Chapter 33
Chapter Thirty-Three
Sayla
Goose bumps ghost up the back of my neck, but I’m not sure what he means. “There’s another sister?”
He nods, slowly. “Clara was only three when we lost her.” His voice is full of gravel. “But she’s still one of us. She always will be.”
My stomach plummets, and I can’t find the right words. There are no right words.
Except …
“I’m so sorry, Dex.” I reach for his hand, cup it in my lap.
“I was twelve at the time. Kendal was ten. Landry, eight. Jojo, six. Clara was the baby. A surprise, my mom said when she told us she was pregnant.” He lets out a broken laugh. “After Clara was born, we called her a blessing, though. And she really was.”
“Of course.” I squeeze his fingers.
“They were such good parents,” he says, his gaze lifting again.
“I mean, they are good parents. Even with five kids, they never seemed to be stretched too thin. They probably were, though.” He shakes his head.
“But we sure didn’t see it. They didn’t show that to us.
My sisters and I always felt safe and cared for. ”
“I’m sure you did,” I say, softly, but then I tell myself to keep quiet and let him talk.
“We had this routine whenever we got sick,” he says, “which was pretty often with so many kids trading germs. Hot soup. Cold washcloths. Honey for a cough. Rest in bed.” He squints, recalling the details.
“Mom kept an eye on any fevers, and if things didn’t get better after a day or so, we’d go to the doctor.
She did the same with Clara, the last time, too.
The doctor looked her over, prescribed some antibiotics.
Ear infection, he said. Told my mom she’d be fine.
My mom told my dad. Fine. They repeated that word all over our house.
Fine. Fine. Fine. They trusted the doctor.
But doctors are human.” His shoulders hitch.
“They make mistakes too. At least this one did. So Clara got worse—more listless, pale, glassy-eyed—and eventually they ended up in the ER. My mom insisted something was off. That Clara wasn’t Clara, she kept saying.
By the time they figured out what was really wrong with her, it was too late.
” His face goes grim. “Meningitis can be like that, apparently.”
“Oh, Dex.” My words are etched with sorrow.
“Yeah.” He clears his throat, pulls his hand free to rub at his upper arm. “The tattoo the girls and I all got? That was for her. For Clara.”
I nod, breathless. No wonder he protects that part of himself. “Right up to the moon,” I say.
“And back,” he adds. “It was her favorite book. Just one line in my mom’s handwriting means we’ll always have her with us, you know?”
No. I don’t. I can’t even imagine. And I never should’ve made any fuss about me today. Any fuss ever. Me, complaining that I had to move around a lot.
That’s nothing.
I’d move a million more times to take the sadness out of Dexter’s eyes.
“The bear in my office—he was Clara’s, too,” he says.
“Well, he started out as mine. That part was true. Years later, Clara found him in an old toy box. Named him Clarence.” A smile tugs at his lip.
“We teased her for not being very original. But she was three. She named all her stuffed animals some form of her name. She slept with the thing every night.”
“And that’s why you still have him now?”
He ducks his head, shy. “My mom really did slip him in my suitcase when I went to college. And afterward, I wasn’t exactly gonna keep him out on my bed, but I didn’t want to stick him somewhere I’d forget him again either.
So I brought him to school with me.” He takes a beat.
“Every time I go searching for something in that old filing cabinet, I get a little boost.” One corner of his lips turns up again.
“Everything I’ve told you was the truth, I just didn’t tell you the whole truth. ”
“You didn’t have to,” I assure him. “You don’t owe me any explanations. Ever.”
“But I want to tell you everything,” he says. “Because it’s all part of why I won’t leave Stony Peak.”
He rises, like his body can’t stay still in the wake of all these memories. I stand too and follow him out into the main living area.
Framed posters of great moments in sports history hang on the walls. There’s a succulent on a bistro table and a potted ficus in the corner. Dex steers me over to the sofa, and we sink onto the cushions next to each other.
“You can tell me now, but only if you want to.” I say this because I think he needs to get the story out, more than I need to understand.
“Our family moved here to Harvest Hollow, after …” His voice trails off.
After Clara. The unspoken end to the sentence.
“I’m sure leaving that old house was tough on my mom and dad,” he says, “but the rest of us kids weren’t doing so great, so they brought us here.
For a fresh start and all. We started going to all the Stony Peak football games and musicals and concerts as a family.
At first, that stuff was a distraction. But also, we needed some joy back in our lives.
No one ever wanted to forget … but sometimes, we had to put down the sadness. ”
“And choose happiness?”
“That’s who the Michaelses became.” He bobs his head.
“It’s who we still are. But after some therapy back then, I never talked about the who—or the why—with anyone again.
I think a part of me was afraid to share what happened because I’d have less of her somehow.
Like little pieces chipping away every time I opened my mouth.
So Bridger doesn’t know. Neither does anyone from high school or college. ”
“Not your guys with the shoulder tattoos?”
“Nope.” He touches the part of his arm with Clara’s moon. “But I have the tattoo. And I have her bear. Those are connections I’ll never lose. And maybe none of these reasons makes sense, but what can I say? Holding her story in became a habit. The thing I carry on my own.”
“It makes total sense,” I say. “At least to me.”
“Hmm.” He’s quiet for a moment before he goes on.
“Once we moved here and started going to the games, all I dreamed about was playing for the Squirrels. Kendal and Landry felt the same. Not so much Jojo. In her defense, she was six. She hadn’t really started dreaming yet.
” This pulls another small smile from him.
“The rest of us joined as many teams as we could, though. Every sport. Every season. We kept busy. We kept living. We kept our parents going.” He pauses to meet my gaze again. “So.”
“So. All your memories from that time are wrapped up in Stony Peak sports.”
“Yes.”
“The school healed you.”
“Yes.”
I press a palm to his knee. “Then of course you can’t leave, Dex.”
“I’m sorry, Sayla.” His eyes go glassy.
“Don’t be sorry. I’m so glad you told me. I’ve got a whole new appreciation for what sports did for you. What athletics can do for kids, in general. I’ve been so focused on trying to get everyone to understand how important my department is, I wasn’t fully listening to you.”
“You’re listening now.”
“You listened first.”
“I’d do anything for you, Kroft.” He draws in a long breath, his gaze still pleading with me. “Well. Almost anything.”
“I know,” I say. “You even tried giving up the FRIG for me.”
“Yeah. I did.”
“And that had to be the one time you didn’t succeed at something.”
A low breath of laughter slips out of him, and I’m relieved by the release.
I was so unprepared for this moment between us, I can’t help feeling like I’m totally flailing.
Then again, Dex says he likes my whelm. Maybe I’m finally the right amount of enough for someone. Maybe we can be that for each other.
“Hey.” I tilt my head as something occurs to me. “Is Clara the reason you got so worried when you thought I went missing at the retreat?”
He looks down at my hand, still on his knee.
“I’m sure I’ve got that instinct programmed in me.
I don’t ever want to feel like that again.
The sense of helplessness and loss. It’s why I never let myself get close to anyone new.
Close enough to care.” He lifts his gaze, eyes softening at the corners. “Until now.”
Emotions catch in my throat, but I swallow them down. “You feel close to me?”
“I tried not to,” he says.
“And I tried not to get tangled up with a coworker.” I shake my head and sigh. “Guess we’re not so great at achieving our goals after all.”
“Or we could just say we’re flexible.”
“No one’s ever called me flexible before.”
“It’s about time, then,” he says, and we both fall quiet for a moment.
“So.” I scrunch my nose. “What do we do now?”
He lays a hand over mine—the one on his knee—and presses tenderly.
“We do our best to get that four-year accreditation from the SACSS. Then I tell Dr. Dewey I’m not leaving Stony Peak.
And then you … Well, I hope you’ll decide to stay, too.
” He glances around the room. “I mean, stay in Harvest Hollow. At the school we both love. Not stay here in this apartment, specifically.”
“Ah.” I test a soft smile of my own. “Does this mean you aren’t holding me hostage anymore?”
“Not unless you want me to.” A small laugh slips out of him, but his eyes are still wet at the corners.
“What if Dr. Dewey makes your transfer to Harvest High a condition of the grant?”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.”
I put my other hand on top of his hand, that's on top of my hand, that’s on top of his knee. A hand sandwich. “Or …”
“Or what?”
“Or maybe we’ll find a way to get both our projects funded.”