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“Jamie and I… we broke up without actually saying it, you know? It was just implied… after I… you know.”
“You know what?” Dr. Wiig asked.
“After I… tried to kill myself.” I choked out the final words, took yet another breath, and pushed through the ending of the story. “After that, I transferred schools. I never called him. He never called me. And… we just never spoke again. Maybe that’s why it’s been so hard.”
“Which all sounds very reasonable to me,” Dr. Wiig started softly. “But… you left a voicemail telling me you thought you were crazy. Why?”
My voice cracked as I asked, “Do you think there’s something wrong with me for thinking about him so much?”
Dr. Wiig studied me for a moment. Then, his brows crinkled in the way that made him look his usual pensive self.
“This boy was a big part of your life, Jemma. He entered and exited right in the middle of two major traumatic events. There would be something wrong if you weren’t thinking about him this much.” He let out a subtle smile. “I know it isn’t the same but… have the letters helped at all?”
“Yes?” I sighed, realizing that was a boldfaced lie. “No. Not at all. It’s just…” My words trailed off. I played with the opal bracelet once more, staring off at the aquarium.
“It’s just what?”
“It’s just… writing a letter to someone doesn’t mean anything when the person doesn’t receive the message.”
Jamie ist tot.
As dead as my father. As dead as my marriage.
The hardest lesson I’d ever learned in my entire life was that once you lost something or someone, there was no way of ever getting it back. Even if they appeared to you in hallucinatory visions.
Dr. Wiig’s voice faded away as my internal mind droned on, clouding me in a fog of anxiety. In the background, as if my doctor were under water, I thought I heard him say: Jemma… things will get easier. I thought I heard him say: Jemma… grief is different for everyone. I thought I heard him say… what you’re feeling is normal.
Except all I heard inside my mind was one loud message, playing over and over again in my head.
I need to talk to Jamie.
“Jemma?” Dr. Wiig asked. I snapped back to the moment; suddenly aware he must’ve been asking me a question I hadn’t heard.
“I’m sorry… what did you say?”
“I wanted to know… what would you tell Jamie, if he were right here in this room?”
“If he were right here? And I could get just one message to him? Easy. I’d tell him the one thing I never got to say.” I sighed, letting the next words fall from my lips on the exhale. “I’m sorry, Jamie, that I never got to truly know you.”
I almost added,if only there was a way for me to speak with him.
But then I stopped myself.
Duh, Jemma!
There was a way for me to speak with him. This Jamie spirit practically begged me to talk to him each time he appeared. And, yeah, maybe a part of me still didn’t know whether the guy was real or a figment of my imagination. But couldn’t it help, if only a little, to let out all my pent-up frustrations at even a vision of this Jamie entity?
After the session, when I reached my Nissan in the empty parking lot, I screeched the next words at the damn car.
“Okay, Jamie!” I cried. “You want to talk? Let’s talk.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Whispers
The sun peeked through the clouds above my house as I walked up the gravel path. I’d driven here straight from Dr. Wiig’s office and had yet to see any signs of Jamie’s ghost. Once again, I’d parked my Nissan in the driveway, avoiding the garage at all costs. As I passed the grey attachment where I used to park every single day, I shuddered, remembering the final night of my marriage. The end, as it were, happened to take place inside that garage about a year ago, before Jamie died, right before Dave moved out.
“I can’t handle this anymore,” Dave said. He stood next to the car, on the outside, leaning away from me. I still smelled the fumes as the garage door opened.
