed my spine in anticipation. “Yes, that’s fine.”
Tentatively at first, she pressed her fingers into the back of my neck, trailing a path into my scalp. Her touch alleviated the pressure inside my skull almost immediately.
“Do you see dark spots when it comes on? Or does everything just blur together?”
“Both.”
She braced each side of my head, her fingers gripping the space under my ears as she pushed her thumbs into my tensed muscles, ushering instantaneous relief.
“Who is Carlos?” But before I even had a chance to answer, she rushed on. “You don’t have to tell me, it’s just that I couldn’t help but overhear the tail end of your conversation when I came in to find you.”
At the sound of his name, the tension in my neck returned. I willed the words to come out clear, strong. Detached. “My older brother. My only blood relative.” Though we’d shared the same mother, there’d been little else we’d shared in common after the day protective services had separated us.
A soft intake of air. “Oh.”
“He was just released from prison. For the second time.”
“Oh, Silas, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“It’s fine.” I swallowed as she tilted my head to the left, rubbing her thumb along the tendons below my ear. “As you probably heard, we aren’t close.”
“Still, I’m sure that’s hard. It might even make it harder,” she said. “I don’t have much of a relationship with my parents anymore. I know it’s not even close to what you must be going through with your brother, but sometimes I think the strained way things are between us now makes me think of them more, not less. They’re always hovering close. In my thoughts. My memories.”
It was the first time she’d mentioned her family—outside of Miles or her grandmother. And even though I couldn’t see her face or the way her eyes likely shifted to the floor, the significance of such an admission was unmistakable.
“Where do your parents live?”
“Where haven’t they lived?” Her exhale came out as a tired laugh. “They work for a ministry organization that takes them all over the U.S. and sometimes abroad. They’re church planters. To impoverished communities. These days, they rarely stay anywhere for longer than a year or so.”
Interesting. “Was it that way growing up, too? You and your brother traveling with them from church plant to church plant?”
“Yes, though it was a slower process back then. We lived in six states in ten years, from ages seven to seventeen. But we always spent a few weeks here every summer.”
“With your grandmother. Mimi, you called her?”
“Yes. Miles and I moved in with Mimi for our last year of high school. Our parents went to the Philippines that year, and I begged to stay back. Miles didn’t want to leave me, so he stayed back, too.” Her sigh was filled with an angst I could feel through her touch. “It’s strange, though. When I think back on it, on being homeschooled by our mom and traveling in the back seat with my brother in our little compact car, my memories of that time, of that part of my childhood, are mostly positive.” Another weak chuckle. “Ten-year-old Molly would never have imagined she’d become an adult who didn’t have the support of her parents.”
“Why don’t your parents support you?” Though I’d heard hundreds of abandonment stories in my line of work, the idea of Molly’s parents willingly walking away from her as an adult seemed unthinkable.
“It’s hard to support someone when you don’t take the time to understand them. And my parents haven’t tried to understand me for a very long time.” A simple explanation that was likely tied to a much deeper root. “Sometimes I wish I could pinpoint the exact moment the distance between us began. Like if I could look back and recall one of those big holiday meal blow-ups where everybody hollers their opinions at one another over a tray of sweet potato soufflé . . . but that’s not what happened with us at all. It was more like a slow erosion of indifference over time. The more I pursued interests and hobbies outside of what they knew, the further the distance. Miles is about the only thing we have in common now, and even that feels strained.”
“Because Miles is a pastor?”
“Exactly.” The finality with which she spoke the word was sobering. “The truth is, I don’t know how to fit in their world, and they don’t know how to fit in mine. That’s one of the reasons I loved living with my Mimi. She was precious to me.” Molly’s voice took on an ethereal quality. “She always smelled like lavender and honey and was as assertive as she was graceful. She used to say, ‘God has uniquely shaped gifts for every one of His uniquely shaped people.’ She’d tell me it was okay that my gifts didn’t fit inside the same box as my family’s gifts did. But as a kid, that was pretty hard for me to understand. It still is sometimes.” She was quiet for a few seconds before adding, “I suppose that’s something we all want in life, no matter how old we get: to find that special place where we fit.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
Her fingers paused for a beat. “Were you adopted by the Whittaker family, Silas?”
“Yes. Just after my tenth birthday.”
“And did you feel like you fit with them immediately?”
“No, but at the time I hadn’t wanted to fit anywhere.” Especially not with a family who didn’t look or speak like me. And who hadn’t known my mother or my big brother. “But I was a boy with a lot of confusion and anger to work through after my mom died of an overdose. I was the Whittakers’ first emergency placement, and I was anything but easy on them. Eventually, though, they became everything to me, and I’m grateful to be their son. Their brother.”
“And Carlos . . . was he ever adopted?”
“No,” I said, unable to hide my grief or my guilt. “But I imagine so many things would have turned out differently for him if he’d been given that chance.” Or even a place to feel safe during his transition from teenage boy to adult man.
As her fingers slowed and eventually stilled on the nape of my neck, Molly asked, “How is your pain now? Better?”
Remarkably so. “Yes, thank you.”
“Good. I’m glad I could help.” I felt her distance as soon as she stepped away from me.
“Molly.” Slowly, gingerly, I opened my eyes and reached out for her wrist, feeling her delicate pulse thrum against my fingers as I stared up at her. “You fit here. At The Bridge. I hope you see that as clearly as I do now.”
She pressed her lips together, swallowed, nodded. “Thank you, Silas.”
22
Molly
If there was a prize awarded for the least interaction one could have with their new personal assistant, I would win first place. If I hadn’t seen Rosalyn with my own human eyes, I could be convinced she was actually connected to the artificial intelligence conspiracy Miles loved to prattle on about. The woman had the personality of copier paper. And not the high-gloss variety, either—the one-ply, standard stock.
Over the past two and a half weeks, she’d emailed me twice a day. First to let me know the titles and times of the scheduled posts Val had edited for me weeks ago—as if I couldn’t see them waiting in the queue myself—and second to let me know how each of those posts performed in their first twenty-four hours. Again, as if I didn’t have the log-in information to my own social media platforms. But those were far from her most annoying transgressions, as Rosalyn’s favorite form of communication seemed to be the automated group text message she sent out every morning at exactly 7:00 a.m. A motivational quote. But not one for each day of the week—nope, the same one. Every. Single. Morning. And the more I read it, the more unmotivated I became:
“Working hard is not the same as hard work.”
—Rosalyn Brunswick
What kind of person sent out a daily anti-motivational quote that they wrote themselves via group text message? Not Val. That’s who.
I sat at my computer, wishing I could copy/paste my latest Rosalyn encounter—an unnecessary reminder to please respond to your viewers within an hour of your most recent postings for best visibility and reach—to Val, since she was the only person in my life who could truly understand what I was working with here. But every time I scrolled down to Val’s name, I’d get that same awful prickly feeling in the pit of my stomach. Because I’d be forced to see the last of our text messages to each other. Those brutally polite exchanges recounting her final days and hours as my assistant. Simple logistics absent of personality or emojis.
Who was I to Val now? A former boss? A former friend? Both?
I wasn’t sure of the new rules. What were the boundaries for such a strange arrangement? I didn’t know. Just like I didn’t know how to push the constant swell of grief and regret away whenever I thought of her. Why hadn’t I visited Val in Alaska when I’d had the chance? I knew all about her fears of flying, her obligations to Tucker and her parents, and yet I never actually booked a flight. I should have surprised her, shown up with balloons and a cake for her birthday one year. I should have planned a girls weekend at a spa retreat on a snowy mountaintop as a thank-you for her countless overtime hours and loyal dedication to building my brand. I should have put one of my many work trips aside to do something that actually mattered for someone who actually mattered.
And yet, I’d done none of that.
I forked another bite of chilled wedding cake samples. Perhaps one of the only things I did know how to answer was the call to eat my feelings, and thanks to Clara’s generous donation to the Late Night Emotional Eating Fund for Molly McKenzie, I’d be on a sugar high for at least another hour. Possibly two.
When Clara had asked if I wanted to go with her to Bake Me A Cake two days ago to pick up the samples, I’d figured she just needed a ride since Jake was at a job site across town, but as it turned out, we ended up spending the entire day together. After the tasting, she’d asked my opinion on a going-home outfit to wear after the reception, which had led to several more store visits and then to the purchase of iced coffees and a long stroll around the Riverwalk. It had been an unexpectedly fun day, yet like so often over these last few weeks, I couldn’t help but think of Val. I’d reached for my phone countless times to snap a picture of something I knew she’d find amusing or cute or post-worthy for an upcoming feature. But then I’d remember how things were between us now, and that terrible gut clench would return.
I stuffed the last piece of orangesicle-and-limeade cake into my mouth and swiped to the home screen on my phone. It wasn’t the first time I wanted to start a music playlist entitled Friendship Breakups are the Worst.
An email notification appeared at the top of my device, and I
prayed it wasn’t from Rosalyn. I couldn’t be held responsible for a professional reply after 11:00 p.m.
But it wasn’t from my new assistant. It was from Sophia Richards.
I fought to swallow the too-big piece of cake and sat up as if Sophia herself were walking into my living room and not confined to my inbox. I clicked into the body of the message.
Dear Molly,
I apologize that it’s taken a couple weeks for me to respond to your email. We’ve been in Barbados, celebrating the launch of a new product line before my husband gets back to the Hollywood grind.
To address the outcome of the photo shoot, yes, I was disappointed by your decision to leave. However, we all have times when our personal convictions override obligations. In this case, I applaud you for sticking to your convictions and considering how the choices you make on your platform might affect the impressionable following you’ve grown. As a former foster child myself, I’d be interested in hearing more about the organization you mentor through. I was adopted prior to my twelfth birthday, but not without much struggle and hardship.
Due to some recent feedback within the industry, we will be implementing an alternate pattern to the traditional Tubee: a halter tank which will cover more chest and midriff with a less translucent fabric. I’d be honored if you’d consider it for future endorsement.
Stay in touch,
Sophia Richards
I read the email over three times in a row, my eyes growing wider and wider with each pass. And then I stood up and paced my living room. Sophia Richards applauded me? She applauded me for leaving her photo shoot early?
I glanced back at the clock. Ten after eleven.
Miles would for sure be asleep. Plus, I would have to spend thirty minutes filling him in on everything that had happened that day at Sophia Richards’s house, and by the time I got to the punch line, all the happy endorphins I felt right now would be dead. At least, that’s what I told myself as I picked up my phone and fired off a text.
Molly
