I smiled at her as though the difference in our finances meant nothing to me, even though I was trembling over the news that Keith had called Andy “rich.” I hoped that was all he’d said. “That’s never been an issue between us, silly,” I said. “I can’t believe you’ve been worrying about that.”
But it was an issue, wasn’t it? I loved Laurel with all my heart, but deep down, when she’d show off something new she’d bought for herself or the house or the kids, expecting me to ooh and aah over it, I did feel resentful. Now, though, wasn’t the right time for that conversation.
I watched her cut her chicken, the wedding band she still wore sparkling on her finger, and I knew the right time for that conversation would never, ever come.
Chapter Sixty
Maggie
I WAS SO MISERABLE BY THE TIME OF MY THERAPY APPOINTMENT Tuesday that it was all I could do to drive myself to Dr. Jakes’s office. When you screwed up as much as I did, it made sense to feel like you didn’t deserve anything good in your life. That meant you didn’t deserve people to treat you well, you didn’t deserve a boyfriend, you didn’t even deserve friends. And so, when everything fell apart at the hospital because of Rudy, I was devastated, but I felt like I deserved it. And when Jen didn’t seem to really care when I asked her for help, I felt like I deserved that, too. She didn’t even call to be sure I got home all right. I was so desperate for friendship that I built her into this great friend in my mind, never realizing that she didn’t think of me that way at all. I wondered if I would ever have friends again. How could anyone want to be friends with someone who did what I did?
I was such a wreck after getting towed home the night before that Mom insisted I call Dr. Jakes on the phone. I didn’t want to, but she put the phone in my hand and told me she wasn’t letting me out of her sight until I had him on the line. I told him everything about Madison dying and Rudy’s meltdown and how my friendship with Jen was tanking. I must have sounded truly awful, because he asked me if I felt like killing myself. I didn’t. I just felt horribly, inescapably, bad.
When I got off the phone after nearly an hour, Mom told me about the message on Keith’s answering machine. That took care of my self-pity routine. Keith had it so much worse than me. My mother was standing right there in front of me, healthy and whole and loving me every single minute. I hugged her, thinking about Sara and how all the stuff about Charlotte raised more questions than answers.
I knew better than to go into the hospital this morning, but Cathy Moody called me before seven just to be sure I had no plans to come in. She said she’d need to talk to the hospital administrators to figure out how to proceed, and that I shouldn’t come back until I heard from her. It wasn’t a surprise, but I felt such a deep loss on top of everything else. I loved the peds unit. I was good with the kids. But I totally got what she was up against. I was sure she regretted ever giving me a chance.
I went back to bed, too depressed to do anything else, and Taffy left a voice mail while I was asleep. She said that, no matter what the hospital decided, everyone knew I had nothing to do with Madison’s death. “That’s insane,” she said. “And as far as I’m concerned, you served your time for that fire in Surf City. I hope you get to come back. You were excellent and we really need you, and I just wanted to let you know how we feel.” I wondered how many people were part of that “we.” I hoped at least Miss Helen and Mr. Jim. And Tony. But I remembered how Tony’d sounded the evening before when he told me to go home. He’d taken the brunt of Rudy’s anger, and I doubted very much that he was one of the “we.”
“I’m glad you called last night,” Dr. Jakes said as I sat down across from him in his office.
I nodded, but what I was really thinking was, Thank you for being there and making time for me and for listening and caring. I wasn’t sure how I would have made it through the night before without being able to dump everything on him.
“Have you heard from the hospital?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “I’m not optimistic.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I feel bad for that father, even though he really screwed things up for me.” l could still hear Rudy wailing, You let her take care of my little girl!, and I knew that even though he was a jerk and a drunk and a bully, his heart was breaking.
“It was a tragic situation all the way around,” Dr. Jakes said.
I sighed, rubbing the soft leather on the arms of the chair. “I loved it there,” I said.
He nodded. “I think it was an excellent fit,” he said. “Now you know that about yourself, whatever happens.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know you like working in hospitals. You like working with children.”
“Fat lot of good that’s going to do me,” I mumbled. I sounded so pathetic. “Sorry,” I said. “I just feel…shitty.”
Dr. Jakes didn’t respond right away. I thought he was waiting for me to fill the silence, like he usually did, but then I heard him draw in a breath.
“What do you think would make you feel better?” he asked.
Daddy. He just popped into my mind. I hugged myself, pressing my fingers into my arms. My eyes suddenly filled with tears, but I held them in. Of all the things I’d lost—my friends, my freedom, my future—Daddy was the one loss that could instantly make me cry. No way could I explain how I felt about Daddy to Dr. Jakes.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I can’t undo the fire. I can’t undo what I did.”
“Tell me about your tears.”
Once he mentioned them, my tears spilled down my cheeks. I pulled a tissue from the box on the table beside me.
He leaned forward. “I tell you what I think,” he said. “I think it’s good you feel so alone right now.”
“What?” I pressed the tissue to my eyes. “You’re a bastard,” I said.
He smiled. “You were focused on Jen. And on the children at the hospital. They kept you from focusing on you. Now you’re free to deal with yourself.”
“Ugh. I don’t want to.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t like myself.”
He didn’t say anything. I blew my nose. Stared up at his stupid burned-out lightbulb.
“What are you thinking, Maggie?” he asked finally.
I looked at him. “If I tell you, will you promise not to send me to a mental institution?”
“I don’t believe you need to be in a psychiatric setting,” he said. “I think you have amazing resources inside yourself you don’t even know about. And, as we talked about when I first started working with you, what you tell me stays between us. The only time I would break that pact between us is if I feel you’re a danger to yourself or others. It would be very important for you to tell me if you ever feel that way. But, Maggie, I don’t think that’s who you are.”
He was right. I’d hurt a lot of people, yet I’d meant to hurt no one. And offing myself? I lacked the guts for that, even though there were times in prison when I felt like I wanted to die.
“So, can you tell me what you were thinking a few minutes ago? You looked like you were far away.”
“I was thinking about my father.” I twisted the tissue in my hands.
“You’re angry with him.”
I shook my head quickly, but then, without even thinking about it, I began to nod. “I told you about our old house,” I said.
“The Sea Tender.”
“Right. Well, I have these memories of my father being there. We’d sit on the deck together. He’d take me swimming in the ocean. He was the greatest dad.” The tears started again, and it took me a minute to go on. I took a fresh tissue from the box. “It hurts to know he was…involved with Sara and had another kid and all that. But it doesn’t change how great he was to me as a dad. And when the Sea Tender was still…before the storm washed it away, I used to go there sometimes at night and sit on the deck, and I felt like my father was with me. Not always. But sometimes I could get really still inside and…
sort of connect with him. It was like I could really feel him there with me.”
Dr. Jakes nodded like I’d said something perfectly normal. “I hear you,” he said.
“Do you believe me, though?” I asked. “I mean, that he was really there? That I was actually connecting with him?”
“I don’t know, Maggie.” He took off his striped glasses and sat them on the table next to him. “They say some people have an ability to do that, but I don’t know if it’s real or just wishful thinking. No one can know that for sure. It’s the great mystery, isn’t it?”
“That we don’t know what happens after we die?”
“Right. The thing is, it felt real to you. We—you and I—can’t know if it was real, so we have to deal with the fact that it felt real. That’s what matters.”
“But…crazy people have delusions and hallucinations that feel real to them.”
“We’re talking about you, though. Not ‘crazy people.’”
I managed a smile.
“What was special to you about those visits with him?”
“He loved me for myself,” I said. “I mean, at the time, I was lying to my mother, hiding out with Ben, smoking weed and screwing up in school. And with Daddy, it was like he saw me on a different level. A deeper level or something, like none of those things I was doing mattered. Like it was just the fact that I was Maggie, the daughter he loved. It didn’t matter what I did.”
“He accepted you.”
“Totally.”
“What a great feeling that must have been.”
“But the Sea Tender’s gone, so I can’t connect with him that way anymore. I’ve felt him with me a few times since, but he just sort of…appears. I can’t connect with him on purpose, the way I used to.”
“Well, I don’t agree. I think you can connect to him anytime. Anywhere. Even in here.”
“It’s not the same. I won’t feel him like I did there.”
“I’d like you to try.”
“Here?”
He nodded.
“No. I don’t want to.”
“I know you won’t feel him the same way you did at the Sea Tender,” Dr. Jakes said. “But I think you’ll feel him in a different way. If you try.”
I looked down at the wadded-up tissues in my lap. I’d feel like an idiot trying to connect with Daddy in front of someone.
“How would your father react if you told him what you did?” Dr. Jakes asked. “If you told him about the fire?”
I looked at him. “He’d understand me,” I said. “I wouldn’t even have to explain why I did it, and he’d get it. He wouldn’t be angry with me.”
“I remember he had that tattoo on his arm,” Dr. Jakes said.
“Empathy. Right. And I got mine after the first time I felt that connection with him.”
“I bet that felt good, to have that link to him.”
I nodded.
“Maggie…close your eyes.”
I did.
“Just breathe for a minute. Just focus on your breathing. Feel your breath at the back of your throat. How it feels coming in. How you can feel it going out through your nose.”
I did what he said. I knew he was trying to get me to still my mind, and at first I thought, This is ridiculous. I know exactly what he’s trying to do. But after a couple of minutes, I nearly forgot where I was.
“Tell your dad…tell him out loud, what you did.”
“Daddy,” I said, even before I made the conscious decision to go along with Dr. Jakes, “I set fire to a church. I mean, I laid the fire and it accidentally ignited. Some people died.”
Where have you experienced God lately?
I laughed out loud, my eyes popping open. “Oh my God!” I said to Dr. Jakes. “That was so Dad.”
“What do you mean?”
“My mother told me that when he used to have a service in his chapel, Daddy’d ask people ‘where did you experience God lately?’ And that’s what he said to me right now. ‘Where have you experienced God lately?’ It was so bizarre.”
“By your smile, I think it was a good sort of bizarre.”
“I really could hear him.”
“Maybe you should answer him.”
I laughed again. “You’re crazier than I am.”
He smiled. Waited.
“Nowhere,” I said.
Dr. Jakes raised his eyebrows again. “Do you think he’d accept that answer? Your father?”
I closed my eyes again. I let Daddy’s question fill me up, and I suddenly remembered holding Madison on my lap. Feeling the light weight of her in my arms.
“Holding Madison in the hospital,” I said. “The girl I told you about whose father had the meltdown last night.” I opened my eyes. “She died while I was holding her.”
Dr. Jakes looked instantly concerned. “Maggie!” He leaned forward in his chair. “You didn’t tell me you were holding her when she died!”
“I didn’t?” I’d spilled so much out to him so quickly the night before, I had no idea what I’d left in and what I’d left out.
“How did you feel?”
Dozens of words slipped through my mind. “Sad,” I said. “Helpful. Good. Bad. Amazed. Horrified. Overjoyed.” I smiled at how strange the rush of words felt coming out of my mouth. “I felt lucky,” I said. “I don’t mean lucky, as in ‘I’m lucky to be alive and she’s not,’ but I felt lucky to be with her. To know her and to be able to hold her that way.” I wrinkled my nose. “Does that make any sense?”
“Were you thinking about what a bad person you were then?”
I shook my head. “I wasn’t thinking about myself at all.”
“Maggie,” he said, “that tattoo of yours is perfect. Over the weeks that I’ve gotten to know you, I’ve heard your feelings of empathy for so many people. You have empathy for everyone but yourself.”
“That’s because what I did is unforgivable,” I said.
“How much of your day do you spend thinking about that?”
“It’s always in the back of my mind. Even in my dreams. I dream about fires and I’m always the one who started them. Sometimes it’s other…tragedies. The other night I dreamed I caused a car accident. That kind of thing.”
“So even in your sleep, you’re beating yourself up.”
“There’s nothing you can say that makes what I did forgivable.”
“Perhaps that’s true,” he said. “But I’m going to say something completely different. I’d like you to consider this idea—you’re being selfish by not forgiving yourself.”
“I don’t get it.”
“It keeps you stuck. You just said it yourself. When you held that child, you were helping her by not thinking about what a terrible person you are. Instead, you were thinking of her. The more energy you spend beating yourself up, the less energy you have for other people.”
“I can’t automatically say, okay, I forgive myself,” I said. “It doesn’t work that way.”
“What’s standing in the way of you being able to forgive yourself?”
I knew the answer instantly, even though I didn’t like it. “I haven’t apologized to anyone I’ve hurt,” I said. “Not even Keith. Especially not Keith. I avoid him. I hide from him. From everybody who knows. I can’t face them.”
“It would take courage to face them.”
Chapter Sixty-One
Andy
ME AND KIMMIE RODE MY BIKE AND MAGGIE’S BIKE TO THE Topsail Island Trading Company in Surf City. We wanted fudge, and they had all kinds there. We both had exactly the same favorite kind: chocolate marshmallow.
“It looks like us,” Kimmie said while the lady put some of it in a little box.
“What do you mean?” I didn’t see how fudge looked like us at all.
“Black and white.” She pointed to the big thing of chocolate-marshmallow fudge behind the glass. The dark part was not black at all. It was brown. But Kimmie is brown, too. If she said it was brown and white, that would make more sense. I almost said i
t, but Mom said I should pick my fights better. So I just said, “Yeah.”
After we got the fudge, we put it in Kimmie’s basket and started riding home. There were no cars except parked ones on the street since it wasn’t summer or a weekend, so we could ride next to each other.
“There’s your cousin,” Kimmie said all of a sudden. She pointed to the new police station.
Keith was walking to the street from the police station. His car was parked ahead of us a little and I could tell he was walking to it. I didn’t want to talk to him, but we were going to crash into him, so we had to stop right in front of him. Maybe we could’ve gone around him, but it seemed funny not to say anything, especially since he’s my cousin now.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hey.” Keith hardly looked at us. He just opened his car door.
“We bought some fudge,” Kimmie said. “Chocolate marshmallow. Would you like some?”
I didn’t want to give away some of our fudge, but me and Kimmie thought Keith didn’t tell Uncle Marcus about us being at the tower. Uncle Marcus would’ve said. I was surprised Keith would be nice like that. That was why Kimmie was being nice back.
“No, thanks,” he said.
“Do the police know any more about Sara? Miss Sara?” I asked.
He laughed, but it wasn’t like when you laugh at something funny. “I think it’s time they called in a psychic,” he said. “That’d be just as useful as anything that’s happening now.”
I wasn’t sure what a psychic was. After the fire, they had these psychic people come to my school to talk to us to be sure we were okay. They were like counselors. Maybe Keith needed somebody to be sure he was okay now.
“You mean, like somebody who can have a dream about where your mother is?” Kimmie asked.
Oh, I got it. Not like a counselor at all. Kimmie was the brains. I was the brawn.
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