My Very Best Friend (15 page)

Your third suggestion that I go to Seattle and ask a man out is equally mind-boggling.

I have beaten two of my chess pen pals in our matches recently. That is the excitement in my life.

But do tell, though, how is your love life? And how did your trip to London go?

Love,

Charlotte

I picked up a bunch of her “real” letters. The Diary Letters, as I now thought of them. With shaking hands I read through a few more.

I was horrified down to the marrow of my bones. I actually hurt for Bridget, my chest tight. I tried to keep control, but I couldn’t. It was like walking through the darkness with her, the darkness filled with evil and violence.

Poor Bridget.

She had lied. She had written two sets of letters, ones she sent to me to keep up the façade of her life and the ones she kept.

Though it hurt me, like a pen piercing me in the chest, to know that she lied to me, that things were not as they seemed, that my reality of my relationship with her was utterly wrong, her lies to me were completely irrelevant. My feelings were nothing against the background of Bridget’s suffering, the harm that had been done to my friend, the crimes committed.

I put my head between my knees, my hands over my head, and cried harder than I had cried since my dad died.

I cried for Bridget.

Bridget, where are you? Please come home.

“It was my father’s fanaticism that set Bridget up for what later happened.”

Toran and I sat on the sand, the day sunny, the ocean waves blue-gray silk, the sky dabbled with white, squishy clouds.

“He was obsessed with Catholicism. He thought more of his obsession than he did of his family. Church for us every day, twice on Sunday, as you know. Kneeling and praying for hours on end, sometimes on sand or gravel if he didn’t feel we were holy enough. He believed in self-punishment. There was constant memorization of the Bible. He was intimidating and angry. I think he loved us but had no way to show it. I have no mixed emotions about the man, and when he died I grieved only for what could have been, what should have been. I didn’t grieve for him.”

“He hit you then?”

“Yes. Sometimes.”

“You and Bridget didn’t talk about that, but I wondered.”

“We were humiliated, and my mother told us not to tell. She was humiliated, too. He hit us whenever he thought we were not being ‘devout, Christ-filled Catholics,’ that’s what he told us. He would quote the Bible before he hit us, and afterward. We thought we were bad—he told us we were. What kid wants to tell anyone they’re so bad that their parent hits them?”

“When your father would hit you, what did your mother do?”

“Nothing. She was totally and completely cowed and controlled by my father. She was scared. She had no education, no money, and she was Catholic, too. Didn’t believe in divorce.”

“How do you feel about her, that she didn’t protect you and Bridget?” I pushed my brown corduroy skirt between my knees. I was wearing my white sweatshirt with a squirrel on it and a straw hat.

“I could forgive her for not stepping in to help me, as a young man, but I have a hard time forgiving her for not stepping in to protect Bridget.”

“I have a hard time forgiving her for not protecting either of you.”

“My emotions toward my mother are more,” he tipped his hand back and forth. “Undefined. I loved her, because she loved us and we knew it, but she drank too much to block out her life. By drinking too much, she wasn’t there for us, and because she wasn’t sober, or was hung over, she couldn’t find a solution, which would have been taking us to her family in Dublin. She couldn’t think straight.”

“And by not thinking straight, she didn’t protect you from your father, a harsh and creepy virus.” I sat straighter, realizing my mistake. “I apologize. I’m being way too blunt and harsh.”

“Never apologize to me, Char, for being honest. I loved my mum, but no parent who is drinking heavily is being a true parent to their children. She saw us hit. She saw us kneeling for hours, reciting the Bible in tears, standing in a corner being castigated by a fanatic.

“My father did the same to her, only I often think she had it worse. No telling what that man demanded she do in the bedroom. I would wake up to him yelling scripture at her. She was scared. I felt sorry for her, I still do. But she should have intervened when Bridget went through what she did. She should have saved Bridget, and she did not. That’s hard to get past.”

Off in the distance, a blue-gray wave crashed, then smoothed out. Another wave followed it and crashed, too. By the time the crashing waves met the shore, they were calm.

“I look back now and I know there was something wrong with him. He had an addictive, twisted personality. He was a slave to Catholicism, would even whip himself at night sometimes. He sometimes wore a barbed chain around his thigh, which caused him to bleed. He wanted me to wear one, but I refused. He wore two crosses on his chest, which he kissed religiously.

“When he met Angus Cruickshank, when he arrived from Belfast, those two would rant and rave about the Bible, yell, pray. It was scary, that’s what it was. But he was honored to be friends with a priest, awed. Talked about Father Cruickshank all the time. They performed an exorcism on Bridget once, when I was away at school, when you were in Seattle.”

“That would be like participating in your own horror movie.”

“She was terrified. She told me later what happened.” He gritted his teeth. “Poor Bridget actually believed there were evil spirits inside of her.

“My father’s family was Catholic and from Ireland, but they came here to Scotland about two hundred years ago. I think my father always felt that he was not accepted, so he became more extreme. His father had a temper, and I know he hit my father as a boy, much worse than what we got. My father had a slight dent on the right side of his head from a head injury. Perhaps all those things turned him away from a rational, reasonable life.”

“I remember you doing most of the work on the farm.”

“What I remember is how often you and Pherson, and your father, came and helped me. Your father came only when he knew my father wasn’t here. My mother never said a word. Your father—” He stopped. I knew he was trying to rein in his emotions. “He was the one who taught me how to be a man. He taught me about farming. I remembered everything. I’d write it down. But our farm didn’t do well for long years, and we were poor.

“Being poor, at any time of life, is very difficult. You feel like you’re less than other people. That other people are better than you. Everything’s a struggle, a worry. You’re thinking of survival so much, you can’t get much past that.”

“Toran, I’m sorry. I never felt better than you.” Not a day did I think that. “I don’t think anyone did. You were the most popular kid in school.”

“I know you didn’t. I don’t know about being most popular. I was trying to survive my home life. When I was older, thirteen, fourteen, and could handle more of the farm work, that helped. I was able to hide some of the money from my father, and I bought food, and things my mother and Bridget needed. I hated the way my father treated his own family. He was supposed to be the man of the home. He was supposed to protect us, to provide a life, a living. He was supposed to lead, to be kind to my mother, and to Bridget and me. He was supposed to be involved in our lives, to make things easier, not harder. He did none of that.”

“I used to think of him as Le Monster.”

“He was a monster. I’m glad he’s gone. I’m glad he’s been gone a long time, too. He did enough damage. When I am a father, if I am fortunate enough to be a father one day, I will treat my children with respect and love. Above all, love. And I will never lay a hand on them in anger.”

I couldn’t talk. My lips quivered, and my chin wiggled. He saw it and said, “Ah, Charlotte, I did not mean to make you cry.”

“You didn’t.” He pulled me into his shoulder. “Okay, you did.”

The next blue-gray silk wave rushed up to us. I knew we would get wet. I didn’t move. I liked being in Toran’s arms. When we were wet, his jeans, my skirt, we still didn’t move.

The sun shone above us, the clouds white and squishy.

I was glad that Toran’s father was dead. He was a blockheaded, raving lunatic.

I felt sorry for his mother . . . but I had a hard time feeling too much pity for her. Her job as a mother was to protect her kids, and she didn’t. She should have taken Toran and Bridget to her own parents, who would have welcomed them in. Carney had forbidden her from visiting them, according to Toran, but she had an answer. She said no to it.

I know there are many reasons why she didn’t, things that Toran had already said, but does that excuse it? Does that excuse that her children were raised in fear, spent hours on their knees while their fanatical father screamed Bible verses, hit them, and was intimidating and scary?

Does it?

Look what it did to them.

Look what it did to Bridget.

Look what they did, to Bridget and to Toran.

And then they died. Up there, nearby.

What happened?

“She’s got a mark on her,” my grandma said to me as Bridget and Toran ran back through the fields to their house. “It’s dark. It will stain her whole life.” She teared up. “Trouble comes to her.”

“Mum,” my dad said, his face creased in worry. “Don’t say that to Charlotte.”

“It’s true, though. She is old enough to hear it. You must be Bridget’s friend always. Never let go. I see cities for her. I see a wanderer in the dark. I see pain in her veins and smoke surrounding her life. I see . . . confusion. Lost. She’s lost. Oh!” She covered her mouth.

“What, Grandma, what?”

“I see that they take her away.”

“Take who away? Take who?” I watched Bridget in the distance, her red ribbon flowing between strands of her white-blond hair, Toran running alongside her.

“Both of them.”

“
What? Who?”

“Both of them. Her and . . .” Her eyes filled with tears, and I knew that this time the vision was clear. “Mackintoshes are loyal to their friends. You must always be loyal to Bridget. It is not her fault.”

My father went to stand at the window and watched them go. My mother linked an arm around his waist, then laid her head on his shoulder. They sighed, as if on cue, together.

Since I had no close friends in high school, I had a lot of time to study for the SAT, which I nailed. It is not something I am overly proud of. Rather, it’s a mark of how much time I had to spend alone and how lonely I was.

I went to college and majored in physics and biology. I was glad to go to college. Physics and time traveling actually go hand in hand. In fact, my love of physics helped propel the original plot of my first book, which launched my career. For fun, at night, I would study time travel.

I knew it wasn’t possible.

Logically speaking.

I knew it was a ridiculous notion.

Scientifically, that is.

I knew it was only a fantasy.

For magical dreamers only.

But, I asked myself, over numerous cups of coffee: What if it were possible?

I pet my beloved cats, Pillow Z and Tasmania, long dead now. I listened to symphonies composed by Dvorak and Rachmaninoff, and had more coffee. I was, as usual, alone, so I had a lot of time to think.

What if?

Were time periods simply parallel to each other? Could you cross that parallel? How would you do it? Are we living multiple lives at once and don’t know it? Could certain people time travel who had special perceptions or inexplicable universal powers? Are we new people in those lives? What about reincarnation?

What if?

I thought about my lack of romance as I analyzed time travel, scouring books, journals, and articles in prestigious magazines. I thought of my stash of romances under my bed, some contemporary romances, some historical, others so graphic and titillating that I would read in my flannel floor length pajamas and have to fan my face or get Dan, the first vibrator.

I had no romance. I had cats, coffee, and romance novels. After graduating from college, I decided to get a master’s in biology. Along with school, I had a job at the university research laboratory which I loved, except for one prick named Dr. Xavier.

What if?

In between school and work I asked myself, Could I write a
time travel
romance?

I started scribbling some thoughts down, late at night. McKenzie Rae catapulted to life as if she were a living person. The plot came. The history. The time travel elements. How she had to save someone in every book.

I was the happiest I’d been in a long time.

Then the book was derailed.

By a man, no surprise there.

And I let it happen. That’s what galls me the most. I let a man alter my destiny.

Preposterous and shameful on my part, and on my feminist belief system.

My mother almost choked on her own tongue.

Toran and I drove over to my house several evenings later, the sun beginning its descent, slow and easy, lazy, as if it were waiting for us to tap it down those final inches. The colors blurred, like melting popsicles, with a dark streak of purple.

I liked the new roof. The white kitchen cabinets were halfway up. Because they were premade, it was quicker. It was a mess, but an organized, tarp-covered mess. The Stanleys had a large crew.

“When this is all finished, I’m going to buy curtains and put them up to help sell it,” I said to Toran. I adjusted my glasses, then refastened my clip to keep my hair out of my face, as it had popped open again. I touched the button of my blue blouse to make sure it was still fastened. Over my blouse I was wearing my favorite green poncho, with a horse embroidered on the front, and my light brown ruffled skirt.