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I don’t understand what’s happening. He wants me one minute and is throwing me away the next. He’s gentle and horrible. Vulnerable and hateful.
He shares me with Noah and then gets possessive. What does he want?
“He was with our mom,” Noah tells me, breaking the silence.
I open my eyes, feeling his voice vibrate against his body.
“It was a rainy, spring day, and some guy she’d been running with on the side was with them,” Noah goes on. “They had gone to the store—or so she told my dad. Instead, they went to a white house off a dirt road somewhere, and she left Kaleb in the car. Locked it and said she’d be back in a bit.” He pauses and then continues. “She went inside and the brief stop turned into a party. She got high, lost time, and fell asleep in the house.”
This is only the second time Noah has mentioned their mother. He must’ve been a toddler at the time.
“He was alone in the car with no one around for miles to hear him call out or cry when the minutes turned into hours. And hours into days.” I close my eyes, not wanting to hear the rest. “There was no food in the car and the only water came from the leak in the roof when it rained.”
I try not to see it, but an image of a little boy alone—cold and hungry—flashes in my mind. Kaleb was a child at one time. He was helpless then.
“At some point his throat went raw from crying out,” Noah explains, “but when my father finally found him, he wasn’t crying or calling out. Not anymore. Just sitting in the seat in his own filth staring off and barely even registering when the door was finally opened.”
“How much time?” I ask. “How much time did he lose?”
It takes a moment for him to answer. “Four days.”
My face cracks and silent tears fall.
“Something separated in his head,” Noah tells me. “What goes through your mind when something like that happens, you know? When one day turns into two and two into three? You’re four years old. You can’t get out. You can’t figure out what to do to help yourself. You’re starving. You’re cold. You’re alone. You can’t stand up. You don’t know when help is coming…”
I turn it all around in my head for a moment trying to imagine how long the hours felt to a four-year-old. Minutes filled with fear feel like hours, and hours of fear feel like an eternity.
“It must’ve felt like he was buried alive,” Noah adds. “The doctors said he gave up. A wall just sprung up, and over the years not talking became the one piece of control he had when he had none during those four days in that car. His voice was the one thing no one could demand from him. It was his way of punishing everyone. A way to make the world share the pain.”
Needles prick my throat. Yeah, I know what that’s like. Denying myself anything that made me happy for so long because I couldn’t let it go. It couldn’t not matter.
Kaleb has been punishing the world his whole life, almost like me. Unfortunately, the world moves on, and then it just becomes punishing yourself.
“Don’t cry for him,” Noah finally whispers. “Especially not in front of him.”
After a while, Noah falls back to sleep, and I’m not sure how long I lie there, thinking about what he told me.
Kaleb almost died. Slowly. Painfully. That would be a nightmare for anyone at any age. How much does he remember?
Hopefully not much.
It changed him, though. He turned inward and couldn’t trust again. That’s why he doesn’t speak. Not out of spite necessarily. He doesn’t want to give anyone a piece of himself again. People hurt.
He may not even know how to talk anymore. It’s not like four-year-olds are enunciating full speeches to begin with. You can’t really lose an ability you never had.
And it’s hurt the whole family. His mother must be in prison for other things to keep her there this long, so she’s all but dead to them. Jake had to raise two boys on his own, miles away from the help that Kaleb needed, and Noah never really knew his brother. He’s never known what Kaleb could’ve been. They’ve all been alone, and somewhere in the time I’ve been here, we’ve all learned to care about each other, but I also created a whole other wedge. Kaleb couldn’t learn to live with another woman in the house, and when he tried, the lines were fucked up. How did I fit? Was I his cousin? His friend? His brother’s?
His?
I pull my arms off Noah and swing my legs over the bed, sitting up, the weight of my role in all this sinking in. He acts wrong. He treated me wrong tonight. I’m confused, too. I’m making mistakes, too.
But I don’t want to hurt him. All I know for sure is that I can be there. Maybe over time he’ll trust me as a friend.
Hopefully as someone who cares about him, at least.
I stand up, looking at the clock and seeing it’s after four in the morning. I pick up a clean shirt out of Noah’s laundry basket of clothes he never puts away and slip it on. Leaving the room, I close the door and head for the shower.
As soon as I open the door, though, the steam hits me. The shower is running, and I spot Kaleb sitting there on the edge of the tub. I stop, my heart beating fast again.
