"You know what I did."
"You left town when you turned eighteen. Dad threw you out?"
"More than that."
"Tell me."
I look at him. He folds his arms. d.a.m.n, he"s big. Scars, too. What the h.e.l.l happened to him?
"I"ll wait," he says.
I walk over to the nearest tree and lean against it.
"She told you everything. Alexis did."
"She told us about Dorney Park. Just the two of us, not her sister. How you couldn"t stop looking at her and she pretended to be asleep so she could, and these are her words, cuddle with you on the way home."
I just stare at him, gaping. Then I take a deep breath.
Then I tell him.
I relate the story slowly, and he asks no questions, makes no judgement. I start with the day I was made to leave, and work my way back from there. As he nods and scratches his chin I end up blurting out more stuff, how stupid I was, how much I missed her every miserable day.
When I finish he stays quiet for a long time. He puts his hands on his hips and sighs.
"There are times in a man"s life when he does what he has to do. In the moment when all the options are laid out before us, we have to choose the right one and go for it. If you had the information you had then, and only the information you had then, what would you do?"
I scuff my boot against the ground and answer without looking at him.
"The same thing. I"d rather she be alive and safe and hate me than..." I trail off. "That doesn"t matter, I left her to-"
"She had everything set up, you said."
"Yeah."
"School, job, she was leaving town too."
"Yeah. She was supposed to be gone from this place. I knew her. She"d never come back, except to help out her sister, who wasn"t far behind. I had no idea my father was even involved with her mother, as far as I knew they only met once and it was years before I left. My father hated Alexis and her family. He wanted me to stay away from her anyway."
Jacob rolls his ma.s.sive shoulders and walks to stand next to me. He looks around, his sharp eyes darting from shadow to shadow.
"You know, it"s easy to wallow in regrets. They pull you in. Become a blanket. The past is a sunk cost, kid. What matters now is what you do with the future."
Alexis Now Every time I look at Jennifer, I feel a little pathetic. When she sat me down and told me what she"s been through, it makes me feel silly and stupid for my own problems. She"s so strong, wearing the scar on her cheek like a badge of courage. Naturally I glance at her hand. She wears a glove over it all the time; right now it"s one of a matching pair of riding gloves but she always has one on.
Her left hand is a sight to see. She grabbed a knife blade to save herself and it bit down to the bone, making her fingers mostly useless. There"s a big puckered scar along the base of all her fingers, which have oddly thinned out and the skin grown close to the bone.
I don"t know how she survived that.
"How long has he been in town?"
I know who she means. She knows more about how I feel about Hawk than anybody. I told some of it to her husband but not all. It was such a relief to say something to somebody, and not May.
May annoys me with her optimism sometimes. Long after I gave up hope, she"d tell me that Hawk has to come back sometime, he has a reason, he wouldn"t just leave us. After a few arguments we just stopped talking about it. Now he is back, and I don"t know what to do.
"Since yesterday I guess," I sigh. "That"s the first time I saw him anyway."
I tell her what happened, about the hot dog and the alley. I don"t tell her everything but she"s smart, she"ll fill in the gaps. I don"t have to explain, she just nods.
"You feel like he betrayed you."
"Yes," I sigh, my chest tightening. "I hate myself for feeling that way."
"It"s all right to feel betrayed. I can"t say I"m happy with him just up and leaving you without a word and never contacting you again."
"You"re not?" I glance at her. "Of course you"re not. I can"t just take him back."
"Why not?"
I stop and shrug. "How am I supposed to ever trust him again?"
"I"m not going to tell you what to do. You have to find that on your own."
She must see the look on my face. She sighs and touches my shoulder with her bad hand.
"I know how you feel. There was a time when I couldn"t trust any man, not any one in particular. It took a lot of work for me to bring Jacob into my life. I wouldn"t wish what I"ve been through on anyone."
I nod.
She starts walking again. "Sometimes we think we"re in the right place and we"re not. I was married once before."
"I remember. Your husband..."
"Yes. The bridge."
"My dad."
"I know, hon."
"After that." I stop to look through a gap in the trees. The sun is shining on the meadow where the fireworks display went off last night. "Hawk was the only thing in my life that was right. May needed me, I couldn"t lean on her. He never asked anything in return. He gave me whatever I needed after my dad died."
She steps beside me and listens. She"s good at that. Listening.
"Why was I so stupid? It took until the last day of school before I knew what it was. Just... something in the way he looked at me that day was different. He looked at me like he"d..."
"Never seen you before," Jennifer says, softly.
"Yeah. I pretended to sleep on the bus so I could hold him."
"I remember. I was there."
I blink a few times. "Yeah, you were, weren"t you?"
"I should have said something. Public displays of affection and all that, but I decided, who cares? It"s not like it mattered. You"d effectively graduated and it made me happy to see two young people happy with each other. That was a dark time for me. The next four years were dark. Little spots like that got me through it."
"I don"t know what to do."
She looks at me with one eyebrow raised, and folds her arms over her chest. "I think you do."
"I don"t feel like it."
"If he"s right for you, if it"s right for you, then you just know. Sometimes that feeling isn"t as strong as our fears, but it"s there, and no matter how many reasons you find to fight it, it never goes away. Once that torch is lit, it never goes out."
"Never?"
She shakes her head.
"How long did it take you to figure it out with Jacob?"
"Figure it out? Too long. It was there the first day, though. He looked at me like he"d never seen me before."
To my own surprise, I sniff a little and rub at my eyes.
"What do I do?"
She sighs. "I just told you... okay, look. Why don"t you trust him?"
"What, like specifically? He wouldn"t tell me why he left."
"Nothing at all?"
"He said if he told me I"d be in danger."
"Do you think he"s telling the truth?"
I start to answer but go quiet.
"I don"t know. It sounds like an excuse."
Jennifer shrugs. "Lots of times, things sound like an excuse when they"re not. Lots of excuses sound true, or they wouldn"t work. Maybe you should try asking him again. It sounds like he"s trying to protect you."
My own fingers dig into my arms. "Protect me? Where was he to protect me when I needed him, Jennifer? They strapped me to a table and injected me with drugs. I wanted him so bad it hurt. All I wanted was for him to come get me and get me out of there and take me away and make it better."
She doesn"t say anything for a while. A squirrel runs in circles at the base of a tree in front of us. Birds chirp. Jennifer sighs.
"Did he know where you were?"
"No."
"If he did, would he have come?"
I swallow, but don"t answer her.
"Ask him again. Lay it out for him."
"Whatever you decide to do, we have your back. If you want to get out now, we"ll get you out."
"My stepfather has connections. He knows people."
She only smirks a little. "I"m scared."
"I"ll get you something you can use, I promise."
"Don"t do anything rash, Alexis. Your safety is more important to us, to me, than dealing with your father. We have other ways of taking care of that. This is our mess to clean up."
"No," I say, "It"s mine. I was helping him for years."
Again, she puts her hand on my shoulder. "You did what you had to do for yourself, and for your sister. Survival sometimes means we have to do things we"re not proud of, or even ashamed of, but that doesn"t make us weak, and it doesn"t make us wrong. You"re taking a stand now and that"s what matters most. Go tell my husband to get back here."
Sighing, I walk back down the path, hook left at the parked bikes and find Jacob and Hawk standing around, eyeballing each other. I can practically smell the testosterone.
"Hey," I tell Jacob, "Your wife wants you back."
"Remember to call if there"s trouble. Don"t wait."
Nodding, he starts back up the path, breaking into a jog. I look at Hawk, leaning against the tree. He"s doing it again.
Looking at me like he"s never seen me before.
"What did he tell you?"
"He told me to ask why my father put you in the psych ward."
Of course he did. I chuff out a breath. "Will you tell me why your father made you leave?"
He kicks the ground and steps towards me. "d.a.m.n it, Alex. Just telling you could put your life in danger."
My life in danger. That"s a good one.
"If you won"t trust me with your secrets, why should I trust you with mine?"
I put my hands on his chest, and wait.
"He killed my mother," he says, very softly.
My stomach drops, and I feel my knees wobble a little.
"What?"