Chapter 34 #2
“So you wondered if you’d caused their breakup?” she probed, and when I nodded in response, she continued, “I see. And did your parents explain their reasons for divorcing?”
“Not really,” I said with a shrug. “They said their reasons were between them, but the gist was that they’d ‘grown apart,’” I said with finger quotes. “Whatever that meant.”
“Did you ask them if your short story had anything to do with the timing?”
“No,” I said softly. “I was leaving for college in a few months, and I think I wanted to put it behind me as fast as possible. Also, if I’m being totally honest, which I guess is kind of the point in here .
. .” I said, scanning the generic photos of snowcapped mountains and beaches on the walls with resignation.
“I was afraid of the answer. Like, if my story had been the catalyst, how could I live with that? It seemed better not to know than to be certain it was my fault.”
“And do you remember the framing of that question in your mind?” Dr. Field asked. “Like how might it have been a catalyst?”
“I don’t know. At the time, I wondered if maybe my story had somehow given them the idea to split up, and then they did.
” I flicked a piece of lint off my jeans.
“But then, after Sam died, I started to wonder if it was more of an invisible hand–ish pattern. Like, I write some words, then they come true, irrespective of any logical explanation. Does that make sense?”
“Hmm, I think so,” Dr. Field hedged. “Were there any parts of your short story that were autobiographical?”
This was not where I thought we were going. I looked at the clock. Still forty-five minutes to go. Oof. “Don’t you want to pivot to Sam and my fake astronaut boyfriend now?”
“You said I could ask you anything, Thea.” She cocked her head. “Did you mean that?”
I felt my chest constrict, but I didn’t say no.
“Were you, by any chance, the surviving child in your own family, like your short story protagonist?”
“What does that have to do with anything?” In my mind, I’d agreed to explore my grief over losing Sam, not revisit all my childhood traumas.
“Thea, you do understand that this is grief counseling and not a podcast or a deposition, right? I’m not trying to elicit specific answers from you, but we need to be open to examining our past to live a more authentic future.”
“Yes,” I croaked out.
“Yes what?” she asked.
“Yes, I was the surviving child in my family.” Dr. Field was either very lucky or very good, but my money was on the latter. We’d barely gotten started here, and she’d already managed to zero in on the one topic I almost never let escape from the sturdy lockbox buried deep inside.
“I see,” she said kindly. “Can you tell me what happened to your . . .”
“Sister. She was my older sister. Callie. She died in a freak accident when she was fourteen and I was twelve.”
“I’m so sorry, Thea. That’s awful,” she said, running a hand through her neat brown bob. “Were you with her when it happened?”
I glared at her, but it was more in faux anger designed to distract my brain from thinking about that gruesome day. “Kind of.”
“I’m sure this is difficult, but could you tell me what happened?”
I sucked in a breath. Other than the briefest of conversations with my parents, who steadfastly refused to revisit the horrors of that day, I’d only told Sam and Frannie what happened, and even with them I’d skipped over the awful text I sent Callie.
But Dr. Field had been clear that I needed to commit.
Even to the hardest parts. It had been almost twenty years, and I knew from experience that relating the details aloud would shatter me all over again.
But then I thought of Lucy. I was always telling her to be brave when facing challenges.
Maybe it was time for me to heed my own advice, even if that meant confessing to the worst thing I’d ever done.
I cleared my throat. “So my mom picked us up from school one day and surprised us with a shopping trip for skinny jeans. They were popular that year and we’d been begging her for months, but she kept saying our old flared jeans were fine.
When we got to the mall, we happened to walk past a group of kids from our school by the candy shop.
Callie asked our mom if she could say hi to her friends and meet us in ten minutes at the jeans store.
I knew Callie had a crush on one of the boys and I was worried she was going to blow my chance at the jeans, so I made some obnoxious kiss-kiss noises and told her to have fun with her boyfriend, figuring that would convince my mom to say no.
I couldn’t believe it when my mom said yes anyway, and even gave Callie a few dollars to buy herself a treat.
“When we got to the store, I whipped out the flip phone I’d just gotten for my birthday and sent Callie a text: ‘You better get me a jawbreaker. And don’t be late.
I’ll kill you if Mom changes her mind about the jeans.
’ After about twenty minutes in the dressing room, I’d found the perfect pair of jeans.
But Callie still hadn’t shown up, and she wasn’t responding to my mom’s texts.
My mom wanted us to go find Callie and then come back to buy our new jeans together, but I begged her to buy mine before we left.
We waited for a few minutes, but the line was too long, so my mom bailed.
On our way to find Callie, we came upon a large crowd of people.
Someone was yelling for people to stand back.
My mom grabbed my hand and pushed our way in.
That’s when I saw Callie’s baby-blue Converse high-tops.
I’ll spare you the gory details as they tried to open an airway, but nothing worked.
It was too late. We were told Callie had been running when she choked on a jawbreaker. ”
Dr. Field handed me a box of tissues and let me weep. When my tears had ebbed a bit, she asked, “Thea, do you think Callie dying was your fault?”
I was definitely regretting green-lighting this AMA lightning round. But this one was easy. “Of course I do. I was the one who told Callie to get jawbreakers, and not to be late. That had to be why she was running.”
“But Callie choking on a jawbreaker wasn’t your fault,” Dr. Field said.
I so desperately wanted to believe her. But I’d blamed myself for so long. It wasn’t easy to let go of this narrative. “I was selfish and impatient.”
“You were twelve,” Dr. Field volleyed back.
“Yeah, but I actually wrote the words in my text that I would kill her if my mom changed her mind about the jeans. My mom did change her mind, and then Callie died.”
“Thea,” Dr. Field said, sitting forward in her chair. “Your words didn’t kill your sister. You didn’t kill your sister. This is what’s known in the field as magical thinking.”
“No, magical was when I thought I had an astronaut boyfriend who was my husband reincarnated.” I raised an eyebrow. “I think you mean unmagical?”
“I suppose so,” Dr. Field agreed with a sad smile. “But let’s be serious for a moment. Do you believe you deserve to be happy?”
I regarded Dr. Field for a few beats, not really sure where she was going with this line of questioning, but I took a stab at answering her anyway.
“No, not really. Think about it. Callie, my parents’ divorce, Sam’s accident.
Whether it’s me or my writing, somehow I leave a trail of destruction everywhere I go.
I even tried to write my own happily ever after, and look how that turned out. ”
“I think we need to unpack all of that,” Dr. Field said.
“Is that an order or a threat?” I quipped, but my voice quavered.
“It’s a promise,” she said. “We’re going to work together and help you feel better, Thea.”
And somehow, I believed her.
As our session drew to an end, Dr. Field tasked me with the homework assignment from hell. Before our session next week, my job was to pin down one emotionally impenetrable math genius and find out why she and my dad got divorced.