Chapter 12 – Davis
CHAPTER TWELVE
DAVIS
As much as she wanted it to, reading the email from Professor Novak for the third time in as many days didn’t change the effect the words had on her. The new research proposal—engineering microbes to target specific cancer cells for site-directed chemotherapy—sounded interesting. She’d be studying the same bacterial strain she’d been working with before she left school. The funding was solid for the next five years. Her lab mates were all returning. And she couldn’t summon a single ounce of enthusiasm.
She’d never been this person before. She’d always known where she was going, what she was supposed to do. Or at least what everyone expected her to do. She didn’t recognize this inertia, this indifference, this apathy. Maybe she was depressed too. Maybe she should get on fucking Lexapro.
The knock on her door was a signature. The same three little taps her mom had used for as long as Davis could remember.
“Hi, honey,” her mom said, peeking her head inside. “Can I come in?”
“Sure.” Flipping her laptop closed, Davis swiveled around in her desk chair. “What’s up? ”
Her mom crossed the room to sit on the edge of Davis’s bed. When she started wringing her hands in her lap, Davis asked, “Mom? You okay?” Because if she’d come in here to deliver bad news, the new, indecisive, and, quite frankly, flailing version of herself wasn’t sure she could handle it.
“Davis, sweetie.”
Honey and sweetie? This couldn’t be good.
“I’ve given you a few days to tell me, and you haven’t. So I’m just going to come right out and say it. Kev told Madigan that you were thinking about going back to school. And then Madigan told me.”
Davis groaned, circling her fingertips into her abruptly pounding temples. “Shit.”
“Did you not feel like you could tell me?” Hurt rang through her mom’s words. “You know I’ll support you in whatever you want to do. You know that, right?”
This wasn’t necessarily true. Her mom hadn’t exactly agreed with her choice to leave school in the first place. And she definitely hadn’t wanted Davis to stay at Bluebird, at least not initially. But what Davis was going through now, the paralyzing hesitance… She barely knew how to explain it to herself, let alone to anyone else.
“I didn’t tell you yet,” she said, staring at the pink nail polish she’d applied last night to feel like she was at least making an attempt at self-care. It was already chipped. “Because I’ve apparently decided that denial is a good look this summer.”
With a soft laugh that faded into an apologetic sigh, her mom tilted her head to the side, her blond curls—a little darker and longer than Davis’s—bunching up on her shoulder. “Want to talk about it?”
“I don’t know,” Davis said while frustration prickled her skin. “I feel like I’m just floating here. Like I’m”—she looked around her room, waving a hand to encompass so many things she couldn’t find the words for. Like I’m stuck. Like what I want is too close to me here, considering I can’t have it. Like I don’t know how to jump to the next thing anymore. Like I’m completely and totally —“lost.”
“Oh, sweetie. ”
“So I might leave. I might go back to school.” She raised and lowered a shoulder, back to staring at her hands in her lap. “Professor Novak has a spot for me again. Everything sounds really good. I just… I haven’t made up my mind yet.” She bit down, interlacing her fingers and squeezing, a little pain to keep the pressure brewing behind her eyes at bay. “Because I can’t seem to make up my mind anymore. About whether I want to do research anymore. About whether I want to move back to Missoula. About anything. Because every time I think of leaving, I feel sick. But every time I think of staying, I feel even worse.”
Rising from the bed, her mom knelt at Davis’s feet, taking a hold of her hands. “Every time you think of leaving him , you mean.”
Biting her cheek, convinced that if she said a single word, she’d fall apart, crumble like dead flowers in a vase, she nodded.
“I haven’t ever been through what you’re going through,” her mom said. “And it’s something I never would have wished for you. Or for Kev. It’s hard to be on the outside of it. Because it’s obvious that both of you are struggling. It’s obvious that you both still care about each other. It’s obvious that you’re both hurting.”
Reaching up to wipe away the tear rolling down Davis’s cheek, the first brittle flower petal floating to the ground, her mom said, “One of the hardest things to do in life is forgive. But do you think you could? Could you forgive him? Is he worth a second chance? Is he worth trying to trust him again? Because if the answer to any of those questions is yes, even if the answer is maybe, then it’s no wonder you’re having a hard time deciding what to do. It’s no wonder you’re feeling a little lost.”
“I don’t know,” Davis said. “I want to forgive him. I do. But what if I forgive him, and he does it again? What if I give him a second chance, and he breaks my heart even worse than the first time? The ghosting, the silence, the nonstop worry. I can’t go through that again.” She closed her eyes, pushing out the memories of waking up in a cold sweat with a scream frozen in her lungs. “I can’t.”
“I know.” Her mom squeezed her hands, her honey-brown eyes misting over. “I can’t see you like that again either. But it’s hard seeing you like this too. I just wish there was something I could do. I wish I could snap my fingers and make it all better.”
Blinking another tear free, Davis asked, “How do I get over this feeling that if I even consider staying, forgiving him, that I’m being stupid or na?ve or weak? I mean, you never forgave Dad, right? Not after the divorce? Not after he drugged the men? You were strong. You held your ground. Shouldn’t I hold my ground too?”
“First of all,” her mom said, her tone skewing maternal. “Kev is nothing like your dad. And second.” The muscles in her jaw flickered, her lips twisting. “I…have forgiven him. Your dad.”
“What?” Davis pulled a hand free of her mom’s hold to wipe her eyes. “Since when? We haven’t even spoken to him since Flannelfest.”
“Actually.” She cleared her throat. “I spoke to him last week.”
Davis must not have heard her correctly. “I’m sorry. You what?”
“Sweetie, I haven’t wanted to make a big deal out of this because your relationship with your father is just that—yours. And after what he did to Kev, I wouldn’t blame you if you never said another word to him for the rest of your life. But Madigan is big on forgiveness. And a few months ago, your dad reached out to see if we would meet him for coffee. So we did.”
Davis’s head spun, and not just in a figurative sense. She was dizzy, confused, thrown so hard that the reality she landed in was not the one she’d woken up in that morning. How could her mom have forgiven him? How? “You are seriously blowing my mind right now, Mom. And not in a good way.”
With a tight half smile, she said, “Believe me, I’m still furious with your father for what he did. I’ll never forget it. But I don’t feel like I’m a weaker person for listening to him. I don’t feel stupid or na?ve for letting him apologize and try to make things right. Neither does Madigan.” She reached up, brushing a stray curl off Davis’s cheek. “And you won’t be a weak or stupid or na?ve person if you let Kev apologize either. Not even if you give him a second chance. Not even if you decide he’s worth it.”
“I won’t?”
She shook her head. “No. You’ll just be a woman who’s following her heart. Which can be a really fucking terrifying thing to be sometimes.”
Through an abrupt, frail laugh, Davis said, “True story.”
“But I have to believe,” she said, her voice going soft, “that everyone on this planet deserves a second chance. Maybe not a third. Definitely not a fourth.” Pulling a tissue from the box on Davis’s nightstand, she handed it to her. “But second chances give us room to be imperfect. They give us room to be human. Without them, we’d probably all end up on our own.”
Maybe her mom was right. Maybe Kev deserved more than she was giving him. Maybe he at least deserved to be heard when all she’d done each time he’d tried to apologize was run away. Maybe he deserved a second chance. Maybe they both did.
Davis blew her nose and threw the tissue into the trash, then she threw her arms around her mom. “Thank you,” she said, the scent of her mom’s floral shampoo filtering in through her stuffed-up nose. “I know I’m not easy to talk to. But thank you for always trying. And sometimes you even help.”
Her mom snorted, and Davis hugged her even more tightly.
“I love you, Mom.”
“I love you too,” she said. “More than anything in this world. But right now, I have got to get up off my knees. In fact, it might be too late. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to straighten them again.”
“Not yet,” Davis said, holding on, not letting her go. “Please. Just a few more seconds.”
Squeezing her back like she really meant it, like she knew exactly how much Davis needed it, like she needed it too, her mom whispered, “You’ve got such a big heart, sweetie. Now you just need to follow it.”