by Lily Foster
Let Me Heal Your Heart
Let Me Series: Book Four
By Lily Foster
Shorefront Books
Let Me Heal Your Heart
By Lily Foster
Copyright © 2014 Lily Foster
ISBN: 978-0-9905941-7-8 (ebook)
ISBN: 978-0-9905941-6-1 (print)
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any other manner without the express written permission of the author.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living and dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Book Cover Typography: Scarlett Rugers design
www.scarlettrugers.com
Formatting: Polgarus Studio
www.polgarusstudio.com
Other Titles by Lily Foster
Let Me Be the One
Book One: Darcy and Tom’s story
Let Me Love You
Book Two: Rene and Caleb’s story
Let Me Go
Book Three: Kasia and Dylan’s story
Chapter One
Declan
He doesn’t even like the radio on as we drive.
It’s not that he doesn’t speak to me at all—he does—but his overtures are function-driven. He asks me if I’ve eaten, do I have enough money, do I need the car this weekend.
I think to myself, maybe the interminable stretches of silence are what finally did her in.
As we pull up outside the dorm, he asks without looking my way, “Do you want me to help you carry your things in?”
Fuck no, my inner voice screams. I want out of that car a-sap. Smiling to myself, I imagine him not even stopping the car, just slowing down enough for me to jump out of the still-moving vehicle with my things.
He surprises me again when he actually touches me, places his hand on my arm and says, “Best years of your life, son. Study…but have your fun.”
So it’s all downhill after this? Always a ray of sunshine, aren’t you, Dad? It’s not that I didn’t appreciate the sentiment—I knew this was his version of trying—but it was just so little, so, so late. Instead of telling him this, or telling him how much it hurt to know that we no longer had any kind of a relationship, I managed a phony smile. “Thanks, Dad. I’ll call you once I’m settled in.”
I wouldn’t call him.
He wouldn’t be calling me either.
I made my way into Grafton Hall, my new home. I moved past kids who were flanked by a mother on one side, a father on the other, each reluctant to let go of their baby. There were many hugs, moms speaking reminders about separating the darks from lights when doing laundry, dads handing over extra spending cash and reminders from both to eat right.
I walked into an empty room.
Shit.
More silence.
Anna
“Did your father give you enough money, sweetheart?”
“I’m good, Aunt Margot. I have enough.”
She tucked an envelope into my bag as we pulled up outside the dorm and grasped my wrist firmly when I attempted to take it back out to return it to her. I was sure the envelope contained an ungodly sum. “Don’t you dare, Anna Banana. Trust me, you’ll need some mad money—clothes, parties, maybe some upperclassman will ask you to homecoming and you’ll need a dress.”
“You make this sound all very nineteen-sixties.”
She smacked my arm, playfully. “Sixties? Really, Anna? Try the eighties.” She sighed then and smiled. “I loved college. I want to go back.”
“You could be my roommate, Aunt Margot! You’d be heaps better than the potential serial killer I may be meeting in the next five minutes.”
“I’m sure you’re about to meet a best friend for life just like I met Bunny the first day of school.”
“If my roommate’s name is Bunny or Muffin I’m going to run out of that dorm screaming.”
“Don’t judge a book by its cover, Anna.” Margot grabbed my other small bag. She’d insisted on shipping most of my things. As we made our way from the car I noticed the look of derision Margot gave to one parent wearing—gasp!—mom jeans and running sneakers as she lugged several bags up the stairs at once like a pack mule. So much for judging book covers.
Margot Cole didn’t lug.
To my knowledge, Margot had never physically exerted herself. My aunt was the epitome of style and refinement. Today she was dressed college-campus-casual, and from her three hundred dollar driving moccasins to her five hundred-a-month highlights, she screamed money. She was, however, good to the core in my book.
Margot had taken me in at the end of my junior year in high school after my parents split up and were driving me to the brink of insanity. I was able to stay at the same high school, which made the idea of moving out a no-brainer, as Margot and Uncle Vince lived only a few miles over. I like to think it served us both. After my cousin Dylan left for college, she hated the empty nest feeling and Margot got to dote on me like the daughter she’d never had. For me, having people who accepted me—I could be a temperamental little thing—meant the world. Margot and Vince didn’t bat an eyelash at my fashion choices, piercings, or hair color du jour.
Loyola 231. This would be my home for the next nine months. I was expecting a small room but this was one-quarter the size of my bedroom at home and I was sharing this space with another human being. It was going to be tight so I really hoped that I liked the person I was being stuffed in here with.
“No roommate yet, Anna. Let’s get you settled in.”
We left the door open to catch the comings and goings in the hallway. Once every few minutes someone would glance in as they made their way to their own room, flanked by parents and siblings. I smiled and said hello to anyone who caught my eye. I hated being alone and wanted to make some friends here pronto.
I chose this school because of its academic reputation and architectural design program, but I struggled with the decision because my friends were all going to other schools, some of them going together in pairs. The one girl from my high school who was here, Vicki Knotts, was a prissy brat who had been in all of my honors classes since we were in junior high. Suffice to say that she and I would not be grabbing a latte together before class…ever.
Being alone was my worst nightmare. Since Will died I couldn’t stand being alone, being in an empty house, or silence in general. I think my friends even got tired of sleeping over but they indulged me, and Jonathan, who was practically a saint, understood this about me as well.
My fear of solitude was part of what drove my decision to leave home and go live with Margot. I guess my parents had always been self-absorbed, but their self-centeredness and immaturity became more noticeable after Will’s death. Maybe I’m being unfair; after all, they say the death of a child is the most devastating event a person can endure. However, anyone with even an ounce of personal strength, a shred of moral decency, would have handled the situation better than either of my parents had.
My mother and my father essentially abdicated any responsibility they had for me and basically decided, each in their own way, to abandon ship. It’s not that their marriage was perfect before the accident or that our home life was wonderful—it wasn’t. But it was fine, it was normal. I had two parents, a stable home and I had Will.
Will’s warmth and humor made up for a lot of what my parents did not contribute. Without him, our family was an already shaky house of cards bound to collapse.
And collapse it did.
Declan
My door was already open so I turned, curious, when I heard knocking. I w
as hoping my roommate wasn’t overly formal or weird in general. This guy looked ok, though, with his baseball cap on backwards, dressed like he’d just rolled out of bed. “You’re Declan Banks?”
“Yeah,” I answered as I stuck out my hand to shake his. I took in the guy’s tight expression and wondered if I’d done something wrong. “What’s up?”
“I’m Matt Parker, the R.A. for Grafton. It’s good to meet you,” he said as he shook my hand. “Look, man, I got some sad news when I got here this morning. Your roommate’s father had a heart attack a few days ago, a major one. He’s probably not going to be moving in anytime soon. He lives fairly close by so he’s going to be commuting for a while.”
“That’s terrible. Is he coming by at all?”
“I don’t think so. I think his father is still critical.”
“Oh.” I could think of nothing else to say.
“The bad news—I guess it’s bad unless you like your own space—is that they won’t assign you anyone else because his room and board is all settled and he may be back later in the semester.”
I looked over at the unmade bed on the opposite side of the room. The walls were painted a cream color but the surface underneath was clearly cinderblock. The striped cover on the mattress and the cinderblock made that side of the room resemble a prison cell.
I hoped I hadn’t just traded one jail for another.
Anna
God bless Aunt Margot. She was making sure, even though there was no Greek system here, that I had a sorority’s worth of sisters before she left me today.
She bounced from my room to each neighbor’s room, popping in, introducing herself to other parents, making connections with others out of thin air. Once Margot asked where they were from, she could conjure up a link. “You’re from Westport? We have a summer place next door to Carrie and Mark Spencer on the Vineyard, do you know them? Oh, you wouldn’t be related to Ken Richter, would you? You are? He works with my husband often.” And so it went. Margot had made several friends before she took off late that afternoon and I had, as a result, befriended their offspring. She was a force of nature and I was grateful for her in ways that were too numerous to count.
My roommate materialized just around the time that I was beginning to worry about the prospect of spending the night in this room alone.
Fiona seemed shy and reserved when I introduced myself, with her overbearing mother answering questions on her behalf and correcting Fiona whenever she had the opportunity. “Speak up, Fiona.” Mrs. Fields butted in before a second had passed, giving her daughter no time to answer my questions herself. “Fiona,” the overbearing presence said as she rolled her eyes, “hails from Ogunquit, Maine. You have to come up in the summertime, Anna.”
I felt pain on behalf of this girl. She looked as if she wanted to crawl underneath the flimsy twin bed frame and die right there and then. I smiled right at Fiona, ignoring her mother—I had the ignoring mothers-thing down to a science—and took her hand. “Only if you let me drag you to Connecticut first, Fiona.”
The corners of her mouth turned up slightly as she met my gaze. I think we both knew in that moment that we’d stumbled upon a friend.
Fiona’s eyes were a rich, warm brown and her wild, brown hair hung in ringlets down her back. She had the kind of hair that other girls would kill for while the owners of said hair generally lamented their plight, wondering why they couldn’t be born with stick-straight locks like every other girl in their grade.
Fiona said, “So, um, I met Sarah, the R.A., and she said we had to be at the dorm meeting really soon, right Anna?”
I checked my watch, noting that we had an hour, but then got her message clearly. “Oh my God, I lost track of time. Yeah, we have like five minutes. I’ll come down to the car and we’ll grab the rest of your things.”
Her mother sighed, “Did you hear that, Max? Because you took so long getting here, now I can’t even stay and help Fiona get settled.”
He was meek in her presence but I think Mr. Fields did his version of asserting himself when he said, “She’s eighteen, dear. I think she can make her own bed.”
She huffed, “All right then. Let’s get the rest of your things and we’ll be off.” Her tone indicated that she wanted Fiona to need her, to reassure her that she wanted her to stay longer. That would not be happening, I gathered from the look in Fiona’s eyes. Fiona looked as if she would positively wither underneath one more minute of this woman’s scrutiny.
Following some awkward hugs and admonishing words directed at Fiona, the Fields’ car finally pulled away from the curb. Taking in my gaping mouth and wide-eyes, Fiona smiled sheepishly and asked, “So, she’s as bad as I’d always thought?”
I put my hand on her shoulder and laughed. “Fiona, I’ve never been so grateful for my distant, cold, heartless mother as I am right now. At least she doesn’t bother with me.”
“Ugh!” she cried out as she looked towards the sky. “All she does is bother with me…bother me. It’s like my grades are her grades, my friends dictate her social status, my place on the cheerleading squad is her achievement, not mine. Sorry,” she laughed. “TMI for our first day?”
“No, vent away.”
“I feel bad sometimes because she left college during her sophomore year when she got pregnant with my brother. She wants to live vicariously through me and I feel like I need to let her do that.” When I nodded, unconvinced, she added, “And that’s my life story, Anna. What’s yours?”
“Parents divorced, self-absorbed and clueless when it comes to me. I actually live with my aunt and uncle now. I moved out when I was sixteen.” In response to her shocked expression I added, “See, thought you had me beat in the nightmare-home-situation-department, didn’t you?”
By now we were back in our room, sitting across from one another on our twin beds. “I’m sorry, Anna.”
“Don’t be. My aunt and uncle are wonderful to me. You missed Aunt Margot. She left right before you got here. And my cousin, Dylan, is one of my best friends. My life is pretty great when I’m there.”
“So you don’t have any brothers or sisters?”
“I have a brother but he died three years ago.”
“Shit, Anna! I should just shut up with the twenty questions. I’m so sorry I brought it up, damn!”
I couldn’t help but smile in response to her reaction. “It’s ok, Fiona. We might as well get all the awkward shit out of the way, right?”
She smiled back. “I just met you and I think you’re pretty great, Anna.”
“Right back atcha, Fiona.”
As we made our way towards the common area for the meeting, I felt an old memory rising to the surface, a memory that warmed me from the inside out whenever I let it in. “Where in Maine did you say you were from?”
“Ogunquit. It’s on the coast, York County.”
“Maine,” I said, wistfully. “I’ve never been.”
Declan
After a week I was actually grateful for the few moments of solitude that my lack of a roommate provided. Basically, every door on my floor was left open twenty-four-seven and there was a constant flow of traffic between every room. Bonded is a girlie word but after spending the last seven days talking, drinking, and laughing with these guys, it was the word that best described how I’d felt in their presence.
Right across the hall I had Brandon Carter and Jimmy Walsh. Next door was Terrence Healy and Colin Watters. On the other side lived Frank Collagrazzo and Simon Bennett. This was the pack I’d become closely associated with, while there were several other guys on the floor that I could easily flop down next to at lunch, join in their pick-up basketball games, or fall into easy conversation with as we walked to class. I felt more at home in this new place than I had in the house where I’d spent the past eighteen years of my life.
All of them knew I was an only child, that I was from Maine, that I played hockey and that I lived with my father. They drew their own conclusions about my mother’s whereabo
uts. Only Brandon, my teammate and fellow finance major dared to ask, “So, did your mom die or just, like, leave?”
“She died.” That’s about as detailed as I was willing to get on that subject.
“I’m really sorry. That sucks.”
Right then and there I decided that Brandon was just about the most eloquent and articulate person I’d ever met. What had happened to me that year did, indeed, suck. There was no other word in the English language that fit better.
Everyone had their shit, though, not just me. My phantom roommate, I’d heard through Matt Parker, was basically assuming the head of the household role in his family, as his father was incapacitated. Brandon had an older sister who, at age twenty, already had a three-year-old child and Terrence had hinted at his mother’s alcoholism. It made me feel at ease to know that I wasn’t the only one who came from a fucked-up background but I still couldn’t help but feel that every one of these guys had it better than me.
I doubted that any of them went home to a house that was devoid of life in any form. My house was clean, there was food in the fridge, there were basic amenities and some luxuries, but there was no life. There was no music playing and if I played mine without headphones, I’d typically get a soft rap on the door indicating that I needed to cease and desist. There were no parties, no visitors. I avoided the place unless a shower, meal, or place to crash compelled me to walk through the front door.
I’d become a competitive hockey player thanks, in part, to my father’s shitty parenting skills. I dreaded going home so much that I would play pick-up games every day after school no matter the age or skill level of my opponents. Because I hung around the rink so late, this often meant that at fourteen, I was playing against sixteen and seventeen year olds. The kind of rough around the edges boys who didn’t have homes they were beckoned to at dinnertime, and where returning home with the faint odor of pot on their clothes was no biggie.
They were bigger and tougher than I was at the time, and seemed to believe that how hard you checked someone into the plexiglass was as important as the number of goals scored. Playing with them made me skilled at evading checks, but as a result of the many I’d failed to duck from quickly enough, I became bloodthirsty to inflict at least some measure of pain on others as payback.
