CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
January
Kathryn
Kathryn’s car rolled to a stop at the crest of a circular driveway. Though the manicured grounds and bubbling koi pond gave off a resort-like feel, the squat, aggressively modern building made Kathryn uneasy, and she was grateful this would be her final visit. Max’s car rolled to a stop beside hers, and Kathryn climbed out into the sunlight. Javi joined her, pocketing Max’s car keys. He glanced at his phone. “Noon on the dot.”
As if on cue, the pristine glass doors of the clinic glided open, and Max strode down the stone pathway, a backpack slung over his shoulder. Kathryn’s heart swelled when she saw him in the beam of sunlight falling between the trees. He looked healthy, even better than he had the week before, when she’d come to attend their therapy sessions. He’d gained weight, and when his eyes fell on Javi, his face split into a grin.
“Maxwell!” Javi called, and jogged to meet Max at the end of the driveway. Javi reached out tentatively. “Can I?”
Max nodded and dropped his bag. “Yeah, yeah, it’s all right.”
Javi pulled Max into a hug that lifted him off his feet.
Kathryn approached. “You look good,” she said.
Max gave her a shy smile. “Thanks.”
When Amy had entered the waiting room that fateful night, Kathryn had finally met the woman she’d known only in theory up until that moment. Kathryn’s life—her entire reason for being—hung perilously in the balance. Though Amy’s face was dewy with sweat, her forehead creased with exhaustion, she was beautiful. Andrew ran to Amy, begged her for the news that would change all their lives. Amy told them how she’d nearly lost Max more than once. How she’d fought to bring him back.
“Thank you” was all Kathryn could form through her sobs.
Amy swept her scrub cap from her head. “This is what I do.” Then she’d turned away.
After a grueling month in the hospital—a time Kathryn hardly remembered—Max had spent six months in rehab. Six months of lonely nights in an empty house, longing to hear his noises on the other side of the wall. The rush of the shower. A fork on porcelain. But he was safe, she consoled herself. Healing. And each week, during their therapy sessions, she got to see him, touch him, watch him change. Now, seeing Max in front of her was like looking at a dream.
Kathryn had shown up each week for her session with her son. It went against her instincts, everything she’d ingrained in herself. Kathryn knew how it felt to have her secrets laid bare. Still, she told her son who she’d been before him. How he’d come to be. How he’d changed her.
How she wouldn’t change a single thing about who he was.
Max’s blue eyes held steady. Sometimes a flicker. But he absorbed it all.
And in return, behind tears, Max confessed that the guilt of nearly killing Javi was one he couldn’t escape. His words were a twisted dagger to Kathryn’s heart, the burdens her son carried. Nothing Kathryn had ever experienced hurt like Max speaking badly of himself. She longed for him to see himself as she did—perfect. She ached to absorb all of it for him. To absolve him of the agony of the human experience.
Max had requested Andrew’s presence for their last two sessions.
Andrew’s level voice had filled the respectful silence as he described his life until that point: the year he’d spent drowning in Kathryn’s absence, how he’d wanted to end his life. And how grateful he was that he hadn’t.
Over the years, all the times she’d thought of Andrew, Kathryn had never imagined he’d spent the days from the last time she saw him to the moment he got in line behind her at Starbucks fighting a battle of wills just to survive. She’d never considered the loneliness of his sober years or the bond he’d grown with Nick. A sharp picture of Andrew formed. And she loved him more deeply.
He’d said his recovery had felt like taking a steering wheel and holding it steady in the direction he wanted to go, even when he felt he was too weak to go on. When he said this, the therapist leaned forward, the cap of his pen pressed to his lips. “I find that analogy interesting, Andrew. You felt like you had let go of the wheel and crashed, because that’s exactly what Max did when he felt his most hopeless.” Kathryn’s attention moved to Max and Andrew, wearing a shared expression, taking in each word. “I think it’s important for both of you to remember when you feel like you can’t see the road in front of you, you need to take it mile by mile. Nobody is going to drive for you.”
In front of the clinic, Max pressed a finger to the hood of his car. “Wow, I haven’t seen you in forever.”
Javi clapped. “I’m going to take a walk around the, uh, gardens. See what this place is all about.”
Javi walked away, and Max leaned against the side of his car.
“Javi put your bags in the trunk,” Kathryn said. “Our house sold so fast, I’m sorry you didn’t get to say goodbye.”
Max looked at the ground. “It’s fine. Probably for the best. Delray ... maybe I’ll go back someday, but I’m glad you’re getting a fresh start.”
“That’s what I thought, too.” A heavy beat. “Max, I’m so sorry. About everything—”
“Hey, Mom. It’s ... Let’s save it for therapy, okay?” But the sides of his mouth lifted. Kathryn stepped toward her son and pulled him into a hug. He was there: solid and alive, in front of her. She tried not to think about those lost hours when his fate rested in the hands of Andrew’s wife.
In the sunlight, Kathryn buried her face in Max’s neck. He slipped his arms around her and held her close. Finally, she let him go.
“Javier,” Max shouted. “Let’s go.”
Javi appeared from the other side of the koi pond and tossed Max his car keys before climbing into the passenger seat.
“Are you sure you don’t want to come home, even for a few days?” Kathryn asked.
Max smiled over the roof of his car. “Thanks, but Javi found an apartment close to where Emmy and Harper live. Emmy said she’d come over for pizza when we get there.” The gravel scratched under his shifting feet. “We’ll see where it goes after that.”
Javi rolled down his window. “Like I’d ever let you pick out furniture by yourself.”
Max climbed into the car, and the last sound Kathryn heard was Max’s and Javi’s laughter as they pulled away. She merged onto the highway and headed toward her exit, a few towns north of Delray Beach.
The morning she’d moved, Andrew’s car had pulled up at her house just moments before she drove away for the last time. He’d reached up and dragged down the rolling door of the moving truck, and it had crashed beside them. Then he’d clutched her to his body. “Maybe in another life it would have been different for us,” he’d whispered, and her body shook as he’d held her against his chest, his tears falling into her hair. He’d kissed her where her hair parted.
They hadn’t said goodbye, because that wasn’t what it was. They spoke occasionally, though their communication had become sporadic after Max had left the hospital. It would never be the same; they were bound together, irrevocably changed, but the unspoken message between them was clear: I’m here. I’m not going anywhere, though this will never be anything more. She had to be okay with that. She had no choice.
Kathryn called Harper as she cruised I-95. “He’s headed your way,” she said after Harper answered. “I tried to get him to stay, but he and Javi couldn’t get out of here fast enough.”
“Well, you know how stubborn we were when we were young,” Harper said.
Kathryn felt a bittersweet smile spread across her face. “Keep an eye on him for me?”
“I will, Kat.”
Her son was a few miles ahead of her on the highway. Over the years, all the times she’d felt Max pull away, she’d tried to reach across the void, only to find he’d already slipped from her grasp. Now, while the space between them grew, she felt closer to him than ever before. Max was off to set into motion his own imprint on the world, to make his own mistakes. And, for the first time since that morning twenty years before, when she’d sped along the same highway, running from the consequences of her choices, Kathryn felt confident in her son’s future, comforted by the fact that Max was putting miles between himself and the wreckage of his parents’ decisions.
As the midday sun rose, Kathryn decided to go home, make herself a latte. It was time to adjust to that vacant house, to the new town, where she wouldn’t bump into Andrew, or his wife, or their babies. She took the off-ramp to the beginning of a new chapter she might chart alone. But she found she was comfortable with this notion, comfortable in her solitude, for the first time in as far back as her memory could reach.