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“And not every kid who has a hard life makes the kind of decisions I did. I can’t make excuses, Carly. I made my choices.”
“You’re not just talking about the Altons, are you?”
“No.”
Carly sighed. “Everything that happens in our lives shapes us into who we are. I made mistakes, too, Justin, but looking back on them, I realize I wouldn’t be who I was today if I’d made different choices. Right or wrong, good or bad, we’re the product of all of those decisions. You wouldn’t be the Justin who was selected to be in The Unit, and you wouldn’t have learned all of this survival stuff, and you wouldn’t be the Justin I know now.”
“Maybe I’d be a better one.”
“Better in what way? If you’d lived a nice, middle-class life with the Altons, would you have been a tax accountant? You never would have met me, that’s for sure, since you wouldn’t have gone into the army, and you wouldn’t have been wandering around Alaska, headed to a motorcycle rally. Would the other Justin have given away some of our supplies because he was thinking with his heart, not with his head? Would the other Justin have had the stomach to go into those buildings where the dead were to collect the supplies we need in the first place?”
Justin rubbed the back of his neck again. “I see your point.”
“So what’s the point of living with regret? Let’s say you had tracked the Altons down and apologized to them. Would it have changed anything? Would it have repaired any of the pain in the past?”
“You might want to practice what you preach, sister,” Justin said, but his voice was mild, lightly teasing. “I can see you have your own regrets you carry with you.”
Carly touched her father’s ring—the bump it made below her T-shirt. “I’m carrying them in my heart, not my head. I can’t help what my heart feels. It doesn’t use logic. But my brain knows some of the things I regret couldn’t have been changed. You, on the other hand, have them stuck in your head but aren’t using logic. You know all that psychology stuff. Use it on yourself. You know why you acted as you did, so why not accept it as a lesson learned, the path your life had to take to lead you to where you are now, and let it go?”
“Easier said than done.”
“Sure. It’s a process. But you’ve got to want to do it. Maybe you’re having too much fun beating yourself up over it to let it go.”
Justin was startled again. He stared at her, and his mouth hung open slightly.
Carly shrugged. “Some people like to wallow in guilt. I don’t think you’re one of them, but you kind of seem like you do it on occasion.” She glanced over at him and narrowed her eyes. “Did you use any of that psychology stuff on me when we first met?”
“Yes.” Justin admitted it without a qualm. “You weren’t thinking clearly, Carly, and I had to get you out of that apartment. So, yes, I tricked you a little and manipulated your emotions. If that upsets you, I’m sorry, but I don’t regret doing what needed to be done in order to shake you out of your state of shock.”
“I’m not mad about it. I understand what you mean about me not thinking clearly. And you sure weren’t doing it for your own selfish benefit or anything like that. You were doing it to help me.”
“I picked your locks, and I... uh... I turned off your water.” He actually blushed a little at this confession.
Carly gave a bark of surprised laughter. “Tricksy hobbit!”
“That white pipe I took off to show you there wasn’t any water in it? That was your sink drain.”
Carly laughed so hard she had to coast her bike to a stop or risk falling off. “You’re kidding!”
“Jesus, Carly, didn’t you ever look at what pipe goes to what?”
“No. To tell you the truth, I don’t think I’d ever looked at any of the plumbing under the sink.”
“Too busy alphabetizing your cleaning bottles?”
“You’re just jealous of my organizational skills.” Carly remounted her bike and began to pedal again. Maybe she was fooling herself but biking for long stretches of time seemed to be getting easier. Her calves weren’t even sore yet.
“‘Jealous of,’ no. Disturbed by, slightly.” Justin tossed a grin at her.
Carly stuck her tongue out at him, and he chuckled.
For a while, they pedaled in silence, and then apropos of nothing, Justin said, “Tell me about Noah.”
“What about him?”
Justin gave a small shrug. “The usual. How long you were together. How you met. That sort of thing.”
Odd for him to be interested, Carly thought. “He was a friend of a friend. I’d been introduced to him a couple of times, but I didn’t know him all that well. Then, one day, he sent a flirty text to my phone. I messaged back, just a funny little quip or something, and we messaged back and forth for a few minutes. He asked me something about my brother, and I said I didn’t have a brother. At that point we figured out he’d thought he’d been talking to another girl. He called me to apologize, and we chatted for a bit, and that’s when he asked me out. We dated for about two years.”
