by Lori Bell
“You need to carry on with your workout. Don’t stop because I’m leaving.” Edie told him, as she stepped off of the treadmill. He did the same. Neither one of them paid any attention to the slew of people working out around them.
“Are you going back to work?” he asked her, well aware it was five-thirty in the evening, but also knowing her. Many times she worked late after dinner, or after a workout. He no longer knew her routine though.
“Tate, don’t,” she said, referring to him wanting to know her business.
“I could tell you the same. Don’t. Don’t ignore my texts, my phone calls. Please, just hear me out,” he stated.
“There were only two,” she replied, referring to his attempts to contact her within the last week. Both times he had texted and called her, she felt too weak to respond and was afraid she would give in to him. She had moments of weakness and moments of great strength. Right now, she felt like she could walk away from him.
“Two attempts to get you to listen. Just hear me out. I swear if you want me to walk away after I have my say, I will.” Tate wished he had not promised her that, but he was desperate for her attention.
“I will make you live up to that deal,” she stated, and he smiled. That smile, his straight white teeth. The curls in his hair slightly matted with sweat. Suddenly Edie didn’t feel so brave anymore.
Tate nodded his head. There was a café across the street, and she agreed to meet him there in ten minutes.
*
Tate was already seated outside of the café, underneath an umbrella table for two. He had ordered two bottles of water and an apple for Edie. Following her workout, she always ate a red apple. He didn’t know why she did so, he just had known.
He again wore his jeans, a fitted white t-shirt, and boots. He watched her climb out of her car, wearing a yellow sundress and dark brown stilettos. Her hair was pulled up in a knot on top of her head, and she had her large, dark sunglasses on, too, and Tate knew why. Ten minutes was not enough time for her to shower and reapply her makeup after a workout. It didn’t matter to him at all. He always believed she was beautiful with or without her face painted.
“I am so going straight home after this,” she told him, and he chuckled because he knew her well. Wearing no makeup made her feel self conscious. “How bad do I look, really?”
“Do you seriously want me to answer that?” he replied, as she sat down in the chair across from him and he sat again after standing for her. He offered a bottle of water and she took it immediately after she looked down at the apple and smiled. He remembered. “You’re beautiful. You’re always beautiful. And you know it.”
She smiled at him again. She missed his straight-from-the-heart compliments. She had taken so much for granted. Especially him. “Thank you,” she said, looking down at her French-tipped finger nails wrapped around the water bottle that was sweating on her fingers.
“I came to see you today for two reasons,” he began. “One, I want you to know that I’m sorry. You know I want you back, but more than anything I want your forgiveness. I should have believed you, I should have supported you.” Edie listened as he concluded his reason number one.
“What’s your other reason?” she asked him, trying to conceal how grateful she felt for his words. He wished he could see her eyes behind those large sunglasses right now.
“My mother has been going to visit Syd,” he began, and Edie instantly put her guard up. If this conversation was headed in the direction she thought it was, she wanted to be done. Now. “She wants the two of you to talk.” Tate waited for the fallout.
“Absolutely not!” Edie voice was loud and then she caught herself. They were in public. “She is out of my life, and that’s where I want her to stay.” Edie paused. She was never going to tell him this. But, now, she knew she had to. “You want me to forgive you? You want me to come back to you? You want to be us again? The one thing that has kept me from falling back into everything we used to have and be together, is Syd.” Tate didn’t understand, but he waited for her to explain. “You will not ever truly get her. You liked her. You pushed me time and again to welcome her into my life. My life with you. You defended her, you took her side when I needed you most.” Tate looked down for a moment. He felt such shame. “I get that she blindsided you. What I cannot see, and what I will never open myself up to is having a future with you, without wondering or worrying if you will one day ask me to forgive and forget all that Sydney has done. I won’t do it. Not even for you.”
Tate sat there in silence, and then finally he spoke to her. “Take off your sunglasses,” he requested.
“Why?” She didn’t want to.
“I want to see your eyes when I tell you this,” he stated, and Edie at first hesitated to remove her sunglasses, but a moment later she did. Her eyes right now looked pained. “Syd deceived me. I do not want her back in my life. If you ever choose to have her back in yours, I would completely understand. I will never ask that of you. My mother, however, has other ideas.”
Edie looked puzzled. She didn’t understand why his mother had visited Sydney, or why she cared if their relationship was or was not ever rekindled. And Tate tried to shed some light on why his mother was involved. “When Ma overdosed,” he said, and Edie cringed because that was another god-awful day in her life, “she slipped into a coma and Pops was there.”
Edie’s eyes widened. Not her too? She could see on Tate’s face that he now believed something like that could happen. His mother must have been successful at convincing him, because she never had been.
“Ma wanted to stay with him. She wanted to leave her life behind, and be with him. She wanted to die.” Tate sighed. “He told her if she did not go back to try to help you and your sister, my life would never be the same. Ma chose to come back because she thinks she can do some good, maybe make up for the awful thing she tried to do to you.”
Edie just wanted to run from all of it, but she knew she couldn’t. She owed Tate the truth. “I am so incredibly happy to know that your mother saw your father. That’s pretty amazing. And I know you believe her. I also understand why you didn’t believe me. It seemed so crazy. But, it did happen.” Tate nod-ded his head, and Edie continued to speak. “What seems even crazier to me now is making amends with Syd. I am not safe when she’s in my life. So how can you ask me, on behalf of your mother, to put myself in danger again?” The thought terrified her. She was trying to move forward with her life, and now Tate was doing to her exactly what she had feared. Even if it was for his mother.
“I can’t,” Tate instantly chimed in, and Edie looked surprised at him. “And I won’t. You just told me that the real reason why you could not or would not come back to me was because you feared I would push for you to reconcile with Syd. Look, I don’t care if you never speak her name again. And I will tell my mother the same. And I’ll even send a memo to Pops. I’ll tell him that you and your sister do not need to make peace in order for me to be happy and live a fulfilling life. All I need for that – is you.”
Edie choked back the lump in her throat. “Go with me,” she spoke so softly that Tate had almost not heard her.
“Anywhere,” he said to her, as he reached for her hand across the table and it was trembling.
Chapter 27
For as long as Tate lived, he was sure he would never understand women. Especially Edie. She had been adamant about not seeing her sister again. She even had gone as far to admit she chose to stay out of his life in fear of the pressure to do the noble thing and give Sydney a second chance. And, now, she had asked him to go with her to the mental institution. She did not fully explain her reasoning why, and that had made Tate feel more nervous than he was willing to admit. Yet, he wanted to be by Edie’s side because she had asked him to be.
They drove in Tate’s truck, in silence. Edie asked him not to speak. No more questions about why she so abruptly changed her mind, or what her intentions were now. Edie realized what he was thinking. She had changed her mi
nd so drastically, so suddenly. Even she was afraid to go through with this now. But fear had never stopped her before.
When they reached the institution, Tate parked in the same spot he had for weeks with his mother. He shifted the gear into park and killed the engine. And then he reached for her hand. The sun was beginning to set as they sat in his truck for a moment longer. “Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked her. Edie had called ahead from her cell phone at the café before they both got into Tate’s truck. She spoke directly to the administrator, and had been granted permission to visit her sister. Saturday mornings were the only time visitors were allowed, Tate had informed her of that. Edie described her need to be there tonight as an emergency, and so no questions were asked. Camden was a small town. Everyone knew why Sydney Klein was locked up. And everyone felt great sympathy for her successful, beautiful sister who had fallen victim to her mad-ness. Even the administrator of the institution was sympathetic.
Edie sat there, holding Tate’s hand. She never before had truly appreciated their bond, their connection, their chemistry, and their passion for each other. If they were meant to have a second chance, Edie knew she would never take him, or them, for granted again.
“I don’t want you to leave my side,” she spoke, quietly. “No matter what, I want you to stay.”
“Okay, I’m here for you,” he promised.
“And, please, don’t judge me. I cannot help it if she brings out the worst in me.” Tate didn’t quite fully understand what Edie meant by that comment, but he did nod in agreement because he believed she had every right to be resentful.
*
They walked inside together. Edie would tell him later how much it meant to her to have him with her. Because she was afraid. So fearful that she wondered if she would be able to speak without her voice quivering and her body trembling. But she was determined to do this.
Edie did the talking when she encountered the first employee walking in the foyer, dressed in royal blue scrubs. She asked for the administrator, and stressed that Mr. Seger was expecting her. There were cameras everywhere in that building. The administrator had already seen a beautiful woman walk in with a man by her side. He left his office to meet them.
Tate and Edie both shook his hand. Mr. Seger was a tall man with a large frame and a belly that peeked out of his navy suit coat and hung over the belt of his matching dress pants. “Your sister does not know you are coming, as you requested she was not told. You can find her in the library. There is a
private office in the far right corner of the library, you may go in there with her. Be aware that there is a red button on the upper right corner of the inside door frame in that office. If you need help, just press it, and security will be there.” Tate and Edie both felt the severity of this place at the same time.
They walked in silence to the library. Neither of them looked around or made eye contact with anyone other than the occasional orderlies in their path. Tate wondered why some of the patients were locked up and others were free to roam. Maybe they had earned it? If that was the case, Sydney had earned library time tonight. Perhaps, there, she was perceived as more troubled than dangerous.
Tate saw her first. She again wore a gray sweatsuit, too tight around the middle, and those white tennis shoes with the thick soles. Her once shoulder-length auburn hair had been cut shorter and it was pulled back in a low, tiny ponytail. Her back was to them as she stared up at a row of books on the shelf. Tate pointed silently in the direction of Sydney, about thirty feet away from them. Edie saw her now, too.
“Syd,” Edie spoke her name and Sydney instantly jerked her head around. She stared at her sister in a yellow dress. Her sister’s perfection sickened her. And beside Edie, was Tate. Her heart would always skip a beat for that man.
“What are you doing here?” Sydney now turned her back to the books on the shelf, but kept her distance from her sister.
“I came to tell you something,” Edie spoke, and Sydney recognized how she showed no emotion. What else was new, Sydney thought negatively about her already. Her mind raced
for what her sister could possibly have to tell her. Because the two of them were there together, Sydney assumed Tate and Edie were back in each other lives. If her sister was there to rub that in, she would regret it.
No one suggested going into the private room. The three of them just stood there, sandwiched between book shelves. Tate stood right beside Edie, but he never spoke.
“I was not going to come here,” Edie said pointblank. “I never wanted to see you again.” Sydney never flinched. She just stood there and took the beating, as she had so many times with her big sister. Tate almost felt sympathy for her. The look on her face was complete innocence. But, no, he knew better now. That was her look of deceit. “But then I had this revelation. You, imprisoned in this place, have been successful at keeping me from living my life. You were winning.” Sydney felt like smirking. She finally had managed to get ahead of Edie. That, alone, had almost made being locked up worth it.
“Careful, Edie. You’re the one talking crazy now. You’ve never let me win.” Tate observed the two of them. The animosity had always been there, but it was a thousand times more intense right now. He felt as if something final was going to have to happen between these two. And it worried him.
“No, that’s where you’re wrong, little sister,” Edie told her. “You won that night in the backseat of our parents’ car. Don’t you remember?”
Sydney’s eyes widened. They had never spoken of it. Sydney assumed Edie had not remembered. She was certain she
would have confronted her about it. And held it over her head. Maybe she had? In her own way, she had. Edie’s cold-hearted actions and inability to love her were not just from the pain of grief, but the resentment from the way their parents had given in to Sydney, whining in the backseat of their car. The nagging that led to the decision that changed the course of all of their lives.
Sydney remained quiet.
“I asked you a question. Don’t you remember getting your way? We were almost to the movie theater. That late-night Friday movie mama and daddy had promised us for weeks. They were so happy, holding hands in the front seat. We thought it was gross then, but think about it now. To be that in love. I’ll bet they would still be so into each other today – if they had lived.”
“Why are you doing this? I was just a kid.” Sydney did not want to rehash that moment. The moment she wished she could have taken back since she was eleven years old. But, really, she had not been able to mature or progress since then.
“You had to have your blankie. The one you were too big for, but couldn’t go to sleep without. The same tattered piece of fleece that you never left home without, if it was dark outside. Daddy got angry, and said you were a big girl. Mama never could stand to see you cry. They started arguing in the front seat – over you and your blanket. Daddy eventually gave in, criticiz-ing mama for always taking your side and giving in to her baby. He turned our car around and we headed back home. At the next intersection, daddy never saw that reckless car speeding through the red light, coming right toward us. No, he wasn’t watching the road. He had been looking in his review mirror at
you, still screaming your head off like a baby even though we were going back for your fucking blanket.”
Tears were streaming down Sydney’s face. Tate was staring at them both in disbelief. He had never heard any of this before. They were just kids, doing mindless things to get their way. No one should have to pay for the rest of their lives for a moment that should have been a distant memory, or mocked with laughter many years later.
“You ruined that blanket afterward,” Sydney accused her.
“No, you did,” Edie corrected her. “I caught you sleep walking into the kitchen when we were living back in our house with our aunt who eventually couldn’t take your craziness. “You cut it, every inch of it with a scissors. It was in shreds. The scissors was in your hand. And yet you blamed me.”
<
br /> “I don’t remember that,” Sydney spat at her. “But I do remember bringing it into the backseat of the car that night. I had it placed between us. I know I did.”
“We lost our parents that night over a blanket,” Edie told her, and Sydney flinched.
“So you’ve blamed me for that all of these years. That’s why you said you never wanted to speak of our parents or what happened ever again. You hated me for it.” An outsider would have seen this as utterly ridiculous. But, Tate didn’t. He stood there, taking in all of it. And he hoped the truth would set them both free.
“I hated myself more,” Edie admitted, and Sydney look-ed perplexed. “I didn’t want to go to the movie that night. I was a teenager, who didn’t want to be seen with parents and a little sister. Mama would never let me go to the late night movie, but I knew some of my friends were going to be there. And here I was going to show up, like a dork, with my family.” Edie paused before she continued. “I was sitting on your blanket. It was balled up under my leg.”
Chapter 28
Sydney gasped, and then she blurted out, “Noooooo!” as Edie only stared at her. She dropped to her knees. And clenched the sides of her hair that had been pulled back into a ponytail that was too small to bother. The truth had sent her over the edge. She began ripping out her own hair, and then she turned around and started to destroy the bookshelf, recklessly throwing books everywhere. She especially focused on hurling them at Edie. Her sister had allowed her to blame herself all of her life for their parents’ deaths. Edie’s years of silence had forced Sydney to self destruct. She had gone on believing the fault was entirely hers. And no one had helped her to see otherwise.
Her screams and destruction alarmed the staff while she was being watched on camera. The communication between sisters had ceased. Edie had backed up against the bookcase, opposite of Sydney. She never ran to her, she never attempted to reach her. Tate pulled her close to him as they watched Sydney eventually be sedated with a syringe by two staff members, dressed in all white clothing, who forcefully held her down on the floor.
