Page 60 of The Love of My Next Life
Meaning Lennon had to have been the one who...
Fuck, and she was only nine.
I rub her back and let her cry into my shirt. I run my fingers through her hair. Press soft kisses on the top of her head. I do everything I can think of to comfort her, short of taking her pain into my own body so she can be free of it.
If I knew how to do that, I would.
“Is that why you don’t let Trent know you paint?” I ask after a while.
“Yeah,” she says against me. Her lips tickle the skin on my neck as she talks. “I used to paint all the time, but I could always feel him watching me. Waiting. Like I was this ticking time bomb.”
She sits up and makes eye contact with me. The wet, red-rimmed look of her eyes makes the green in her hazel irises seem almost ethereal.
“My mom painted. She was so talented. But in her moods...”
Lennon pauses, grappling for the words. She looks back at the carpet, stares at it for a few moments, then finally brings her eyes back to me.
“You could kind of tell by her paintings. The colors she’d use, the speed at which she’d paint. You could tell when she was heading for a crash.”
She shrugs.
“I was tired of Dad trying to read into my work that way. Not seeing my paintings as art, but as warnings. I don’t know, as if they were harbingers of my impending mental illness, or something. It made him so anxious. I could tell he hated it.”
“Do you think...” I start to say, but then stop. I don’t have to finish. She knows what I was going to say.
“I don’t know,” she whispers, concern or embarrassment or both coating her words. “It can be genetic. I read that signs typically start anywhere between eighteen to twenty-nine, but my mom’s started at sixteen. They got worse when she had me, but then they got better for a few years. Things improved when she was on my dad’s health insurance because she got a proper diagnosis and treatment. Therapy and meds. It’s why he enlisted. But...”
She trails off and doesn’t finish. I don’t push.
I’ve always had a lot of respect for Trent. He’s one of the only people who has never treated me like a complete fuck-up. He treats me better than my sperm donor. I didn’t know about everything he went through with Lennon’s mom, but now that I do, I respect him more. And for Lennon to have gone through this as a kid? Shit.
“I’m sorry,” I say, though I know it’s not enough.
I hate that phrase.I’m sorry. But what else could I possibly say? It happened, and it’s fucked up that it happened, and Iamsorry.
“Thanks. Me too,” Lennon says, then she reaches up and starts pulling her hair into a French braid. “Wanna go sit on the beach?”
I nod, but I don’t take my eyes off her hands. Her talented fingers twist and loop strands of her long, brown hair until it’s all in an immaculate braid hanging down her back. She ties it off with a ribbon that she pulls off her wrist. It’s practiced and perfect. You can tell she’s been braiding her own hair for years.
“Why do you always braid your hair?” I ask as she stands up and walks through the house toward the door that leads to the beach access.
“I just always have,” she says with a shrug. “I like them.”
“But you don’t though,” I challenge. She raises an eyebrow.
“I don’t?”
“No,” I tell her. “You hate your hair in a braid. You’ve hated it for as long as I’ve known you.”
“Yeah...” She blinks and messes with the hem of her oversized t-shirt. “Well...my mom always used to braid it.”
I don’t say anything else until we’re seated on the beach, our shoes off and our toes dug deep in the sand. I lean back on my elbows and watch her watch the ocean. Her eyebrows are scrunched, deep in thought. I give her shirt a light tug to get her attention.
“Hey,” I say softly, “I should have told you.”
She turns to me and studies my face, bouncing her eyes between mine, checking for a lie.
“It’s okay.”
