Chapter 14 #3
“I don’t have to be,” she declared, waving her hands, “but it’s a whole lot easier. I have absolutely no intention of ever being friends with him.”
“And yet you didn’t have any problem with him at first.”
“Yes, … I did,” she spat, chewing on her words.
“I didn’t want him around. You did. And, sure, I may have had something to do with helping you decide to get rid of him—not being friendly with him and reminding you of all his faults.
Maybe I should have passed on that message about his dad, but he wasn’t right for you then and isn’t right for you now.
So I don’t know why you would hold it against me. ”
“Do you know what’s right for me though?” she asked. Kelly eyed Keisha curiously. “Do you have any idea what I need or want for my life?”
“Yeah, and it’s not him,” she snapped.
“How much of that is because you’re afraid of being alone, afraid of not having a home?”
Her sister glared at her, suddenly angry. “Oh, no. … No, no, no. You’re not …” Kelly was spitting mad now. “You won’t pull a stunt like that with me.”
“Oh, and what stunt is that?” Keisha asked, staring at her sister. “Because you’re right. I did let you sway my decision. I did let all the times you ended up in hospital influence me, and that’s why I told him that I needed space and time.”
“And then you asked for the divorce.”
“I did,” she agreed, “and now I’m wondering if it was me wanting a divorce or if it was you telling me that I needed to divorce my husband.”
Kelly laughed. “It probably was me telling you, but the fact that I could even tell you that”—she smirked—“says an awful lot about you, and the fact that you really didn’t want him in your life.
If you actually loved the man, nobody could tell you that.
” And, with that, she wheeled herself back out of the living room, laughing like a loon.
Keisha stared out in the distance. Kelly was right about that, if nothing else.
But when it’s been a long time, with issues of long distance, you get worn down and don’t know where you’re going and what you’re doing.
And suddenly you’re listening to the wrong voices and the wrong people are telling you what to do.
In a way, Keisha hadn’t made her own decision at all. She had just made the one that Kelly wanted her to make because her sister was so worried about being alone and being afraid. It wasn’t Keisha’s own decision at all, and that’s where she had gone wrong.
Going up to her room, she brought out a journal and just started letting the emotions flow.
She still had a long way to go, but she wasn’t sure that divorcing Jaxon was the issue.
Every time she thought about those divorce papers, her stomach twisted up in knots, and she realized just how much she didn’t want the divorce.
Then she would think about all the problems they’d had when he was here and realized she just couldn’t live that way.
But then again, they didn’t have to. She didn’t know what the solution was, but it didn’t have to be that way, and, considering Kelly’s attitude, a different solution would probably be better for Keisha as well as for him.
If he had such a tough time being here in the first place, who’s to say he even wanted to come back anyway?
She wouldn’t want to, not if it had been made so obvious that she wasn’t welcome in the first place.
And it wasn’t just Kelly. Keisha herself hadn’t made Jaxon feel welcome either.
She should have been absolutely thrilled to see him but had very quickly let her sister’s poisonous voice hit her in all the wrong places, and that’s where everything went south.
Sad and ashamed of herself, Keisha worked her way through as much as she could by writing it down in her journal and then phoned her therapist and left a message, hoping for an appointment.
The next day she went through the motions at work and knew her staff was looking at her sideways throughout the day.
She tried hard to be what they needed and knew that she needed to kick this as fast as possible, but it was damn hard when she was stuck on some of the most basic issues.
When she walked in to her therapist’s lobby later that day, he came to get her, a frown on his face, and walked her back to his private office.
“Your message sounded pretty serious.”
She stared at him and nodded. “In a way, it is serious. And, in another way, it’s been a long time coming.”
Dr. Raul looked at her and nodded. “Then let’s begin.”
When her appointment was over, she sat outside in her car for a long moment.
A lot had been shared. A lot had been brought up and had shown her even more issues that she didn’t want to look at.
Dr. Raul had been the first to say that she needed to go easy on this and that she shouldn’t blame herself, reminding her that nothing was so far gone that she couldn’t save it—if she really wanted to.
Exhausted to the point of no return, she fell asleep early. She woke up in the night with her phone ringing. She grabbed it and answered it, her voice sleepy.
“If you go back to him, you’ll be sorry.” And, with that, her caller disconnected.
It was that same mechanical voice that had been plaguing her for what seemed like an eternity.
She stared down at the phone, shocked because it had to be somebody who actually knew who she was.
What did they mean, saying she would be sorry?
It sounded much more like a threat than an observation.
When her phone rang again, she stared at it as if it was a viper about to explode, but she recognized the number as Jaxon’s. “Hello?”
“You’re awake?”
“Yeah, I just got one of those nasty phone calls.”
He hesitated and then said, “So did I.”
“Why is somebody doing that to us?” she cried out.
“What did yours say?”
She stopped, winced, and took a deep breath. “If I go back to you, I’ll be sorry,” she repeated, quoting the voice on the phone.
“Yeah,” he replied. “I got something pretty similar. More like, If I go back, I’ll be sorry.”
“Somebody really doesn’t want us to be together,” she noted, with a bad attempt at humor.
He didn’t respond.
She continued. “I don’t know who it is, and I don’t have a clue why anybody would care. It’s our life. Nobody else should have any issue with us.”
“Oh, I agree,” he confirmed, “but these calls are getting particularly … nasty.”
“I think this is the first one that seems threatening,” she noted. “I just don’t know who cares enough.”
“Yeah, maybe that’s the question. Is your business in jeopardy?”
“What do you mean?”
“If we do get back together again, does it affect anything at the clinic?”
“Oh my,” she replied, gasping and breathing heavily.
“Take a deep breath and calm down.”
She took a couple deep breaths. “No, … not at all. It’s been my practice and my business all along. It’s always been my plan, and our marital status won’t change anything.”
“So, nobody will lose their job? You won’t have to lay off anybody? Nobody has any fears along those lines?”
“I don’t think so, and I don’t know why they would,” she replied immediately.
“It’s certainly interesting,” he noted. “I almost didn’t call you, since it’s late, but then I figured maybe you had gotten a call too.”
“Yeah, I sure did,” she noted, “but this one has unnerved me. There was more force, more anger, more something behind it.”
“Yeah, I agree. So, you can’t think of anybody else who might be against you being … I want to say, being happy, but I don’t know if that’s part of this.”
“I don’t know anybody who would do this,” she stated.
“I don’t either,” he agreed. “Completely unrelated but we have an injured armadillo here. Timber calls him Pako.”
“An armadillo?” she asked in astonishment. “What happened to him?”
“Looks as if he got into an argument with something, though I wouldn’t have thought anything would pick a fight with him.”
“Not often,” she noted cautiously. “Do I need to come see him?”
“I, … I could either bring him to you or have you come here.”
“It wouldn’t hurt to check on the llamas too,” she suggested, “and tomorrow is a half day anyway at the clinic. So maybe I’ll come out in the afternoon.”
“Okay, that sounds great. Look. I know it’s an odd question, but the accident that killed your parents and injured Kelly, was anybody else involved?”
She stared down at her phone. “I don’t know why you’re asking that,” she began, “but, yes, another vehicle was involved—two other vehicles actually. Some other cars got bumped, but I guess they classified it as a head-on collision. The other driver died too.”
“Interesting,” he muttered.
“I don’t have too many of the details. I was so busy looking after Kelly and trying to bury my parents that finding out who the other driver was wasn’t among my immediate needs at the time,” she shared. “That’s another ball I dropped and feel guilty about.”
“Don’t bother,” he stated. “It’s been a lot of years now.”
“It has, but Kelly might benefit somehow if I’d gone in that direction. God, I hadn’t really thought of it.”
“I’m worried about it now. It just occurred to me that maybe the one thing somebody doesn’t want is for you to be happy, and that would be someone who is unhappy themselves and who blames you.”
“I don’t know how anybody would think blaming me for their unhappiness would solve anything,” she replied, “but it doesn’t really make sense that it would involve that accident since I wasn’t even there. I was finishing exams.”
“Right,” he muttered. “You weren’t even in town then, were you?”
“No, I was at college,” she stated. “I finished my last exam that day at three o’clock, then stepped outside and started to whoop and holler because I’d finally completed my studies. Then I got the phone call which basically ended everything I knew in my life.”
“Interesting,” he repeated, with a sigh.
“That’s too many interesting comments coming out of you today.”
“I’m sorry. That was really crappy timing. It’s just that … my mind is spinning.”
“Yes, crappy timing, yet, if it hadn’t happened that way, I don’t know if I would have been able to finish. Things were financially very tight for quite a while, and even now I’m still just trying to get back on my feet.”
“And I was gone for quite a while.”
“Yes, you were,” she said, but this time she could see it for what it was—and the humor of it. “And apparently I just blocked all that out and went to work, not thinking about what you might need from me either.”
“That part isn’t of any importance at the moment,” he told her, “but I really would like to get these phone calls to stop.”
“You and me both.” She groaned. “It just seems as if somebody hates me, and I don’t know why.”
“Has your sister gotten any calls like that?”
“I don’t think so, but I can ask her.”
“Might be a good idea,” he suggested, “and, since you’ve hidden it from her, maybe she’s been hiding something similar from you.”
“Maybe,” she murmured. “Anyway, I’ll come out tomorrow afternoon.”
“Okay, but talk to Kelly in the meantime.” With that, he disconnected.