by T. L. Haddix
“I’ll extend the invitation.” He followed her out the door. “I can’t believe… you really liked her?”
She pinched his cheek gently. “I really did. Now, I need to get back to check on Daphne and the baby. See you soon?”
Charles hugged her. “Yes, ma’am. I love you, Mother, even if you do drive me insane from time to time.”
“Sweet boy, that’s why I’m here. Love you dearly.”
He sagged with relief against the doorjamb after she was gone. Considering all the ways her meeting with Kathy could have been a disaster, he felt a bit as though he’d gotten a last-minute pardon on a death sentence. He was still concerned, and he’d make a point of stopping by the Browning house tonight to see for himself that Kathy was all right, but he felt humbled as well from learning that his mother had been in his corner all along.
Sally came back in just then. “How’d it go?”
“Mother likes her, thinks I should marry her. Talk about dodging a bullet…”
“I’m glad it worked out.”
He chuckled. “Me too. I need to order some flowers for Mother, I guess, something to say thanks and maybe I’m sorry as well. I think I’ll go do that now.” The florist he liked to use was only two doors down.
“I’ll hold down the fort. Don’t forget you have that appointment at two.”
“I won’t.”
He usually sent his mother and Daphne flowers every couple of months or whenever they needed cheering. He’d not done that lately, and his guilt from earlier returned. He’d never expected his mother to go to Kathy, and he’d surely never expected that she’d be in their corner. Not so soon.
One thing he was certain of though was that with Augustina Kelly pulling for them—on top of most of Kathy’s family, Daphne, Herman, and Sally—they could hardly fail.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
“I’m afraid Charles wants to marry me.”
The stark pronouncement was delivered quietly, but to Kathy’s ears, it sounded as loud as a scream. Maybe it was from saying the words, for the first time giving voice to the concern that had caused her so much turmoil in the last couple of weeks.
“What makes you say that?” Dr. Milton asked.
They were sitting on a swing in her garden, taking in some of the late-February sun after what had been a rainy, miserable couple of weeks.
“Because of the way he’s been acting since Valentine’s Day. I was terrified he’d ask me then, but he didn’t.” They’d celebrated the holiday last weekend, and she’d been so tense with expectations she’d barely been able to enjoy herself. She sighed. “Plus, Jack and Gilly will be in tonight or sometime tomorrow, and I’m worried about how he and Charles will take to each other. Jack’s very protective of me. They weren’t planning to come down until the end of March for Easter, you see, but once Sarah told him about Charles, they changed their plans.”
Dr. Milton frowned thoughtfully. “Let’s tackle one concern first, then the other. Would how your brother feels about Charles change how you feel about him? If for some reason Jack doesn’t like him, I mean. How does he feel about Owen?”
Kathy snorted. “They’re like peas in a pod, those two. They get along so well that they drive Sarah and Gilly nuts from time to time. Sarah says it’s almost like having two more kids in the house when they visit.” She shrugged. “I guess, given how well Charles and Owen hit it off, I shouldn’t borrow trouble until there’s reason to expect it. Jack just has a tendency to run his mouth when he’s worried. He means well, but it doesn’t always come across that way.”
“So would Jack’s opinion influence your relationship with Charles?”
“I don’t know. But I’d hate to see another rift in the family over who I’m dating.”
“Nancy still hasn’t come around?” There was a hint of disapproval in Dr. Milton’s voice, a surprising element given that she always tried to stay neutral.
Kathy looked at her, eyebrows raised. “She hasn’t. That bothers you?” She chuckled. “Now who’s the therapist?”
Dr. Milton smiled. “It does bother me. I’ve come to really like you as a person, not just as a client, and I don’t agree with how Nancy handled things. It isn’t my place to judge her, and I’m trying not to. That said, I’ve seen you begin to regain your confidence since you and Charles started seeing each other, and I’d hate for her negativity to influence you.”
Kathy’s smile was rueful. “You know, that’s one of the reasons I’m worried about Jack. I… want to believe what I have with Charles is good, and I guess I’m afraid if Jack doesn’t approve of him, that might mean what we have isn’t as good as what I think. I don’t trust my own judgment yet. Which is why I’m afraid of Charles proposing—how can I be sure accepting a proposal would be the right thing for me to do? I’ve messed up so many times. I don’t want to mess up again.”
“Fear can paralyze us and keep us from doing good things or bad,” Dr. Milton said. “It’s an instinctual response for the most part, designed to keep us safe from uncertainty and harm. When we’ve had bad experiences that leave scars, we tend to view everything new with trepidation. I fully expect you’ll learn to trust your own instincts again over time, and it’s okay if that takes a while. I think you have a very good head on your shoulders, and you just have to learn to believe that. I’m not surprised you’re concerned, because given what you’ve been through, caution is simply prudent.”
“Why do I feel like there’s a ‘but’ in there?” Kathy asked. A butterfly was flitting around her knee, and she held her hand out to the yellow-and-black swallowtail. Her eyes widened with wonder as it lighted on her fingertip. “Look at that.”
“Our friend here is demonstrating an excellent example of trust, you know.” Dr. Milton laughed softly. “There is a ‘but,’ and it’s this. When we’re children, we go through a period where we don’t trust anyone except our parents and close caregivers. We watch the people we trust, the ones who’ve never hurt us, who’ve loved us and comforted us, and by watching them, we learn how to trust others.
“I don’t know if you’ll have the chance to develop your instincts further or not—though I think they’re stronger than you believe them to be—before your relationship with Charles reaches a point where you have to make some decisions. But if you don’t, if you’re still feeling lost, look to the people who’ve never steered you wrong. They can’t make decisions for you, and they shouldn’t, but they might be able to help you achieve the clarity you need. Your mother, for example.”
Kathy frowned as the butterfly lifted off and zigzagged across the garden. “What if the advice she gives me is too terrifying to contemplate? What if I’m not ready?”
“Then don’t ignore your own feelings for hers. I don’t want you to rely on her to make your decision, but I think she’s someone you could turn to for some good advice if it comes to that. If you’re truly that confused or uncertain if he proposes, you should wait. He’ll understand, and if he doesn’t, then maybe that’s the answer you needed.”
The thought of Charles pushing her into anything before she was ready was surreal. “No. I can’t see him doing that—pushing me, I mean. He’s never once pressured me into anything. Not even intimacy—especially not that.”
Dr. Milton looked at her notepad for a moment, rotating her pen as her brow furrowed. “How do you feel about Charles? Let’s assume for a bit that there are no bad consequences in this world. If those magically disappeared, how would you feel about him?”
Kathy groaned softly. “That’s easy. He’s one of the best men I’ve ever met. There’s nothing bad about him. He isn’t perfect. I don’t mean that. Lord knows he works too hard, and he tends to stub up if his mother tries to tell him what to do.” She laughed, thinking about Gus and Charles’s argument over Gus’s driving. “If she says the sky is blue, he’ll argue with her. Gus says it’s one of the reasons he makes a g
ood lawyer.”
“How would Randall feel about Charles?”
The question floored Kathy. She could imagine all too well how badly that meeting would have gone. She stared at Dr. Milton as she considered what might have happened. To her horror, she teared up, and she had to grab the tissues on the nearby table.
“Kathy? Tears are a strong reaction. Why does that question upset you so?” Dr. Milton’s voice was soft and calm.
She blotted her cheeks, her lips pressed hard together. “Because of how awful it makes me feel just imagining the two of them… Randall would dismiss him, make fun of him. Charles wouldn’t meet his definition of a ‘real man,’ you see. Neither did Owen, for that matter. When they met… God, it was awful. Awful—and funny in a way because poor Mama ended up refereeing me and Jack, but mostly it was awful. Randall made jokes about Owen for days afterward. He’d do the same to Charles. I can’t stand the thought of it.” She was shaking, the idea was so traumatic.
Dr. Milton gave her a minute to calm down. “You care very much for Charles.”
Closing her eyes, Kathy nodded. “I love him. I don’t want to, because I’m so afraid I’ll hurt him, but I can’t seem to help it.”
“And that’s why you’re afraid he’ll propose?”
“Yes. I don’t think I’m strong enough to say no. I want him too badly.”
“Why would it be a bad thing for you two to end up married?” Dr. Milton tilted her head. “I know we’ve talked before about you forgiving yourself for what happened. Is it possible that you don’t want him to propose because that would mean you were moving on, that you had forgiven yourself for your role in what happened?”
They’d first broached the subject of self-forgiveness a few weeks back, though Kathy hadn’t been ready to think about it then. The concept still made her somewhat uncomfortable.
“If I forgive myself, I guess a part of me fears I’ll forget everything. And I don’t want to forget what happened to my babies, to me. How can I keep it from happening again if I forget?” she whispered.
Dr. Milton let out a long breath. “There will come a time, if you give yourself permission to live again, when you will go hours, or perhaps even a day or longer, without thinking about what happened. When that occurs, you’ll remember with a jolt, and you’ll be devastated you forgot for even a brief amount of time.”
“That’s already happened a couple of times with Charles. It punched me like a blow to the chest,” Kathy admitted. “I felt so guilty for forgetting and then for worrying Charles when he saw how upset it made me. Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place. I just wanted to go hide under the bed.”
“But you didn’t?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t.”
“Good girl. I’m proud of you.” Dr. Milton laughed softly. “That’s where the importance of self-forgiveness comes in. Some people aren’t able to do it. They feel too strongly like they’re betraying the memory of what happened. I look at moving on differently. What happened before is gone and done. It’s set in stone, unchangeable, and after an appropriate amount of retrospection and grief, it needs to stay in the past.
“I feel like by not letting go, we’re in fact betraying the people with us now and the people we’ll be with in the future. As cold as it may sound, the dead need to bury the dead. The living shouldn’t try to crawl in the grave with them. There’s nothing wrong with remembering, but it’s a shame to let tragedy rule the future. You know how I feel about giving power to those who’ve hurt us.”
Kathy gave her a half smile. “The best revenge is living well?”
“Exactly! And the best way to honor those we’ve lost is to find happiness again. Would your children want you to live in misery? I don’t think they would have.”
No, they wouldn’t have. Despite how tense life with Randall had been, Moira had been one of the sweetest, sunniest children Kathy’d ever known. She wasn’t fond of Randall—she most certainly hadn’t been a daddy’s girl—and she’d preferred to play in her room when he was home. But when he was gone, she was Kathy’s shadow, curious about everything. Her observations about the world around her were so outrageous and strangely mature that she often had Kathy in stitches. The last thing Moira would have wanted was for Kathy to shut herself off from the world like some sort of sacrificial offering to her memory.
“You have a lot to think about today,” Dr. Milton said. “A lot of homework. I want you to consider forgiving yourself. Hopefully, the visit with your brother and his family will go better than you expect. I think things will sort themselves out.”
“If they don’t?” Kathy asked. “What then?”
Dr. Milton patted her hand. “Then you call me, and we’ll pour ourselves some strong coffee and sit down and figure it out.”
Kathy stopped by the supermarket on her way home, and she was so distracted that she had to make three circuits through the store before she managed to get everything on her list. What Dr. Milton had said about living in the past—that she was betraying the people who were still here—made a lot of sense. Much like their previous breakthroughs, Kathy could feel a mental shift taking place. She couldn’t go back to viewing the world the way she had before, and the sensation was no less disconcerting now than it had been eight or nine months ago.
The trick would be finding the courage to consciously set the past aside and make the commitment to live in the present as much as possible. Kathy didn’t expect it to be easy, but she was starting to believe she would find the gumption to pull it off whether she was ready or not.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
“Get your hands off my sister!”
Charles jerked awake with a start, fumbling for the lamp with one hand, Kathy with the other. He fully expected to be hauled out of bed by his hair, pummeled by an angry Jack Browning. But Kathy wasn’t in bed beside him—shoot, he wasn’t even in bed.
He figured that out when he landed on the floor on his hands and knees.
Embarrassed, relieved, and laughing at himself, he collapsed on the rug with a groan. “Oh, yeah. I was working on the couch.”
He checked his watch. Eleven thirty. With any luck, Kathy’s brother and family had made it into town by now. He let his head rest on his arms with a tired yawn. At some point he should probably get up and go to bed, but the empty space beside him would just remind him of how much he missed Kathy.
Regardless, he pushed himself up and found his glasses, which were thankfully safe on the coffee table. At something of a loss as to what to do with himself, he wandered into the kitchen for a drink. He was standing at the sink, looking out the window at the yard beyond, when a light moved across the darkness.
“What in the world? That looked like headlights.” And since the driveway for his neighbors across the street was a good distance away from his own, that had to mean…. “Someone’s here. Oh, God. Something must be wrong.”
He opened the front door just as Kathy stepped onto the porch.
She ducked her head and smiled. “Hi.”
“What’s wrong?” He clung to the doorframe, afraid to move.
“Nothing.” She tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “Jack and Gilly made it in early. They were tired and went to bed early, so… I borrowed Mama’s car.”
He felt a smile form. “You did, huh?”
She nodded. “Sure enough.” Moving slowly, she walked up to him, not stopping until her chest brushed his. “Are you going to let me in?”
“I don’t know. The last uninvited guest who dropped by at least brought me a cobbler.” He was grinning like an idiot, but he didn’t care. “I don’t see a cobbler, Ms. Browning.”
Kathy lifted an eyebrow as her hands went to the belt on her dress. “Then I guess I’d better not plan on undoing this. I didn’t bring you a single thing to nibble on.”
Charles swallowed hard. “No? Nothing
?” He was thrilled when his voice didn’t crack like a boy’s.
When she stepped back, his hand shot out, catching her by the waist and pulling her forward. He didn’t waste any time lowering his head for a heated kiss.
“I can’t stay too late. I need to be home by six or so.”
“I’ll take every second I can get,” he whispered.
The sun was just starting to lighten the eastern sky when Kathy slipped in the front door. She was a bit tired as they’d not gotten very much sleep, but the exhilaration of sneaking back into the house had given her a shot of adrenaline. She’d just started down the hall when she heard one of the kitchen chairs creak.
“Crap,” she whispered. Hoping against hope that it was her mother or Gilly, she tiptoed back and peeked inside the kitchen.
“You’re up early,” Jack said. He spoke softly to the baby in his arms, who was slurping away at her bottle.
Kathy studied him for a minute then sighed. She knew better than to walk away when he had that stern expression. Setting her purse on the counter, she crossed the room and sat at the table. “How’s my niece this morning?”
A hint of a smile appeared on Jack’s stubble-covered face, and he looked at Michelle. “Hungry. Glad to be here. She didn’t like the motel room last night. Were you with him?”
Kathy narrowed her eyes. “I don’t like your tone, little brother.”
Jack scowled right back at her. “You don’t have to like it to answer the question.”
If she hadn’t known he was worried about her, she’d have responded with sarcasm. But real concern was etched onto his face, and she couldn’t bring herself to bait him.
“Yes, I was with him.”
Jack didn’t like the answer, that was clear, though he couldn’t have possibly been surprised to hear it. “Is that a regular occurrence, you sneaking out to spend the night with him?”
