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“It’s a movie about these housewives and...” He shakes his head. “Never mind.” He knows I’m going to google it the first chance I get and judging by his tone, he knows I’m not going to like what I find. “Anyway. Where to?”
“You’ll know when we get there,” I say in a singsongy voice, biting the end of a gummy worm. “Talk to Rowan if you need to feel better. He’s got everything covered.”
Handing the gummy back to me, he closes the computer with a sigh, clearly exasperated by my antics. “I trust him.”
“Good.” I hold down my inner glee. It feels good to get my way and keep this a surprise. “So, what do you want to talk about?”
His attention focuses on me. “Tell me more about your friend Pippa.”
My heart immediately sinks, the candy turning to sour goo in my dry mouth. “I said that thinking we could talk about something fun, light, easy.” I put the candy away, washing my mouth with water and swallowing it down my tight throat.
“We can.” His voice and eyes soften as he puts a warm, caring hand on my thigh. “Or we can talk about Pippa. Don’t you think it would be healthy to talk to someone about her?”
Duh. I’m about to apply to a program for my doctorate in psychology. Of course I do.
My online therapist makes me talk to her about Pippa. But I haven’t wanted to talk to anyone in my “real-life” about her. His words echo in my mind…and so do my therapist’s: “You need to open up to a friend about what happened with Pippa.”
He’s a—friend. Kinda. A friend with some pretty steamy benefits. Maybe I do want to talk to him.
I look up into his trusting eyes. “Fine.” He gives my leg a squeeze and the gesture reassures me. “She was the daughter of the woman my dad hired to train me in self-defense and some mixed martial arts. She’d come watch sometimes and afterward we’d talk.”
I still remember the first thing she asked me, staring at that pink backpack. “Is that your little sister’s?”
“No, it’s mine,” I said. “Is it too babyish? I wouldn’t know—I’ve lived a sheltered life.”
“Tell me about it,” she laughed. “When your mom works for the military, your house becomes a fortress. No one in, no one out.”
“We connected over the fact that we were both so sheltered. Only, Pippa had found a work-around. She’d discovered the Pit. She’d come over to the Hamlet and hang out after my training sessions with her mom. I started sneaking out to meet her at the Pit. Then, I signed up for my first fight. Pippa was right there against the ropes, screaming her head off cheering for me as I got my butt kicked.”
He can sense I’m closing up, that I feel as if I’ve shared enough. He presses, gently. “Then, what happened to her? How did she die?”
Tears spring up and I wipe them away, angry that I’m letting him see me cry. “It was my fault. I mean, not really, but it always seemed like my fault. You know?”
“I don’t. But I will if you tell me.” He catches a tear as it falls from my cheek.
“She slipped on one of the indoor concrete stairs. There was a spilled drink, a patch of sweat, we don’t know.”
It was one of those moments that slows down, that you see but can’t comprehend. I was on the landing about five stairs down from where she was. Her foot slipped and when she went to grab the rail, she missed. She hit her head on the corner of a concrete stair tread. I can still hear the sickening thud, see the dazed look in her eyes as she laid there.
“I tried to catch her, but I could only grab part of her backpack, but it was too late by then. It was a freak accident. She died from that fall. It was no one’s fault, right? But when I saw the look in her mom’s eyes. The way she looked at me at the hospital. Like she trusted me. It broke my heart.”
“It wasn’t your fault. Like you said, it wasn’t anyone’s.” His voice is reassuring but there’s nothing anyone can say to take away the pain.
“Still.” I sniff, wiping the tears away.
He presses on. “And now you feel like since Pippa isn’t going to have a future, you should have to be a martyr. And give yours up for the good of the family?”
“Kind of.” I shrug.
He wraps his arm around my shoulders. “You’ve already got a degree in psychology and you’re going on for more, so I’m guessing logically you know this isn’t your fault and Pippa would want you to live your life and be happy. But logic and feelings don’t always match.”
It feels so good to finally have someone put my hurt into words that make sense. “Exactly.”
Her mom wanted to keep the cause of Pippa’s death a secret. Pippa had so many friends at the Pit, she didn’t want to see it closed down, people charged for their illegal activities, for a freak accident, even if it was her own daughter’s.
She had contacts in the military, who had helpers in the local police, who all had connections to the Pit. They all agreed. Pippa had fallen at home. Hit an icy patch on their front steps. It’s what Pippa would have wanted.
My parents were devastated to find out Pippa had died. My dad already knew about the Pit. He must have known about Pippa too. That’s why he let me keep going, knowing it was my only connection to her.
