Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Dr. Nora Bell
I’ve learned to read the room before the door even closes.
Today the room says that they didn’t speak in the car, and whoever suggested this topic can go dive off a short pier.
That would be me, for the record.
I settle into my chair and let the silence do its job for a moment. Outside, a city bus hisses past the window. Someone’s dog barks twice. It’s apparent we’re still in the “I don’t want to talk about my feelings” stage.
“Last week,” I say, keeping my voice level, “we talked about starting at the beginning. I’d like to go back to the divorce. You were nine when your parents divorced, but you two were separated at eleven, correct?”
The word divorce lands in the room like a bulldozer dropped from the top of Willis Tower.
On the far end of the couch, Foster pulls at a loose thread on his sleeve. He’s been doing that for three sessions now.
Decker has his eyes trained on the middle distance. He does that when he’s deciding how much of himself to share.
“It wasn’t a big thing,” Foster says, which is the most telling sentence a person can offer me. “People get divorced.”
“People do,” I agree. “What happened afterward?”
Neither of them answers immediately. But something moves through the room. Not discomfort, but more like the feeling before a storm when the air pressure changes and everything gets very still.
“Dad took me south.” Foster’s voice is even and sounds like a practiced answer. “He had a connection down there. A coach who thought I had something worth developing.”
I turn my attention to Decker. He’s barely nodding, as though he still can’t stomach hearing this chapter of their story.
“So you were separated,” I say. “Not just across town, but across states?”
“Yeah.” Foster shifts in his seat.
“How did you stay in contact?”
Decker shifts, an echo of the same movements his twin just made. “We had these—” He stops. Starts again. “Mom got us both these phones. Just for calls. No texting, basically. The plan was terrible, and it cost a fortune.”
“Sunday nights,” Foster murmurs.
Decker turns toward him. It’s the first time their eyes have met this session.
“Sunday nights,” Decker confirms. Both of their lips almost tip into a smile.
I let the moment sit. Two boys with a bad cell plan on Sunday nights. There’s a whole childhood compressed into those three things.
“What about pictures?” I ask. “Seeing each other’s lives?”
Foster makes a sound that isn’t quite a laugh. “It predated cheap smartphone plans. You didn’t just send pictures whenever you wanted. That wasn’t a thing. We weren’t old enough for email really. Sometimes I’d send him a baseball card from whatever team was local.”
“I still have them.” Decker’s voice is unsure, as if he’s not sure what his brother may think of that.
Foster’s hand pauses on his sleeve. He doesn’t turn toward Decker. But every therapist knows the difference between someone who didn’t hear something and someone who heard it and is trying to process the revelation.
“What about Logan Pruitt’s signature?” he asks.
Decker nods. “They’re all saved in a box. Not sure how the signature held up on the napkin stained with pizza grease.”
Foster huffs. “You’re welcome. I had to run back and ask him for a second signature and Dad was already halfway out the door.”
Decker’s lips tip. “I didn’t mean to be—I mean… I was just saying.”
“Yeah.” Foster quickly shuts down any emotion, the way he always does.
“By the time we were in high school,” Decker continues, “there was MySpace. Then Facebook. I’d see his games posted sometimes. Stats.” He pauses. “It was amazing to see the player he was becoming.”
“And how did you feel about that?” I ask gently.
Something moves across Decker’s face. He takes his time with his answer, as though he’s picking through a box and deciding what to give me.
“Happy for him.” A beat. “And jealous.” Foster’s head stays down. “And then angry at myself for being jealous because it wasn’t his fault.” A shorter beat. “And then just angry.”
“At Foster?”
“At—” He stops and quickly recalibrates himself. “At the situation.”
I let that land without any follow-up questions. We all know what the situation is.
Foster hasn’t moved. His hand is completely still on the thread now, which reads louder than any fidgeting he could do.
“Foster,” I say, “do you want to respond to that?”
A long moment passes, and I’m about to ask another question when he finally speaks.
“I knew.” His voice is quiet, but there’s something underneath it. “I didn’t know the specifics, but I knew. I used to downplay things on the phone. On Sundays.”
Decker’s jaw tightens. “I didn’t need you to do that.”
“I know.” Foster raises his gaze then, and there’s an edge to his expression I haven’t seen before. Something that’s been simmering. “But I didn’t have a lot of room to figure out what you needed. I was eleven, and I didn’t choose where I went. Plus, you had Mom.”
The room gets very quiet.
Decker drops his gaze.
“She wanted to be there,” Decker says carefully, pinpointing that this is a bigger issue—their mom.
“She was a weekly phone call for me.” Foster’s voice doesn’t rise, which might be worse.
“She was down the hall from you. I got to share her on Sundays with you.” He turns his attention back to his sleeve.
“Dad didn’t exactly leave a lot of space or understanding for me to be sad about it. There was always work to do.”
There it is. The thing Foster has been carrying that doesn’t have Decker’s name on it.
I stay very still.
Decker speaks first, and to his credit, he doesn’t deflect. “I knew that too, and I felt guilty, but I was a kid and thought you had everything. I didn’t think about what you lost too.”
“I know it looked good from afar, but you had the better parent,” Foster says quieter, as though it costs him.
They’re not facing each other. But the couch geometry has shifted again. Their bodies are opening up to one another.
This is why I keep the notebook closed in early sessions. Once you open it, people start narrating for the record. Right now, they’re just talking. To me, a little. To each other, without really meaning to.
“How long were you apart?” I ask.
Foster answers. “At first, eight months. We went home for Christmas.” A beat. “But then two years and four months before we saw one another again.”
And four months. He knows how long down to the month. Counted it and stored it somewhere deep.
“I want to ask you both something, and I want you to actually think about it before you answer.” I turn to Foster first. “Why did you come here? Not why Paisley recommended it to you. Why did you come?”
Foster is quiet for a long moment. The thread from his sleeve is balled up in his fist now. “He’s my brother.” He says it simply. As though it’s the only math that calculates.
I turn to Decker.
His jaw moves. His eyes are fixed on his hands. “Because I stopped knowing how to talk to him. And I don’t want that to be how it stays. I want a relationship with my brother.”
It’s the most either of them has offered me in three sessions.
I reach for my notebook slowly, and they both notice.
Neither of them tells me to stop.
We’re finally getting somewhere.