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Dr. Martin adjusted his glasses. He removed them and wiped them down and put them back on his face. “All right, then I guess this is settled.” He stood and eyed the two of them, his expression stern. “But you have my number if you change your mind. Please call me, anytime.”
Myles showed the doctor out and Jess headed straight for bed. He was angry with her, she knew.
She put on one of Spencer’s old t-shirts and crawled into the big oversized bed. Feeling too bad to sleep, she picked up the notebook and read for a bit, then took a break to hide underneath the covers, curl up in a ball, gripping her head, and waiting out the pain.
When she found it was bearable again, she pulled the covers back and read a little more. Sometime later, Myles came in and climbed in bed. “Do you want some company?” he whispered. Jess nodded and felt him scoot in behind her, gently wrapping his arms around her.
“I’m really, really proud of you,” he assured her quietly. And somewhere between the warmth of his arms, the pain, and the words she’d just read, she found the strength that kept her from crawling out of that bed and out of her own skin. As the hours went by, it was taking everything she had not to beg Myles to pick up the phone and call that doctor back and tell him to fix the problem—all of the problems—which she’d created.
Hi,
Tonight has not been a good night. I can’t sleep so I thought I would write to you instead. I guess, in a way, it helps me not feel so alone. Like maybe, you’re out there somewhere thinking of me, too.
Anyway, about my night… to start from the beginning, most nights ever since the accident, Kit Cat cries for Mom at bedtime. She’s only seven so I get it. It’s tough for a seven-year-old when your mom’s not around and your dad hardly ever comes home from work. So, at bedtime, I go in and I rub her back to help her fall asleep, because she only wants Mom, and if she can’t have Mom (because she’s in the hospital), then I’m the next best thing. Some nights though, I’m so tired that I end up falling asleep too, and then I don’t sleep well because I wind up all scrunched up in Cat’s little girly bed.
Tonight, Kit Cat (I have to stop calling her this ASAP, I’m too old for it now, I know, but she likes it so I try to make her happy anyhow)—tonight she woke up screaming and crying that her legs were hurting. So, I tried to calm her down and I rubbed her back but nothing was helping and she just kept crying. First, I went to find Serena (she’s our Nanny even though I’m too old for a Nanny too, but I guess my mom thinks otherwise), but Serena doesn’t like to be woken up she says, so she just yells at me to go back to bed and says that Catherine will be fine, even though she hasn’t been the one listening to her cry for the past twenty minutes, and even though I know that she won’t be fine. What she needs right now is Mom. But Mom isn’t here. Obviously.
So, I go in search of the next best thing I can find that isn’t Mom and clearly isn’t Serena—someone, anyone to make the crying stop, but when I open the door to my parents’ bedroom to ask my dad to come and help Cat, I find him standing naked in front of his computer.
And trust me... you DO NOT want to know what he was doing or what I saw on the screen.
Why anyone would want to look at that, I have no idea.
Grown up’s are so strange.
I think I should tell my mom…
JSC
Hi,
Thankfully, today wasn’t so bad. We went to see my mom in the hospital. Mom’s friend, Addison and her husband, William picked us up and took us there even though Dad said we couldn’t go.
I like them—Addison and William, that is. They seem so normal, unlike my family with their weird late night habits and all. Sometimes, I dream about what it would be like to be their kid. But I know that would make my mom sad so I usually catch myself. No use wanting what you can’t have, as my dad likes to say.
Speaking of my dad, I wanted to tell my mom about him and that man on the computer screen but her friends were there—and I didn’t think it was appropriate to say in front of them, so I went for Plan B and gave her the note I’d written it in—just in case I chickened out.
Which I totally did.
JSC
Hi,
I’ve learned a lot since I last wrote to you…
So, I decided to tell my friend Sophie (you remember I wrote about her before, she’s the one whose parents are divorced) about my dad and what I saw him doing. Since my mom never said anything, she’s in a lot of pain with the surgery she had and all, I probably shouldn’t have made it worse I realized. But she never mentioned it. It was probably embarrassing for her, too.
I was really worried because I was afraid that my dad would say something weird—that he might try to talk to me about it. But he never did. Grown-ups are so good at pretending things never happened, even though we all know that they did. I hope I’m not like that when I grow up.
Anyway, sorry I keep getting off track, there’s a lot going on these days… but back to Sophie. So, yeah, I told Sophie what happened. And you know what Sophie said? She said my dad is probably gay. Sophie knows about a lot of things, which surprises me. Sometimes I have to use Google just to bring myself up to speed, which I like because I’ve never met anyone smarter than Sophie. Once I asked her where she got her information from because I thought maybe it might be Google, too. And sometimes even Google is wrong. She says she’s an old soul mostly because her parents are open and they taught her not to judge others. But also, because she’s lived other lives and has experienced many things. I think this is why I like her so much. Being with Sophie is never boring.
But the things is, I knew what gay meant and there is no way that my dad could be gay—so I told her that she was crazy (which doesn’t mean not smart, it just means wrong) and now she won’t talk to me.
Then, because I wanted to prove her wrong, I went on my dad’s computer and I looked at his search history just so I could tell her that what I saw with the men was a mistake. But I actually found out that Sophie isn’t crazy. I also found out that Dad spends a lot of money on what Google informed me was internet porn, which happens to be so gross that I couldn’t even look at it.
Dad always says to Mom that if you don’t want the worms, you shouldn’t have opened the can and he was right.
This, I’m sure mom would want to know.
