Compulsive (Liar #1) (15 page)

“That’s not what I’m doing.” I paused, knowing I sounded
like the liar I was, but hoping my calm, determined words would get through to
him. “I know that’s how I used to deal with things. It’s how I reacted tonight,
but it doesn’t work anymore. Don’t you see? Tonight showed me that.
You
showed me that.”

He released my hand, pulled from our connection, and
walked to the fireplace with a loud exhale. “Even if you really believed
that…even if it were true…it doesn’t matter.”

“What? How can you say that?” He left his back to me
as I spoke and walked over to him. “What…I’m so broken you can’t even consider
I know my own feelings? You can’t even acknowledge there could be something
between us?”

His hand landed hard on the mantel as I neared him. Then,
he looked at me over his shoulder. “Dammit, Gray…you’re not broken!” Granger
looked up with concern. Daniel turned toward me, softening his anger. “You’re
not broken. You’re beautiful and incredible…and sad and lost.” He touched my
face with gentle hesitation. “And you entrusted me to help you find your way. But,
not like this. It can’t be like this…no matter what I want.”

Equal parts of relief and desire filled me from his
last words. He could push me away, but he’d admitted he wanted the same thing,
and that was all I needed…for now. “I called you tonight because I needed you.
Because I wanted
you
. But, I hung up because I was too afraid to tell
you that. Kevin was waiting, and I didn’t know what else to do. My father had
called me right before. Tonight of all nights and all the blackness and hurt
and anger came flooding back, but I knew if you were there, I could handle it
all.”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you sooner. But, I don’t
understand. What do you mean ‘tonight of all nights’? And what does your father
have to do with it?” He took my shoulders in a firm grasp. “Please, Gray. If
we’re ever going to get past this, you have to talk to me.”

“I know. I’ve done everything I could to avoid
thinking about it. To avoid reliving it all over again. It doesn’t matter,
though, because the pain is still here.” I grabbed his hand and stuck it to my
chest. “So now, I have to get this out. I’m going to tell you why I hate my
father and how he ruined my life.”

--------------------------

Daniel took my hand and led me to a dark brown leather sofa. “Is this
okay?” He hovered over me as I sat. “Can I get you anything?”

“I’m fine. Let’s just get this over with.”

“Okay.”

“I’m sorry. You’re being very sweet. Thank you.”

“You don’t have to thank me, Gray. I want to be here
for you.” He stepped toward a chair on the other side of the coffee table and
started to sit. “Whatever it takes.”

“No,” I said, catching him in time. “If we’re going to
do this, I need you closer to me.” I scooted to the side and laid a hand on the
cushion next to me.

Silently, he conceded my request and came to sit on
the corner spot of the couch. I gave him no choice and nudged up against him.
When I heard no protest, I began.

“When I was in the fifth grade, there were only two
things I cared about: my baby brother, Noah…and school. My grades were decent,
but more than that, it was a place to feel normal. My favorite subject was
science.” I turned my chin up to check Daniel’s reaction since I hadn’t shared
many personal preferences before. He gave me a small, encouraging grin. “The
science fair had been coming up, but Dad had been gone so much that he couldn’t
help me. Not that I really ever expected him to, but I needed to get the
materials. Anyway, my aunt Becca took me to the store, and with two days before
it was due, I finally had begun what I planned to be the coolest battery-operated
volcano.

“I went to work at the kitchen table, trying to keep
Noah, who was around three at the time, out of my hair and out of trouble. Dad
was in the backyard, smoking a cigarette. The older I got, the more he just
assumed I was in charge of Noah.” I glanced over to Daniel to see if I was
boring him yet.

“You must have felt very alone with all that
responsibility,” he said.

I ignored the comment, plowing through the story.
“Usually, I was patient with Noah, but the pressure of the project got to me; it
was harder than I’d expected. He kept saying he wanted to help me, but he was
just a distraction.” A smile escaped me, seeing Noah’s sweet face as he pulled
random items from the kitchen drawers asking if I needed them. It faded just as
quickly thinking of my reaction. “For once, I was doing something for me, and I
hoped for it to be great. When he spilled water on the table, I snapped at him.
Then, I yelled at Dad and told him to watch Noah in the backyard, so I could
get my project done.”

I readjusted myself on the couch and took a deep
breath. I hadn’t thought about these details in years. I’d only told one other
person the story, and I’d done everything I could since it happened to avoid
thinking about it. Now, I was reliving every painful instance.

“Gray…are you all right? What are you thinking?”

“I’m fine. It just feels…strange. Sometimes, I would
convince myself it was all a horrible nightmare. That’s probably why I found it
so hard to say out loud.”

“That’s exactly why you need to talk about it. To
acknowledge it happened, and whatever it is, you will learn to move on from
it.”

I folded my arms, feeling a sudden chill. Daniel’s arm
came behind my head to land across my shoulders.

“About half an hour later, I was finally starting to
make headway on the project. I remember hearing my stomach grumble and
realizing it was past Noah’s lunchtime. Guilt crept in because I’d let so much
time pass. I’d worried Noah was hungry too. I stood on my tiptoes to see out
the window what they were doing. All I could make out were Dad’s feet at the
end of our bench swing. I should have known he wouldn’t bother playing with
Noah, let alone see if he was hungry.

“I grabbed a juice box and a bag of crackers and
headed out back. I figured he could snack out there, and I could try to finish.
Anger hit me fast when I opened the back slider and saw Dad passed out on the
bench swing. Some of this part is fuzzy, but I remember yelling something as I
paced over to him. The yard felt impossibly quiet. Anger turned to fear quickly
as I glanced around looking for Noah. I shook Dad’s shoulder, and he roused
slowly. ‘Where’s Noah?’ I asked. He sat up, rubbing his hair and then his chin.
‘I don’t know,’ he said before standing. ‘Maybe he went into the house.’ I
don’t remember answering him, but I knew I’d have seen Noah come by the
kitchen.

“My heart thudded as I ran around the yard, calling
his name. I went to the side where our old trampoline stood with a broken net.
He wasn’t allowed to jump alone. His shoes and socks sat in the dirt next to it,
so he definitely had been there. I picked up the dusty shoes and held them up
for Dad to see. Like usual, he was doing nothing. He just stood in the middle
of the yard staring, except he had this confused, worried look on his face. I
raced to him and shoved him as hard as I could. ‘What’s wrong with you? Do
something!’”

“Gray.”

Daniel’s voice took a moment to register, but I looked
down when I realized why he interrupted. My hand fisted the material of his
pants and pulled it away from his thigh. “Oh…I’m sorry.” I opened my hand,
releasing the crumpled fabric.

Daniel placed his hand over mine. “It’s okay. Do you
need a break?”

“No. I’m going to finish. I have to.”

Dad’s eyes popped wide as he stumbled backwards
from my blows. “Goddammit, little girl. He probably just got ahold of some
candy and is hiding in the house eating it.”

He pushed past me before I could protest. I
followed him to the door, but stopped short. I would have seen him come in no
matter how hard I had been concentrating on my project. Besides, I knew Noah,
and this didn’t feel right.

I ran back to the middle of the yard. “Noah!” I did
a complete 360 as I racked my brain. Had I heard him playing in the yard? Had I
even heard Dad’s voice that whole time? I’d already checked the side of the
house with the trampoline. Then, heat smacked my face so hard I got dizzy. My
stomach flipped upside down as I turned to the opposite side of the house and
sprinted around the corner. “Noah!”
Oh, God. Please, no. Please, don’t do
this to me again
. As soon as I got past the edge of the house, I could see
the gate was open. We’d never had a lock on it because Noah was too short to
reach the latch. But, he’d been climbing so much lately. I ran toward the open
gate screaming, “Daddy! Daddy!”

My whole life up to that point I’d never felt
afraid. I’d been sad or angry or disappointed. I’d never let fear get ahold of
me, because I wanted to be strong for Noah. So that I could take care of him.
But, as I stepped out of the safety of our home, not knowing where my brother
was, terror gripped me with such force I froze for several seconds as the world
spun around me. My first instinct was to run back and get Dad, but something
caught my eye. I turned my head to find a nightmare had begun.
No
. Mrs. Watson’s
gate was open, too, but they were out of town. She’d told Noah that when he’d
asked her about swimming just the other day.

My limbs felt heavy as I ran through the gate to her
backyard, the muffled sound of my heart thumped and echoed in my head. A
screeching, terrifying sound that I’ll never be able to fully describe left me
when I saw a small body with black shorts and a red shirt floating face down in
the pool. There were so many blank spots after that, like when a movie skips
while playing off a DVD. One second I stood outside the pool staring at my
three-year-old brother. The next second I was in the pool fighting to flip him
over. I bobbed and pushed and cried and prayed until the world went black.

Arms groped at me, causing my body to move this way
and that on top of a cold hard surface. Two slits opened over my eyes to reveal
a soundless scene of frantic faces moving in and out of my vision. My chest
ached. My stomach felt bloated. Slowly, my ears crackled and cleared, giving
way to voices saying things I didn’t quite understand, until I heard my name.
How
do they know me
, I thought for a split second before recollection hit. Tears
streamed down my face as I began to thrash around.

I left my head to the side when I heard my dad’s
voice, saw him kneeling down a few feet away. He scrambled over to me, but I
fought to see beyond him. “Noah.” I’d tried to shout it, but my lungs only
produced a raspy strained attempt. Noah lay on the concrete, flanked by two other
grown-ups, only his feet and head visible. His stillness shot a dagger through
my chest. I cried out. When my dad tried to comfort me, I pushed him away. I
tried to crawl to Noah. “Noah!” My father held me down. His words were
disjointed, but I knew what they meant. “No,” I screamed. “This is your fault!
You killed him!” Arms held me down as I fought and yelled, “Your fault! Your
fault,” writhing to no avail until all that was left was a lonely, horrific
realization of wanting to die because the two people I loved most in the world
were in heaven.

When they lifted his impossibly small body to carry
him away, I summoned my last bit of energy, raising my hand to my mouth. I
kissed two shaky fingers and sent them up to the sky.

Daniel gripped my shoulders and turned me to face him.
A compassionate gaze took me in, led by those midnight blue eyes filled with
sadness. His hand slid to my face, and his thumbs rubbed across the wetness on
my cheeks. “I’m so sorry, Gray.” He held me there, his expression growing more
intense with each passing second, as if he was attempting to will the hurt from
me to him. Then, he pulled me to his chest, wrapping his arms securely around
me. I hadn’t noticed before that Granger had jumped up on the couch at some
point and was now resting his chin over my leg.

“I can’t even imagine what that was like for you.”
Daniel stroked my hair, as I held in an almost choking breath, barely able to
hold back a floodgate of sobs. “Thank you for sharing that with me. I know it
wasn’t easy. But Gray…it’s okay if you let go now. I can feel your whole body
tensing next to me.” Had he read my mind, or was it that he knew me so well? Seeing
my brother lying dead on the ground next to me turned my world upside down and
gutted me to my core. Worse than when my mother died. I think a part of me felt
the loss as a parent would, and ultimately, I turned into the same empty vessel
my father had become when my mother died.

“I’m here, Gray.” His words and his movements then
felt nothing like a therapist and everything like a man comforting a woman, but
it still didn’t ease me enough to let go. “It happened,” he continued. “You
lived through it the best way you could, but you never accepted the pain and
the loss and acknowledged that it’s always going to be a part of who you are.
You’re strong enough to do all that now…and I’m going to be right here with
you.”

A powerful burst of air exploded from me, and the dam
of tears let loose. “I loved him so much.”

“I know.”

“I let him down.” My words chopped out.

“You were a child yourself.”

“Why couldn’t it have been me?”

“Shhh. You can’t think that way.”

I took a few calming breaths, hoping to get the words
out before I closed myself off again. “It doesn’t make sense to take the two
best parts of our family and leave two broken people who’ve amounted to
nothing.”

His hand stopped moving and stayed on my back. “I’m
not going to let you say or believe that. No one knows why someone is taken
from us. I wish I could tell you why you lost your mother and brother, but I
can’t. What I can tell you is that you and your father had horrible
circumstances to deal with. It shaped part of who you are.”

“I knew my father wasn’t good enough to take care of
us. I knew it. I shouldn’t have trusted him. It was his responsibility. His
fault.”

“I know you have a lot of anger that has built up in
you. That anger and that pain are the source of a lot of the things we’ve
talked about.” Again his hand moved across me, over my head, down my back. “I
think it’s also kept you from becoming all you can be. It’s stopped you from
growing and reaching out…and loving.”

Some of the calm I’d felt was giving way to anger. “I
know what you’re going to say…that until I forgive my father, I’m never going
to be okay.”

“Gray, I wouldn’t tell you you’re never going to be
okay, but yes, I do think a huge step would be forgiving your father.”

“I’ve tried.” I pushed myself up and out of his hold.
I cleared the tears from my face with my sleeve. “Okay, that’s a lie, maybe I
haven’t. But, I can’t.” I turned toward Granger and brushed my fingers over his
head. “I don’t know. I just don’t know how I can do that. I can barely stand to
be around him.” Part of me understood that forgiving my father would mean
sharing this with him as well.

“We can talk more about that another time, but it’s a
necessary step for healing. Not for him…for you.”

I didn’t respond because it was something I didn’t
have the strength to face. Instead, we sat. On the couch between a man and his
dog, sitting in silence, I released a lifetime of tears and pain. When my
breathing came under my control, water continued to puddle and leak from my
eyes. A welcome exhaustion came over me that lulled me back into Daniel’s
embrace. That was where I stayed until my eyelids pulled me over to sleep.