Page 136 of Made Better Together

I put my hand on his. “That’s not your fault.”

He dips his head, keeping his hand enveloped by mine. “I know. Really, I do know.”

I try to find the right thing to say. “Do you…what can I do to help?”

“You don’t have to do anything. I—I should reach out to my Princeton counselor, probably, see what she suggests. Maybe she’ll even have a referral for someone down here.”

I nod. “Your siblings…do they struggle…” I cut myself off. It’s not right for me to ask him to reveal their mental health journeys.

He reads between the lines and answers anyway. “Not in the same way, as far as I know. It was different when they lived at home.”

From this comment, I realize he hasn’t told me anything about his mom’s actual behavior.

“Different…how? If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s okay.”

“No, it’s alright, I can tell you.”

My phone dings, and we both look at it. It’s a notification from one of my apps, but it forces me to note the time. The ten minutes have passed, and our conversation is now eating into my homework time.

Still, there’s no way I’m leaving or cutting off the discussion. “Go ahead.”

“With all of us kids in the house, it was easy to ignore her behavior, all her remarks. We had each other’s backs and would act as buffers, even once it was only Rawley and me. She also didn’t push as many boundaries.”

“And then?”

“When it was just me, well…it was hard to avoid her. She thrived having my undivided attention. All those toxic criticisms, meant to belittle us to make herself feel better—I became her only target, with no clear way of escape.”

“Oh, Connor.” I pick up his hand and thread my fingers through it.

“Then there’s the sleep thing. As time passed, she kept crossing more lines. My senior year, she started coming in my room at like, four in the morning, and shaking me awake. Every night.”

Oh my God. “I’m—that’s awful.”

“‘You’ll never amount to anything, Connor. Sleeping is for the weak. You will not be weak under my watch.’” His Alabama accent deepens as he repeats the quote. “Shit like that, in the early hours. Mind you, I was a straight-A student admitted to Princeton, at the time.”

“Why didn’t…I mean, I’m not blaming them…but why didn’t your siblings intervene?” Landon was in the NFL by then, and the little I know of him, he seems like the type who wouldn’t let a situation like that persist.

He looks at me straight on. “They didn’t know. Still don’t.”

What? “Connor…” I stop myself before I say what’s on the tip of my tongue: “They’d want to know.”

“It’s my burden. No reason to tell them something that only I can fix at this point.”

I guess…that doesn’t sit right with me, though. I suspect his siblings would strongly object, too.

“Anyway, I’ll get an email off to my old counselor. I don’t want…to startle you in the mornings.”

“It’s okay, it’s fine.” There are so many thoughts swimming in my head, and I’m at a loss at how to react other than—“Can I hug you?”

He twists toward me in his chair, opening his arms. “Yes.”

We hold each other until he has to leave for practice. It’s thirty minutes past when I intended to leave, but being there for him after what he shared is nonnegotiable.

As soon as I’m back at the dorm, it’s not my neglected Genetics reading I reach for. It’s my old Abnormal Psychology textbook.

I devour the relevant sections, and it confirms several things:

-it’s extremely rare for narcissists to change, meaning his mom isn’t likely to “get better”