The Love That Split the World

by Emily Henry

  Alice’s gaze makes me feel like I’m being X-rayed. I sometimes think the whole world knows my history, and I’m the only one who can’t see it.

  I sometimes think they all know, and all I’ll ever get is what Mom told me, a logistical play-by-play of how the adoption went: She and Dad tried to get pregnant for a long time. Once, they thought they had. She miscarried; they were heartbroken.

  Down in Alabama, on a reservation, an eighteen-year-old girl found out she was pregnant. Before anyone noticed her growing baby bump, she ran away, up to Kentucky, where her boyfriend’s family lived.

  Meanwhile, Mom and Dad got a call from a friend of a friend, who’d gotten a call from a friend of a friend, whose nephew’s girlfriend was having a baby.

  That baby was me.

  Did they want her, the friend of a friend wanted to know.

  They needed time to think about it, Mom said.

  They had ten days and not one more, the friend of a friend said. The mother-to-be, my ishki, didn’t want her baby to grow up on the reservation. She’d never been happy there, had very little money, no real hope for a career, and an abusive father she didn’t want anywhere near her baby, near me. But she needed to find me a family soon, or she would have to take me back to the reservation with her.

  Mom and Dad always say they were never terrified to take me; they were terrified to lose me—they thought that logic showed my ishki wasn’t sure, that she was ready to change her mind.

  When Mom and Dad spoke to their lawyer, he brought up the Indian Child Welfare Act, a protective measure put into place in the 1970s, in response to the nearly one-third of all Native children who were being forcibly removed from their homes and put into non-Native boarding schools and foster homes. To protect babies like me and parents like my biological ones from being coerced into adopting to non-Native families, the act added a few extra hoops to the adoption process, one being that I couldn’t be adopted within the first ten days of my life.

  Ten days during which my birth mother looked at me, rocked me, maybe even whispered or sang to me, and held fast to her decision to give me away. I wonder if in that time she ever stopped to think that people could be unhappy, lonely, weary anywhere; that in a town like Union, there would still be parents who hit their kids and kids who stared up at the night sky, whispering that they’d like a better life, a gentler place. Did she ever, in those ten days, want to be the one to soften the world for me?

  Mom and Dad’s lawyer was unconcerned by the rest of the ICWA’s stipulations—Alabama was apparently notoriously unfriendly toward the act, and my biological mother’s extended trip to Kentucky was just one more way to ensure Alabama’s courts saw me as not Indian enough to fall into the category of all Indian children, to which ICWA was supposed to apply.

  I knew she could never regret me, but Mom always told me that last part with guilt in her eyes, like she was pretty sure she’d done something wrong by adopting me, by playing into a system that made exceptions for people like her and Dad.

  If at any point in the first two years my birth mother had changed her mind about the adoption and could prove she’d been under duress when she’d decided to give me up, legally the state was supposed to rescind the adoption. After Ishki’s neighborhood walk with me, Mom was terrified Ishki was going to try to regain custody, though of course by then the two years were up.

  And it’s not like I wanted to leave my family—I never did. But sometimes, after that walk, I used to lie awake and cry, because it hurt so bad that Mom had thought my birth mother wanted me back, and it hurt so bad when it turned out she didn’t.

  Even if I wouldn’t have wanted to go with her. She should have wanted me to.

  Funny thing about belonging to two worlds: Sometimes you feel like you belong in zero.

  “An EMDR therapist might say these manifestations are a coping mechanism,” Alice says, pulling me back to the office. “You needed a continuation of your original world—a time when there was stability with your biological mother—so your mind created one. When you’re under duress and returning to a precognitive state, Grandmother resurfaces. An EMDR therapist might think your dream states are triggering suppressed memories, which were in turn triggering a PTSD response. A hallucination.”

  “Well, what would you say is happening?”

  She grins. “I’d say it’s pretty hard to prove whether something’s real or a hallucination.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, all of my subjects have post-traumatic stress disorder, but not all PTSD patients have seen the orb. I mean, your PTSD may be real, but that doesn’t mean Grandmother isn’t. I mean, maybe the EMDR banished her because the trauma really is at the root of your ability to see her—perhaps it stimulates your dream life so thoroughly that it causes you to tap into something else entirely. And the fact that you’re having the visions again indicates there’s something else—a remnant of the anxiety attached to the memory or some forgotten bit of it, another negative self-belief you haven’t dealt with, or even another cataclysmic event you haven’t processed—allowing a tenuous connection to continue.”

  I shake my head. “I went over this with Dr. Langdon. There’s nothing else, just that one memory.”

  Alice looks skeptical, but she lets it drop. She turns toward her desk and digs a calendar out from under a leaning stack of notepads. “Okay, Natalie,” she says. “I think, unfortunately, the way we’ll be most productive is to go by the book. Start with twice-weekly sessions and see how we do. It’ll be important that you talk about whatever you want to talk about, at least at first, because later you might have to talk about some stuff you don’t want to talk about. I’d also like you to write down all the stories Grandmother told you, as well as you can remember them, so we don’t lose any of the details. Sound good?”

  I shake my head. “I can’t.”

  “Can’t what? Do twice-weekly?” she says.

  “No, I mean, I can’t write the stories down. Grandmother didn’t want me to.”

  “She . . . didn’t want you to?”

  “She wanted me to remember them,” I explain. “And she wanted me to hear them.”

  One dark eyebrow arches over one of Alice’s green eyes, demanding more of an explanation. This is the exact sort of thing I dread talking about—or, rather, I guess I dread the rolling eyes, the uninterested shrugs, the blank looks that might follow. Despite how much I used to tease and hassle Grandmother, I’ve always held the things she’s taught me close to my heart. They are a part of me I keep, and nothing makes you more vulnerable than sharing something you care about. “Most of them are stories from the First Nations. They’ve been shared orally for generations and generations. She wanted me to experience them like that, how they always have been. “

  Grandmother wanted me to love the stories, to take them into my heart through my ears and let them become a part of me, connecting me to all the people who told them before. It feels disrespectful just to give them away on a sheet of notebook paper. It feels wrong not to be able to include or incorporate the way she said certain words, and where she paused, in her retellings.

  My retellings should be wrapped in my voice, cradled as carefully as water so that no word spills. “If you want Grandmother’s stories, they should be told how she told them. They’re sort of hers, you know?”

  They’re yours too, Natalie, Grandmother used to tell me.

  Alice considers me for a long moment before her head does that wobbling thing again. “Well, what if I send a voice recorder with you? You could tell the stories and record them.”

  I think it over. “Yeah, I think I could do that,” I say. “But don’t write them down. Just listen. That’s how you’re supposed to experience them.”

  “You’ve got yourself a deal—we don’t want to piss off the person we’re trying to find. Will Tuesdays and Thursdays at nine work for you?”


  “Yes.” I’ll be dropping Jack off for early morning conditioning every day of the week anyway. That’s the deal with Mom and Dad paying for my car insurance and gas—while they’re at work, I’m the twins’ chauffeur.

  “In the meantime, try to get as stressed as possible. Reeeeally get your trauma to the surface—know what I mean?”

  “Oh, I think so,” I tell her.

  Maybe that’s why I agree to go to Matt’s birthday-slash-graduation party with Megan the next night. Or maybe I’m a masochist when it comes to Matt Kincaid. Maybe, even though it doesn’t feel right to be with him, I’m too scared to let him stop loving me, lest cutting that last tether sends me floating away.

  8

  “Remember: You were going to have to talk to him eventually,” Megan says gently. With the Jeep in its geriatric state, we decided to take her Civic instead, and it’s rumbling from the little Presbyterian church’s parking lot to the Kincaids’ connected gravel driveway, the one they open to visitors every fall for their corn maze, and when they host weddings. “It’s not like you and Matt have never fought before.”

  “We’ve argued before,” I correct her. “And even that was mostly just us sighing back and forth until someone gave up. This was different. More like he verbally poked me in the rib cage a couple of times and then I verbally beheaded him.”

  Megan rolls her eyes. “You could’ve nonverbally castrated him, and he’d still want you here.”

  “The point of breaking up was to not have to fight anymore.”

  “You mean argue,” she teases. “And I thought the point of breaking up was so you guys didn’t drag things out until you ended up hating each other. The point was saving your friendship.”

  I shrug. “Maybe it would’ve been better to let him hate me.”

  “Then you should’ve tried getting a worse personality and an uglier face.” She reaches over and squeezes my hand in the dark. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

  The lot beside the barn is already full, so we park just off to the side of the gravel drive instead, where we can hear music blaring from the house. Matt’s parents are out of town this weekend, ensuring 1) this party will get out of control and 2) I won’t have to hear the phrase I’m so heartbroken my grandbabies won’t have your coloring from Joyce Who Only Eats Beige.

  “This will be fun,” Megan insists. We get out of the car, climb the last few yards of the upward sloping drive, cross the lot, and are met by a cheer rising up from the people perched along the edge of Derek’s truck bed. Even Rachel seems genuinely happy to see us, like old times.

  “Happy birthday, Matt. We come bearing Heaven Hill,” Megan says, holding up a bottle of bourbon.

  Matt stands up, grinning and swaying like a stalk in a stiff wind. “Whoa there, cowboy,” Rachel says, grabbing a fistful of his shirt to steady him. “Try not to break your neck on your birthday.”

  “Come up, come up,” Matt says to us, waving his arms wildly. I’ve never seen him quite this drunk before, and I’m not sure what to think about it. Still, after our fight, I’m just relieved he’s happy to see me.

  “You’re in rare form,” I say, trying to sound lighthearted.

  Derek guffaws. “Rare? This is classic Matty Kincaid. Now he’s off your leash, boy likes to party.”

  “Oh, shuttup,” Matt says, clumsily slugging Derek’s arm. “Come up here, girls.”

  “Is there room?” I say, scanning the packed truck.

  “Course there’s room, Nat,” Matt says. “Come ’ere.”

  “You two,” Rachel says, pointing to two juniors. “Get out. Sorry, birthday boy’s wishes.”

  The girls exchange affronted looks but ultimately obey, and Matt helps pull us up—or at least, he’s sloppy enough to think he’s helping.

  “Can’t believe it,” Derek says. “Baby Matty’s eighteen. We’re all grown up.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Rachel says. “Five minutes ago you asked me to take a picture of your bare butt with Matt’s donkey.”

  “Oh yeahhh,” Derek says, hopping up. “I almost forgot about that. Come on, let’s do it.”

  “Dude, no.”

  “Why not?”

  “Why not? Because I’m not an ass photographer, and all you’re gonna do with that is send it to some poor freshmen girls and scar them for life.”

  He lifts her hand up and gives it a courtier’s kiss. “My beautiful, wonderful Rachel. Would you please make me the luckiest man on Earth by taking a picture of my ass with that ass?”

  “Fine,” she groans. As they serpentine toward the barn, I see Jack and Coco standing off to one side with a semicircle of freshmen and sophomore girls. As usual, the group’s unanimous attention is fixed on Coco and her best friend, Abby, and Jack’s just goofily grinning along. He’s always been able to run with the girls as well as Coco’s been able to run with the boys, and, being four minutes younger, he’s always let her call the shots on where, how, and with whom they spend their time. The second I became a big sister my job as such was already obsolete. Watching from afar has always been my M.O.

  Megan lies down in the truck bed beside me, and I realize the rest of the group has split off. It’s just the two of us and Matt now, how it used to be. I lie back too, then Matt does, and the three of us look up at the sky.

  “Look,” Megan says, “the Big Dipper.”

  “What’s a dipper?” Matt slurs. “I mean, think about it.”

  “It’s a ladle,” Megan says.

  “It’s a boat,” I disagree. At least that was my favorite of the explanations Grandmother gave. “It carries the souls of good people across the Milky Way, the so-lo-pi he-ni, to the City in the West when they die.”

  “So-lo-pi he-ni,” Megan repeats dreamily.

  “Sssolopahennu,” Matt says.

  “Hey.” A new voice comes from the foot of the truck. I look down toward my feet and see Brian Walters, of varsity soccer fame, with his pretty blue eyes fixed on Megan.

  Megan sits up quickly, pulling the strap of her tank top back up her shoulder and brushing her bangs aside. “Hi.”

  “Did you go see the animals yet?” he asks, awkwardly shifting his weight between his feet.

  “No, not yet,” Megan says, as if we haven’t all seen Matty’s cows and goats and donkey a thousand times.

  “Me neither,” he says, nodding.

  I look back up at the sky, cringing. “Well, what are you two waiting for?” I say. “If you hurry, you might get to see the extra ass that’s in the barn right now.”

  Megan scoots to the end of the truck and hops off, hiking her jeans up by the waistband and brushing stray bits of hay from her clothes. “Can’t miss out on that.”

  I watch them make their way toward the open barn doors, the golden light spilling out over the soft wispy grass and the gravel lot, suddenly wholly conscious of the fact that Matt and I are alone. “Well, that made me want to scratch my face off,” I say. “Since when is Brian so shy?”

  Matt doesn’t answer, and we lie there for a while longer, contemplating the stars and all their stories in utter silence.

  “It wasn’t all bad, was it, Nat?” he says finally.

  “What wasn’t all bad?”

  “Us.”

  “Of course not,” I say. “Hardly any of it was bad.”

  “Thasss what I thought too,” he slurs. “I donwanyou to think I love you despite things. I hate that I made you feel like that.”

  “Matt,” I say. “You were a great boyfriend. That wasn’t the problem.”

  “You always looked so cute over on the sidelines with that little ponytail,” he murmurs. “Made me wanna win to make you proud.”

  “I always was proud,” I tell him. It’s the truth. “You play football like it’s a science. You made me love the game.”

  He laughs. “You don’t love
the game.”

  “Fine, tolerate it,” I amend. “Sometimes even enjoy it.” It’s true I’ve never loved, and probably will never love, football. But watching Matt play—and Jack too—always fascinated me. The thing about football is once you get past the point system and general cultishness, it’s exactly like any other hobby or skill: There’s a generally agreed-upon technique, and then there’s personal style. The latter, for those who look, is a window to a person’s soul. Personal style is my mom, after some red wine, walking like she intends to restore order and beauty to the world with her posture alone. It’s Rachel dancing like she’s fighting her way out of quicksand, Megan running across the field like she’s floating on her back in the ocean. And it’s Matt Kincaid playing football tidily, like he’s checking off boxes.

  He’s always in the right place at the right time, rarely too fast or too slow. He runs, looks up, finds the open teammate, and sends the ball soaring toward him at the exact right moment; he doesn’t have to speed up or slow down or backtrack, even when he sneaks it forward. He just clutches the ball like it’s a brick of gold as he dodges beefy linemen and jumps over fallen bodies as if they’re narrow streams and he’s a gazelle. He breezes through tackle attempts and scores as the last buzzer sounds. Practically every play he makes resembles the hundredth take of a choreographed sword-fight scene.

  “I was thinking,” he mumbles, and his unfocused eyes wander over to me. “Do you remember the firsssong we danced to?”

  I sift through my memory. “It doesn’t even feel like we had firsts sometimes. I don’t think I even realized we were dating for, like, the first six months.”

  “Well, I remember it,” he tells me.

  “You do not.”

  “Yeah-huh.”

  “Sing it,” I say.

  He starts humming something that sounds like a few different songs mashed together, and I start cracking up beside him, until I feel the back of his hand graze mine. We both fall silent, and after a second, he slides his fingers through mine. I’m so shocked I freeze.