Chapter 46
CHAPTER 46
OWEN
September 9
When the plywood finally comes off the living room window after two months and the sunlight pours in, I nearly gasp. It’s been covered up ever since the pineapple can sailed through it, and I forgot what it was like to have light in the living room.
After Wyatt fled my house, I taped some cardboard over the jagged glass. I swept up all the tiny broken pieces. I waited for Felix to come home and ask me how the window broke. But he just took one look at me, then set about replacing my sad, falling-off cardboard with plywood.
“I’ve always wanted to learn how to repair historic wooden windows,” was all he said.
That was two months ago.
And to my surprise, despite the laundry list of unfinished projects in our house, he did.
The window—stripped, glazed, and holding a shiny new pane of glass—is lying on the living room carpet.
“Okay, I’m going to place the window, and then you’ll hold it while I secure it,” Felix says.
I was skeptical when he told me he needed me to assist on this job, but he assured me I’d be wielding no tools, so I agreed. And my therapist has been encouraging me to try and be social again, so I figured I’d start at home alone with my brother.
Felix lifts the window into its spot, then nods for me to take his place. Once I’m holding it, he steps back.
“So how’s therapy going?” he asks, and it’s not lost on me that he lobs this question as soon as he knows I’m trapped. My stomach clenches like it always does when therapy comes up. I’m not used to letting my wounds show.
The night I cried all over Francie, finally recognizing what a disaster I was, she helped me reach out to therapists. I visited four potential providers over the next week, finally settling on a guy about my age who has a disconcerting penchant for boat shoes but not a trace of condescension in his voice.
Dr. Berry is a psychiatrist whom I’ve been seeing twice a week for three weeks. He knows about that night with Eden and what happened with Wyatt. He knows about Dylan Anders. He knows about my mother dying when I was just six. He has diagnosed me with generalized anxiety disorder, and I’ve started an antianxiety medication.
And on his advice, I’ve told my family about all of this.
“Therapy’s good,” I say, and I can practically hear Dr. Berry’s voice in my head: Say more about that . “It’s hard. I’m learning a lot about myself, but I leave exhausted. It’s going to be a long process.”
“But you’re going to keep doing it?” Felix asks as he roots through his toolbox.
“I’m going to keep doing it,” I confirm, and just saying it actually does feel good. It feels weird, since I’ve spent my whole life making sure nobody knew I had trouble with anything ever, but it feels good.
“Excellent,” Felix says. “Glad to have another fuckup in the family.”
He laughs.
And I laugh.
And even though my life is far from perfect, I feel okay.
“So has this therapist told you to pull your head out of your ass and fix things with Wyatt yet?” Felix asks.
I nearly drop the window.
“We haven’t gotten that far,” I say, swallowing hard.
It’s true. I told Dr. Berry about the night I rejected her, about our relationship, about the pineapple can, about meeting her in the bar back in January and how she was wary of me. How I pushed her and cajoled and convinced her to trust me, only to smash her to bits.
Dr. Berry told me I needed to apologize to her, but he made it sound like something we’d tackle down the road. I’m still working on getting through a therapy session without crying.
And I don’t think any amount of therapy is going to help me come to terms with what I did to her. I’m finally starting to understand that Dylan Anders’s death wasn’t my fault. I didn’t do anything wrong. But Wyatt? What I did to her was wrong, and it was absolutely my choice.
I sigh. “I don’t know if I even could fix things,” I confess to Felix, giving voice to one of the intrusive thoughts that’s been swirling in my brain. Another thing I’ve learned in therapy? If you say something out loud, you take some of its power away. “I hurt her pretty bad. I don’t know if she’ll ever trust me again.”
“Yeah,” Felix says, “but are you really not even going to try? I mean, this window? Everything about this window said don’t even try . Decades of paint, some of it lead. Glazing that had degraded, water in the panes, rot taking hold. The sashes were a wreck, and one of the weights was missing. Most people would have taken one look at all the wear and said, ‘I’m better off just tossing it, replacing it with something new.’ But you know what? Historic windows, even ones that have been through shit, will last you longer than some new bullshit you buy at Home Depot.”
The whole time my brother is talking, he’s systematically nailing the window into the frame with precise movements, protecting the glass and the sash, making sure everything is placed perfectly.
“But I like the hard work. I think it’s worth it,” he says. Then he turns to me. “I think you do too.”
I feel my eyes watering, a side effect of all the therapy. Turns out that when you start acknowledging your feelings, you have to let them escape however they want. I’m discovering that for me, that involves a whole hell of a lot of crying.
Thankfully, my brother is unfazed.
“You love that girl. I saw you two together. She was good for you, and you were good for her. Don’t walk away from that,” he says.
I drop my gaze to my feet, because this much eye contact with my twin is a lot. We don’t really do this. In fact, it’s only my foray into therapy that has us talking about real shit at all. I’m learning that my whole family avoids the hard stuff by focusing on the good. And while positivity is great, there comes a point at which it’s more toxic than helpful. This kind of conversation—like everything else in my life right now—is new. And like I said, it’s weird, but it feels good.
Still, I have to cut the tension with a joke. “When did you become Dr. Phil?”
“Dr. Phil is a con man,” Felix shoots back. “I’m just your brother. And I’m telling you to sit down and use that big brain of yours to figure out a way to fix things. Show Wyatt that you love her, that you’re sorry, and that you want another shot.”