Page 98 of Edge of Unbroken

I shift away from her, causing her to raise her head and look at me. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. Do you have time to look at my truck? It makes a grinding sound when it’s in drive.”

“I have to head into town for a couple of errands, but I can look at it for you when I get back.”

“Bummer. I was kind of hoping to check in on my dad today,” she says, then makes a face like she just had an epiphany. “Or do you mind if I ride with you? You can drop me off at my dad’s, do whatever you need to do, and then just come get me afterwards?”

I shrug. “Works for me.”

“Thank you, Rony!” she says with a bright smile and stands up. “Give me like ten minutes and I’ll meet you by your truck, okay?” She doesn’t wait for an answer before she rushes out of my room.

“Heading out?” my grandmother asks me after I make my way downstairs and into the mudroom where I step into my boots and pull on my jacket.

“Yeah. Randi’s coming with me. She wants to check in on her dad.”

“Oh, okay,” she says, stopping in the doorway to the mudroom. “Would you please stop by the grocery store while you’re in town?” She holds out a small piece of paper.

“Sure.” I step close to her and give her a kiss on her cheek. “Love you,” I say as I pull open the door.

“I love you, baby boy,” she says with the warmest smile on her face.

As promised, Miranda meets me by my truck a few minutes later. She’s bundled up, wearing a heavy coat, her hands gloved. A black beanie covers her head, and a thick scarf’s tied around her neck, yet she still looks like she’s freezing as she shoves her hands into her jeans pockets, shrugging her shoulders up. I watch as she walks around the front of the truck, heaves the passenger door open, then climbs into the cabin.

“Jesus, this truck is not made for little people,” she huffs breathlessly, buckling herself into her seat, and I laugh. She’s so damn tiny, but she definitely makes up for her stature with her larger-than-life personality.

“How’s your knee today?” Miranda asks while we drive along the snow-flanked highway.

“Stiff.” For some reason the cold really affects me, and it only gets worse the more temperatures drop.

“Hmm… I don’t mind stiff things.”

I glance at her, shaking my head while she eyes me with a naughty grin. “You have the dirtiest mind.”

“And you don’t?” she asks, her eyebrows raised.

I chuckle. “I do, but I’ve learned to keep those thoughts to myself for the most part.”

She shrugs. “I don’t believe in that. You have to learn to let things out, Rony. It’s not healthy to keep everything bottled up.”

“Are we still talking about dirty thoughts, or did we once again arrive at the shit my mom did to me?” Miranda has a real fucking knack for trying to force me to talk about the abuse I endured.

“I don’t know,” she says innocently. “What do you think?”

“I think we should change the subject,” I grunt.

“How’s therapy going?” she asks instead.

I knit my eyebrows together, frowning at her. “You’re fucking relentless, you know that?”

“Yep,” she says, crossing her arms in front of her chest. “Is this news to you?”

“No, but I wish you would back off a little, Randi. This shit is really fucking hard to work through,” I say, my voice taking on a pleading tone. “Just today, okay? Just leave me be.”

I can feel her eyes on me, probably analyzing whether she can push me a little more. I’m really not in the mood today. I mean, I’m never in the mood to talk about this stuff, but I feel particularly on edge today.

Yesterday’s therapy session was exhausting. Doctor Seivert’s attempts to dig into my past, to urge me to reveal the horrors I faced growing up, always make me extra susceptible to nightmares, which usually ramp up Tuesday through Friday, then subside a bit over the weekend, only to disrupt my sleep again the following Tuesday.

Doctor Seivert really pushed me yesterday, refusing to let me get away with vague surface-level responses. She dug and prodded, forcing me to say some truly unnerving shit until I just couldn’t do it anymore and we had to stop our session half an hour early. Not surprisingly, I didn’t sleep great last night, my mother’s shadow encroaching upon my dreams until my grandfather finally woke me from a particularly realistic night terror that left my chest heaving and clammy. He hasn’t had to wake me in quite a while; I really thought I was past the part of my recovery where I’d get stuck in my nightmares. I was obviously wrong.

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