Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
TREVOR
Out of all the places I expected to be tonight, the passenger seat of my sister’s car is not one. I pull the stupid rock out again and smooth my thumb over it.
I had another panic attack, and my vision is fucked again because of it. I blink a few times as I consider the last twenty-four hours. I keep going over the same things, but the part that continues to evade me is how we got to this point.
Paige’s devastated yet quietly determined face flashes through my mind and wrecks me in the process. When did I become the person she needs protection against? Fuck.
I squeeze the rock until it bites into my fingers, and I try to halt my thoughts before I start to spiral all over again.
I peek over at Bethany, who is holding the steering wheel with a death grip, hands firmly at ten and two.
At first, when the truth of my situation started to penetrate the haze, I wanted to stay there, alone, in the dirt.
I run my fingers through my hair, then I tap the rock. I nearly left it when I followed Bethany to her car, but froze with my hand on the door handle and darted back to the place I threw it. I smooth its shiny sides and spin it around in my fingers. Why do I relate to a little rock so much?
The destruction my carelessness has brought to the lives of the people around me is overwhelming. I can’t be careless anymore. I can’t put anything off. I can’t take the easy route. I cannot lose my fucking family.
I look back at Bethany, but something dangling from the rearview mirror catches my eye.
What the fuck? I stop messing with the rock, keeping it hidden in my lap, and let my attention bounce around the car.
Wow. There are Pokémon everywhere. Never, in my twenty-two years of knowing her, would I have guessed this is Bethany’s car.
This is not the car of a vapid rich girl.
There are Poké Ball air fresheners in the vents.
Pokémon dangling from the mirror, mats on the floor, and—I try to discreetly check the back seat.
Yup. Pokémon stuffies are in the back seat.
I stop investigating the car and check on Bethany. Her eyes are on the road, her hands still tight on the wheel. “Pokémon, huh?”
She sighs and flashes a look at me before concentrating on the road. “Look, Paige and Jacob—”
“Wait, where is Jacob?” I thought they were having an auntie date.
“Oh, Edna is hanging out with him for a little while. I needed some air.”
“The cook?” Bethany nods.
“Right.” That’s odd. Does Paige know she does this when Jacob visits?
“Anyway, they are the only two people I really drive anywhere. I mean, yes, I … like Pokémon, but not as much as it looks like. Jacob … You know, your son.” She slaps herself on the forehead.
“Of course you know your son. That was stupid. I mean to say that Jacob knows. Knew? Has known? Well, he has known—no, definitely knows that I like to play Pokémon Go! sometimes, and he likes to give me things when he finds them.” She gasps in a breath after saying it all so quickly.
Bethany stares straight ahead as she turns at the single stoplight in town. The car lapses back into silence.
Her story about my son gifting her Pokémon makes another memory click into place.
There’s a knock on the door to our Ronald McDonald room, and I freeze. It’s not usually good news when there’s a knock on our door. Paiges sits up straighter, and shockingly, a smile lights up her face. “It’s your sister!”
It’s her first sign of joy from anything outside of the brief moments she gets to hold our baby, so I ignore my own immediate impulse and open the door to see Bethany standing alone in the hallway.
I inconspicuously try to lean out and check over her shoulders, down the hallway of the hospital, but she notices.
“They’re not with me. I came alone.”
Thank God Mom didn’t come with her. I get a brief look at her blue eyes—a mirror of my own, filled with a gleam of excitement and some kind of stuffed animal in her hand as she flashes me a shy smile before rushing to Paige’s side.
“Where is the baby?” Her quiet, low voice fills the otherwise silent room, and I watch as some of the joy present in my wife’s face fades.
“In the NICU,” I answer before Paige has to.
Bethany’s shoulders slump and tighten all at once. “Oh, okay. Um, I got him something.” She holds out a small, weird-looking blue turtle. I step closer to see it’s actually a Pokémon.
“We can’t bring anything in there, Bethany.” My voice is harsher than it needs to be, but seriously, we have bigger shit we’re dealing with.
Her face falls, and I hate that I feel guilty. “Oh, well, I’m sor—”
“I love it,” Paige interrupts and does gimme hands at my sister, whose shoulders begin to ease at my wife’s gentle words and ways.
She hesitantly walks the rest of the way into the room and hands Paige the toy.
My little wife pats the bed next to her, and Bethany hops on without hesitation.
Their voices become part of the background as they talk some nonsense about boys, bands, and Pokémon while I go back to change the course of my entire life, starting with changing my next semester classes from auto mechanics to business.
I blink a few times and frown. I have a feeling Bethany didn’t show up with our parents’ permission that day, and I have a feeling the little toy was not bought with their money, either. She was only thirteen or fourteen that day.
“Bethany.” I make her startle and jerk the wheel slightly in the process.
“Shit, sorry. I just—” Fuck. Why can’t I talk to her?
I need to talk to her about her boyfriend, but I need to get in a better headspace first. “Can you tell me how to play Pokémon Go!?” I am not putting this off.
I can’t throw this at her when we barely talk.
Her cautious agreement, hell, her cautious everything is giving me a crash course in why the hell I should never have listened to my mother.
This young woman, calmly and gently walking me through the process of starting my Pokémon Go!
journey, is nothing like the neurotic, selfish mess my mother—our mother—presents her as.
“Bethany can’t deal with you boys playing in the house.
Bethany needed me to take her shopping. Bethany won’t be able to handle going to the baseball game, and we can’t leave her at home alone.
” I’ve known Bethany for her entire life, but suddenly, I’m left wondering how much of this was her, and how much of it was an illusion my parents and Krista created.
“Go ahead and download it, and we can get started.” Bethany gently guides me. I shake my head. “Yeah, about that. I don’t have a phone yet.”
“You don’t … What happened here, Trevor?” She pulls up to the Catholic church on Main Street, parking far off to the side, but near the pathway that leads to the pretty white gazebo.
I rest my head in my hands and groan. This sucks. The way I feel right now, looking at my sister, knowing what I know, and with what else I suspect to be true? “I’m—I am so sorry, Bethany.”
“I don’t know what you’re apologizing for right now.” Her voice is growing smaller, confusion in her tone. A hit of guilt simmers through me, but before I can catch my breath, she makes it worse. “I’m sorry. I really don’t know. I’m not trying to … upset you.”
I laugh. I don’t really know why, but my sister is not the person everyone has had me believe, and it’s such a strange mix of relief and pain.
I don’t know how to process it all. “Bethany, you just apologized to me when you have to know that I am the person who is entirely in the wrong between the two of us.”
Her voice somehow manages to become smaller in a question I hate to answer. “What do you mean?”
“How long have you and Bobby been together?”
“Um, a couple of years, coming up.”
She was twenty years old, and he was over thirty. “Right.”
Bethany tugs at her shirt and wrings her hands for the millionth time since we got into the car, and I realize I have to say something.
Not only did I promise Paige, but this Bethany, the girl sitting next to me, who displays her nephew’s gifts to make him happy?
This grown-up version of my little sister does not deserve what may be happening to her.
“Something happened Friday night.” I take a calming breath, willing my calm to soothe her.
“Something I think has to do with your boyfriend.”
She goes rigid, eyeing me across the car.
“We left the party before the fireworks. He dropped me off before he headed home. He seemed fine. Did something happen other than …” She trails off and turns bright red.
Her eyebrows draw together as she tugs on her bottom lip.
Jesus, how could I forget that part of the night?
“I owe you an apology for that, too. I should have said something right away—”
“He shouldn’t have said it.” She whispers it, but I hear her clearly.
I shake my head. “No, he shouldn’t have.
” I gather my courage and conviction and lay it all out for her.
“I’ve been watching him this last week, and he’s been real close to Krista.
It’s not been anything overt. She’s been in his office, and I’ve seen them enter rooms together when they have no reason to be.
All things that could be explained away.
Until the conversation on Friday and their second one I walked into. ”
“Something else happened Friday?”
I scratch the scruff of my beard. “They were having a cozy chat against my kitchen cupboards, whispering about the concert.”
“The Savage Sixty8 concert.”
“He was talking about taking her and how they could enjoy the drive—”
Bethany swipes her hand across the air. “Enough.” Her expression is blank.
Or broken. “You—” her eyes go distant as she pulls out another of my stupid, stupid choices.
“You brought her to my home yesterday? You heard that, saw them. Then brought her … Why? Why would you do that?” Her eyes line with tears as she looks at me in disgust. “Was it some kind of sick game to you?”
“No! No. Not a game. Not at all.” My father’s voice from that morning echoes in my mind while I try to find the best way to answer the question.
“Are you fucking kidding me? Your panties are in a fucking twist, so you can’t even drive someone across town? Are you slow? That fucking stupid? Jesus Christ. Your mother wants you to bring her, so bring her. You don’t want to annoy me today, boy.”
I needed to take a few minutes to calm down after that conversation. Nothing went right that day. “I know this is not really helpful, and it will seem like a cop-out, but I didn’t have much of a choice.”
Bethany scoffs, her hurt turning her vicious.
“You didn’t have a choice. Right. God, here I was trying to figure out how to tell Paige what I saw in that office and feeling like the worst person for not immediately saying anything, but it was fine because I figured there was no way I actually saw anything.
You’re so in love with her, so I hoped …
But then you guys knew all of this about Bobby and didn’t say anything to me? ”
“No, no. Paige had no idea. We didn’t know. I had a plan in my head. I was going to tell you on Saturday, but when I got home … some news knocked me off kilter.”
“So off kilter that you just forgot to say something about my boyfriend propositioning my best friend?”
“I should probably tell you what else I think may have happened, but I don’t have any proof.
” She’s silent, so I continue. “There was a used condom wrapper and a box of condoms left in my car. After Friday night. It also—” I try not to gag with the new knowledge of why.
“It also smelled like sex in my car when I got back into it. It didn’t register until later, but I believe Krista may have pulled someone into my car while I was busy—”
“You think that Krista had sex with my boyfriend in your car.” I nod, but when I open my mouth to explain, she interrupts me. “Get out.”
“What?”
“Get. Out. The Shop is right down the road. I need to go home to relieve Edna of Jacob duty.”
“Bethany, don’t blame Paige. Please. Talk to her if you need to talk to someone. She needs to talk to someone—”
“Get out, Trevor. We’re done here.” Oddly, instead of starting the car again, she slides out of her door and heads to the little gazebo in the churchyard.
She doesn’t look back.