Chapter 19

Chapter Nineteen

Shepperd

This man was so much more than I deserved. If it wasn’t my solid opinion before, it was after today. As I drove aimlessly along the busy freeway, my mind jumped from subject to subject. Every conclusion I came to—even the small inconsequential ones—pointed me in the same direction. This was years in the making, and finally, I needed to have a long, hard conversation with my sister, Hannah.

So I found myself winding through the tight streets of the beach town of Malibu, trying to find her address. I had been to the house once or twice before, but now that I was behind the wheel and responsible for navigation, all the properties looked the same.

I drove past her street twice and had to loop around the neighborhood before I made the turn in time and searched for her house number. As luck would have it, there was a great parking spot less than a block away, so I maneuvered Law’s SUV into the spot and made sure to get as close to the curb as possible.

While I waited at her gate, I took a deep breath and blew it out, almost choking on the exhale when Elijah’s voice came through the speaker.

“Not interested in buying anything,” he said in a clipped tone.

“Hey, Elijah,” I said, and my voice came out way huskier than I expected. Not a surprise, though, from the amount of crying I’d done today. I cleared my throat. “It’s me, Shepperd. Is my sister home?”

Silence seemed to stretch for an hour when it was probably only ten seconds. Even so, why didn’t he answer right away? Were they conspiring inside their huge castle to not let the commoner in? A low buzz sounded, and then there was a metallic click.

I gave the tall gate a push and found he had released the lock to allow me to enter.

My nerves jackhammered through my whole body. By the time I made my way up the pathway to the front door, a light sheen of sweat chilled my skin.

Hannah, in all her maternal glory, opened the front door. She had a sweet little baby bundled in a yellow gauzy blanket cradled in her arms. She spoke quietly so the infant continued to sleep and invited me inside.

“Thank you for seeing me,” I said before anything else.

She wrinkled her nose. “Shepperd, you’re my sister. You’re welcome at my home anytime.”

And that was my oldest sister for you. She always took the high road, no matter how shitty a person was to her. She was always right there to offer the benefit of the doubt. And why was that? How did we turn out so completely different when I was pretty sure we had more in common than I did with my twin—at least with respect to the crap we’d been through in life.

“Thank you,” I muttered as we walked into their home. I couldn’t take my eyes off the sweet little bean in her arms, and she noticed my attention.

“Do you want to hold her?” She smiled kindly and started to hand the baby off to me.

“Are you sure?” I asked and met her eyes for the first time.

“I would love for you to know her. She’s the sweetest baby, I swear. Of course, not at three in the morning when all she wants is to nurse.”

I took the swaddle as carefully as possible and moved the blanket away from her angelic face. She was absolutely perfect and made a little squeaky sound as I readjusted her in my arms.

“She looks so much like Elijah, huh?” Hannah asked.

“Definitely. But I see a lot of you in her too. What color are her eyes?” I asked since the baby was sleeping.

“Well, they’re still blue. We’ll have to wait to see what happens there, but I’m secretly hoping she got his.”

Her husband had piercing ice-green eyes that were so unusual and striking, it was the first thing you noticed about the man. And that was saying a lot since the guy was as beautiful as a human could be.

“Her name is Elissa.”

“So pretty,” I commented, not really knowing what else to say.

We sat down on a moss-green velvet sofa that was so plush and comfortable, I wanted to curl up with this little baby and nap alongside her.

Hannah was explaining the origin of the child’s name while we got situated.

“It’s a combo, really, of Elijah’s name and Mom’s. I always liked the name, so it just worked out.” She shrugged with a little smile.

We were just making small talk, and we both knew it.

So I mustered the courage to talk about what had been on my mind. “I wanted to talk about what happened yesterday.” I waited for her to say something, but she was quiet. “Would that be okay?”

She nodded but still didn’t speak. This woman had as many triggers as I did and was probably steeling herself for a tough conversation.

Finally, Hannah asked, “Do you remember what happened?” She waited for me to slowly shake my head and said, “Yeah, me neither.”

I fussed with the baby’s blanket again.

“Elijah told me what he knows, but I can’t really piece much together,” she said. “Something happens when I’m in bad situations like that, and I completely shut down. He has theories.” She chuckled. “But he basically has theories about everything.”

Her words were filled with so much love and adoration, and it made me think I wanted to look like that to the outside world when I talked about Law. Maybe not with the intensity I saw in her features, because she and her man had been together a lot longer, but I wanted what she had in her relationship.

And what a revelation that was. I spent most of my life being jealous and resentful of Hannah. She got all our parents’ attention. She was the one the entire family would uproot plans for. She was the sister all the girls wanted to be friends with and all the boys wanted to date. I lived a lifetime of the world according to Hannah.

Now, here I was, still wanting what she had, but for the first time being ecstatic about it. I saw her life and her relationship as goal-worthy, not a cause for jealousy. Damn…it felt so good to see the difference for the first time.

Little Elissa stretched and made the cutest face. Unfortunately, there came a deafening wail hot on the heels of the cuteness overdose, so I quickly handed her off to my sister. She maneuvered the baby and her top like she’d been doing it her whole life, and the baby nursed contentedly in no time.

“Motherhood looks good on you,” I said honestly. “That little lady clearly has your lungs though.”

“Elijah says the same thing. I don’t think that’s all bad, though. If she’s going to look exactly like him, it’s only fair she sounds like me, right?” she said while stroking the baby’s wispy hair.

“So, these theories…” I trailed off, hoping she’d open up a bit more about our previous conversation. I needed to get to the bottom of what was going on with me, and her too. If she had answers, or at least a good place to start figuring it out, I wanted to hear them.

“I don’t know how you deal with it, but when someone starts telling me what they think I’m dealing with in here”—she tapped her temple with her free hand—“I get pretty defensive. It doesn’t feel good when people are always trying to fix me, you know?”

“Oh, I understand that probably more than you can imagine,” I muttered, but the way she held my gaze after I said it, I knew she heard me loud and clear.

“So, I processed what he was thinking might be going on with me. And mind you, this wasn’t an overnight type of discussion… I checked it out with my therapist.”

“Was he right?” I asked, feeling close to some answers.

She rolled her eyes and groaned. “Of course he was.” The comment started with a playful inflection but turned melancholy by the end. “Yeah, he was spot on, actually.”

“Can you explain it to me?” I asked genuinely.

“You know, our brains are incredible things. Not only do they get us through the day-to-day crap, but they protect us from the life-changing bad stuff too. And then it seems like a little button is pushed inside. For some reason, our brains think we’re ready to deal with a bit of the truth. For me, that looks like a flashback or a nightmare.” She repositioned the baby to her shoulder to coax out a burp or two.

“I understand exactly what you’re saying. But it’s a different type of nightmare than others. It feels so real. I can smell things, hear things in the background, and on the really shitty occasion, I feel pain or other sensations as if it’s happening in real time.”

“It’s called PTSD, Shepperd. I’m sure you’ve heard that term before, right?”

I nodded. The conversation with Law flashed through my mind. “Law just said after the party that he wants to help me deal with my PTSD.”

“And what did you say?”

“Well, of course my go-to reaction was anger. But I had a bad feeling he was right.” I thought about him and the past day or two and couldn’t stop the burning sensation behind my eyes and up my throat. I gulped as much down that would move and said, “I’m so scared. If I don’t get my shit together, I’m at serious risk of losing him.”

Now the tears clouding my vision were actually welcomed because I couldn’t bear to see the pity in her expression.

But surprisingly, that’s not what I got in return.

“You’re in love…” she said with a gentle smile. It wasn’t a question—and she wasn’t wrong.

“Yeah, it’s certainly looking that way,” I said with a healthy amount of resignation.

“Why do you sound sad about it?”

I gave her the side eye. “Because, if I’m being completely honest, it scares the shit out of me. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I have a knack for fucking things up.”

“You’re not going to fuck it up, Shep. Just be honest with him and communicate. Always communicate.”

“Are these words of experience?” I teased, wanting desperately to lighten the air.

“Absolutely. Believe me, I wasted a lot of time running from my feelings for Elijah. Because I was scared too. Not of fucking things up but of getting hurt. So I pushed him away. Several times,” she said with a roll of her blue eyes.

“What made you finally see the light?”

“Well, he did, for the most part. He’s a stubborn man when he wants something.” She laughed, and the love for her husband was oozing from her pores. It would actually be sickening if I hadn’t been feeling the exact same way about Law. And damn, did it feel good to have someone to share it with.

But we still had a lot of shitty ground to cover if I was going to have any hope of feeling put together from a mental health standpoint.

“Let me go lay her down. Be right back.” Hannah stood with the baby carefully nestled against her chest.

“Can I see her room?” I asked, also standing.

“I would love that,” she said, and we padded off toward the nursery.

While my precious niece slept in her crib, my sister and I sat on the floor of her nursery and talked. And then we talked some more.

I finally felt comfortable enough to ask her what she remembered about the school custodian from our elementary school. At first, I worried I had brought up a new trauma for her to deal with by the ashen color of her face.

“What do you mean? What do you remember?” she asked, not giving anything away about her memories of those years.

So I just let it out. “He molested me in his workshop or whatever the hell it was.”

She gasped. “Oh, Shepperd, no.”

“He did it to you too, didn’t he?” I whispered as though speaking it aloud so close to her innocent child would tarnish her perfection.

She was quiet at first, and when I finally met her gaze, tears were running down both cheeks as she nodded. “Shep, I had no idea.” She scooted closer to me on the floor to take my hands in hers.

“Why would you? I never told anyone. Law was the second person I ever told. And hell, that was only about a month ago. I’ve been carrying that shit around with me for what? Fifteen years?”

We were both crying then.

“The first person?” she asked.

I shouldn’t have been surprised that she caught that fact in all that I had said.

“Yeah.” I nodded. This next part was really going to suck. But it needed to be addressed.

“Who else did you tell? If it’s too much to share…”

“I told Mom.”

Hannah put her hands on her cheeks. “What did she do?”

I just made a face, because of all the shit I had to deal with from my childhood, this one fact was the absolute most painful.

“What did she do, Shepperd?” she asked again.

I just shook my head.

I couldn’t say it out loud. Even though it was the truth, admitting it seemed as painful as the betrayal of our mother doing nothing.

“But why?” Hannah asked, and I prayed I wasn’t about to undo any sort of progress we made today in mending our relationship. “Why wouldn’t she do anything? It doesn’t make sense.”

I couldn’t tell if she realized what the reason might be or if it was me just thinking wishfully. Her entire face fell when the truth became clear to her.

She was the reason.

I wanted to explain as much as I understood. The details were sketchy for a few reasons. One, I was young. Maybe eight or nine years old when I told our mother. Secondly, Hannah was very dramatic as a child. After the abduction attempt, she was hysterical all the time. Everyone in the family bent over backward to keep her content. And lastly, denial was a funny thing. It distorted reality, and over time, the blame I placed on her grew to such an overwhelming monster, I lost sight of what truly happened that made me feel so resentful toward her.

Now, when I thought about it, I knew it wasn’t fair to blame her, but throughout the years, I needed a place to focus all those bad feelings.

“Because of me?” she croaked. Damn it, why was she pushing me to put it into words?

“I don’t really remember what happened, or why.” I waved my hand in the air like shooing away a pesky fly. “Or whatever.”

“But it had something to do with me. That’s why you’ve been so angry toward me for so long?” she asked, but she didn’t need me to confirm it.

She was a smart girl, and I laid all the pieces of the puzzle in front of her to fit together.

“My God, Shepperd,” she gasped. “I’m so sorry,” she said through fresh tears.

“Hannah, stop. You were a child. And dealing with so much of your own shit.” She shook her head, not hearing any of my excuses. “Seriously, I was wrong to blame you.”

“I’m so sorry,” she said again.

“Mom and Dad dropped the ball. They did. They were the adults in the scenario. Not you. Not me. I realize they had a lot on their plates with the abduction attempt, but they screwed up by not remembering they had four other children that needed them just as much.”

I believed what I was saying even if it didn’t make me feel any better to actually say it.

For a long time, we sat in the quiet nursery. Both of us so deep in thought we didn’t need the additional noise of conversation.

“I’m really glad you came over today,” my sister said. “This conversation was long overdue. Let’s go out to the kitchen. I need some water. Nursing dries me out more than exercise, I swear.”

I followed her through the enormous house to the kitchen.

After looking around the room, I said, “You must be in heaven in this kitchen.”

“Well, I was before that little queen arrived. Now all I do is feed her and sleep. I couldn’t tell you the last time I cooked dinner.”

I didn’t have a lot to add to the conversation, so I just nodded.

“Luckily, Elijah enjoys cooking and is actually quite good at it.” She smiled and offered me a bottle of water.

“Sounds like you found the perfect guy,” I said, and meant it in the best way.

She smiled warmly. “Yeah, he’s pretty amazing. Can I ask you something?”

“Sure, go ahead.”

“Have you considered talking to someone? A therapist, I mean? And before you get defensive”—she held up her hands, but I had no intention of interrupting—“it’s helped me so much over the years. I think you’d get a lot out of it.”

“I’ve thought about it a few times, but it’s overwhelming, you know? How do you pick the right person?”

“I could give you the name of the woman I go to. She’s amazing. Really smart and funny too. She specializes in childhood trauma and PTSD, so I think you’d be in the right place.”

“I’ll take her information.” Actually following through and making the appointment might be a different story, but one step at a time. “Can I use your restroom? Then I should probably get going.”

Hannah showed me to a guest bathroom just down the hall from the kitchen. While I was in there, I sent Law a text.

Hi. I’m at my sister’s in Malibu. Should be leaving soon.

It was a starting point at least. I owed him about twelve apologies but would rather do that in person. At least if he was worried about my well-being after the way I left the condo, he could rest easier.

Hey there. Thank you for letting me know. See you when you get home. XO

That damn XO got me every time. I walked out of the bathroom smiling and looking at my phone until I nearly plowed over my sister.

“Ahh, one guess who that is,” she teased and motioned to the phone in my hand.

“I was just letting him know I was heading back. I was a bitch to him before I left, and I didn’t want him to be worried.”

“I’m sure he appreciated that.”

“If I didn’t fuck things up today, it’ll be a miracle. I was really shitty to him, and he didn’t deserve that.”

“Shep, listen. None of us is perfect. I’m sure he’s not either. If he loves you and cares about you, he’ll understand you have a lot of unsettled things you’re dealing with. Yesterday was really hard on all of us.”

I wasn’t convinced I should be let off the hook so easily. I needed to take responsibility for my behavior and start treating people better in the first place.

But instead of getting into another deep conversation with my sister, I said, “I hope you’re right. I’m going to take off. Hey, anytime you need a babysitter, feel free to call me. She’s absolutely perfect, and maybe if I play my cards right, I’ll be her favorite auntie.”

“Are you serious? We desperately need a night out, just like adults. I’d love to take you up on the offer,” my sister said hopefully.

“One hundred percent serious. Just hit me up. I may have to bring Law with me, though. He loves kiddos. Before that disaster yesterday, I was loving watching him with all the kids.”

“Kind of funny how our worlds ended up being intertwined, isn’t it?” she asked as we walked to the front door.

“Yeah, I guess it really is a small world.” For the first time in years, I hugged my sister. Neither one of us wanted to let go, but finally she pulled back and held my gaze for a moment.

“Thank you again for coming today, Shepperd. You have no idea how much it means to me.” She gave me another quick hug.

“No, I think I understand exactly. Love you, Hannah,” I said and waved over my shoulder as I headed for home.