Page 89 of Healing Hearts
“I love her,” I say, my voice cracking. “I’ve never loved anyone like I love her.”
“Then you fight like hell to keep that. You don’t throw it away. You don’t set it aside. But the fact that we’re sitting here, that you’re not with her, means you’ve got work to do. Your fight isn’t out there,” he says, pointing to the door, “it’s in here.” He touches his chest and then his head. “You get those two things aligned, and you’re good, man. ’Cause she loves you too.”
I put my head in my hands, and I’m barely holding myself together. “You really think I can have that? You think I deserve that?”
Grady rises off his stool and comes to my chair, hauling me out of my seat and into his arms. I can’t hold it in anymore, and a sob escapes.
“I love you, man,” Grady says as he claps me on the back. “And I think you deserve Emily and Amir and your shop and a chance to be a good dad to this baby. What you don’t deserve is to keep punishing yourself and letting other people punish you for a mistake you already paid for.”
I squeeze him tight, and I wonder whether it’s really possible to let go of the weight that I’ve been dragging behind me since I was nineteen and the police raided my house.
I’ve been seeing Amber, the therapist Grady recommended and offered to pay for, for the last few weeks, and I’ve been surprised at how I’ve been starting to see my life differently. It’s been weird to reframe my experiences just by talking about them.
When I got out of jail years ago, I was offered some reintegration support, but I’d already made up my mind that I wasn’t planning to be a husband and father. That bridge had been blown up and couldn’t be repaired. Who’d want someone like me?
“Tell me about you and Emily,” Amber says.
“What do you want to know?”
“When you first came, you stated that being ‘good enough’ for her was a goal. So today I’d like to explore what that relationship has been like up to this point.”
I try to figure out where to even start, how to categorize her and us. “I fake dated her younger sister in high school.”
“The one who helped you learn how to read.”
“Yeah, but Em and I never really connected. We didn’t really know each other. Not until we worked on a fundraiser together almost two years ago now.”
“The one for Little Falls after the flood?”
“That’s the one,” I say. “She was helping to organize it, and even then, we hung out a bit. But the night of the concert, something justclicked.” I snap my fingers. “We were standing on the side of the stage, and I made her laugh. Her dad had just died, and she was clearly struggling, but I got her to laugh. WhenI looked over at her and saw her smile, I just thought—that’s it.” It’s the first time I’ve ever admitted to myself, let alone out loud, that the lightning strike happened in that moment. But looking back on it, I never saw Em the same after that.
Sure, we were still friends, but she wasthefriend for me. The one I’d show up for no matter what time or where she needed me.
“Was that connection mutual?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “We hung out a lot. She called me when she needed something—something fixed, Amir looked after, picked up from a date.”
“Picked up from a date?”
“Yeah,” I say, realizing that might seem weirder than it was. “She was doing this dating experiment thing, but the guys all sucked.”
“And how’d that make you feel?”
“I was glad none of them held her interest.”
“Why?”
“You know,” I say with a little laugh, “I think it might have been because I was already half in love with her.”
“And what are some things you think you’ve done to express that love?”
I sit back in my chair, surprised by the question. The obvious ones come easy. “I agreed to father her baby, and I did a bunch of tests so she wouldn’t have to worry about that baby.” Then I think about it some more. “When she got Amir’s genetic tests back, I held her while she cried, and on the anniversary of her husband’s death, I went to the cemetery with her.”
“If I told you that those would be things most people would consider as adding value to someone’s life—being that system of support—what would you say to that?”
I take a deep breath and then release it, really letting myself consider her words without getting defensive or looking for analternate picture of things. My fingers are gripping my knees hard. “I could see that.” My chin trembles, and I blink away tears. “It’s just really important to me that I don’t make her life worse.”
“I understand that,” Amber says, and her voice is gentle. “Let’s explore that some more. Because, like we talked about before, how we frame our experiences makes a difference in how we respond to them, how we move forward from them. Tell me about some of the other experiences you’ve had with Emily.”
