Forgiven (Ruined) Read online

* * *

  Friday night.

  "You can come with us, you know, Willow," my mother says. She looks fabulous in a tan linen dress, stiletto heels, a simple strand of pears around her neck. There's not a single thing I own that could make me look refined enough to go with her. Bruce comes into the living room and takes her arm. He's been much cooler to me since I went to his office. Which I don't get. All I did was fall in love with his son.

  "I've got homework," I tell her vaguely. I do. I just won't be doing any of it. Carmelita's off for the night. I finally have the house to myself.

  The sound of the car dies away while I'm still standing on the porch, breathing in the evening air, watching the last of the light on the water. It's so beautiful here, and peaceful. Earlier this year I would go out every morning and stand on the porch and drink my coffee and just breathe in the sea air. It centered me enough that I was able to face my day then, to put aside the guilt for what I'd done and the ache of missing my father.

  The past months everything has changed. I feel like I've been traveling instead of staying home, and I feel like I've been moving very fast.

  When the cooling evening air has sunk into me, I finally turn and go back inside. My parents will be gone for hours. The big house around me is already starting the nighttime noises, the ticks and clicks of evening. It doesn't feel as welcoming as it usually does. Kellan having come and gone into and out of this house has changed it. The reaction of my stepfather has changed things.

  I stop by the sweeping staircase, one hand on the railing. I could go upstairs, take a long bath in my sumptuous private bathroom. Or spend the night looking for apartments I can't afford unless I get a job or make DCTV start paying. Call Emmy and suggest we get a place together off campus.

  Call Kellan and suggest the same thing.

  Or make myself understand that he left. Without telling me where he was going. Without even telling me that he was going to go. I have no way of knowing he wanted to protect me with his actions.

  Maybe he just wanted to get away from me.

  There's nothing that says I have to use this opportunity to look through Bruce's office. But even as I think that I'm moving down the hall, past the staircase, to the back of the house where his windows look into a shadowed garden, big palms and all kinds of beautiful, deadly flowers. Standing inside his office, I crack my knuckles. Stare around myself. Where do I even start?

  With the desk set under the window. The one where he often sits. The one where, before Kellan came home, before I even knew about Kellan, I'd sometimes find him, contemplative. Quiet. A little sad.

  Sitting at his desk, looking back at the door, I understand who he is, but can I put myself in his place, this man who walked away from his only son when that son made a mistake Bruce couldn't accept? Who never visited his son in prison? Who barely welcomed him home? He was grateful, then, that I wanted to spend time with Kellan. He hoped that we'd get along, we're close in age, and in the same household. That's all Bruce knew at first about our similarities.

  I thought I knew Bruce better, before this. But is he helping Kellan get back on his feet? Or just getting him out of the house?

  I open his top drawer. There's a photo of my mother. Odd to have it put away, but there are others on the walls. On his desk. Top middle drawer seems to be a catchall drawer. Lots of USB cords for electronics.

  The second drawer I open reveals a checkbook. I know that Bruce has the whole big checkbook, the kind bigger than a notebook, the kind held together with pegs. But that's at his office. To pay for his son's living expenses, I fully expect to find a personal account, with a small cheap checkbook cover, something issued by the bank.

  That's exactly what I find. I don’t know why it bothers me. Bruce's business is a corporation. Even I know enough to understand a corporate account can't be used for personal payments. So he's created a separate account to pay for Kellan's expenses. That's good, right?

  If nothing else, it makes my search easier.

  There are some great architecturally beautiful old converted houses on Bee Street, and some interesting lofts and great apartments. I wonder whether it was Kellan's idea to rent a nondescript cookie cutter place?

  Or his real estate mogul father's?

  * * *

  Now that I know where he is, what do I do with the information?

  If he wanted to talk to you, Willow, he would. He knows where to find you.

  I did not think this through.

  * * *

  When in doubt, work. I go in to the station Saturday just to get out of the house.

  First thing I find? There's another letter. Postmark Charleston. No photos this time. The letter reads: How could you do what you did? You had everything. I would give anything for what you had. You were the chosen one.

  It makes me sound like a character from a science fiction movie. What is it the reader thinks I had? A normal life. A mother who was never home because she had to work so much to make up for the money my father didn't make. He was the basketball coach in the high school, a teacher, but he never advanced, never saved, never really provided.

  There's no way to write back to this person. No way to ask Who are you? Why do you think I did what I did? It was self-defense. Everything you think I had? A lot of it wasn't anything anyone wants.

  Who is it you think I am?

  * * *

  Getting away from thinking only works for so long. By Monday I can't stand it anymore. He hasn't contacted me at all.

  I take a taxi to Bee Street.

  * * *

  From Kellan's doorstep I can watch the sun set. His neighbors go in and out. They keep asking me if I want to be let in. What's the point of having a locked building if just anyone can be let in by just sitting outside on the low cinder block wall?

  Maybe nothing is safe. Waiting for Kellan, I watch traffic, people on foot, dog walkers and runners, everyone moving purposefully.

  About a dozen times I almost run away. There's time to disappear down the street, go somewhere and find a taxi, go home. He's told me to back off, followed that up with silence. What's the point?

  "Do you want to go inside?" a woman asks, heading up the stairs. Big sunglasses, scarf over red hair. I shake my head, mutter thanks, and go on waiting for Kellan.

  And where is he? If he's working at the VA Hospital, like I suspect, his shift work could be nights for all I know. He's not in school yet. He could work any hours. He could be home right now in his apartment, in bed, asleep.

  He could be out on a date. That makes me stop moving. I freeze in place, as if I can become invisible. Just in case I'm not only right but he appears right then.

  He doesn't. But I'm losing my nerve. Where do I draw the line between pursuing life and knowing the man I thought I was going to be with doesn't want to pursue life with me?

  I have to get out of here. It's 5:30 in the afternoon. The street is really busy with people on foot and in cars, coming home, going out, dropping off passengers. I should be able to disappear into it. Kellan's building is dead smack in the middle of a block, but I can move fast to one end, turn onto a side street, start looking for a convenience store or some other landmark and call a cab from there.

  "Do you need to get inside, dear?" An older lady, bent and wearing black despite the warm of the day.

  "I’m OK. Thanks." I really am. Maybe I just needed a sanity check. Sitting waiting for someone who is not appearing and doesn't seem to want to see me seems to have done it.

  I get up fast, hands in pockets, heading upstream in the direction traffic is coming from. I'll call him from home. Leave a voice mail if he doesn't answer. Tell him what I think I've found out about Aimee's sister Stacee. Can't decide yet if I'm going to also tell him I won't call again or text, that I'm waiting until I get some idea from him what he wants. I'll decide that when I call him.

  Merging into the stream of foot traffic I swing to the outside of the sidewalk, making room for a young mother with a stroller. There are parke
d cars along here, no way to give her more room, but just ahead there's a cross street, my chance to duck out of sight in case Kellan comes along. I've made it to the intersection where there's a red light preventing my crossing when someone says, "Excuse me."

  A woman's voice. Next instant hands slam into me. I rock forward, one foot slipping hard off the curb. I catch myself, hands jerking up for balance, one foot in the gutter, the other on the curb. Cars are passing inches from me.

  Angry, I'm starting to turn, about to demand, "What the hell?"

  Hands again. Shoving hard. My knee buckles. The foot on the sidewalk loses purchase. I pitch forward. I'm falling.

  There's a scream of brakes. It's not going to be enough, or soon enough.

  I both feel and don't feel the concussion.

  * * *

  The next few minutes are a confusion of voices. Legs move around me. Car doors slam. My head throbs like I'm in a dance club. Noise is blurry, uncertain. My right leg throbs. My hands feel skinned. My head aches. I didn't have a headache today, did I?

  The voices repeat the same things. They're not talking to me. They're talking to each other. That means I don't have to answer. I'm not responsible. I could close my eyes and sleep.

  Except the voices don't like that. I hear keep her awake and they're coming and a voice that sounds all wrong, not human.

  Oh. That's probably a siren.

  My heart jackhammers. Sleep is no longer a problem. I'd tell the voice that didn't want me to sleep, if only I could focus. I'm awake.

  I'm awake, and I've killed my father. My mother has just gotten home from work and found us. I'm kneeling on the kitchen floor. The butcher knife is close to my hand. My father, no longer the monster who hit me and shouted and raged in the evenings, lost to alcohol and self-loathing, lies on the kitchen floor in a spreading pool of blood. The same body is my father who l loved, the father who told me I was his Willow tree, that I was strong and brave and could bend without breaking, that father lies on the kitchen floor in a spreading pool of blood.

  My mother kneels before both of us. Screaming. Her hands are on her face, then on his shoulder, turning him onto his back. Then on her face. Then on his belly, trying to stem the blood flow that no longer flows.

  It's only been a couple minutes. Later, minutes or years later, someone will explain what the knife hit. Why he bled out so fast. Even later than that they will tell me it wasn't my fault. They'll explain that my father had taken a chemical called bath salts, the same drug that turned a man in Florida cannibalistic. The bruises on my neck where my father tried to kill me will tell the story.

  I'll tell my own story. That I was just trying to cut him. I thought if he was afraid I'd kill him that he'd back off, I could get to a phone, call

  Call 911.

  They're already coming.

  That's the sirens. They're close now. How is it the voices can't hear them?

  Because they're afraid.

  Oh. Of what?

  They're afraid for you.

  Open your eyes.

  That's not one of the voices. That's just me. Telling me that I've hit my head. I'm not back on the night in Seattle, my father lying dead on the kitchen floor, my mother screaming, terrified and confused because I hid it from her, all those months, hid my father's escalating alcoholism and violence. She had enough to worry about. So when she finds us like that, when her only daughter is in the back of a police car and her only husband is in the back of an ambulance in a body bag, she doesn't understand.

  I do. Maybe for the first time. Despite therapy. Despite Kellan. Despite my mother forgiving me and the forgiveness process I started. Despite telling Bruce and no longer hiding, despite Emmy knowing and trying to come out of the shell, out from behind the wall I'd thrown up to protect the world from me.

  To protect me from the world.

  Despite everything, it's now, on the asphalt of Bee Street and a cross street I don't even know the name of, outside Kellan's new apartment, it's now that I understand I did nothing to deserve a death sentence.

  I protected myself. And after that, I threw away the gift of the life I had saved. I've been crawling out of that shell, but I haven't fully understood the process.

  I haven't fully understood what Kellan has been saying.

  I thought I was ruined. But I was hiding. Giving up. I was in the process of ruining. The coming back to life? That's what he was talking about. Being a light in the world. Giving instead of taking. That's the trade. The balance. I took one light.

  I make sure mine is a light that shines brightly in the world.

  "I understand now," I say, looking at the legs. Most people gathered around me are still standing. It's like being four years old again. I can't see up to their faces.

  The sirens are close. I'm on the street. I'm injured. My palms are bleeding and I'm pretty sure my right leg is broken. But they can stop panicking about concussion.

  My head is clear for the first time in years.

  "Willow."

  This face I can see. Because he bends down and looks into my eyes. His hands are on my shoulders. The voices all around caution not to touch me, to be careful, lots of instructions.

  Fuck you, voices. You didn't bend down and touch me. You stood around and repeated the same things.

  That's OK, though. Gave me time to think.

  To understand what I told Bruce is true. The face I look up into, the green eyes that meet mine? I'm in love with him.

  "Kellan."

  "Give her some room."

  The legs don't move at all. That makes me giggle. The giggling makes Kellan look very worried.

  "People, back off, give her some air."

  I put a hand on his forearm. "It's OK. There's air here. The legs. They're beside the point."

  Yeah, that didn't exactly reassure him, either.

  "The ambulance is here," he tells me, looking over his shoulder. "Are you – what hap – I don't." He stops.

  I could answer. No, I'm not really alright. I was hit by a car. Of course you don't understand. I don't either.

  It doesn't matter. The only important thing is: "Will you go with me?"

  Kellan's hands tighten on my shoulders even as the EMTs rush from the ambulance, stretcher rattling, instructions shouted to the people with the legs surrounding me to get back, and with the voice of authority that makes them do so.

  "Try to stop me," Kellan says.

  Chapter 14

  Horror stories about emergency rooms abound, about waiting hours while everyone else goes first and gunshot wounds are attended to along with worried moms whose children coughed twice. But the hospital where I'm taken takes me straight in and a very nice East Indian doctor tells me I appear to have broken my leg, so straight faced that I almost end up laughing. Then the pain starts and I don't. I also worry that laughing is a sign of concussion. Why else would someone laugh at the idea of a broken leg?

  Kellan says almost nothing. He just holds my hand whenever someone isn't shoving him aside to take my blood pressure (elevated, there's a surprise, maybe it was being pushed into traffic and being hit by a car?), and heart rate and oxygen intake. I don't even ask about the last of those. I'm breathing, that's enough for me. Especially given I got the feeling whoever shoved me would have been happy to prevent my continuing to breathe.

  Kellan has to let go when they take me to X-ray, where they conclusively prove my right tibia is broken. It's not a joint, no part of ankle or knee, and a clean break, which seems to make everyone happy. Cast and crutches are called for, which means I'm going to be here more than long enough for the hospital to reach my parents and call them down here.

  I'm a legal adult and with the person I most want to be here with, if here's a place I have to be (I'd rather have avoided it, thanks). But the nature of things being the way they are, I'm on my parents' insurance and so the hospital calls them. Which is fine in a way – hospital staff can deal with the number of panicked Mom Questions that first erupt and I don'
t have to. By then, though, I've got some choice opiates in my system. I could probably deal with my mom's questions.

  What I don't want to deal with is the Willow + Kellan equation that Bruce is going to have instant questions about. As in, What were you doing on Bee Street? Didn't I tell you to let him go?

  Not that it's up to Bruce to tell me to let Kellan go. Since Kellan hasn't let go of me any time he didn't have to, maybe someone should ask him how he feels about it.

  I certainly haven't had time to. As soon as the doctor gets done examining and the cast process is arranged for and the nurses have given me drugs with a needle that almost hurt more than my leg (there's a reason I don't have piercings, damn it) the police are there.

  "You're Willow Blake?"

  They're both males, which at least means no one suspects this was a sexual assault. Maybe I just watch too much TV; I always figured they sent female cops for female victims,.

  And I try not to flash back to my last, to-date biggest, encounter with law enforcement.

  "I'm Willow Blake," I acknowledge, because it's easier just to answer in very complete sentences. Especially when the pain killer is making me feel as woozy as I did the night Reed had to rescue me from the jerks at the bonfire who were getting girls drunk and then doing what comes naturally to guys who intentionally get girls drunk. I fish for my bag and realize I don't have it. "Is my purse – " I start at Kellan, who just nods without handing it to me and the cops don't ask for ID anyway.

  "We'd like to get the details from you about what happened."

  I don't ask if they got details from everybody standing around me, who probably saw more than I did. I glance at Kellan, wondering if they'll ask him to leave, something about keeping our stories straight. They did when – in Seattle. But then I wasn't a victim. They didn't determine that until later.

  "I was waiting for Kellan," I tell them, hoping I won't have to elaborate about why I was sitting on a wall outside his apartment building with no idea when he'd be back and without texting him I was there, waiting. "We – we had an argument. I was waiting for him to get home and I." I hesitate. Almost stutter. And then tell the truth. "I lost my nerve about seeing him. I was heading to a cross street, looking for an address to give to a taxi service."