Bet on It (28)

Now the noise helped guide him towards her and the conversation they needed to have. He heaved a long sigh, getting out of bed to pull on a pair of jogging pants and a T-shirt before he slipped out of the room. When he got downstairs, she was sitting in the right corner of the couch, one of her casts resting on the couch’s arm, using the remote to flip through the TV channels. Her dark satin robe was a little wrinkled and her hair was all over the place, but she seemed relaxed. She looked up when she saw him, the lines around her mouth pinching tighter as her lips pursed and pressed together.

“Hey, Gram,” he said, taking a seat on the other side of the couch.

“Oh, we’re speakin’ to each other now?” Her eyes burned.

He sunk in on himself then, a wave crashing over him, leaving him weak and soaked in shame. “Gram … I’m sorry.…”

“Don’t worry. It’s not like I’m not used to it. You spent years lockin’ me out.”

“I didn’t lock you out.” Walker struggled to keep indignation out of his tone. “I was just—” He stopped and shook his head. Now wasn’t the time for that. “I was angry.”

Gram’s exasperated sigh made his temples ache. “You’ve been here three weeks, Wally. What could you possibly have to be angry about already?”

There were all kinds of infuriating things he wanted to reveal. The way he hated the looks he got in town anytime someone recognized him. The fact that he couldn’t even get himself off at a time when he needed the relief most because his grandmother refused to knock before entering a room. The way she still refused to acknowledge his PTSD by name. So many grievances rushed to the front of his mind at once that his head spun.

“The other night, when we were at the diner and you were talkin’ to Louise Smith—that bothered me. It made me angry,” was what he said instead.

Her face screwed up and he could see that she truly didn’t understand. That only made the knots in his stomach pull tighter.

“Why would that have made you mad?” she asked. “We were just talkin’ about her vacation.”

Tendons tight, he stretched his neck, grimacing as he moved his head from side to side. Tension rose in his body right along with frustration. For him, that combination had always been dangerous. He was trying not to get too worked up, but he wasn’t doing a great job of it. The backs of his neck and knees slicked wet with sweat as anxiety invaded his body.

This was it. This was the reason he hadn’t been back to Greenbelt in over a decade, the reason he avoided even thinking about the place unless he was in a safe space—like a therapist’s office. Whenever he delved in too deep, he started feeling sick. His heart raced and his skin got clammy. Irritability inched its way up his spine, mingling with the anxiety already digging into the base. It wasn’t a panic attack that he felt coming, but anger. Not just the frustrated sighs and slightly irritated tone that his grandmother perceived as him being angry. Real anger—the kind that made his head hurt with the force of it. The kind that made him want to find the nearest small space and fold his body into it for so long that his muscles started to groan. The kind that would only go away when some other part of him started to hurt, whether from sheer sadness or physical strain.

In the past he would have flicked himself between the eyes or jammed his elbow against something sharp. Whatever it took to distract him from the chaos in his head. He couldn’t do those things anymore though. Hurting himself wasn’t healthy and it didn’t serve him. That’s what he’d been told time and time again.

Hurting myself isn’t healthy and it doesn’t serve me.

Hurting myself isn’t healthy and it doesn’t serve me.

It doesn’t serve me.

It doesn’t serve me.

Repetition had always been his self-soothing technique of choice. It had worked when he was a kid, and it worked now—to an extent. Not enough to make the anger go away, but enough to clear the fog.

“So you don’t remember when I was little, and she started all those rumors about us? Telling people that dad had tried to trade me in for a fix and that you used to lock me in a closet at night and that’s why I had panic attacks? You don’t remember that?”

She grunted. “Wally, there’s nothin’ to do in Greenbelt but gossip. You think we’re the first family in a small town to get talked about like dogs?”

“No, Gram, I don’t think that. I know other people got it too, but I don’t see them goin’ out of their way to be friendly with the people who treated them like crap.”

“If I avoided everybody in this town who ever whispered about my failings in raising you and your daddy, I’d never have anybody to talk to,” she snapped. “You left and you made a home somewhere else and found a family somewhere else. Greenbelt is my home, and these people are my family.”

“I’m your family!” He strained to keep his voice level.

“You haven’t much acted like it for the past twelve years.” She turned her head towards the window and sniffed. Walker couldn’t see her face, but he could picture the tears welling up in her eyes, and it made his ribs ache. “A short call once a week, makin’ me drive all the way to Charleston a couple times a year just to see you. I barely know anything about your life, Wally. I barely know you.”