The Fidelity Files (Jennifer Hunter #1)(134)

Time was an illusion, anyway. Pacific Time, Eastern Time, Central Time, Daylight Savings Time. Those were all just man-made words used to keep us all in line. And, of course, on time.

Because without time, how would we be able to set appointments? Make dates? Measure driving distances in Southern California?

Well, screw that. All of it. I reached down and violently yanked the clock plug from the socket.

I would be the first person to live entirely without time. I would revolt against the very institution of time. I would rage against the machine. Defy the system.

According to Einstein, time didn't even exist.

So why should I change my whole life around just to adhere to something that doesn't even exist?

I would sleep when I felt tired, eat when I felt hungry, and watch whatever TiVo had recorded when I felt bored. It was the Zen routine of the twenty-first century.

Although at this point all I felt like doing was the sleeping part.

The thought of fishing my cell phones out of my bag and listening to all the messages from people trying to get ahold of me with more bad news made me feel tired.

The thought of getting up and getting some food out of the refrigerator made me want to close my eyes and go to sleep again.

So I did.

But I woke up to the sound of my home line ringing.

"Hello?" I said groggily into the phone.

"Good morning, Jenny." My mom's cheerful voice vibrated into my ear.

"Hi, Mom."

"Were you still sleeping?"

I looked at the clock on my nightstand. It was blank. Then I remembered unplugging it after my whole time-doesn't-exist phase a few hours ago. Or was that days ago? I fell onto my back and rested my palm on my forehead. "What time is it?"

"It's eleven-thirty," my mom replied.

"Oh."

"Have you called your father yet?"

I pulled the pillow over my face. "No. And I'm not going to."

"I thought you said you would!"

I threw the pillow to the floor. "Well, I changed my mind. I'm allowed to do that, Mom."

There was a long, meaningful pause on the other end, and I could almost hear my mother's disappointment come through the phone. "Honestly, Jenny, I think it's about time you grew up and started acting like an adult."

Her words stung me. "I've been acting like an adult for the past sixteen years, Mother. If anyone should be allowed to act like a child and wallow in her misery, it's me!"

My mom sighed. "I don't know what you're talking about, but you're going to have to learn how to forgive your father or else..."

"Or else what?" I shot up in bed. "What, Mom? This I would love to hear. What if I don't forgive him? Ever? What if I stay mad at him for the rest of my life? Would that be so terrible? I'll tell you one thing, it certainly wouldn't be as terrible as what he did to us. To our family. And he kept it a secret for over a decade... maybe longer. Who knows? As far as I'm concerned, I have at least eight more years of feeling bitter and angry before my dad and I are even. The only thing I've ever learned from my father is that men can't be trusted. And if they can't be trusted, then they certainly don't deserve our forgiveness!"

My mom was silent, and I immediately worried that I had gone too far, said too much. I was about to open my mouth to apologize when she replied, "You're obviously not ready yet, honey. But don't worry, you'll be ready someday."

I wasn't quite sure what to make of that response. It was as if overnight my mom had transformed into a Buddhist monk. Had she been taking meditation lessons at the local community center or something? Where was the sudden need to forgive and the "you're not ready" speech coming from? It was like something straight out of the Spiritual Guide to Raising Children book.

"You're right, Mom. I'm not ready to forgive yet. And I'm not sure I'll ever be."

I hung up the phone feeling worse than I had when I picked it up. I'm sure my mom was just trying to help. That was, after all, what moms did. But I wasn't used to getting help from her. Sure, she was always around to help me with homework, or raise hell when a teacher gave me an unfair grade, or help me pick out decorations for my first college dorm room. But I never went to her with the big stuff.

In fact, I never went to anyone.

I had always felt alone when it came to dealing with my personal problems. And so I had always managed to solve them myself. Or at least I thought so.

But given the state I was in now, I couldn't help but come to the conclusion that maybe you can't do everything alone.

I eventually pulled myself out of bed long enough to walk to the living room and plop myself right back down on the couch.

I turned on the TV and started an episode of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. That always used to cheer me up. But it was slowly becoming obvious that my old tactics weren't going to cut it anymore. All my problems weren't going to just vanish into thin air, no matter how many episodes of Extreme Makeover I had stored up on my TiVo and no matter how many sets of white satin sheets I had folded up in my linen closet. And this time, no amount of staring into a wooden box with a list of names inside was going to change anything that had happened in the past few weeks.

I suddenly longed for the days when everything in my life fell nicely and neatly into two independent categories: Ashlyn and Jen. The cheating, the infidelity, the sinful touch of a married man could always be successfully tucked away inside an alias that I could turn on and off with the touch of a button.