Gilly’s Divorce
or
Don’t Make The Mistakes I Did
and
Gilly’s Manual And Advice On Coping With Your Divorce
by
gay toltl kinman
Copyright gay toltl kinman 2012
Published at Smashwords
Smashwords License Statement This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Mysterious Women
2012
© Gay Toltl Kinman 2012 http://gaykinman.com
All rights reserved
© Illustrator / Editor Ann Hunnewell 2012
All rights reserved
© Formatting by Peggie Chan 2012
All rights reserved
Cover art:
A splash of water in a kitchen sink.
In the foreground are water globules, a type of antibubble; droplets of water that sit on top of the water's surface and skim across quickly without submerging. They are short-lived, move very quickly, and are commonly mistaken for regular air bubbles. The flash is good at capturing their quick movements, but makes them look like bubbles because of the reflection.
Taken by User:Omegatron using a Canon Powershot SD110
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a3/Post-splash_with_droplets.jpg
GILLY’S DIVORCE
TABLE OF CONTENTS
3 PEANUT BRITTLE AND OLD PICTURES
6 LEMONADE AND IMPOSSIBLE QUESTIONS
8 WHY IS THIS HAPPENING TO ME?
13 SCHOOL AND SCAMPER AND BOOTS
29 ENDINGS—HAPPY AND OTHERWISE
SURPRISES
“Are you and Mom getting a divorce?”
“What makes you ask that, Kitten?” Daddy looks a little surprised. It’s Saturday morning and he’s lying on the sofa reading a book. He always does that. And then he falls asleep.
I ask him now because Mom’s at work. And my baby sister, Honey, is over at her best friend’s house. I don’t want them to hear me asking Daddy the question I’ve thought about for a while. I especially don’t even want Honey to have any idea of what I fear most.
Everything’s normal. Like it is every Saturday.
Why is my heart pounding so fast?
How to answer him?
With the truth?
“Because you and Mom are always arguing. Mellissa says that married people who always argue are going to get a divorce.” I say it real fast so maybe he won’t hear it all and think I said something else.
“Are we really always doing that? Always arguing?” His voice is soft, sad-like. I’m sorry if that’s what made him sad. But I want to know. I need to make plans for my life.
“When you and Mom talk,” I go on, a little slower this time because I’m having trouble catching my breath. My heart is pounding so fast. “You both sound mad. Just like you do when we do something wrong.”
It’s not that they yell at each other. They just talk real cold. It usually happens on the weekends. That’s about the only time they’re both home together. And usually when we’re all eating. When they start, just even the first word, Honey and I ask to be excused. We go into the living room and turn up the sound on the TV. Mom and Daddy never seem to notice that we leave. They just keep at it. Whatever I eat always goes bad in my stomach.
“I had no idea. Maybe we do. No, Kitten, we’re not getting a divorce. Maybe we couldn’t even agree on that.” He smiles and pretends he made a joke. “What else have those eleven-year-old eyes and ears noticed?”
“I’m going to be twelve in a month.” Actually, more than a month. It’s almost the end of September and my birthday is on November 7th.
“That means I’ve known you all your life.” That’s a favorite joke of Daddy’s. But I think he’s trying to change the subject. So I just blurt out the rest of my answer.
“Mellissa says that’s the way her parents acted before they got a divorce. I want to know what’s going to happen. I don’t like those kinds of surprises.”
“No one does. Least of all, me,” Daddy says. Only he’s not smiling any more.
SISTERS
Daddy calls me Kitten. My real name is Gilly, short for Gillian.
My youngest sister is Honey. She’s nine. Daddy calls her Honey something. Honeybunch, Honeysuckle, Rose of Honey, Honey-baked Ham. Daddy keeps making up names with honey in them. Some of them are really funny. It has to do with what’s happening at that moment otherwise it’s hard to explain why they’re funny. Like one time we were looking at perfume and he called her Eau de Honey.
Mom used to get her mouth in a tight mode. She wants Honey to be called by her proper name. Mom named her after a favorite aunt or somebody. She told Daddy once that if he didn’t like the name why didn’t he say something at the time. Honey spoke up and said Honey was what she wanted to be called. And that was that. But Mom wasn’t too happy about it.
My oldest sister is Baby. The way Daddy says her name you picture a cute baby all powdered and coo-cooing in her crib. Too bad it doesn’t suit her. “Baby” because she’s the first baby they had. Eighteen years ago. I don’t know if she likes the name or not. Probably not. She doesn’t like much of anything. The good thing is she isn’t around anyway so it really doesn’t matter. She moved out. That’s great, because I got her bedroom.
Otherwise, I’d have to share one with Honey. Nobody wants to do that. Even Cindy, her best friend, won’t sleep over. That’s why they’re usually at Cindy’s place. Honey’s room looks like an atomic blast met a hurricane during an earthquake. That’s another thing that sets Mom and Daddy to talking cold. Mom wants the room straightened up now! Daddy says it’s her room, let her “decorate” it the way she wants. Mom says that throwing dirty clothes on the floor and furniture instead of hanging them in the closet is not considered decorating.
When Mom gets on her case, I think it makes Honey just want to be messier. Hard to do.
My next oldest sister, she’s sixteen, doesn’t have any pet name. And she doesn’t want one. Her name’s Elizabeth. Not Liz or Betty or Beth. Elizabeth. I think the name Elizabeth is really beautiful so I’m glad she’s not called anything else. Not that she answers if you do. Her name’s the only thing beautiful about her.
She moves in and out of our house like a yo-yo. Her bedroom’s real small so I’d rather have Baby’s room. Besides, Elizabeth always comes back.
She’s a real pain. She keeps doing dumb things like going out and not locking the front door when nobody’s home.
And she just did another thing that made me really mad. Our uncle gave us a bunch of steaks when we visited him on his farm. My uncle raises the cows himself. He feeds them special stuff so that the steaks really taste super. Like no other steak I’ve ever had. It’s a real treat because we don’t get steak often, and because they’re so good.
When I take a bite, it reminds me of my uncle’s farm. We stay there a few days every summer and it’s really fun. Mom and Daddy seem different. Quieter, and they laugh more. My uncle is Mom’s brother. He’s a lot older than she is. He’s more like her father. When we’re there, it seems like Mom and Daddy don’t have any need to talk cold anymore.
When we came back Mom put the steaks in the freezer. And what does Elizabeth do? She takes them all to a barbecue with her weird friends. They were probably all so spaced out they didn’t know what they were eating anyhow. If they ate them. Likely, they threw them at each other. What a waste. And I had my mouth all set for one of those yummy, big, delicious, juicy steaks.
But now the steaks are gone. And so is Elizabeth.
Another thing—she won’t feed Boots and Scamper when it’s her turn. As far as she’s concerned, it’s never her turn. “Not my pets,” she says. Like she doesn’t play with them, too.
Boots is a black, silly-looking dog, a Lab-Shepherd mix. Only he’s got one ear that sticks straight up and one that doesn’t. He almost looks like a cartoon dog. He sure isn’t the brightest bulb on the planet.
Scamper is our calico cat. She’s smart and cute, too. I love them both. Which is why I seem to be the one who feeds them the most.
Worst of all. Elizabeth uses the last of the toilet paper. All the time. I mean she uses a whole roll practically every time she goes into the bathroom. And never puts on a new roll. I don’t notice until it’s too late. They’re stored under the sink. Five feet away.
About Scamper and Boots and Elizabeth. I take back that she doesn’t feed them. She does—from her plate which makes Mom mad. “Haven’t I told you a million times I don’t want them fed from the table…” and nahnahnah.
Then she takes her plate into the living room. That alone is a definite “no-no.” To make it even worse, she feeds them on the sofa. And that makes Daddy really mad. “Haven’t I told you a million times not to feed them on the sofa. It gets the sofa all dirty…” and nahnahnah.
Then they both yell at her and she yells back. She gets mad. And the next thing we know, she moves out.
Again.
Mom and Daddy try to find out where she is to make sure she’s all right and to ask her to come back. Sometimes they even find her. She’s always off staying with a bunch of weird kids until they get too flaky—even for her, then she comes home. Even when she lives here, she’s hardly ever home.
Like I say, she’s a real pain and I don’t miss her a bit. Not that Mom and Daddy argue any less when she’s gone.
Now it’s just Honey and me left at home.
PEANUT BRITTLE AND OLD PICTURES
We live in Mirasol, California. To play in the snow we drive for two hours to Mt. Baldy. One afternoon is enough cold for me. That’s why I’m glad I live here and not up there.
I walk over to Mellissa’s to tell her what Daddy says. She’s the one who got me to ask him. It took me a while to get up my nerve. I guess I got so used to the way Mom and Daddy talk to each other, I just thought it was normal. Mellissa set me straight.
She wants to know everything he said. What I said, how he looked. So I tell her. Not that there’s much to tell.
We sprawl on her bed and her mother brings us a plate of homemade peanut brittle. We thank her and wait until she leaves before we say anything else. But we don’t say anything right away because we’re too busy stuffing our faces with the brittle. It’s so good.
When Mom’s at work, Daddy takes us out for hamburgers. So it doesn’t matter if I spoil my appetite for lunch, it’s going to be another hamburger day.
“Do they ever hug and kiss or anything like that?” Mellissa asks between brittle chomps.
“I haven’t seen them do that for a long time.” I try to think back when I saw them kiss last, but I can’t remember. “They’re hardly ever home at the same time,” I say. That’s funny in a way because all I hear in my head is them arguing.
“Do they ever take a rest on Sunday afternoon?”
“Daddy naps on the sofa. Is that what you mean? All he does every weekend is take naps on the sofa,” I say.
“No, silly, that’s not what I mean. Do they say they’re going to take a rest? And go in their bedroom and close the door? And tell everyone not to bother them?”
I shake my head. She smiles like she knows a secret and she’s not sharing it with me. I don’t want to know any more about that subject than I have to. I don’t want to talk about it because it’s my parents.
“That’s bad,” she says. She’s said that before. She knows everything about parents getting divorced. She’s always talking about the Moms and Dads of kids we go to school with, like it’s another subject she’s studying.
I’m getting a bad feeling in my stomach. Everything that Mellissa says about people who end up getting a divorce makes me think of the way Mom and Daddy are.
“My parents were like that before they got divorced,” she says. “Only my Father worked on Saturday and Sunday so he wasn’t home to take naps. I read that sleeping is a way of escaping.”
“You mean at night?” I put more brittle into my mouth. I’d better stop. My teeth are real soft. Chewing on the brittle is not a good idea.
That’s another thing my parents fight about. My dental bills. And all the times I have to go to the dentist. One of them has to take off work to drive me there. The way they talk is like I have bad teeth on purpose just to make them mad. Sure.
Nobody ever asks me if I like going to the dentist. I don’t. Even though he’s a really nice man and tries not to hurt me.
“No. I mean if you’ve had eight hours of sleep and then you sleep during the day. It means you’re trying to escape from something.”
“What can Daddy be escaping from?”
“I don’t know. Talking to your mother? You said they argue all the time.”
“It’s not arguing exactly.”
“What do they say?”
I really don’t have to think too long. It’s something that Honey and I laugh about. Sort of.
“Mom says `You didn’t take out the garbage last night’ and Daddy says `If it was packaged up properly and not all over the floor then I’d take it out.’ Then Mom says `You know the dog got into it’ and Daddy says `Then let the dog take it out.’”
“Your father’s funny.”
“It’s not funny when he does it. I don’t like it. He says it like he’s mad. When he’s mad, he gets more sarcastic. It makes me scared,” I’m telling her something I don’t want to tell her. I don’t even want to tell myself.
“That’s not real fighting. Like yelling and screaming. And calling each other names. And throwing things. That’s what my parents did.” she says.
“They’re that way about everything.”
“Such as what?”
I think for a moment. “One time Mom made an asparagus casserole. Daddy said she did it on purpose because she knows he’s allergic to it. She kept saying she forgot.”
“Did she?”
“Yeah. I don’t remember her ever making it before. A neighbor gave us a bunch from her garden.”
“I like asparagus.”
“I’m not sure if I do now or not,” I say.
I’ve had enough brittle and my hands and mouth are all sticky. So I go into Mellissa’s bathroom. She has one all to herself. She doesn’t have any brothers or sisters. I wash my hands and face, then use her hand lotion. It smells like peppermint.
I think about the question I want to ask her.
When I come back I say, “Do you think your parents got divorced because of you? I mean, do you think you did something?” I wonder if my teeth are the problem. Would parents get divorced if their kid has bad teeth?
“Nope, and neither did you. What do you think you did?” She doesn’t wait for an answer. “Beside you have three other sisters, including two nutty ones. If anybody did anything, it’s them, or at least two of them. Honey’s okay.”
“Yeah, but Baby and Elizabeth aren’t living at home right now. I do. So I can’t blame them.”
“You don’t have anything to do with the way your parents are acting. Your parents just don’t get along. Plain and simple.”
“Why? They’re my parents. They’re married, they’re supposed to get along okay.”
“Gilly, that doesn’t have anything to do with anything. Are you any more special than anyone else just because they’re your parents?”
“I wonder what it was like when they did get along. I wonder what they were like when they first met. They must have been in love because they got married. I’ve seen pictures of them hugging.”
“Those pictures are old.”
Yeah, they are.
EARNING MONEY THE HARD WAY
There’s not much I like about my life. Is this all there is? Do I have more of the same to look forward to? My parents fighting all the time. We don’t seem to ever do anything for fun. I’m not sure I want to do anything. Go to Magic Mountain and ride the roller coaster? I don’t think so. My stomach is as bad as my teeth. Sensitive. Weak.
And now I have to face Jeb. He’s the kid across the street I babysit. He’s three. At least I get to make some money. But I earn every penny of it.
He won’t even sit still to watch TV. He runs around the house like he’s being chased by something.
He screams all the time. If the neighbors hear, they must think I’m chopping him up into small pieces. With a dull axe. Slowly.
I always leave there with a raging headache. I could use a whole bottle of St. Joseph aspirin to get rid of it.
I try to watch TV while I’m babysitting him. I hope to ignore him, but it’s impossible. He wants me to pay attention to him every single minute. It’s got to be a boy thing. I can’t remember being like that when I was a kid. I don’t think Honey was either.
I keep watching the clock. Wanting the time to go faster. I seem to be doing that a lot lately. But I want lots of hours so I’ll make more money. But faster so I don’t have to put up with this kid.
No wonder his parents go out so much. I would, too, if I had to come home to Jeb. I also know they have a long list of babysitters. How many do they call before they get to me?
If he was my kid he wouldn’t act like this. I think he’s royally spoiled.
I want to have kids when I get married. But Jeb could make me change my mind fast. Maybe I just won’t have boys.
Trying to play any kind of game with him is out. He won’t sit still. He plays some sort of cops and robbers in his head. At least, that’s what it seems like to me, but who knows.
I play games in my head, too. I pretend I’m grown up and this is my house and that I have a handsome husband and we’re rich. Soon he’ll be home and tell me how much he’s missed me. We are very happy together. We love each other very much. And always will. And we never argue.
Jeb screams around me and bangs full force into my knee. I think he’s broken it. I tell him that and he laughs like some monster in a horror movie.
I pretend Jeb is not my kid. I’m just babysitting him here in my lovely home for a neighbor who’s had an emergency. I’m being very kind and helping out by keeping him here until she returns. Which I hope is soon.
Pretending it’s my house makes it easier to stand Jeb. Particularly pretending about my loving, handsome husband. I close my eyes and try to see his face. Jeb slams into me for the second time. I’ll never be able to use my leg again.
Trying to get him to go to sleep is also impossible. He won’t stay in his bed unless I’m sitting there. He doesn’t like me to read to him. As soon as I turn out the light and leave the room, he comes running out and pretends he’s an airplane doing stunts. That’s what it looks like to me.
It’s funny in a way because as soon as he hears his parents drive up, he runs to his room and gets into bed and pretends he’s asleep.
At least that makes me look good.
I wonder if he’s like that with his other babysitters.
The main thing now is that I have some money. At least Jeb’s good for something.
Maybe running away money.
TAFFY AND PRESENTS
At school on Monday, I don’t get a chance to talk to Mellissa again about “it” until we go to her house afterwards.
“If your parents get divorced who do you want to live with?” Mellissa asks me.
My mouth falls open. I’m so startled. Why hadn’t I thought about that? I sure don’t know much about this divorce thing. No class at school for that. “You think I’ll have to move?” My heart races.
“Nah. The mothers always get the kids and the house,” says Mellissa.
“Not always. What about Cindy, Honey’s best friend?” I remind her.
“I forgot. Nobody knows where her mother is and her Dad wanted her,” Mellissa says. “Not all mothers are like Cindy’s. At least she didn’t have to move.”
We sprawl on Mellissa’s bed again. This time her mother gives us taffy. I didn’t feel like eating all day. Now the candy tastes good. But it’s trying to pull out my fillings. Mom and Daddy will really be mad if I have to go back to the dentist’s again so soon. It’s not easy to eat taffy without chewing.
“I want to live with both of them.” I hadn’t even considered the possibility of not living in the same house. “I don’t want to move,” I say. I don’t. And I don’t want to think about it. I put it in a box with all the other things in my mind that I don’t want to think about. The box is almost full.
“I hope you don’t have to. I don’t want you to move far away. I might never see you again.” She leans her head to one side and looks at me. Like I’m already far away and she’s looking at me from a distance. I shove more taffy into my mouth. I’m not liking this conversation.
“Did you have to decide who you wanted to live with?” I say.
“No. They decided for me. I stay with my Dad a lot, too. I wouldn’t have picked him even if they’d asked me. My dad was an alcoholic and when they fought, no one could call it sarcastic. You could hear him a block away. When I was walking home from school, I heard them when I was in front of the Martins’.”
“That’s not a block way.”
“It almost is. Anyhow your parents don’t do that. And at least your father’s not an alcoholic. Your father’s nice,” Mellissa says.
“Yeah, I guess. I haven’t had any other fathers so I don’t know.” I think I’d better stop eating the taffy, but it’s so good. And it’s something to do with my hands. I’m so fidgety, as Mom always says.
“You’ve been to other people’s houses and met their Dads,” Mellissa says.
“Not too many. Besides everybody’s divorced.”
“Just think, you’ll be right in style like I am.” Mellissa kind of chokes on those last words.
“Very funny,” I say. I don’t want to be in style. Not that way.
“I wish there was something I could say to make you feel better.” Mellissa’s nice like that. That’s why she’s my best friend. And that’s why I’m even talking to her about “it.”
“The truth is it’s so much better now that my father and mother aren’t living in the same house. It was really awful. Now I get to see them both but not together. My father’s never drunk. He used to throw things and break them. Mom couldn’t have any vases and figurines and stuff like that around. And then when he was sober he never remembered doing the bad stuff.”
“I’m glad Daddy’s not like that.”
“Lots of good things happened when they got divorced. I get a lot more Christmas and birthday presents. Double vacations. All kinds of neat things. No hassles. They’re both extra nice to me. They both take me places. Before we never went anywhere. Now they seem to be in competition.”
That’s sure the opposite of my life right now. The exact opposite.
“I hope everything works out.” Mellissa looks into the bowl like she’s searching for the perfect piece of taffy. She takes one out and looks at it some more. She’s thinking about something.
“I’m not going to ever get married,” I say. Even though I daydream about my perfect husband and my two perfect children whenever I babysit Jeb.
“Me neither.”
“It all seems like such a hassle.”
“Yeah, it does,” says Mellissa.
“Let’s live together when we grow up.”
“What if we don’t get along?”
“Then I’ll move out.”
“Everybody will think we’re lesbians,” she says.
“We’re not. Just because we live together doesn’t mean that,” I say. Then I think, maybe I’ll just live alone.
Maybe that’s exactly what I’ll do.
I wish I could grow up faster.
LEMONADE AND IMPOSSIBLE QUESTIONS
It’s Tuesday. Mom was mad at me yesterday because I didn’t come home from school right away and do the dishes like she told me. I forgot about them. Talking to Mellissa was more important.
To add to that, Boots broke some dishes when he was trying to eat the leftovers off the plates on the table. So that was another mess. Mom just went on for ages. The taffy I’d eaten at Mellissa’s turned into a hard block in my stomach.
So today I tell Mellissa I can’t go over to her house. We stop at the park on the way home. We both have cans of pink lemonade from the corner store.
“It’s so sad,” she says. “Look at our classmates. Practically nobody in our class has two parents, I mean birth parents, living at home.”
“I still believe in happily ever after when I get married.”
“You mean you still believe in Cinderella and a Prince Charming?” Mellissa wipes off the top of the can with a tissue and pops the top.
“Yes,” I say, sitting up straight, defying her to say I’m wrong. Then I think about what we’re talking about. “Mom and Daddy are both so lovable—except when they’re together,” I say. “I don’t want them to be like they are. They’re making me miserable. But I don’t want them to be apart either.”
“I bet that’s why Baby and Elizabeth left.”
“That’s not what Daddy says,” I tell her.
“What does he say?”
“He says they couldn’t control them any more.”
“What does he mean, ‘couldn’t control them’?”
“I guess Baby and Elizabeth didn’t do what Mom and Daddy told them to do. I didn’t ask him a whole lot of questions about it. I have Baby’s room so I don’t want her to come back. Otherwise, I’d have to share a room with Honey.” I roll my eyes.
Mellissa makes a horrified face. She’s peeked into Honey’s room. Not that my room will be pictured in any magazine.
Mellissa’s room would be though. It’s always so neat. But her mom has a cleaning lady. I wonder if that would help my Mom and Dad, keep them from arguing. If the cleaning lady took out the garbage then maybe they wouldn’t fight. At least not about that. And then the toilets—
“Your life’s going to change, that’s for sure,” Mellissa says between gulps of lemonade. “But it’ll get better. It sure did for me.”
I’m not Mellissa and I don’t want my life to change. I’m scared. It’s not the greatest life in the world, but it’s mine. Right now it’s all I’ve got and it seems very precious. Even thought I’m not happy about it.
“Did you ever feel like maybe it was your fault that your parents got divorced.” I asked that question yesterday, but I want to talk about it some more. I was glad I could ask Mellissa all the things I can’t talk to anyone else about. Maybe I just want her to tell me again that I’m not to blame for any of it.
“In a way. I thought it was my fault that my father drank.”
“You did? Why?” I’m surprised she says this.
“He started drinking when I was a baby. Then he stopped for a long time. He started up again when I went to first grade. He said that me going to school made him feel very old.”
“How old was he?”
“I don’t remember. I could figure it out. Who knows how old parents are? They’re parents.”
“Why did you think it was your fault that your father drank?”
She doesn’t say anything right away. She looks at the grass as though the answer is written on one of the green blades there.
There’s something she’s not telling me. I think that because I know Mellissa really well. But I don’t ask again. She’ll tell me if she wants to. Maybe it’s something I don’t want to know.
“Oh, I know it wasn’t my fault. I had therapy and I’m all right now.” She says this real fast.
I don’t want to have therapy. From what Mellissa told me before, I don’t like the idea of telling a stranger my innermost thoughts. They’re my thoughts, I don’t even tell them all to Mellissa. And if’s there’s anyone I would tell them to, it’s her. I like having a part of me that’s secret, that nobody else knows about. That’s how I know I’m me. If I tell everything, there won’t me any “me” left.
Sometimes I think it’s like having an identical twin inside of me. The only one who really knows me. And she’s not going to tell anybody. She’s not going to reveal my secret thoughts.
And that’s what a therapist would want me to do. She would want to get inside of me and try to find out everything about me. She would want to kill my secret twin.
I can’t do that.
I fill my mouth with lemonade. I don’t want to tell Mellissa that I can’t go through therapy. She’ll just try to talk me into it and tell me how wonderful it is. After all, she had it and it worked for her. So I should do it, too. I know that’s what she’d say.
“Before therapy, why did you think that?” I ask her. I have to keep talking, doing something. Fidgety again.
I also know it must have been hard for her because she doesn’t talk about it much. I mean, she doesn’t talk about going through it much, she only talks about the afterwards and how wonderful it was—afterwards. Maybe like having a really painful tooth worked on. It feels so good when it’s over. I know about that.
“I thought what…well, that I did something. Or just because I was me. Like maybe my father was disappointed I wasn’t a boy. I didn’t really know what. I just thought it was something I did.” She fiddles with the top of her lemonade. “Like my just being alive.”
I wait for a minute. Mellissa has a strange painful look on her face. Like she’s eating a pickle. Finally, I say, “What happened in therapy?”
“The main thing I learned is that everyone is responsible for their own actions,” Mellissa says.
I thought about that. Responsible.
“My father was responsible for his actions. Not that he ever blamed me for anything. I just thought it was my fault. I’ll tell you something else that I’ve never told anyone except the therapist I had.”
“What?” I say, leaning closer.
“I felt like committing suicide.”
I gasp. I bet that’s what she didn’t want to tell me before. “Did you try?”
“No. But I thought if I did then everything would be okay and without me my parents would get together again.”
I lean back against the park bench not wanting to think about Mellissa committing suicide. Not being here. Here on this earth.