Reminders of Him(45)
His honesty fills my chest with embarrassment. “And tonight?” I ask quietly.
He looks me in the eye. “Tonight . . . I’m starting to wonder if you’re the saddest girl I’ve ever met.”
I smile what is probably the most painful-looking smile, simply because I don’t want to cry. “All of the above.”
His smile is almost as painful. “I was afraid of that.” There’s a question in his eyes. Lots of questions. So many questions, I have to look away from his face to avoid them.
Ledger gathers his trash and gets out of the truck and walks it over to a trash can. He lingers outside his truck for a moment. When he reappears at the driver’s side door, he doesn’t get in. He just grips the top of the truck and stares at me. “What happens if you have to move away? What are your plans? Your next step?”
“I don’t know,” I say with a sigh. “I haven’t thought that far ahead. I’ve been too afraid to let go of the hope that they’ll change their minds.” That’s starting to feel like the direction this is going, though. And Ledger of all people knows where their heads are at. “Do you think they’ll ever give me a chance?”
Ledger doesn’t answer. He doesn’t shake his head or nod. He just completely ignores the question and gets in his truck and backs out of the parking lot.
Leaving me without an answer is still an answer.
I think about this the entire way home. When do I cut my losses? When do I accept that maybe my life won’t intersect with Diem’s?
My throat is dry and my heart is empty when we pull back into the parking lot of my apartment unit. Ledger gets out of the truck and comes around to open my door. He just stands there, though. He looks like he wants to say something, the way he shuffles back and forth on his feet. He crosses his arms over his chest and looks down at the ground.
“It wasn’t a good look, you know. To his parents, to the judge, to everyone in that courtroom . . . you just seemed so . . .” He can’t finish his sentence.
“I seemed so what?”
His eyes connect with mine. “Unremorseful.”
That word knocks the breath out of me. How could anyone think I was unremorseful? I was absolutely devastated.
I feel like I’m about to start crying again, and I’ve cried enough today. I just need out of his truck. I grab my bag and my to-go food, and Ledger steps aside so that I can exit his truck. When my feet are on the ground, I start walking because I’m trying to catch my breath, and I can’t and don’t know how to respond to what he just said.
Is that why they refuse to let me see my daughter? They think I didn’t care?
I can hear his footsteps following me, but it forces me to walk even faster until I’m up the stairs and inside my apartment. I set my stuff down on the counter, and Ledger is standing in the doorway to my apartment.
I grip the edge of the counter next to the sink and process what he’s just said. Then I face him with the distance of the room between us. “Scotty was the greatest thing that ever happened to me. I wasn’t unremorseful. I was too devastated to speak. My lawyers, they told me I needed to write an allocution statement, but I hadn’t been able to sleep in weeks. I couldn’t get a single word out on paper. My brain, it was . . .” I press a hand to my chest. “I was shattered, Ledger. You have to believe that. Too shattered to even defend myself, or care what happened to my life. I wasn’t unemotional, I was broken.”
And it happens again. The tears. I’m so sick of the fucking tears. I turn away from him because I’m sure he’s sick of them too.
I hear my door close. Did he leave? I spin around, but Ledger is standing inside my apartment. He’s walking slowly toward me, and then he leans against the counter next to me. He folds his arms over his chest, crosses his legs at the ankles, and then just stares at the floor silently for a moment. I grab the napkin off the counter that I was using earlier.
Ledger eyes me. “Who would it benefit?” he asks.
I wait for more clarification, because I don’t know what he’s asking me.
“It wouldn’t benefit Patrick or Grace having to share custody of Diem with you. It would bring a level of stress to their lives that I’m not sure they can emotionally handle. And Diem . . . would it benefit her? Because right now, she has no idea anyone is even missing from her life. She has two people she considers her parents already, and all of their family who love her. She also has me. And if you were allowed visitation, yes, it might mean something to her when she’s older. But right now . . . and I’m not being hateful, Kenna . . . but you would change the peaceful existence they’ve worked so hard to build since Scotty died. The stress your presence would bring to Patrick and Grace would be felt by Diem, no matter how hard they tried to hide it from her. So . . . who would your presence in Diem’s life benefit? Besides yourself?”
I can feel my chest tightening at his words. Not because I’m angry at him for saying them, but because I’m scared he’s right.
What if she’s better off without me in her life? What if my presence would just be an intrusion?
He knows Patrick and Grace better than anyone, and if he says my presence is going to change the good dynamic they’ve built, who am I to argue with that?
I already feared everything he just said, but it feels painful and embarrassing hearing the words actually come from him. He’s right, though. My presence here is selfish. He knows it. They know it.