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“I was twelve!”
“It works both ways, Ford. We can be strong for you too. You don’t get to be that all the time. It’s not healthy. Weakness doesn’t make you less of a man,” she said.
His shoulders were just about at his ears now.
“While your father and I slept, you walked about your room?” His mother had stopped crying but looked pale.
“Mom—”
“I remember when you came home all banged up from, as it turns out, not a cycling accident. You used to come to my room when I got home from the hospital and lie with me on my bed. Lie there and tell me that I was going to be okay, and all the time it was you who needed me to tell you that. It hurts my heart to know one of my babies was suffering and I didn’t know.”
He’d hurt them all when what he’d wanted to do was the opposite. It had taken years to come out, but now that it had, his family was bleeding and he’d been the one to inflict the wound.
“And don’t get all caught up in the fact we’re hurting over this,” his father said. “Because we are, but there’s a lot of anger too, but we’ll get over that. The main thing here is we deal with it. Deal with what you’re going through, are still going through. But I’ll tell you something. You better come clean about everything now, because if I find you’re hiding anything else, there will be hell to pay.”
His father didn’t act mean often, but when he did, Ford listened.
“No, I have nothing else to share.”
“What have you taken for the sleeping?” Maggie asked.
“I tried pills, but I hated how they made me feel. Alcohol worked for a while but not long term, so I take some herbal stuff. I get to sleep but I don’t stay out for long.”
“Okay, we’ll work on that.”
“I can—”
“If the next words to come out of your mouth are ‘I can do this alone,’ you better think again,” Maggie said, jabbing a finger his way. “Because clearly you can’t do it and need help even if it is years too late.”
“Well hell,” Ford muttered. He grabbed Nash’s cookie out of his hand and took a large bite. The hit of chocolate felt good in his mouth. Sweet and creamy, it washed away some of the bitterness.
“Have you talked to anyone about all this?” his mother asked.
“You mean like a therapist?”
She nodded.
“No.”
“Well, that’s changing too.”
“Mom, I don’t really think—”
“And there you go, doing something you are clearly not equipped to do,” she snapped.
“Amen,” Maggie said.
“Hey! I’m the victim here.”
“You’re the idiot. But at least we know that now,” his father said.
“Sit.” Nash pulled out a chair and forced Ford into it.
The others sat around the table.
“More coffee, Maggs,” his mother said. “We need to talk.”
“We just did,” Ford protested.
