How I Got Here (22 page)

I’ve made so many friends here, and my trust issues are hardly there anymore, I still get a little bit withdrawn sometimes, but I think that my group therapy sessions are helping a lot with that, I mean it’s not like we stand in pairs and do the whole falling into each other’s arms thing, but knowing that there are all these people who are going through, or have been through the same sort of things to me, that helps, we all talk and open up about our experiences, and I really feel a part of something. I’ve also made friends with a coupl
e of girls in town, Lisa and Megan. I think that slowly Megan who I met in the town and Kylie from group sessions, are becoming my best friends, and it feels really good to have that close bond of friendship again. It’s nothing like what I had with you, they don’t know me as well as you know me, I don’t think anyone ever could know me that well, but it’s really nice having them as friends.

Kylie really understands what I’m going through, she listens and helps me to work through things, and I help her deal with her own issues, which coincidentally also involve Cyberbullying. She’s sweet and soft spoken,
really petite and just, well she’s tiny, but she’s got such a temper on her, if someone says something bad about her and her friends, she isn’t afraid anymore, she says she never used to be afraid to stand up for herself, but somewhere along the way she’d lost that fight, and slowly she’d started to hate herself, and she said she became weak. Now though she’ll shout at anyone who upsets her, our group leader has cautioned her that perhaps she needs to find a balance, she’s working on it.

Megan is the opposite of Kylie, she’s tall, probably six foot but she won’t say for definite,
she’s curvy and calls herself chubby, but me and Kylie both tell her she’s beautiful, then she remembers that we’ve both been dealing with weight issues, she’s agreed to consider herself curvy from now on, and assures us she is happy with how she looks, which is a great relief to both me and Kylie. Megan is wildly intelligent, she’s at the local college even though she got into most of the top schools, but she decided to stay here in Seattle, because her father wasn’t well enough to run his grocery store alone, and she wanted to help him. She’s very bookish, even more so than I was in the hospital, she reads anything she can get her hands on, and she’s started tutoring me with my high school work, which is a great help because I’m a long way behind, of course a good amount of our time is spent giggling about things rather than focusing on actual work. Can you imagine that? Me sat with a friend giggling away? I never thought I would get back to this place, but here I am. I’m not unhappy, I guess that’s progress, and even though I do giggle sometimes, I am still miserable, not all the time but when I think about you not being in my life, I feel incredibly miserable. I think you messed me up a little, it’s like I can’t lead a normal life now. Why don’t people warn you that love does that to you?

Anyway I was talking about my friends, and I guess all there is to say about that is that I love them both dearly, and I finally feel like I have friends I can trust and who can trust me. My parents are happy I’ve made friends, and they are
giving me a little more freedom, which I think is good, in fact I’m almost certain that it is good.

On another note, I have a job now, I work weekends at the grocery store owned by Megan’s family, that way Megan can keep an eye on me; she’s very good at that, she’s a very mothering person, which is probably why my father agreed to me working there, my dad still worries about me a lot, I catch him watching me sometimes, and I wonder if he’ll ever be able to trust me again, or if he’ll always worry if I’m lying about eating, or hiding food.

I guess all in all I’m doing pretty well, the only thing that still brings me down is thinking about you, because I still miss you so deeply. Of course I still have moments when I dwell on my past, when I think about things that I’ve messed up. I even hate myself sometimes, but those thoughts never stay long, not anymore, not like they used to, and I have ways of dealing with them now. I can talk to people about it now. But you are a different matter, I sometimes talk to Kylie and Megan about you, but I never say too much because it gets too painful. So I write these letters, place them in the draw, and hope that one day I’ll fall out of love with you, because until I do, I don’t think I’ll ever stop feeling miserable.

Chapter Twenty Four

Oliver
4

The drive from Manhattan to their parents’ house in Connecticut, to say the least, was tense. Amanda knew that something was going on with him, she was fairly certain he had news for them, and she was even more certain that it wasn’t going to be good. She could tell from the way that he was gripping
the wheel so tightly, and the fact that he hadn’t said anything since they’d left, and back at her apartment he’d only explained the bare facts.

‘We’re going to dinner at mom and dad’s.’ He’d said as soon as he’s walked in, ‘we should be leaving soon.’

‘They didn’t call me, I don’t remember them setting up a dinner.’ Amanda had shaken her head; she’d planned on spending the evening studying for her course, and she hadn’t really felt like going out.

‘They didn’t arrange it, I did.’ He’d explained using the minimal amount of words he thought he could get away with.

‘Why?’

‘Because I think it would be a good idea to have a family meal.’ He’d persisted, ‘Please can you just not question it and get ready, where’s Tiff?’

‘In her room, why do we need to have a family meal, is something going on that you’re not telling me about?’

‘Later Amanda, we’ll talk at dinner.’ He’d replied and then gone off to tell Tiff their plans, the little girl had been happy to come along, partly because it meant her bedtime would be later, and partly because she knew that a trip to her grandparent’s house, inevitably meant that she would be given plenty of sweets
.

Oliver hadn’t said another word the whole trip, though for the first twenty minutes she’d fired questions at him, all of which he refused to answer. By the time they arrived she was thoroughly annoyed, she got out of the car first, leaving Oliver to unbuckle Tiff, and walked inside using the key under the doormat, vaguely remembering having told Oliver off for keeping one there, she noted that she’d have to tell her parents the same thing.

‘Hello darling, it’s lovely to see you.’ Her mother, Judy, came out of the kitchen to greet her, kissing both her cheeks and looking at her, ‘you look tired.’

‘I’ve been busy lately, ‘Amanda shrugs off the comment, ‘any idea why Oliver summoned us all here tonight?’

‘I wouldn’t call it summoned dear, but I haven’t any ideas. He sounded alright enough on the phone, and you said yourself that he’d been doing better recently, maybe he just wanted to see the family.’

‘Maybe but that doesn’t explain why he’s not answering my questions, I’m telling you there is something going on.’ Amanda stops talking as Tiff comes barreling down the hall, throwing herself into her grandma’s arms.

‘Hi mom, is dad here?’ Oliver kisses his mother’s cheek, and Judy has to agree that he does look as if he had something to tell them.

‘He’s in the dining room waiting for his dinner; I made him wait until you all arrived.’ Judy replies.

‘We’ll have to go in then.’ Oliver smiles and they all make their way into the dining room. For most of the dinner they talk about everyday things. Judy tells them about her gardening and the beach house they just rented for the upcoming summer in the Hampton’s, and then offers both Amanda and Oliver unlimited time there over the summer, to which Amanda promises she’ll get down as many weekends as she can.

‘How about you Oliver will you come? I know you won’t have all the weekends off at the hospital, but you might be able to drive down for some
at least, and some weekdays too, depending on your shifts.

‘Actually that’s sort of what I wanted to talk to you all about.’ Oliver replies, he can hear the collective intake of breath, clearly they’d all been waiting for him to raise the subject,
and he’s surprised Amanda restrained her curiosity for so long.

‘Oh yes?’ His father, Paul, looks up from his now empty plate.

‘I won’t be working at the hospital this summer, I quit today.’

‘You did what!?’ Amanda shrieks loudly, ‘What on earth did you do that for?’

‘Let him explain.’ Judy, ever the peacekeeper, hushes her daughter into a reluctant silence.

‘I haven’t been happy at the hospital for a while; you know I never really did want to work in a private hospital, it was only because it sort of fell into my lap, and then – well there was always a reason to stay, but for a while now there hasn’t been one, so I left.’ He explains it as best he can, this of course being the easier part of his announcement.

‘What will you do now then? Have you got another job lined up? Because the money from your grandfather won’t last forever, you’re young so $500,000 may seem a lot, but you’d be surprised how it can whittle away.’ Paul looks at him sternly, he’d always worried that one of his children would live purely off inheritance, but so far they’d all been sensible about it, and none of them had chipped too far into it. All of them had good steady jobs, and were saving for a rainy day, something which he had always greatly encouraged.

‘I don’t have one yet but I will get one, and as soon as I can.’ Oliver promises, the last thing he wants to do is stop working, keeping busy helps him.

‘Well that seems fine then.’ Judy nods her approval.

‘No but if you were just changing your job, you wouldn’t have called a last minute family meeting.’ Amanda, always ready to be suspicious, was the first to speak
after Judy had so readily brushed the subject aside.

‘There is something else; I used some of my inheritance to buy a house, $294,000 to be exact.’ He said looking for their reactions, the room fell silent for a few moments, his father turned and looked at him sharply, seemed about to say something critical and then changed his mind.

‘Well real estate seems like a sound investment.’ Paul nods his approval.

‘I thought you liked your apartment.’ Judy says confused, ‘Or do you plan on renting out the house, or doing it up and reselling it? One of my friends does that, renovation work on property, she makes quite a tidy profit each time, but surely you wouldn’t have time to do it up, I don’t want you tiring yourself out.’

‘I’ll be selling the apartment and moving into the house, in a week.’ He pauses and takes a deep breath; they’re all waiting for him because they know he has more to say, ‘It’s in South Dakota.’

‘You’re moving to South Dakota!’ Amanda’s voice shouts out, causing Tiff to cover her ears.

‘Honey, why don’t you go and play with your toys in the other room.’ Judy instructs the child, willing to escape the noise of the inevitable fight, Tiff scampers off.

‘This is about her isn’t it, is that where she is?’ Amanda’s eyes flash angrily at him.

‘Who are we talking about, what woman?’ Paul asks trying to keep up, though he’d still reeling from his son’s announcement.

‘Not woman, girl. She was a patient of Oliver’s up until a few months ago.’ Amanda explains briefly, ‘So is it because of her?’

‘Not it isn’t, I don’t have any idea where she is.’ Oliver replies.

‘This seems very sudden.’ Judy says trying to stay calm; of course she’s dealt with her children moving away before, but never so suddenly, and now there was mention of a girl, she was finding it hard to take everything in.

‘I need to get out of the city, that’s it.’ He shrugs, dreading the question he knows is coming.

‘But why to South Dakota?’ It’s Paul who asks it, the question they’re all
thinking, ‘There’s some nice scenery round that way, but I don’t know why you’d move there, of all places.’

‘I found a house that was hard to say no to.’ He told the half-truth, because if he’d told them how he’d found the house, they would have called him crazy and prevented him from going. ‘Here why don’t you take a look?’ He pulls out the details from his bag, which was lying next to his chair. He hands the pages over to his father first, and Judy stands and looks over his shoulder.

‘Oh it does look wonderful, and so much land as well.’ Judy smiles at her son, trying to see this move as a positive thing.

‘You get a lot more for your money that way than in New York, it’s smart to buy something out of the city I think.’ Paul replies.

‘It’ll probably do you good to slow down a bit, the hospitals there will probably be far quieter.’ Judy adds.

‘I was thinking about looking into work in a small practice, just for a change of pace.’ Oliver replies, ‘I just think it could be good.’

‘That sounds sensible.’ Paul offers up his opinion, ‘Excellent prospects.’

‘Are we all forgetting the suddenness of this move?’ Amanda protests, ‘It’s completely insane and I have no idea why everyone is so quick to accept this. I also have no doubt that this is something to do with her.’