Pieces of a Mending Heart

by Kristina M. Rovison

  His words make me sad and I can’t keep the frown off my face. About what I judge to be ten minutes later, he gently pulls me to a stop. “Open your eyes, Katie,” he says, running his big hand through my hair.

  The beauty of the landscape will never cease to amaze me; the rolling hills and massive snowcapped mountains in the distance are like Disneyland to a child for the first time, wondrous and vast. Breathtaking.

  Before I can speak, he guides me towards a boulder resting on the edge of the cliff-like structure we’re standing on, which is looking out over the land. Scooting over to make room for me, he pats the spot beside him, gesturing for me to sit down. I surprise myself yet again by denying his offer and walking to the front of the rock before sliding on, seated between his now open legs. He pulls me close, lining up our bodies, which mold perfectly with one another. My impatience returns, leaving a bitter taste on my tongue. Figuratively, for once.

  “Come on, Tristan. It’s time for some answers,” I say, breaking the peace around us with my voice.

  I feel his arms wrap around me a little tighter, and instinctively tilt my head back to see his face better. Instead of finding comfort in his blue eyes, I see the tenseness of his square jaw, smarting with pressure as he clenches his teeth.

  “I’ve known Rachel for a while, Katie. Wh-when I, um… sh-she,” he stammers. This is the first time I’ve ever heard Tristan so unsure of himself; he has a graceful flow to his speech most of the time.

  I wait patiently for him to continue, urging him on with my silence. “My mom kicked me out of the house the first time I was arrested,” he says.

  “Arrested? What were you arrested for?” I ask, trying to stay calm, but my voice raises a few octaves.

  “I got caught downtown with some guys I thought were my friends. They planted three bags of weed on me when the cops showed up, and some speed was stuffed in my pocket,” he says, sounding guilty and ashamed.

  I squeeze his knee in reassurance, but only because I’m too stunned to speak.

  “So anyway, my mom wanted to put me in temporary foster care. The court wouldn’t give the go-ahead, so she took action herself and Rachel was the first volunteer. For five months, she homeschooled me, I lived in her house, slept in what is now your bedroom, ate in her kitchen… basically, it was stay-at-home therapy,” he continues, voice growing somewhat bitter.

  “How come you never told me this? Did you think this wasn’t worth sharing with me?” I ask, pulling away from him to see his face. The shock there was obvious, but the sting in my chest didn’t recede; I’m upset he wasn’t completely honest with me, even after I told him everything. I feel anger working its way through my veins, and I attempt to control my blood from boiling.

  “Katherine, I just don’t want to scare you off!” he says, pushing a piece of hair behind my ear. “It isn’t easy to retell this sort of stuff, alright? It isn’t like this is some funny old story!” he says, voice fierce and eyes shining, tinted with something that looks an awful lot like anger.

  I scoff, frustrated. “Tristan, you think you can scare me off? Don’t you think if I was going to run, I would have by now?” I stand, trying to stop the heat of my intensified anger from spewing foul words from my mouth. “I’m the person you’re supposed to trust!”

  The flash of heat in my veins is unnatural, meaning the effects of my Punishment are seeping into my blood. I watch as Tristan runs a hand over his face, a gesture saved for when he is under stress. My brother used to do the same thing, and I feel a twinge of sorrow at the fact that he hasn’t contacted me in weeks.

  “Do you just want me to say it? Flat-out tell you what I’ve been keeping from you?” asks Tristan, sounding nervous but just as frustrated as I feel, but I don’t know why he would be irritated. I’m not the one keeping secrets.

  “Yes!” I answer, lifting my hands up in a way that says “are you stupid?”

  “Fine,” he says, standing from the boulder and stepping towards me. “I stayed with Rachel before going to the same boarding school your brother went to. He was in my therapy group, and he talked an awful lot about you.”

  My mouth pops open, but no words crawl up my throat. He knew David? He was friends with David? “You were friends with my brother?” I ask quietly.

  He shakes his head, rocking back on his heels slightly. “No, Katherine. Dave wasn’t exactly friend material,” his eyes take on a sympathetic look.

  “What do you mean?” I ask, confused.

  Tristan sighs, long and deep and full of something I can’t decipher. “Katie, I wrote those letters to you. The ones you thought David sent you? That was me,” he says, not meeting my gaze. “Your brother isn’t… stable. He was transferred to a mental facility in California where he still is… until further notice.”

  My stomach drops. That’s why “David” hasn’t returned my last letter, because Tristan was probably at Rachel’s by then. I haven’t talked to my brother in months, but I assumed my parents have kept in touch with him and his advisors

  My brother was diagnosed with a split-personality disorder that turned him from a loving, quiet, gentle boy into a screaming, homicidal madman. I had only ever seen one of his episodes, but it was scary as hell, not to mention extremely unpredictable. Pushing the flashbacks out of my mind, containing them inside the glass bubble that I’ve protected myself with all these years, I lash out instead of coping with the pain.

  “Why would you write letters to me? How did the facility let you do that?! You were letting me believe he was getting better! That he loved me and would come see me soon and that he was living his life carefree and…” I get cut off by the sob that escaped me, and I couldn’t stop the tears that followed. I feel angry, but also betrayed, and my mind flashes to the words that popped into my head while I was showering. Maybe this is the betrayal I was warned about.

  Oddly enough, I’m not sure it’s Tristan I’m angry at: Maybe it’s the world, for being so unpredictable and unkind to those of us trying to get by. Maybe I’m just angry at myself for not being the sister David needed and contacting him more often. The doctors had told us he wasn’t in any condition to speak with us, so I could never call. A break with reality, that’s what they called it. My anger, no matter who it’s directed towards, sends the tears down my cheeks in a cascading river of confusion and sorrow.

  “Katherine, please don’t be upset,” Tristan begged, frantically wiping the tears from my face. In this moment, I don’t want him to touch me, to take away my pain. I’m not the fragile, weepy girl that Tristan sees me as; I’ve let happiness soften me, and I don’t like feeling vulnerable.

  I pull away from him, not out of anger, but out of necessity. I cannot think straight when he touches me. David was never a permanent fixture in my life, but rather a memory that has faded with the passage of time. His letters made him seem real again, and now that I know that my brother was never really talking to me, telling me things that made me laugh and hope, I feel hollow.

  Deep down, I always thought his letters were too good to be true. In the months following his initial check-in, David wrote me no letters at all. I can see where his path probably intersected with Tristan’s, but their relationship is still confusing.

  “Why would you write letters to me? You didn’t even know me!” I say, wiping my face off and desperately wishing I had a tissue.

  “When I stayed with Rachel, a few months after…” he trails off, looking down, and I realize that he’s uncomfortable speaking about his attempted suicide.

  I can say words like “suicide” without cringing, because words are nothing more than letters. They are describers of actions, and these actions are what support our futures. It’s not words I fear, but what they stand for.

  Tristan continues. “I felt like I was doing so well with the help of Rachel. She was so kind to me, and I was a new person within a matter of weeks. The only reason I was even sent to John Adam’s was because Rachel said it would look better, that people would believe I wa
s better, if I went to a facility. Not only that, but Adam’s offers high school classes and I was so behind I would’ve had to be held back. She sent me there because David was there, and she felt like I could… somehow connect with him because we shared her acquaintance in common.

  “Once I got there, I immediately knew there would be no getting through to your brother. He…”

  “What, Tristan? He what?” I say, anxiously awaiting him to continue.

  He sighs, licking his bottom lip, making it shiny and tempting. “He wouldn’t even speak, Katie. We would be forcefully taken from his room to the dining hall, and I felt sorry for Rachel. I snuck into his room the first week I got there, and found a stack of unopened letters on his desk. I took the letters, left the room, and read them all.”

  Tristan really does know me; everything about me. When I was experiencing a particularly difficult thing, I would pour my heart out in those letters I sent to David. Even if he wasn’t answering, I wrote to him. Tristan knows about the abuse from my father, my mother’s drinking problem, petty arguments with old friends… everything.

  “Why? Did you even know I was Rachel’s niece?” I ask, trying to get as much information as possible.

  “Yeah, I knew you were her niece,” his eyes take on a look of longing, and of sensitivity I have never seen in anyone’s. “Katie, you sent David a picture of you and him. Remember? That photo of the two of you on the steps?”

  I nod; it’s the same photo I keep in my wallet. Tristan reaches into his back pocket, hand emerging a second later holding a folded piece of paper. He opens it, folds it over again so that the photograph is facing the outside, and hands it to me. Sure enough, it’s the photograph I sent David, upon his request.

  “I don’t believe in coincidences, Katie. When I saw your signature at the end of each letter, saw your name, I couldn’t help but ask you to send me a picture of yourself, to validate what I suspected. It was you, the girl from my vision, the angel God told me he sent,” Tristan smiles, a weak one compared with others I’ve seen.

  “And you couldn’t tell me because… I would never have believed you,” I whisper, still shocked.

  “And because I just couldn’t bear to tell you about David… I thought that would be the final straw; that you would just give up,” he says, and I realize he fully believes he was doing the right thing.

  “So you knew who I was all along. You knew I was Rachel’s niece, so why did you act so unknowing the first few days after we met?”

  “Katie, I want everything to work out for us. I didn’t know how to explain all this to you without making you upset. And obviously, I haven’t done a good job, anyways,” he says, face taking on an apologetic grimace as he strokes my hair.

  “So, David never talked?” I ask, sniffing.

  “Yeah, he did, just… selectively. He didn’t like me very much; he thought I was some type of dangerous stalker because I tried getting him to talk about you. David was volatile, to say the least,” Tristan says, smiling. “He only ever said the same thing, though. ‘I want sissy happy.’”

  I smile, thinking of the David that taught me to ride a bike and had lemonade stands with me when we were children. That David is merely a memory now, if what Tristan says is true. And since I have no reason to doubt him, I believe him.

  “So, when did you come home?” I ask, wanting to stray from talk of my brother for a few minutes.

  “About a week before the first day of school. The last letter I got from you was sent from the hospital you were in, days after you tried to…” he struggles, but I nod so he knows I know what he’s talking about. “You said you were going to stay with Rachel, and you left an address. I called Rachel, who called my advisor, who let me come home.”

  “Where is ‘home’ for you? I meant to ask earlier. I got the impression your mother was a… uh…” I trail off, unsure what to say to fill in the blank.

  “Bitch?” he says, eyes hardening. “She changed after my dad died. A lot. But yeah, she and I aren’t on speaking terms. Rachel helped me get my own apartment, in her name, and I live there. It isn’t bad for a guy who’s barely eighteen. Granted I haven’t been able to do much with it just yet, but it’ll be great soon enough.”

  I understand why Aunt Rachel wouldn’t have told me about Tristan; his past is too frightening to share with a niece she’s just getting to know. The fact that my aunt cares enough about Tristan to keep his past, and present, a secret shows mounds about her character.

  A few minutes pass and I just sit, thinking but not thinking. More like soaking, absorbing the information like a sponge. Tristan sits on the grass in front of where I’m sitting, and a slight breeze pushes strands of his hair into his blue eyes, which are assessing mine. I reach up and push the strands back, not wanting to have it as a barrier between us.

  “I should get you back. We have dinner to eat, you know. I promised I’d stay,” Tristan says, voice quiet and sultry.

  I nod, but make no move to stand. Tristan stands, towering over me, holding out both of his hands to help me up. I just stare at them, wondering when he’s going to poof into a cloud, proving he’s a figment of my imagination. I don’t know what’s real anymore.

  Settling on reality, I grab his hands and stand, but he surprises me yet again by gently guiding me into a hug. Enveloped in his tanned arms, I inhale the strong, masculine scent that no cologne maker could ever perfect. We just stand there, his arms around my waist, mine around his neck. His build is athletic, strong and muscled, but somehow tall and lean. How I ever thought of him as frightening is beyond me, because I have never felt safer than I do in this moment.

  * * *

  When we arrive back at the house, Aunt Rachel is in the kitchen, bumping pots and pans into countertops and stumbling on her own two feet. The sight brings a smile to my face and Tristan’s light kiss on my cheek makes me shine even brighter. He releases my hand and goes to help my aunt, and I sit in the chair at the little square table and watch as they make spaghetti.

  “So, Tristan, what do you think of my niece?” Aunt Rachel asks, playfully rubbing the top of my head as she passes me on her way to the pantry.

  “She’s the best friend I could ever ask for, Rachel,” he says, smirking at me from behind the steam from the boiling pot. “Wish she was around a few years ago, but then that would be a different story, now wouldn’t it?”

  Aunt Rachel looks surprised, mouth slightly open and head cocked to the side. Her platinum blonde hair is stacked on top of her head, making her look like a tiny troll-doll with its outrageous style.

  “I told her, Rachel. It’s pretty hard to keep secrets from someone you’re so much alike,” he says, stirring the spaghetti. “Plus, it is better that she heard it from me, anyways.

  “Well. I’m glad to see you two got so close so quickly,” my aunt says as she’s reaching into the cupboard to retrieve the plates. “Me, too,” I chime in, smiling.

  We sit at the table, and a feeling of ease washes over me. This is how it was supposed to be all along; this feeling of happiness should have been more present in my life.

  “Oh, Katherine! I almost forgot, dear. You got a letter in the mail today from your mother. I suggest opening this one!” she says, trying to sound stern.

  I fight the urge to roll my eyes. “Fine, I’ll do it now so I don’t forget. Be right back,” I say as I stand and dramatically walk over to the counter, which is less than ten feet away. Aunt Rachel and Tristan laugh.

  Tearing the letter open, my heart races. I don’t know why, but it does.

  Katherine,

  You’re lucky I opened the letter you sent your father. I burned it. Stop being foolish. Mom.

  My mouth drops open. I forgot all about the letter I sent! Anxiety rises up in me, my Punishment threatening to burst forth and set fire to my veins. I feel it, the buildup, but chase it away with deep breathing. A strong hand on the back of my neck relieves my anxiousness, and I look up to see a stunning set of blue eyes analyzing my ev
ery move.

  “Everything alright, Katie?” he asks, humoring Rachel. He is good at masking his true feelings; his voice is so light, so innocent, that I raise my eyebrows in shock at his great lying skills.

  “Uh, yeah! Yeah, it’s all good,” I say, playing along, not wanting to explain the letter in my hands.

  “I should probably get home. It’s weird, knowing we have school tomorrow. It feels like we were in a different world today,” he says, so low my aunt can’t hear.

  “Yeah, I’ll walk you out,” I say, glancing at Aunt Rachel as I say so.

  Tristan walks toward her before embracing her and whispering something. My aunt smiles and gives him a very maternal kiss on the cheek. As I said, she would be a fantastic mother if she would only settle down.

  Walking Tristan to his car, I listen to the sounds of the nighttime, at peace despite knowing the information unearthed to me today.

  He doesn’t say anything, but takes my hands in his and pulls them up so they rest around his neck. This is it. He’s going to kiss me! I think to myself.

  But, he doesn’t, and I’m feeling rejected and a little frustrated. He must feel this, because he chuckles and leans against his truck, pulling me against him. Our bodies are lined up from our shoulders to our feet, and I’ve never stood this close to a boy. Technically I have, but I feel like I’ve never been close to anyone before Tristan.

  Wordlessly, he tilts my head up so that my eyes meet his, and he leans in. Keeps leaning… and tilts my head up more, so that I’m looking at the sky. I feel a light pressure on my neck just below my jaw, and my eyes flutter shut. A second later he stops, giving me a kiss on the forehead before gently moving me a few feet from his car. Dazed, I watch him get in, smile at me, and drive off. I just received the most passionate kiss I have ever received from a boy. And it wasn’t even on my lips.

  Later that night, as I lay into bed freshly showered with blow-dried hair, I look out my window. I think of David: what he’s doing, where he is, what he’s thinking… I know that he probably isn’t the David I’m remembering, but a stranger. I conjure up a picture of him in my mind and think of a time where we sat under the stars on our roof and watched the fireworks on my birthday. I’m not even sure if this memory is real, but it’s bringing me comfort and, in some strange way, closure.