Reminders of Him

More than likely. “No.” I want to change the subject. “What’s your
turtle’s name?”
Diem picks him up and lays him on her lap. “Ledger.”
I laugh. “You’re naming the turtle after me?”
“Yes. Because I love you.” She says that in the sweetest voice, and it
makes my heart clench. I wish Kenna could be the recipient of Diem’s
words right now.
I kiss her on top of the head. “I love you, too, D.”
I put her turtle in its aquarium and then I crawl back onto her bed and
stay with her until she nods off. And then I stay a little while longer just to
be certain she’s asleep.
I know Patrick and Grace love her, and I know they love me, so the
last thing they would ever do is separate the two of us. They can be angry,
but they also know how much Diem loves me, so even if the three of us
can’t work our shit out, I know I’ll always be a huge part of Diem’s life.
And as long as I’m a part of Diem’s life, I’m going to fight for what’s best
for her.
I should have been doing it all along.
And what’s best for Diem is having her mother in her life.
It’s why I did what I did before I left Kenna’s apartment.
As soon as Kenna closed her bathroom door, I closed her apartment
door and pretended to leave. Instead, I grabbed her phone. The password
was an easy guess—Diem’s birthday. I opened her Google Docs and found
the file with all the letters she’s written to Scotty, and I forwarded the file to
my email address before sneaking out.
I stay in Diem’s bedroom and pull up Patrick and Grace’s printer
network on my phone. I open my email and find the letter Kenna read to
me, and I skip over all the rest of the letters she’s written Scotty. I’ve
already violated her privacy enough by using her phone and forwarding
these to myself. I don’t plan to read any of the others unless she tells me I
can someday.
Tonight, I just need one of the letters.

---

I hit print, and I close my eyes and listen for the sound of the printer to
activate in Patrick’s office across the hall.
I wait until it finishes printing, and then I sneak out of Diem’s bed and
wait a moment in her room to make sure I didn’t wake her up. She’s sound
asleep, so I slip out of her room and into Patrick’s office. I grab the letter off
the printer and make sure all of it printed.
“Wish me luck, Scotty,” I whisper.
When I emerge from the hallway, they’re both in the kitchen. Grace is
looking at her phone, and Patrick is emptying the dishwasher. They both
look up at the same time.
“I have something I need to say, and I really don’t want to yell, but I
will if I have to, so I think we should go outside because I don’t want to
wake up Diem.”
Patrick closes the dishwasher. “We don’t really want to hear what you
have to say, Ledger.” He motions toward the door. “You should go.”
I have a lot of empathy for them, but I’m afraid I’ve just met my limit.
A wave of heat climbs up my neck, and I try to push down my anger, but
it’s so hard when I’ve given them so much. I recall the words Kenna said to
me right before I left her. Please don’t hate them.
“I’ve given my life to that little girl,” I say. “You owe this to me. I’m
not leaving your property until we talk about this.” I walk out the front door
and wait in their yard. A minute passes. Maybe two. I take a seat on their
front patio. They’re either going to call the police or they’re going to come
outside or they’re going to go to bed and ignore me. I’ll wait here until one
of those three things happens.
It’s several minutes before I hear the door open behind me. I stand up
and spin around. Patrick walks out of the house just far enough to give
Grace space in the doorway. Neither of them looks open to what I’m about
to say, but I have to say it anyway. There will never be a good time for this
conversation. There will never be a good time to take the side of the girl
who ruined their lives.
I feel like the words I’m about to say are the most important words
that will ever come from me. I wish I were more prepared. Kenna deserves
better than to have me and my plea be the only hope left between her and
Diem.

---

I blow out an unsteady breath. “Every decision I make is for Diem. I
ended my engagement with a woman I loved because I wasn’t sure she
would be good enough for that little girl. That should tell you that I would
never put my own happiness before Diem’s. I know you both know that,
and I also know you’re just trying to protect yourselves from the pain
Kenna’s actions caused. But you’re taking the worst moment of Kenna’s
life and you’re making that moment who she is. That isn’t fair. It isn’t fair
to Kenna. It isn’t fair to Diem. I’m starting to wonder if it’s even fair to
Scotty.”
I hold up the pages in my hand.
“She writes letters to him. To Scotty. She’s been doing it for five
years. This is the only one I’ve read, but it was enough to change my entire
opinion of her.” I pause, and then backtrack on my words. “Actually, that’s
not true. I forgave Kenna before I even knew the contents of the letter. But
the second she read this out loud to me, I realized she’s been hurting just as
much as all of us have. And we’re slowly killing her by continuing to drag
out her pain.” I squeeze my forehead and put even more emphasis on the
words I’m about to speak. “We are keeping a mother from her child. That’s
not okay. Scotty would be so mad at us.”
It grows quiet when I stop speaking. Too quiet. It’s like they aren’t
even breathing. I hand Grace the letter. “It’ll be hard to read. But I’m not
asking you to read it because I’m in love with Kenna. I’m asking you to
read it because your son was in love with her.”
Grace starts to cry. Patrick still won’t look me in the eye, but he
reaches for his wife and pulls her to him.
“I’ve given the last five years of my life to you guys. All I’m asking
for in return is twenty minutes. It probably won’t even take you that long to
read the letter. After you read it, and take time to process it, we’ll talk. And
I’ll respect whatever decisions the two of you make. I swear I will. But
please, please give me the next twenty minutes. You owe Diem the
opportunity to have another person in her life who will love her as much as
Scotty would have loved her.”
I don’t give them an opening to argue or hand the letter back to me. I
immediately turn and walk to my house and disappear inside it. I don’t even
look out the window to see if they’ve gone inside, or if they’re reading the
letter.

---

I’m so nervous I’m shaking.
I look for my parents and find them in the backyard. My father has
items from the RV spread out across the grass, and he’s using the water
hose to clean them. My mother is sitting in the patio love seat reading a
book.
I take a seat next to her. She looks up from her book and smiles, but
when she sees the look on my face, she closes the paperback.
I drop my head in my hands and I start to cry. I can’t help it. I feel like
the lives of everyone I love are hanging on this moment, and it’s fucking
overwhelming.
“Ledger,” my mother says. “Oh, honey.” She wraps her arm around
me and hugs me.

---

CHAPTER FORTY
KENNA
I woke up with a migraine due to how much I cried last night.
I expected Ledger to text me or call me, but he never did. Not that I
want him to. A clean break is better than a messy one.
I hate that my choices from that one night years ago have somehow
created another casualty all these years later. How long will the aftershocks
from that night continue? Will I feel the ramifications forever?
Sometimes I wonder if we’re all born with equal amounts of good and
evil. What if no one person is more or less malevolent than another, and that
we all just release our bad at different times, in different ways?
Maybe some of us expel most of our bad behavior as toddlers, while
some of us are absolute horrors during the teenage years. And then maybe
there are those who expend very little malice until they’re adults, and even
then, it just seeps out slowly. A little bit every day until we die.
But then that would mean there are people like me. Those who release
their bad all at once—in one horrific night.
When you get all your evil out at once, the impact is much bigger than
when it seeps out slowly. The destruction you leave behind covers a much
bigger circumference on the map and takes up a much larger space in
people’s memories.
I don’t want to believe that there are good people and bad people, and
no in-between people. I don’t want to believe I’m worse than anyone else,
as if there’s a bucket full of evil somewhere within me that continues to
refill every time it runs empty. I don’t want to believe I’m capable of
repeating behavior I’ve displayed in the past, but even after all these years,
people are still suffering because of me.

---

Despite the devastation I’ve left in my wake, I am not a bad person. I