Page 64 of Ebbing Tides
Melanie’s brows rose with intrigue. She laid down strips of gauze as she asked, “Did you love her then? When you were younger?”
“I think I did.” I shrugged, a bit embarrassed. “I knew I liked her a lot, but I kept her at arm’s length. I was scared of getting too close to her.”
“What were you scared of?”
“Hurting her. Turning into my dad and becoming an asshole.” I chuckled bitterly at the thought now. How ridiculousI had been, how immature and irrational. “I think … I don’t know. It’s stupid.”
Melanie furrowed her brow as she secured the gauze in place with bandage tape. “I’m sure it’s not.”
“Oh, no. It is,” I said with a brusque laugh. “I think I was afraid I didn’t know how to love someone properly. Because … because nobody had ever loved me.”
Then, oddly enough, just then, for the first time in many, many years, I thought about that. The fear the younger version of me once had. The worry that I’d be incapable of loving because my parents had failed to show me how. But … no, I’d been right to call it stupid. Because it was, in fact, very much so.
My sisters loved me, didn’t they? They always had. They’d relied on me; they’d looked up to me. They hadn’t learned to follow my parents’ example to treat me with torment and neglect.
And I loved them without hesitation, without resentment.
I always had.
So, why the hell had I believed I couldn’t love her?
“I see the regret in your eyes,” Melanie said, infiltrating my thoughts with her sweet, gentle voice. “Don’t do that to yourself. There’s no point. It changes nothing.”
“I know,” I muttered, shutting my eyes to her and the world. “But I can’t help it.”
She sighed and laid her hands over mine, stroking her thumbs over the freshly bandaged wounds. Then she repeated in a rueful whisper, “I know.”
The boys watched TV in the living room and rolled around on the floor with Lido, who had somehow reverted back to puppyhood in the presence of these three rowdy kids, as Melanie put away the first aid supplies. With the four of them in the house, I somehow forgot the horrors I’d experienced here. The years of abuse and fear. The trauma of finding my mother dead in my old bedroom. Panic wormed beneath my skin, tangling with my veins and nerves.
How the hell can I make them stay?
“Sometimes, I think about the years I spent apart from my husband,” she said, keeping her gaze down as she closed the first aid kit. “Not the time he was in prison, but I mean after I broke up with him. I think about what would’ve happened if I hadn’t left. I think … well, no, Iknowhe never would’ve been arrested for fuckingmurder.” She shook her head and barked with a laugh that was equal parts bitter and disbelieving.
“It’s weird,” she went on, easily brushing off the regret. “I know we’d still be together now. Our kids would be older. He’d still be alive. Let’s be honest with ourselves. He’d still be a fuckup—he always was; he couldn’t help it … but we’d betogether. Iknowthis. We’d be happy—or as happy as we could be. But even knowing that, knowing he’d still be here, I don’t regret the time we spent apart. Ineededthose years. I needed them togrow. I needed them to be who I am now. God, I don’t even know who I’d be if I hadn’t broken up with him when I did.”
“Lizzie and Jane never would’ve been born,” I muttered, thinking of the girls I had called mine for the briefest moment in time. God, it was a blip really. Hardly anything. But thinking about them broke my heart just as much as if I’d known them forever.
Melanie looked at me then, her gaze curious. “Lizzie and Jane?”
“Laura’s girls,” I replied, twisting my lips to the side.
She raised her chin. “You miss them.”
I nodded slowly. “So much. But … ah”—I swept the thought away with a dismissive gesture—“they probably don’t even remember me.”
“I think you’d be surprised,” she said matter-of-factly. “You were a part of their lives just as long as they were a part of yours.”
“Hmm,” I grunted with a single nod.
“Okay. I gotta get those guys back to Charlie’s house. We’re going to go through some of Luke—my husband’s—stuff and some old pictures and probably cry a lot. So”—she wiped her hands against her thighs, and I smiled, recognizing her tell, the one that said she felt uncomfortable—“that’s gonna be fun. Might have to stop by a certain security guard’s office later and grab a cigarette.”
I chuckled, tentatively reaching out to grasp her hand in mine. “He might have a couple other ideas on how to relieve stress too. You never know.”
Melanie smiled, painting my dark gray world with color once again. “As long as he doesn’t mind if I cry a little.”
My thumb ran over her knuckles as I shook my head. “He would never. I’d kick his ass if he even thought about complaining about that.”
She took a step toward me, her bottom lip snagged between her teeth. Her eyes volleyed to the adjacent living room, checking on the kids, before bringing her gaze to mine.
