A Forever Family

by Jamie Sobrato

  “I’ll drop it off at your place later tonight,” she said. “I’m not sure where it is among all the boxes.”

  “No hurry,” he said, but his gaze seemed to search her for something, some answer to a question he hadn’t asked.

  And as they walked back to their respective houses silently, side by side, Emmy could feel the question hanging between them, and she still didn’t know what it was.

  Or maybe she just didn’t want to know.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The physical wounds and the staph infection began to heal, and those of us who’d made it out of Darfur were visited by chaplains and therapists, all well-meaning people who were supposed to heal the wounds no one could see. They were supposed to help us find solace in God or Carl Jung, and we were supposed to comply. But some part of me didn’t want to heal. Healing so soon would have felt like disrespecting all the people I’d seen die. It didn’t make sense, but then very little about that time in my life did.

  From Through a Soldier’s Eyes

  by Aidan Caldwell

  AIDAN’S FINAL WEEK at Promise Lake was uneventful. Once he’d declared that he was leaving the lake and nearly finished with the book, he threw himself into the project wholeheartedly, working night and day to polish it into a final draft.

  The work was a welcome distraction from his feelings about leaving Emmy and Max—a welcome distraction from everything, really. A big part of him didn’t want to leave the lake, or Emmy and Max, behind, and the rest of him knew he had to.

  Aidan looked around the doctor’s office and took note of all the little details that were supposed to be soothing and conducive to mental healing. Soft, low lighting, with diffused natural light pouring in through the blinds, a neutral color scheme, big cushy couch and chairs to sit on, no sharp objects…

  It worked. He felt relaxed here. It was only his second time visiting Dr. Lydia Cormier at her office rather than her coming to his house. The time before had been a part of his agoraphobia treatment—making the breakthrough of leaving home for a session. This time, he was here for his last session and to say goodbye.

  He would be leaving Promise Lake tomorrow, and he was as ready as he ever would be. Which was to say, not very.

  Dr. Cormier set the timer for their session and cleared her throat. “So,” she said. “How are you feeling today?”

  “I just mailed the final draft of my book to my agent, so I’m feeling good.”

  “Congratulations,” she said with a smile. “That must be a huge relief.”

  “It is.”

  “We discussed before how the book has been an aid to your recovery from the trauma. Do you see finishing the book as a symbolic way of laying to rest your feelings about your time in Darfur?”

  He thought of the roller coaster of emotions he’d experienced yesterday as he read through the final draft from start to finish for the first time, and he nodded slowly. “It brought me full circle,” he said. “I could hardly believe I’d actually laid out my whole experience in a coherent story, complete with insights.”

  “You should be proud of yourself. That’s a huge accomplishment. Did any unexpected feelings come up for you upon reading the book yourself?”

  “I—I didn’t expect to feel so…resolved. Like, putting the manuscript in that package and handing it to the courier was almost like I’d put all the bad feelings in that box and mailed them away, too.”

  “That’s a very healthy way of looking at it.”

  “When I think of letting go of all the pain, it almost feels disrespectful to the people I saw suffering and dying…disrespectful to the whole tragedy.”

  “What you’re doing is quite the opposite, Aidan. You’ve written a book that will educate the world about what you experienced, and there is no greater way I can think of to honor those people who’ve died than to tell their story.”

  Aidan supposed she was right, but his feeling wasn’t rational—it was emotional.

  “And keep in mind that if you don’t put up some emotional boundaries to protect yourself, as you’ve been doing in your work with me, you could ultimately be destroyed by your feelings. Destroying your own life isn’t respectful to those who’ve suffered, because it takes away your voice, your ability to help, to spread the word.”

  Okay, he got the point. He nodded, avoiding her direct gaze.

  “Please remember, too, that the emotional boundaries are not a crutch to be looked down upon. They are what allow people in helping professions to survive and cope with what they experience, so that they can go on to assist more people.”

  “I understand,” he said. “I suppose I’m having a bit of trouble letting go of the hard feelings, too because I’ll be saying goodbye to Emmy and Max when I leave.”

  “And that will be difficult for you?”

  Dr. Cormier, queen of stating the obvious.

  Aidan gave her a look that said “Duh.”

  “Talk to me about your feelings surrounding saying goodbye to Max and Emmy.”

  He hated when she did this. But he went along, because so far, Lydia Cormier had done a world of good for him.

  “In a way, I’m relieved to be going. I was getting more and more attached to them, and I didn’t really want to be. I knew Emmy wasn’t into giving me a second chance, and there’s no sense getting attached to Max when Emmy doesn’t want me in their lives.”

  “It’s difficult not getting attached to people you’re fond of.”

  “Yeah. I’m going to miss that kid.”

  “Do you feel as if you have any unfinished business there?”

  “Of course I do,” he blurted. “Emmy is the only woman I’ve ever really loved, and I think I’ve fallen in love with her kid, too. How can I not have unfinished business when I might not ever even see them again?”

  “Have you said all of this to Emmy?”

  “It wouldn’t matter if I did say it.”

  Lydia nodded slowly. “Then when you say goodbye to them, you need to imagine it like the feeling you had when you put your manuscript in the courier’s hands. You’re letting go of your feelings, and they don’t have to weigh you down anymore.”

  Like everything else therapists said, Lydia’s advice fell into the category of easier said than done.

  “You look skeptical,” she said when he didn’t respond.

  “That’s probably because I am.”

  She smiled. “I want you to see this new problem as a victory of sorts for you. You’ve done an incredible amount of healing in the past three months. You’ve gone from living completely isolated, afraid to have contact with anyone and resentful of Max and Emmy’s presence, to wishing they were going to be a permanent part of your life.”

  “Basically, I healed so I could get my heart broken. You’re right, that’s a reason to celebrate. Let’s throw a party.”

  He knew he was being a sarcastic shit, but he didn’t care. It was a good thing this was his last therapy session, because he’d just about had it up to his ears with the psychobabble.

  “Do you think, perhaps, that you’ve developed such strong feelings for them in part because they’ve played a role in your healing process?”

  “My strong feelings for Emmy were already there. And how could I not fall for her kid? He’s a part of her, goddamn it.”

  “You’re feeling angry right now,” she said calmly.

  “Sorry.” He slouched in his chair and glared out the window.

  “Just keep in mind that your healing has come from inside yourself. You don’t need Max or Emmy to be happy and whole.”

  “Look, Lydia, I appreciate your help. You’ve done wonders for me, but it’s time to wrap this up. I think we’re done here.”

  “Okay,” she said, careful not to react to his abruptness, though he could tell that below the surface, she was taken aback.

  He stood up and they said their polite goodbyes. Then he walked out of the therapy office and into the bright, sunny day in the town of Promise. He paused on the
sidewalk in front of the downtown office building, looking left then right before crossing the street to his bike.

  He didn’t need Lydia anymore, that was for sure. But she was wrong about Max and Emmy. They weren’t a part of his healing process, or whatever the hell she wanted to call it. They were a part of the reason he knew he had to go to Africa. Because anywhere on the same continent as them was too close for comfort. Too close to heal from a broken heart.

  BY FRIDAY, his last day at the cabin, Aidan realized Max hadn’t knocked on his door all week. Emmy must have warned him that Aidan was working, or maybe Max was just avoiding him out of a sense of self-protection. Either way, Aidan felt a sharp stab of sadness when he looked out the window Friday morning and saw Max getting in the car with his mother to leave for the summer day camp he went to every day now.

  He had to say goodbye, but…As he watched them, he couldn’t will his feet to move. He felt the same scared paralysis as when his agoraphobia had been at its worst, and he simply stood there dumbly staring out the window as they drove away.

  He would leave a note for each of them, at least. Setting his one bag of stuff, along with his laptop case, near the front door, he went to the desk and found a notepad and pen there.

  To the kid he wrote:

  Dear Max,

  I hope I’ll get to read your next book someday

  soon. It’s been a fun summer getting to know

  you. You’re a great kid. I’ll be thinking of you.

  Your pirate friend,

  Aidan.

  He stopped and blinked away the tears in his eyes. He was a damn fool. He’d gone and fallen in love with a grubby little kid who liked to collect rocks and tell stories about ghosts and pirates.

  He loved Max, and it ripped another goddamn hole in his chest to have to leave him like this.

  And to Emmy, he wrote on a separate piece of paper, I wish you a good life. The key to the cabin is

  under the doormat where I found it.

  Ciao,

  Aidan.

  It was a cop-out, perhaps. But he couldn’t write anything emotional, because he feared if he got started, he’d say a million things he’d regret later. So he would say nothing at all.

  She knew how he felt. Which was why she’d avoided him all week.

  She knew he’d always loved her and always would.

  She knew.

  He walked across the property and tucked the notes into their door, then returned to the cabin, grabbed his bags, locked the door and loaded the bags into the cargo carrier on the motorcycle.

  He didn’t want to be sentimental now. There was nothing left for him here.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Author’s Foreword

  Learning to heal from the wounds of my time in Darfur is an ongoing process. This book has been part of the process. Telling my story, and the story of the genocide in Sudan, has been my way of giving a voice to people who couldn’t speak to the world for themselves. I cannot adequately speak for them, but I can tell the truth of what I saw, in my own limited way. And I have to thank the people who’ve helped me heal—Dr. Lydia Cormier, Emmy Van Amsted and Max, who all taught me how to live again.

  From Through a Soldier’s Eyes

  by Aidan Caldwell

  THE MORNING LIGHT in the cabin felt impossibly sad to Emmy. She looked around the space where Aidan had spent all his days and nights, and she felt for the first time the emptiness he had left behind.

  She still held his goodbye note to her in her hand. She’d come straight over after reading it, somehow wanting to see for herself that he was really gone, that this wasn’t something she’d imagined.

  And also, she realized now, wanting to find some piece of him left behind. Ridiculous and pointless as it was, she searched the cabin, looked in the refrigerator, under the couch, inside the closets, for any little piece of Aidan that might still be there.

  But she found nothing. In the desk where he’d kept his computer though, she found an envelope. It sat right in the front of the otherwise empty top drawer, almost as if it had been placed there to be found.

  It was addressed to Walter Elliot, with no stamp and no return address. Emmy opened it with shaky hands and began reading.

  Dearest Walter,

  I’m not sure I’ll have the courage to send this letter, so if you do receive it, please know that it was sent after much agonizing.

  It was only after I saw your wedding announcement in the mail that I understood the depth of my mistake. I never meant to turn you away, and yet I have. And you are lost to me forever. I will not forget you. But you must know how I feel. I do love you, Walter, and I believe we were meant to be together.

  I am a selfish fool for only realizing that now.

  I have no one but myself to blame, and I fear I cannot live with the weight of my foolishness.

  Emmy stopped reading. Her eyes clouded with tears.

  She looked at the envelope again. There was no postmark, and no stamp. The letter had never been mailed. But the date on it was months later than the last one in the pile of letters from Walter, if Emmy remembered correctly.

  So their love affair had ended because of Leticia, and she’d regretted it. But she must have known too that sending such a letter as this one would probably make everyone feel worse…Or would it?

  Had Walter loved her still, but married someone else? It seemed awfully quick on the heels of his breakup with Leticia that he was sending out a wedding announcement. Emmy supposed in the old days of courting, a quick wedding on the heels of having loved someone else might not have been so unusual.

  How did this letter get here, now? Why was it sitting in Aidan’s desk, when all the other letters had been stowed away in the chest and buried in the woods?

  The hair on the back of Emmy’s neck stood up again, as she contemplated the supernatural possibilities. She didn’t believe the ghost of Leticia Van Amsted was roaming the property. She did believe Aidan had probably found the letter somewhere in the cabin and left it out for her to find and include with the other letters.

  He knew how she’d been interested in Leticia’s story, after all.

  And this letter…It was the key to the woman’s death. Emmy understood now. She’d been heartbroken, and she’d committed suicide. All over the loss of a man.

  It seemed tragic, but Emmy was thankful she’d never felt such depths of despair. Probably the only good thing about divorcing when a child was involved was that it kept her focused on what was important. Namely, taking care of Max, regardless of how awful she’d felt at her lowest points.

  But as she sat here alone in the cabin that had been Aidan’s home for so many months, she could not shake the feeling of loss that was settling more and more firmly in her gut.

  She had lost Aidan.

  And she understood in a personal way the depths of Leticia’s despair. She had not felt it with the end of her marriage, but she could touch that feeling now. She could reach it, feel the shape of it, and almost see its rocky bottom.

  Aidan was gone. She’d blown it with him, this one final time, and there would not be another chance for them.

  She understood now, too that what she’d been afraid of with Aidan wasn’t about any flaw on his part. He was the best man she’d ever known and would probably ever know.

  It was about her.

  It was about her being afraid of how completely she wanted him. Those feelings went against everything she thought she wanted. She thought she’d wanted independence, never to rely on anyone again, a chance to prove that she was the only person she needed.

  But when she thought of how Max would feel when he saw that goodbye note from Aidan, she understood exactly how stupid it was to think it was better not to need anyone.

  Of course she needed people. She needed Max. She needed friends. She needed family.

  She needed Aidan.

  Sure she could take care of herself. Sure she could stand on her own two feet—she’d proven that. But did a
ny of it really matter in the end, when she had a perfectly wonderful man in her life that she could have loved?

  That she did love?

  She loved Aidan.

  She really did. Not in the childish, self-centered, what-can-he-do-for-me way she’d loved him over a decade ago, but in a grown-up kind of way that he deserved to know about.

  And she needed to allow herself to feel that love. She wasn’t the same person she used to be. Because her grown-up self had fallen in love with Aidan didn’t mean she was going to revert to immaturity. It didn’t mean that if she allowed herself to feel the big, consuming love she could feel for Aidan, that she was going to flake out and run away like Steven had.

  It simply meant that she was capable of loving Aidan the way he deserved to be loved.

  The letter she’d been gripping so tightly fell from her hand as she relaxed her hold on it, and she watched it fall to the floor. It landed face up, its ends bending toward her, and she stared at the words on the page without seeing them. The delicate, spidery handwriting formed meaningless designs on the page.

  Someone’s heart dwelled in those words that seemed so meaningless if she wasn’t looking at them the right way.

  It was all about perspective.

  Emmy had just let her last chance with the best guy she’d ever known slip through her fingers, and he’d never know how she felt unless she told him.

  Which she hadn’t. Just like Leticia, she was choosing to stay silent when speaking up might make a difference.

  Just like Leticia, who’d died, essentially, from her inability to follow her heart. If she’d sent the letter, maybe the effort of speaking up would have saved her. Maybe she wouldn’t have ended up with Walter, but maybe she’d have lived on to find some other chance at love.

  Emmy felt tears well in her eyes, then overflow onto her cheeks. She had to tell Aidan how she felt. Maybe it wouldn’t change anything, and maybe her chance with him was really gone for good, but at least she’d know she had tried. She’d have given it one more shot.