Twenty-Five
Trina
I chickened out. I stared at my phone after Cole left for work again. After I joined him for another breakfast. After I didn’t bother offering to clean up once he started to do it himself like the last place he wanted me was in his kitchen. After I asked him if his days were busy, and he responded with a look that said it all. Deer Creek might have been growing, but it wasn’t exactly a metropolis, overflowing with constant crime. Still, I sensed he adored his job.
Who could blame him?
He was doing the very thing he’d dreamed of doing since he went to Deer Creek’s Spring Time Daze festival and not only got to go for a ride in one of our town’s cop cars, but went home with a shiny police badge sticker.
I couldn’t dwell on the fun we had as children though. The intimate moments we shared as we grew older. The distance that separated us before I left.
The days were counting down until his kids returned. The days were counting down on my ability to avoid everything, but changing course wasn’t always as simple as turning around.
The road behind me was paved with craters I couldn’t avoid. It was lined with destruction and darkness, so thorny and jagged, one wrong turn could slice the remaining parts of me in two. The path ahead wasn’t much brighter. Riddled with fears, a single misstep and I’d be thrown right off a cliff.
Which was why I couldn’t call my parents.
Not yet. Not until I made other calls first.
Which was why I was still staring at my phone, the contact number pulled up. Spending time with Mrs. P hadn’t been bad. It’d actually been enjoyable. Sure, there’d been moments of awkwardness and times when I caught her looking at me like she had something to say, but overall, I’d had fun.
Logically, I believed Cole. I doubted people hated me. That wasn’t my largest hurdle. The problem was I still hated myself, and that was a root I’d let burrow so deep inside of me no shovel could dig it out. I could tear off the stems and offshoots, but that root would remain.
It’d taken years to stop having nightmares of the decision I made when I left Deer Creek, and by then, my nightmares were plagued with more horrifying memories. They still came, yanking me from sleep in a cold sweat almost nightly. Somehow, when I’d been living my nightmare with Jonathan in the bed next to me, they hadn’t come. But now, almost every night they clung to me. I couldn’t shake them, and it didn’t matter that my bruises healed a little more every day, or that my knee was improving and the pain in my ribs didn’t feel like a stab to my gut with every cough or sneeze.
The injuries inflicted on me by Jonathan were the least of the things I needed to move beyond.
Before I could talk myself out of it again, I pressed Call.
It rang twice, before she answered. “This is Dr. McElroy. How can I help you?”
“Doctor, hi, this is Katrina…Trina. Actually, it’s Trina.”
Good grief. Even I didn’t know what to call myself anymore.
A whole new flood of nerves and fears crashed into me as the doctor’s soft sigh came through the phone.
“Good morning, how are you today? Is everything okay?”
At least if she noticed my nerves she ignored them. “No, well, yes. I mean, I’m fine, but I guess I do need your help.”
“What is it?”
“I, uh, well, I threw away the lists of therapists you gave me, and I guess I’d like to see if I can have another copy?”
There was a brief pause, followed by another pleased sound. “Of course, Trina.”
“I think maybe I’m ready, or closer I guess.”
“Well, that’s lovely to hear, sweetheart. And there’s no rush, you know. Your physical health comes first, but of course it’d be good for you to talk to someone who can help when you’re ready. Or when you think you might be getting there. I’ll get the list to you as soon as we’re off the phone. I assume you’re calling from a cell?”
“Yes. I am. Cole got it for me.”
“Good. I’ll text it right over, but while I have you, how about we talk about the rest of your injuries. Are you doing your therapy? For your knee?”
We spoke for a while. She went back over the exercises, movement, and pain I should be experiencing and reminded me to wear the brace as much as I felt comfortable, but not to rely on it. She skipped over the reason for my call so smoothly, I almost forgot I’d even asked for it until we hung up, and a few minutes later my phone dinged with a text.
I jumped at the sound, and then laughed at myself as I pulled it up.
There it was.
Lists of doctors as close as the first neighboring town, and then more in Boone, and some even further away who could do virtual.
A step.
I’d taken a step, and somehow, it felt like a leap.
The day crawled by, but it wasn’t the same kind of crawl it’d been for the last couple of weeks. Or the last few years, really. There wasn’t dread in the waiting, and somehow, there’d been a lightness to it. Once I got off the phone with the doctor, I did my exercises like she’d suggested. I spent the rest of the day in front of the television. My days with Jonathan hadn’t been extremely busy, but I’d always had certain things to do that were expected of me. Long since retired from modeling at his demand, he’d insisted the house was spotless and that I managed everything else. There were days I’d spend with Valerie, and time I’d spend attending events for him. Exercising was always planned into my day, and without all the structure and the fear of him jumping out of every dark corner, I wandered around Cole’s house lost.
He clearly cleaned, so there wasn’t much to do. I did a load of my own laundry, and though his mom offered to come back and spend time with me, I declined. Surely, she had things to do other than babysit me.
Which was fine.
But it left me alone all day, and without a whole lot else to do, I helped myself to a canned soup for lunch, and then scoured his fridge and pantry for something I could make for dinner. Last night’s heavy lasagna dinner meant I had to take it easy the next few days, but he had spinach and chicken, so at least there was something.
I prepared that to thaw and then turned on his television. I flipped through his streaming services, thankful I could figure everything out on my own, and was in the middle of an episode of Bridgerton, when my phone rang.
Cole’s name popped up, and I grabbed the phone.
“Hello?”
“How’s it going? Having a good day?”
he asked, as if it was impossible for anyone to have a bad day.
I shook off the weirdness, the fact I hadn’t had a good day in a decade. “It’s okay. I...um… I called the doctor earlier?—”
“What? What’s wrong? Did you get hurt?”
Of course he’d assume the worst. “No. It’s that I um, I threw away the therapist list a while ago, so I had her resend it to me.”
“Oh.”
At first, I swore there was disappointment, but when he spoke again, his voice was deeper. Softer. “Good, Trina. That’s really good. Proud of you.”
“Thanks.”
A lump swelled in my throat, and I bit down on the inside of my cheek. “How, um…how’s your day?”
“Not bad. Things will pick up soon with tourists and snow. Listen.”
He cleared his throat in a way I knew he wasn’t gearing up to share good news, and my chest tightened. “I forgot about this, but Robbie called me today. He and I were supposed to go hang out tonight.”
Robbie. I could picture the man…at least the eighteen-year-old version of him. Probably dressed in work boots, tight jeans, and a thick flannel, he’d been close to Cole’s size, but had a more boyish, rounded face when we were kids.
“Oh. Well, okay.”
Because he could hang out with Robbie whenever he wanted.
“I was wondering how you’d feel if they came over. I haven’t said anything,”
he said quickly. “But I thought, dinner with my parents went well, and one of their parents can watch their kids. It’d be chill. Pizza or something, and there’s a football game on, so…”
I let him trail off and clung to the silence through the phone. He wanted this. It was obvious. And yet if I said no, he’d meet Robbie at a bar, probably Max’s Tavern or somewhere newer. Maybe at a place I didn’t know existed and held no memories for me, but a lifetime for both of them.
“I almost called her today,”
I admitted to Cole. “Stared at her number for the longest time, and then I couldn’t…”
I’d thought of her though, so many times over the years. She was furious with me when I broke up with Cole and didn’t understand why. She was only one in a hundred people who would never know my darkest secrets.
“She’d be happy to see you,”
Cole said. There was that soft tone again. Coaxing.
He wanted this. He wanted this so desperately, and yet I froze. My fingertips clung to the phone. Twelve years of memories I had with all of them flashed through my mind.
“It’s hard,”
I admitted. “And scary.”
“I know it is. It’ll get easier.”
Shoot. My vision was blurry, and I could hardly see the screen across from me. I reached out and paused the show and sniffed. What would I say to her? To friends I abandoned and whose lives I vanished from with no explanation.
“Does Robbie know?”
I asked Cole. Because they’d really hate me then. For sure.
“Told him a long time ago, back before Marie came along. I assume he told Ashley, yeah, but I never asked, and she never brought it up.”
“They foster kids,”
I whispered. “They’ll…”
“They won’t,”
he assured me. “They might have, back then, but they’re the same good people you’ve always known.”
“If it goes bad?—”
“It won’t, but if it does, they’re gone. Trust me on this, like you’ve been doing.”
I hadn’t been actually. I just had no other options and no choices considering I’d gotten the crap beat out of me in my home and then woken up in a strange bedroom. The hospital was a blur, and I still couldn’t remember the plane ride.
But I was trying. The last twenty-four hours I’d tried a lot.
Maybe I could do this too.
“Okay,”
I rasped. “I’ll try.”
“Proud of you, Trina.”
And there it was again—that sensation that wasn’t quite right, but it wasn’t entirely wrong, either.
“Thanks, Cole.”