Текст книги "Every Wrong Reason"

Автор книги: Rachel Higginson

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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

“Oh, my god, I’ve thought the exact same thing!” I plopped down in the chair I’d been kneeling on, unable to look at the picture anymore. “Do you think it’s your new job?”

“No,” he answered immediately, “she doesn’t know about it. Unless you told her.”

“Oh.” I had, but not until recently. When she invited him over for lunch that one Sunday, she didn’t know.

“I’m pretty sure she had a partial lobotomy. That’s the only reason I can come up with.”

“I don’t think you’re wrong.” I felt myself smile even though I felt as if I were spinning out of control. I forced myself to form words and ask, “How was your Christmas?”

“It was fine,” he sighed. “Jared and I went to our parents. We played Super Nintendo all day and ate too much. I felt thirteen again.”

I smiled again at the picture. Jared could be an absolute asshole, but I had always appreciated Nick’s relationship with him. They were good brothers to each other.

“He told me about when he saw you in Starbucks by the way,” Nick added. “He won’t talk to you like that again, Kate. I promise you that.”

My heart thumped in my chest. I believed him. “Thank you.” After another minute of silence, I asked, “How are your parents handling the divorce?”

He coughed suddenly and I could tell he didn’t want to answer the question. “Not as well as yours.”

“They blame me.”

“They blame both of us.”

I didn’t know what to say after that. I looked back at the art he’d made for me and felt a brand new sense of loss. “Did you write it?”

He knew exactly what I was talking about. “I did.”

“For me?”

“It’s not the first song I’ve written for you.”

“It’s a song?”

He didn’t say anything for a minute. I wasn’t sure he took a breath. There was only silence on his end, so much so that I had to check to make sure he didn’t hang up on me.

“It is a song,” he finally breathed.

Something I couldn’t name buzzed through me and made me breathless. “Have I heard it?”

“Nobody’s heard it.”

“Sing it.” I had to hear it. I had to know. I had to listen to these words he wrote for me a year ago, these words he had been too afraid to share with me while our marriage dissolved.

“Kate…”

“Please,” I whispered.

And just like me, he couldn’t say no. “I, uh, hold on a sec.”

I heard movement on his side of the phone while he moved around his room. The entire time I waited for him, I found myself chanting, don’t hang up don’t hang up don’t hang up.

But I didn’t know if it was for him or for me.

I sat frozen in place, too afraid to move, too afraid to make a sound in case I frightened him off. When the first plucks of guitar strings reached me, I realized what he had been doing.

“This is going to be rough,” he warned. Then, under his breath, he mumbled, “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

I pressed my lips together in anticipation. I felt near tears again, but I didn’t know why.

When he started singing, my knees went weak and I would have collapsed if I hadn’t already been sitting. His voice, so familiar and achingly sweet, wrapped around my skin and sunk into my bones. I closed my eyes and listened to him sing about two people so in love they breathed each other. He sang about the world coming between them and tearing them apart. He sang about their love being wide enough to reach around the entire world and find each other again. He sang about love and loss, hope and sorrow, he sang about a girl that wanted more but a boy that had enough. And then he sang the chorus.

Love that is enough.

Love that is big enough for two.

Love that is endless enough for more.

Love that is just between me and you.

He didn’t finish it. He trailed off somewhere in the second verse and claimed he couldn’t remember the rest.

“That was beautiful,” I whispered. Emotion clogged my throat and silent tears tracked down my tears. “Nick, that was…”

He cleared his throat uncomfortably. I could picture him tugging on his earlobe. “I should have sung it for you last year.”

I couldn’t respond to that. I had no words. No ability to speak. We sat there silently for another minute. Then suddenly I had to get off the phone with him right then. I couldn’t spend another second talking to him.

Besides, what was I doing? We were getting a divorce! Why was I reminiscing with him about a past neither of us could change?

I wanted to throw my phone against the wall in frustration.

I forced polite words out, “Merry Christmas, Nick.”

After another beat of silence, he repeated. “Merry Christmas, Kate.”

I hung up the phone before I could say another word. I dropped my cell into the chair like it could burn me or turn into acid and eat away my skin. I jumped out of the chair so quickly Annie yelped in surprise.

I stumbled back from the wall and then toward it. I had to do something. I couldn’t feel like this anymore. I couldn’t even describe what I was feeling. It was just… everywhere. My skin crawled, my blood felt itchy and wrong. My head started pounding with a fresh headache.

God, I was a mess.

I looked at the picture he hung for me and had the strongest urge to tear it off the wall and throw it outside. I had to get rid of it. I had to get it away from me.

Instead of shredding it to pieces, I carefully lifted it from its place and carried it to the hall closet. It was heavier than I’d anticipated it to be. It wasn’t very big, but the frame was nice and sturdy.

It wasn’t just poster board slapped haphazardly together. Nick had put it together with care… made to last.

Unlike our marriage.

I set it in the hall closet next to the vacuum and closed the door behind it. I let out an agonized breath and let myself feel a little bit better.

There.

I couldn’t see it.

It wouldn’t haunt me if I couldn’t see it.

I looked around at my house and felt loneliness stir inside me. The dark corners seemed to press in on me, eating up the dim light and the happy memories that once belonged here.

Unable to take it or myself for a second longer, I called Annie to my side and dragged my tired body to bed. My mind whirled and whirled while I got ready for bed and hours later while I stared up at the ceiling fan rotating in lazing circles.

Unable to find sleep or peace, I crawled out of bed and braved the chill of night. I crept downstairs like I was a burglar in my own house. I knew no one else was there, but I couldn’t help feeling like I was doing something wrong.

Or maybe I was doing something right for the first time in a long time.

I pulled the picture from the closet and with shaking hands and trembling limbs, I rehung it on the wall.

I stepped back and stared at it.

It wasn’t a solution, but I felt a little better.

At least when I lay back down in bed, I could finally fall asleep.

Chapter Twenty

27. Second chances are a myth.

By the middle of January, school had started back up again and Nick and I had been through our second round of mediation.

We’d gotten nowhere.

Neither of us was willing to give up the house or the dog.

Mr. Cavanaugh had been exhausted by the end of it and Ryan Templeton had been contemplating murder of the first degree in his head. I wasn’t sure for whom, but if I had to guess, I would have picked me.

He probably wanted to run me over in his expensive sports car. I bet it was something beyond pretentious.

Poor Marty, the mediator, was beyond exhausted. He had wanted to speak with us both separately. Neither Nick nor I would comply.

It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Nick. I mostly didn’t trust his slimy lawyer.

I had begun to hate Nick’s lawyer with the fire of a thousand suns. He wasn’t the only one contemplating homicide during mediation.

Every time Nick looked close to breaking, Ryan would whisper something in his ear that would make Nick clench his jaw tight and turn him completely unreasonable.

Ryan Templeton was like the devil on Nick’s shoulder, whispering all kinds of evil things.

Nick needed an angel telling him to do good, nice things. Things that ended mediation with giving the dog and the house to me.

Okay, so maybe Ryan wasn’t the devil on his shoulder. Maybe I was.

I had tried to look at this rationally or from his point of view. But I couldn’t. My pain was too blinding. My need to keep the things I loved and that still loved me was consuming. I couldn’t let Nick have any of it.

I didn’t mind if he took the TV or the furniture or even my car. But I needed the house.

And I needed the dog.

I wouldn’t be able to live without those things.

I shook my head and tried to focus on the day. My second and third-hour classes were trading places. Students pushed through the door and chatted animatedly.

I continued to get ready for class while students took their seats. The second bell finally rang and I was happy to see that the majority of my students were in their places. A few stragglers raced in just as the bell stopped ringing and I waved my hand at their pleading faces.

“Be on time tomorrow,” I warned them.

They promised that they would be, even though we both knew they were lying. Tomorrow I would have to write them up. But it was only Monday.

I gave grace on Monday because Monday was the definition of awful.

I glanced around the room and noticed a few empty desks. Two of the kids had been excused from school today for a debate team meet, but one hadn’t been shared with me.

“Does anyone know where Andre Gonzalez is?” A chilled silence crept through the room and I immediately looked at Jay Allen. “He’s not marked as absent today. Is he skipping?”

I hadn’t been out of my classroom yet today. If there was gossip about his whereabouts, I hadn’t heard it yet.

My class was silent so I pressed them. “It’s better if you tell me.” When they continued to stare at me, I felt familiar fear. “Is he hurt? Sick? Did something happen to him?”

“Arrested,” someone called from the back of the room. “He got arrested last night.”

It wasn’t the most surprising news in the world, but it still dealt a painful blow. “Damn,” I whispered. I looked up and saw fear reflected in my students’ eyes. Fear and resignation. “How old is he?”

It was quiet for a long time before someone said, “Eighteen.”

Grief swirled through me and for a moment I thought I would be sick. I hated that he was an adult. I hated that he hadn’t been smart enough to get out of trouble on his own. But I hated more that I felt relief that he was off the streets.

And then I felt intense regret.

He had terrified me before Christmas break. And I had never gone to Mr. Kellar with what happened. I had been too afraid that Kellar would expel him.

It had been stupid of me. Dangerous even. But I wanted to give Andre a chance to finish school. I wanted to help him.

But I hadn’t. I hadn’t helped anything. I’d let him continue his wayward journey and now he’d gotten himself arrested.

My gaze tracked to Jay Allen, who sat with his head down, stabbing his notebook with a short pencil. He didn’t look up at me. It was like he knew what I was thinking.

Only I doubted Jay felt the same sense of loss.

It took me several minutes to pull myself together enough to teach. I struggled and stumbled until I found my rhythm. The class never fully engaged with me. They all felt the loss of one of their peers.

Unfortunately, it happened too often in this school. They weren’t always arrested. Sometimes they just dropped out.

Sometimes they were killed.

A chill slithered down my spine as I remembered how smart Andre could be… how far he could have gone.

When the bell finally rang, I knew I could have done so much better. Those were not my finest moments as a teacher.

I slumped back in my desk chair and tried to pull myself together for the rest of the day. The next hour was my plan period, so I had a little time, but it still felt like an impossible feat.

Long fingers tapped at the edge of my desk and I lifted my gaze to find Jay standing there with a determined expression on his face.

“Can I help you, Jay?”

“I know you never said anything to Kellar.”

His accusation felt strange like he wanted to call me out on it, but there was something more. I lifted my eyebrow, daring him to say whatever it was that he wanted to say.

“Why?” he finally asked. “Why didn’t you say anything? He threatened you. He threatened me!”

“Are you mad I didn’t turn him in because you felt threatened?”

He rolled his eyes at me and rubbed his hand over his shaved head. “Don’t be stupid.” He cut me a sideways glance that I interpreted as an apology for being rude. “But isn’t it your job to say something?”

“Yes,” I admitted. “I should have said something. He could have threatened another student. He could have brought another weapon to school. He could have truly hurt someone. I should have said something.”

“So why didn’t you?” His deep brown eyes searched mine intently, flickering back and forth, waiting for the truth.

So I gave it to him. “If I had said something, he would have gotten expelled.”

Jay let out a bark of mocking laughter. “So what! He ended up in jail, Carter. That’s way worse than getting expelled.”

I swallowed around the golf ball lodged in my throat. “Yeah, and if he would have gotten expelled? Would that have changed anything?”

Jay snorted, “No, he just would have ended up there sooner.”

“Exactly. I wanted him to avoid jail or prison or the lifestyle that he was so bent on having. I wanted him to have a chance at something better. I want the same thing for you and everyone else that comes into this classroom. I gave Andre a second chance and he squandered it. Nobody is more upset about that than me.”

“You don’t know the kind of neighborhood Gonzalez is from. They don’t give college scholarships to kids like him. They get their prison cells nice and ready because they know it’s only a matter of time.”

I expected Jay to be gloating over Andre’s fate, but I only saw an interesting mixture of regret and fear in his expression. Wondering if this was my chance to finally break through to him, I said, “They give scholarships to kids of every kind. It doesn’t matter what neighborhood, social class or family you come from. If you try hard enough. If you work hard enough, you can find a school that will want to take you.”

“So you’re saying Andre actually had a chance at college?”

“Andre was brilliant, Jay. So are you. Every student that comes into this school building and shows up day after day has a chance. But we can’t make you take it. You have to decide that you want it… that you want to do something bigger than prison or jail or whatever.”

He rocked back on his heels while he thought about it.

“College isn’t easy, Jay. And maybe it’s too late for a scholarship. But there’s financial aid. There are options for you. Have you talked to Ms. Chase?” He shook his head. “Talk to her. Please. She can walk you through this better than I can.”

“Maybe.”

“What are you afraid of?”

His gaze snapped back to mine and it was lethal. “I’m not afraid of anything. You saw me with a fu– with a knife to my throat. Did I look scared then?”

I breathed through the rapid beating of my heart. “Then why won’t you try at this?”

“It’s not that I don’t want to try.”

I stood up and placed both hands on my desk, my attempt at looking intimidating. “It is. You have to do something with your life, Jay, or you’re going to end up just like Andre.”

He stepped back, ready to run. “You don’t know me.”

“I know that life is hard work. I know that growing up is the hardest thing you’ll ever do and if you don’t try at something, if you don’t make yourself into something, then you won’t become anything. What Andre did? That’s the easy way out. Getting yourself out of your neighborhood and through college? That’s going to be a lot of goddamn work. But it will be worth it. I swear to you, it will be worth it. The best things in life come with a price. Work hard for those things. Work so hard that you don’t know how to be lazy.”

Jay’s lips twitched and I held my breath, hoping to God I got through to him. “You swear more than any other teacher I know.”

“That’s because I’m the coolest teacher you know.”

The look on his face told me he didn’t believe me. “Is this my second chance, Ms. C?”

I smiled at him. “I knew you were smart.”

He looked around us dramatically. “Shh, you’ll ruin my street cred.”

I rolled my eyes and pulled out a pass pad. “Do you need one of these? Are you late for class?”

“Yeah, but I just got Mr. Bunch and he doesn’t give a shit.” He started walking backward, out of my classroom. “Unlike you.”

“That sounds like an insult.”

“It might be. I haven’t decided yet.”

I laughed, despite myself. “Go to class, Jay.”

He gave me a sarcastic salute and disappeared out the doorway.

I sat back down in my chair, completely perplexed.

Kara appeared five minutes later with her lunch in hand and two Diet Cokes. She handed one over to me. “What’s with you?” she asked.

“Did you know Andre Gonzalez got arrested last night?”

Her eyes flashed with disappointment. “Yeah. It sounds serious. They caught him in possession, selling to minors.”

“Oh, my god.”

“He’s eighteen,” she added.

“I heard that.”

We were silent for a minute. “Jay Allen might come find you.”

“Which one is that?” I was just about to explain what he looked like when she said, “Oh, I know that kid. He was just in my office last week for harassing a teacher.”

“Which teacher?”

“Mr. Bunch.”

I nearly smiled, but caught myself. “He’s going to come talk to you again I think.”

“Mr. Bunch?”

I threw a chip at her. “No, Jay. I’m convincing him to go to college.”

Her eyebrows drew down and her shoulders sagged. “Do you think he’s serious?”

“I don’t know. I hope so.”

“Me too.” She sat down on the edge of my desk and opened her soda with a long, pink fingernail. “How’s the divorce?”

My stomach sank. I had just been contemplating texting him about Jay and Andre. Old habits die hard apparently. They die really hard.

“Uh, we’re still at a standstill. Neither one of us will budge.”

“When’s your next mediation?”

“Not until March. I guess I never realized how long this stuff took.” I stared down at my desk, cluttered with papers to grade, papers to hand back, pencils, whiteboard markers and other odds and ends. “Do you think I’m making a mistake?” I asked the mess.

Kara was quiet for a long time and when she finally spoke her voice was gentle and reserved. “Do you think you’re making a mistake?”

I looked up at her and tried to decide. “It’s normal to question something like this, right? At least I would think so. Except that I can’t stop questioning it. I can’t stop going over my marriage and the night we decided to get a divorce. I can’t stop thinking that there was more we could have done.” I took a deep breath and tried to figure out what I was really trying to say. “I just got finished telling a student that the best things in life are hard work and that he shouldn’t stop trying just because they force him to try harder. He should try harder and harder and harder until he gets what he wants. Isn’t the same true for me? For Nick and me?”

Kara frowned at me. “This is why I took so long to tell you about my divorce. I needed to leave Marcus. He was an awful person. But you… your circumstances are completely different. Neither one of you are bad people, you just… I don’t know, you fell out of love. That happens too. There are all kinds of reasons people get divorced. No reason is right or wrong, just different.”

But mine felt wrong. All of my reasons felt wrong.

I kept a running tally of them in my head. I always had. Everything he did wrong, everything I did wrong, everything that we did wrong together I tallied it up in my mind like the worst kind of scoreboard. And then I’d used that ledger to wage war on him and our divorce. I’d used it to attack him, to show him that we needed to separate and I’d held it over his head ever since.

Did that mean we shouldn’t get a divorce, though?

Maybe he wasn’t as toxic as I’d made him out to be, but there were still facts. We didn’t get along. We couldn’t stand each other. We were better off apart.

Right?

I met Kara’s concerned gaze and told her, “I’m sorry you went through this. I’m sorry that you were hurt so badly.”

She waved it off, “It was a long time ago.”

“It still cuts deep.”

Her gray eyes flashed with proof that divorce cut deep, so deep and jagged it was like death. The death of something sacred… something holy and set apart. Marriage, no matter how short or long, was bound in vows and promises made from our very souls. Severing that tie was like murdering a part of your body.

I felt that daily. I felt it in a way that I knew would never go away.

Kara could talk cavalierly about how she had to go, but she still went through this. She still grieved. She still let those vows wither and die.

“Thank you,” she whispered, blinking brightened eyes. “You’re a good friend.”

“You’re a good friend too.”

“And thank god we have each other. We can become spinsters together.”

“Can we get a cat?”

“Babe, we’ll get cats. Dozens of them. So many that our clothes will be covered in cat hair and we’ll have to pick it off our food before we can eat.”

“That’s disgusting.” But I smiled because I really did like that picture. I liked the idea that I would never be completely alone. I could always become a crazy cat lady with Kara and carpool with her to work daily.

My future wasn’t as bleak as I once thought it would be.

She sighed. “Okay, I have to get back to work. I think I was supposed to be in a meeting five minutes ago.”

“With who?”

“Kellar and that kid that flooded the boy’s locker room.”

I snorted a laugh. “Good luck with that.”

“I don’t need luck,” she mumbled on her way out the door. “I need someone else to flood a locker room so I don’t have to go.”

I watched her leave and waited another minute before I pulled my phone from my purse. I opened my text messages with every intention to text Nick. I had to tell him…

Something.

I didn’t know what, I just… what? I needed to hear from him?

But why?

My fingers hovered over the screen. I didn’t have anything to say to him. I was supposed to be furious with him for causing so much trouble during mediation. I should have wanted nothing to do with him.

And yet I couldn’t stop myself. It was like my body was possessed by the ghost of Christmas past.

Or a demon.

A demon that couldn’t get over her ex-husband.

Cheese and rice, there was something wrong with me.

I tossed my phone on the desk and crossed my arms. And my legs. And tapped my foot.

When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I picked it up again and scrolled through old messages. Finally, I settled on texting my mother. That was safe.

Need me to bring anything for dinner on Sunday?

Three minutes later, she texted back: Just be on time.

Oh, my god. Mom. I needed boundaries with my family. They were literally going to drive me over the edge if I didn’t put a stop to this.

The bell rang and I breathed a sigh of relief. I could lock my phone away now and I wouldn’t be tempted. At least not very much.

I bent over and unlocked my bottom drawer. But then, as if I was actually possessed, I pulled up Nick’s number and texted: Do you think there was more we could have done?

I pushed send and my heart stopped beating. I lost all my breath and I wanted to immediately take it back. I wanted to delete it and unsend it and erase this moment from time completely.

I needed a time machine or the Doctor or freaking Michael J. Fox and the DeLorean.

I dropped my phone into my purse and slammed my drawer shut. Idiot. I was such an idiot.

I didn’t look at my phone until the end of the day. Until I’d gotten into my car and turned it on.

Then finally I allowed myself to see if he’d texted me back.

He had.

Of course, he had. I had never doubted that he wouldn’t.

Yes.

That was all he wrote. A simple, world-changing, confusing, mind-boggling, frustrating Yes.