Back on Blossom Street (Blossom Street #4)(47)

“But Alix…”

“Yes, I know. Jordan was great.” She paused, running one hand through her short, spiky hair. “He told me something I’ll never forget.”

Colette was staring at her intently. “What was that?”

“He said that sometimes the hardest part of forgiveness is forgiving ourselves.”

Colette nodded thoughtfully. “I’m not the kind of woman who does one-night stands. Or at least, that’s what I used to think. I always had contempt for women who did.”

“I never thought I’d sink as low as I did, either,” Alix said and swallowed the bile that rose in the back of her throat. The ugliness of the things she’d done had tainted her view of life until she’d made her peace with God—and with herself. “All I can say is I’m not going back there again.”

“You won’t,” Colette said with utter confidence. “Like you said earlier, you aren’t the same person you were then.”

“The point I’m trying to make,” Alix said, eager to turn the mirror away from herself, “is that you’re doing the same thing I was. The person you can’t forgive is you.”

Colette agreed with a quick smile. “It isn’t easy, is it?”

“Tell me about it.” This had been the most difficult aspect of her new life, and Alix wasn’t sure how to explain it to her friend. “These negative reactions? You know, when you expect the worst ’cause it’s all you deserve?” When Colette nodded, she said, “I call it stinking thinking.”

Colette frowned. “You mean when you start rehashing the past?”

“Yeah.” Alix closed her eyes. “But it’s more than that. Let me give you an example. Once, Tammie Lee, Jacqueline’s daughter-in-law, told me how pretty I looked in red. At the time I had on a black shirt with jeans.”

“So? She gave you a compliment.”

“She intended it as a compliment,” Alix explained, “only I didn’t hear it as one. Instead I convinced myself that Tammie Lee had purposely insulted me.”

“I’m sure she didn’t mean it that way!”

“She didn’t,” Alix concurred. “I don’t know if this’ll make sense to you, but it all goes back to those old messages I’d gotten as a child.”

“I think I understand,” Colette said slowly.

“Tammie Lee made a casual comment and what she intended as a compliment I turned into an insult. That’s because those messages told me I’d never been pretty so I couldn’t be beautiful, no matter what color I wore. Not only that, I assumed she was saying I wasn’t pretty the way I was.” She took a deep breath. “My mother used to call me horrible names. For years I heard her voice in my head—sometimes I still do, but now I know how to drown it out. Whenever I remembered her saying things like ‘You ugly little bitch’ I’d sink into this dark pit of depression.”

“Oh, Alix…”

“That’s one of the effects of not being able to forgive yourself—or to cut yourself loose from those hateful insults and accusations. No matter what wonderful things people say, you don’t believe them.”

Colette seemed to understand.

“Why should anyone love me?” Alix asked rhetorically. “If I don’t care about myself, then how can Jordan or anyone else?”

“Yes, but…In my case, it’s best to leave matters between Christian and me as they are,” Colette said, her voice low. “There’s more I can’t explain—stuff that’s not directly related to Christian and me. I care about him, but I can’t go down the path he’s chosen. I…want to help him, but I can’t. I have to simply walk away.”

“Can you?” Alix pressed. “Can you really do that?”

A long time passed before Colette answered. “I really don’t have any choice and yet…”

“Yet…” Alix pushed gently, knowing there was something else her friend wasn’t telling her.

“I don’t think we can ever get past what happened that…night.”

“Everything seems to go back to that,” Alix murmured.

Colette stopped walking for a moment, looking out toward the Sound. “We didn’t use birth control,” she whispered and Alix watched as she swallowed hard.

“You’re pregnant?”

Colette nodded, her eyes brimming with tears. “I haven’t told anyone…I don’t think I’ve really taken it in myself. Why is life like this?” she groaned. “Derek and I couldn’t get pregnant and then…then one night with Christian and—” She left the rest unsaid. “I haven’t figured out what I’m going to do. I’ll keep the baby, of course. Christian doesn’t know…Every time I try to tell him, I realize I can’t. For now, that’s for the best.”

“But, Colette, he has a right to know!”

“I’ll tell him,” she promised and wiped the moisture from her cheeks. “Just not yet.”

“The prayer shawl?” Instinctively Alix knew it wasn’t a shawl Colette had been knitting, but a baby blanket.

“It’s for the baby,” Colette said. “Christian’s and mine.”