Page 7 of Return To You

We sit on the porch, his big-ass dog at our feet. “So fucking proud of you,” I finally tell him after a long silence.

He turns his head to me, bottle midair. “Proud of what?”

I state the obvious. “The way you rebuilt your life. The way you created something for this whole town.”

He stares at me. “Anybody did something good with his life, it’s you, man. I just sell beer.”

He takes a long pull on his beer, then looks away to the dark fields. “Aren’t you tired of running away?” he asks softly. With compassion, not accusation. I know what he’s talking about. That night that changed everything. When he almost died because of something I did, and the next morning I still left.

But I’ve learned to forgive myself. And I know Justin carries guilt for that night too. He was wounded, but someone died. “What about you?” I ask him. It was hard not to notice, even from a distance, the electricity coursing between him and a pretty brunette on the fairgrounds. Yet he didn’t introduce her to me, and no one brought her up at dinner.

“What about me?”

Maybe I shouldn’t broach that topic now. I don’t know where he is, mentally. I just got back. “You ever think of settling down?”

“Settling down?”

“Yeah. Having what Mom and Dad have. That sounds pretty awesome to me. You?”

“I—I can’t do that. Not after what happened. Not after what I did to you. It’s just not gonna happen.”

I reel back in shock. “Fuck man, what are you talking about?” I look at him, not sure where to even start. “I ran away like a fucking coward when you were in the hospital. I barely knew if you were gonna make it. I can’t believe you never said anything about that. I failed you.” Moose sets his big head on my lap. “But you know what? I forgave myself. I was just a kid. I was scared. I messed up. People mess up, bro. The only thing to do is pick up the pieces and keep going.”

“Yeah, except not everyone got to do that.”

He’s talking about the girl who died in the car crash. The one I pushed away, and he picked up. I was selfishly focusing on other stuff, and I did feel guilty, at the time. All the what-ifs. But not anymore. “It wasn’t your fault. You almost died to save her. You did everything you could, and more.”

“It doesn’t matter. I shouldn’t have… driven her home.”

Fuck. I barely got here, and I have to talk about that night again. And of course I do. It was the night Justin almost died, and the next morning I still left.

Mom and Dad made it clear that I shouldn’t thwart my own plans because of the accident. I was scheduled to start officer training at Maxwell Air Force Base in the next few days. It was enough they had one son whose life was on hold; they didn’t want me to give up on my dream career. And so after some negotiating, I left once we knew for sure Justin was out of the woods and it was all about a long, painful recovery for him. “It’s so unfair to him,” I’d told Mom.

“That’s why I need you to go and have the life he won’t have. You owe it to him.”

And fuck, but my mother telling me these words to help me cope, nearly killed me with guilt. And anger. And powerlessness. All these emotions fighting to bring me down. The guilt was the strongest, and in my young mind, it felt as if my mother couldn’t stand the sight of me. As if she knew that if I’d acted differently, Justin wouldn’t be lying in a hospital bed. As if it was painted all over my face.

I tried to tell her, tell them—Mom and Dad—I said, “I should’ve—” but Dad cut me off. “Don’t go there, son,” he’d simply stated, and he never elaborated, so I drew my own conclusions.

Don’t go there, or your mother won’t stand the sight of you.

Don’t go there, or you’ll carry the burden of your brother’s injuries.

Don’t go there, it’s too late to do anything now.

Don’t go there, but don’t stay here either.

Just go. Leave.

Leave us.

They never said any of that, of course, and possibly they didn’t think this way either. But in my young mind, that’s how it went.

It didn’t help that it was also the night the only girl I ever loved broke my heart. In a way, it made it easier to leave Emerald Creek. I could hide my guilt and forget my pain.

I’d make myself as scarce as possible to my family so they didn’t have to stare in the eye the person who could have, should have, prevented Justin’s accident. And I was never going to see her again.

I never talked about my breakup to anyone in the years that followed, because it would seem so trivial compared to the drama they’ve all endured. But tonight, even that pain, as petty as it is, digs acutely in my chest. It is so petty, and I am over it, but reliving that night makes the pain raw again, these two wounds of unequal importance hurting me almost equally.

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