Page 91 of Two Wrongs

“There’s a bus stop here at the travel center. You can go online and buy tickets. I’m not sure what the schedule is, but there’s several that come through every day,” he lets me know.

I grab my bags out of the car and move over to a picnic table on the side of the building to use my phone to buy tickets. I groan when I see the schedule. I’m in luck, there’s a bus heading to Florida, but it doesn’t leave until late this evening.

Shooting off a text to my aunt, I let her know about the delay in my arrival. Now I just have to come up with what I’m going to do with myself for the next several hours while I wait for the bus to take me the rest of the way.

The long wait for the bus is nowhere near as bad as riding on it for over a day. The bus is new enough, and since I’m not tall, leg room isn’t a problem, but the space seems to shrink the longer I sit on the bus. We stop occasionally to refuel and for bathroom breaks. It’s how I manage to survive this trip. I tell myself I only need to make it four hours before I’ll get another chance to be able to get off and stretch my legs. In some ways though, it only makes it harder, feeling the freedom to move, only to have to confine myself back into my small section.

None of that compares to the smell. Even at only half full, the ripe scent of body odor starts to fill the bus after hour twelve. It makes me self conscious so I use every bathroom break to bathe myself in the sink. Unfortunately, no matter how many gas station baths I take, the smell still isn’t coming from me, so nothing I do makes the stench go away.

My phone battery dips about five hours into the trip, and I am forced to turn it off so I can contact my aunt when we stop in Tampa. Then we still have a half hour drive to her condo in Clearwater.

Every time I close my eyes I imagine Griffin’s face when he finds my letter. He sent me text messages, but I still haven’t been able to bring myself to read them. I’m afraid. Either he’s going to agree that me leaving was a good idea, or he’s going to be begging me to come back. I’m not sure which possibility scares me more. But, if he’s going to run off every time Liam throws a tantrum I can’t go back. I’ve already been in a relationship where Liam always came first. I can’t, won’t, do it again.

Still, I miss him. Our time together was short, and I lie to myself saying I’ll move past it. I know in my gut I won’t. Home was a place of love. It was where my parents were always there for me to run to with any problem, knowing they’d somehow be able to fix it. We weren’t rich, but I didn’t care. Problems didn’t penetrate the walls of our house. It didn’t matter that I couldn’t always have the things I wanted, because I always had what I needed.

Until that day. That awful day when a knock on the door cracked that foundation and popped that bubble of safety that had encased me my whole life. I continued to live in our house for another year, but it stopped being a home the moment I was told my parents had died in an accident. There was no one to blame. They weren’t hit by a drunk driver. They didn’t swerve to miss hitting a deer. Hell, it wasn’t even icy out. My father wasn’t speeding.

It rained. That was it. That was the event that ended my childhood. The water on the road was deeper than it looked, and their car hydroplaned. It spun and since he couldn’t get enough traction to stop, he couldn’t keep the car on the road. There was enough of a slope that the car flipped several times, and that was the end of our family. It took seconds for me to go from having everything I needed, to being completely alone.

I’d felt alone in my marriage too. Being lonely when you aren’t actually alone is one of the most desolate feelings I’ve ever experienced. It’s brought me some of my lowest lows in life. I’ve learned I’d rather be alone, than ever fake my way through a relationship ever again. The problem was when I married Liam I wasn’t whole. I’d offered up only half of myself, because I’d had the other part of myself locked behind a mountain of grief. When that grief started to heal and I had more to give, I realized he was okay with only some of me. In return he only offered me the same. It wasn’t enough in the end.

When Griffin wrapped his arms around me, I felt it again. That peace that comes when you know you’re home. I fought it because I knew I’d only lose it again. I thought I prepared myself, but that was another lie. Just like when I told myself I was able to keep my heart out of it. Every part of me belongs to Griffin Hale, and I’m afraid it always will.

* * *

I’m wreckedwhen we finally arrive at my aunt’s house. The whole way down here I pictured her old apartment. A small one bedroom with a pull out couch. I was prepared to be happy with that, instead I’m pleased to learn she recently moved from her small one bedroom apartment to a nice two bedroom condo a few blocks from the beach. Of course it means she works a lot at a hospital in Tampa, but she seems happy with her life. I envy her that.

It’s late when I get in, but she gives me a quick tour of her place. My favorite part of the tour is when I learn I’ll have my own room, not camping out on her couch like I anticipated. The moment my head hits the pillow I’m out. That doesn’t explain what keeps me there for the next two weeks. Fighting the darkness that looms in my mind takes energy I can’t find. So I stop trying and let it swallow me whole.

* * *

A light tappingat my bedroom door wakes me up. Hattie waits for a minute, but I can’t muster the energy to even answer her. There’s so much I’m holding back from her.

She opens the door and comes and sits on the side of my bed. For a minute she looks like my mother, and my breath catches.

Despite all the time I’ve spent in bed, I don’t feel like I’ve truly slept. Perhaps that’s why I say, “Is it ever hard looking in the mirror? I wonder what she’d look like now, because in my memory she looks just like you.”

Hattie’s hand goes up to cover her mouth, then she nods, and puts her hand back in her lap. “For me it’s hard when something big happens. When I graduated from college and got my job at the hospital, I wanted to call her and celebrate. And for the record—” she reaches out and tucks some of my hair behind my ear, “to me, you look exactly like I remember her when I was a teenager.”

My mouth twitches. That’s the closest I’ve come to smiling since I left Harriston. Tears spill down my face. “I miss her so much.”

Hattie wipes her cheeks. “Me too, sweetie.”

“Why aren’t we closer?” I ask her. For the life of me I can’t think of why.

She looks down at her hands. “I was young and selfish when your parents got married and there always seemed to be more time to catch up. I always seemed to be too busy with things that seem so stupid now. I regret it because not only did I miss that time watching you grow up, but I also missed that time with my big sister. Your mom was so much larger than life to me when I was growing up. I took for granted that she’d always be there when I was ready. And then she was gone. You needed me then, and I wasn’t what you needed.”

“What do you mean? You came to live with me so I could finish high school with my friends. You gave up your life here,” I argue.

“I was assuaging my own guilt. I’d let my sister down so many times, the least I could do was go and look after you. But, I didn’t even do that right. I felt so sorry for myself because I’d lost my big sister, that I didn’t really see your grief. You dealt with it alone, and never once did you throw it in my face. I saw you getting closer to Liam during that time, and I felt relieved because he was looking after you when I didn’t.”

“Don’t beat yourself up. I leaned on him then. We did the best we could at the time,” I try and comfort her.

“You haven’t told me what happened, or why you needed to come here all of a sudden. The last I really knew anything Liam was everything to you, and suddenly you’re leaving him. You’ve barely eaten, or even left this room for two weeks. What happened?”

“I don’t know. Life I guess.” I take a deep breath. “He was cheating on me.”

Hattie nods. “If there’s one thing I understand, it’s heartbreak. You’re worrying me though, because you’ve been shut up in here for two weeks now. Eventually you have to get on with your life. If it hurts this bad though, I’ve got to ask, are you sure you made the right choice? What about marriage counseling?”

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