The Lies About Truth(55)

I tugged the couch pillow into my lap and squeezed it against my chest. “What if I ask, and Max never forgives me? Or, what if I ask, and I never forgive him?”

“Sadie, forgiveness isn’t always returning to the old thing. Sometimes forgiveness is making an entirely new thing.” Fletcher’s watch buzzed that our time was up. “Think about that this week.”

“Yeah, I’ll do that on my road trip to St. Augustine,” I joked.

“You laugh, but it just might happen.”

“Yeah, and I might be Miss America.”

“You might. Lots of cool people have scars.”

“Like you,” I said, trying to pay him a compliment.

“Like Seal, and Tina Fey, and . . . Jesus.”

“That sounds like a really good episode of Saturday Night Live.”

“I’d watch it.” He smiled as I walked to the door. “Last thing before you go.” He closed out every session with the same advice. It was his personal mantra, and I loved hearing it. “Scars tell a story, but this week, you decide what that story’s going to be.”

I hugged the door frame and leaned back into the office. “Hey, Fletcher?”

He stopped fiddling with my folder, where he scratched notes from our session. “Yes, ma’am.”

“I want my story to be good.”

Dr. Fletcher Glasson smiled a smile worthy of an art exhibit at the Met. “It already is.”





CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX


Therapy days were good and bad.

Every time I left Fletcher’s I felt like a freshly plowed field. The blades of his words turned soil in my mind, and the process exhausted me. Mom knew. She turned on some folk music and told me to rest. I fell asleep on the five-minute drive.

At home, I showered, stomached a few spoonfuls of peanut butter, and tumbled into bed as if I’d run a marathon rather than spent fifty minutes talking about my life.

Mom and Dad took my naptime by force. The two of them crawled into my king bed in their afternoon sweats. I should have anticipated this. I’d heard Dad call his boss this morning and ask for a personal day. Mom must have canceled all her appointments. They clearly weren’t taking any chances I’d emotionally crash after therapy or that I’d located some more Sharpies.

“Seriously?” I said through a curtain of damp hair. “I just got here.”

“Scoot over, Sade. You gave us a save-the-date for a movie.”

“Don’t you two have something better to do?” I teased Dad. “Netflix? Street-sign theft? Or, you know, work?”

“Nope,” Mom said. “You want to call Max? We’ll move to the living room and make it a party.”

I glanced at my phone, which had zero texts or missed calls, and said, “He’s doing his own thing today.”

Mom parted my hair. “You want me to brush your hair while we watch?”

This offer was a ticket to my soul.

I laid my head on her lap. “What movie did you pick?” Her fingers needled through my hair, and I practically purred.

“Your choice,” Dad said. “We’ve got Jurassic Park, The Breakfast Club, and The Empire Strikes Back.”

“Those are all old. I thought we were going to watch something funny.”

“Old, schmold, and I beg to differ with your opinions on humor.” Dad popped me on the head with the DVD case. “If you make it through any one of them without smiling, I’ll grill shrimp for supper.”

“Deal. Jurassic Park.” I snuggled deeper into the bed and Mom’s leg. Dad grilled the best shrimp in the world. This was easy eating.

They started the movie. I fell asleep before the first casualty.

My dreams were made of dinosaur-people. A T. rex the color of Big sat in the middle of the island, granting life-saving advice through a hole in his claw. He told me I had to drive a car in a tank top or be eaten alive. I ripped the sleeves off my shirt, but when I combed the island for a vehicle, my safari Jeep was a Barbie car with a battery problem. I woke up as the T. rex teeth came at my head.

I noticed the TV was off, Dad was sound asleep, and Mom still fiddled with my hair even though her eyes were closed.

“Bad dream?” she asked as I stirred.

Sleepy me had no filter. I told her all about it.

Her thigh muscles tightened beneath me as she stretched. Her fingers stopped while she yawned.

“Tomorrow, I say, you’re going to wear a T-shirt and drive a car.”

I lifted my head off her leg. “Mo-om.”

She just smiled. Our features were similar—full upper lips, wavy blond hair with identical widow’s peaks that pointed to crooked button noses, and blue eyes that were occasionally gray. She was beautiful. The way I might have been with some age, had my face not gone through a window.

“Tomorrow. I really believe tomorrow is the day,” she said.

“And if I don’t?”

“It’s not a threat, baby doll. It’s a hope.”

I relaxed again and she said, “Did you know I’ve been to El Salvador?”

I didn’t. Not once in the entire time the McCalls were gone had she mentioned a visit to Central America. Considering her idea of roughing it was the Hilton, I was shocked she’d even gotten on the plane. If the rest of El Salvador looked like Max’s video of the nunnery, my mother had been miserable.