Heart on a Chain

  It’s farther from Jessica’s house to Henry’s, but with the weather warming up I begin walking the distance, then having Henry drive me back at night. I can tell that he doesn’t really understand why I’m so angry with my father, though I think Emma and Dr. Jamison are a little more understanding.

  I’ve been thinking a lot about Henry, trying to find a way we might be able to stay together. I know he will be going away to school, but I have nothing to tether me where I am. I can follow him, maybe, if I work really hard and save some money. Or I can wait for him. I’ll wait for him forever if I need to.

  The thought of being without him, permanently, petrifies me.

  It’s because I’m walking to Henry’s that I hear the conversation that changes my hopes.

  Henry is sitting in his backyard with his father. I don’t mean to eavesdrop, but in the end I’m glad I do.

  “Henry, don’t be foolish,” Dr. Jamison says.

  “Dad, I know what I’m doing.”

  “No, I don’t think you do. Son, I know you love her, but you’ll give up your future for her?”

  I freeze, knowing instinctively they’re talking about me.

  “Yes, I will, I’ll give anything up for her.”

  “And end up angry and bitter because of it. Then you’ll hate her, and she doesn’t deserve that.”

  “That’s not going to happen,” Henry argues, but he doesn’t sound so confident now.

  “You don’t think it will, but I’ve seen it happen plenty of times. You’ve had your college career mapped out for as long as I can remember. You can’t just give it up.”

  “I’m not; I’m just…changing it.”

  “Son, you’ve worked very hard for a very long time to get to this point. How can you even think of it?”

  “Because I can’t imagine being without Kate. She needs me. And I can’t hurt her that way, leaving her here alone.”

  I run away then, not wanting to hear anymore. I had known he would leave, of course I had known that. Even as I think it, I know that I’ve always thought there would be a way around it, just like all of the times I had managed to get out of my house to be with him when it seemed impossible. Because I can’t imagine being without him. Now I can see that he knows how dependant I am on him, that he is willing to change his life, give up his dreams for me—a nobody.

  A murderer.

  And I know Dr. Jamison is right, that he will hate me for it in the end. I try to imagine Henry looking at me with hate and disgust, and it makes me physically ill picturing it.

  I run into the woods, the woods that had once been the site of his prom for me, a stark testament to just how far he’ll go to try to please me, just as he had when he had given up his prom to give me my own.

  I sit on the ground in the wet leaves. I know what I have to do. I have to destroy myself to save him. I lean over, throwing up on the damp ground at the sickness that grips my stomach at the thought.

  I get up and walk back toward his house. I have to do it now, before I lose the courage to.

  Henry is now sitting alone in the backyard, hunched over in a lawn chair, deep in thought. I unlatch the gate, and he sits up at the sound.

  “Hey,” he calls, smiling, happy to see me, which breaks my heart. He gets up and comes over, taking me in his arms and kissing me. I relax into him, savoring the feeling, any excuse to put off what I need to do, wanting one last time to be held by him.

  “Your pants are wet,” he observes.

  “Oh, yeah…I stopped in the trees and sat for a while, thinking.”

  He cocks his head, giving me an odd look.

  “Thinking? About anything important?”

  “Actually, yeah. Something I need to talk to you about.”

  “Okay.” He takes my hand and leads me over to the lawn chairs. I sit across from him, not sure where to start, not wanting to do this.

  “Is everything okay? Is there a problem at Jessica’s? Or with your dad?”

  “No, no problems with Jessica or my…dad. Jessica and her parents have been great, really great.”

  “You can always stay here, you know.”

  My heart squeezes painfully. With every fiber of my being I want to do that, to give in, move into this warm house, to be surrounded with this family’s love. To be with Henry. Above all, to be with Henry.

  “Henry, the thing is…I can’t see you anymore.” I stand up, turning away from him, not wanting him to see what it costs me to say the words, afraid that if I look at him, I’ll take them back.

  “What?” he’s incredulous. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, it’s time for us to grow up, to start living for our futures. And I don’t see a future with us together.”

  “What are you talking about?” He’s on his feet, and I use all my years of practice at schooling my face into blankness in front of my mother’s fury when I face him.

  “Henry, we live different lives—in completely different worlds. Our futures will be entirely different. You will be successful in whatever you do, whether you become a doctor or not. You were raised to do that. I was raised to just get by, to wear hand-me-downs, to drive crappy cars and live in run-down houses. That’s my future.”

  “That’s not true, not with me. I won’t let that be how you have to live.”

  “But that’s the difference between us, Henry. I don’t mind that. I don’t aspire to be something I’m not. And you—you could never live the way I do.”

  “You are saying we can’t be together because I’m not poor?” He sounds angry now, with pain underneath his words. “I can live that way—as long as it’s with you. I will, if that’s what you want.” But his words are untrue—he knows it and I know it.

  “You’ll be going away to college; I’ll be lucky to get a job flipping burgers. You need a wife who can fit into your world, who doesn’t have a past like mine, someone with parents who weren’t drunks and drug addicts, and crazy to boot. A wife who hasn’t been charged with the murder of her mother. Imagine trying to explain that to your other doctor colleagues, or to your patients when you’re trying to build a practice.”

  Henry’s eyes are dark with denial, his face devastated. He’s shaking his head, and it takes all I have not to put my arms around him and try to ease the pain from his eyes.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he’s pleading now. “I don’t care what anyone thinks.”

  “But I do, Henry.” That stops him. “Because it would be me they would be despising, me who would be excluded from their lives, me who would be your shame, me who would be hurt by it.” I turn away from him again because honestly, I don’t care one ounce what anyone thinks of me, what anyone might think in the future, but if this is what it takes to get Henry to let me go, then I’ll use it.

  “Don’t do this, Katy. Please.”

  His voice is broken and I shudder deep within my soul. I don’t want to—oh, how I don’t want to. But his father’s words ring again in my ears. I won’t let him ruin his life for me; I’m hardly worth it. If I wasn’t worth the love of either my birth or adopted parents, then I’m really not worth the love of someone as pure as Henry.

  I pull the cell phone out of my pocket, squeezing it, as if imprinting the feel on my palm will somehow keep him close. I set it on the table.

  “Katy, please, please don’t do this. I want to be with you. I want to marry you.” He steps forward and turns me back toward him, hands clasped around my upper arms. I close my eyes against the intensity in his eyes, against my own overwhelming desire to give in to him, to be selfish and take what he offers. But behind my closed eyes I see again my imagined picture of him looking at me with hatred and I stiffen my resolve.

  “It wouldn’t last Henry. You know that.”

  “Kate, I love you,” he says, yearning in his words.

  “I love you, too.” I struggle to keep my voice light, to suppress the emotion that demands to be released with the words. “I always will. You’ve been my best friend. I will never forget
anything you’ve done for me. You have no idea how much it means. But now it’s time for me to move on.”

  “No,” he moans, pressing his forehead against mine. I reach up, laying my hand against his cheek, allowing myself this one last indulgence.

  “Bye, Henry,” I say, pulling away, hurrying through the gate, running once I’m beyond the house, running blindly with tears flooding my eyes, not stopping until I can’t run anymore.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  I end up staying with Jessica throughout the summer. Every time I try to leave, Jessica or her parents talk me into staying just a little longer, until eventually I quit even bringing it up. It just seems easier to stay.

  When I came home from breaking up with Henry, and told Jessica about it she sat with me while I cried.

  “I can’t do this,” I tell her.

  “Then don’t,” she says, “Go back to him.”

  She stays close to me while I work through the depression, dragging me out of bed on the days that I don’t want to get up.

  “Come on, Kate, let’s go get ice cream,” she says.

  “I don’t want to eat ice cream again,” I moan.

  “Then let’s go get a cup of cyanide. I hear they serve the best cyanide west of the Rockies at Joe’s.”

  She also tells me that I’m an idiot, that if she had someone who loved her in the way Henry loves me, she would do anything to keep them, not push them away.

  She can’t see the picture in my head, though, the one where Henry hates me for destroying his dream, the one where being married to a murderer has shattered his perfect life.

  I find work at the nursing home, taking care of Alzheimer patients, learning patience and love for people who are suffering so much worse than me, people who don’t care about my sudden local celebrity and don’t ask me questions about it.

  I apply for several scholarships, and receive enough to take a full course of classes at the community college, even enough to cover book costs. Jessica is also going to be attending, though we only have two classes together.

  I go to the bank with Grandpa Henry’s money and convert it into a money order, which I then mail to him. It comes back a week later. I mail it again to him, with a letter this time, telling him I’m no longer with Henry and no longer need an “emergency fund”. It comes back again, this time a new money order for two-thousand dollars, with its own letter.

  Dear Kate,

  I am aware of your misguided break-up with my grandson, but I still hold out hope that you will realize the foolishness of this and will return to him. In the meantime, this money is mine to do with as I please, and it pleases me for you to have it. I am happy you no longer need emergency money, so spend it on yourself. You deserve it. Return it to me and I will again double its value and will continue to do so as long as you keep returning it. Do you want to be responsible for wiping out an old man’s life savings?

  Love, Grandpa Henry

  The letter makes me laugh and cry. I miss Grandpa Henry, more so knowing I’ll never see him again. But I know he means what he says, and so I keep the money, this time sending him a letter thanking him for his donation to the Kate Mosley New Life Fund.

  “So, I hear you don’t drive,” Jessica’s dad, Tom, tells me over dinner one night.

  I glance at Jessica, who pointedly ignores me as she’s piling potatoes on her plate. I turn back to Tom.

  “That’s only kinda true. I have a drivers license; I’ve just never really had much of an opportunity to actually drive, so I’m not really sure if I still can or not.”

  “Well, then, let’s get going.”

  He stands up, and I look around, confused. Jessica only shrugs, shoveling a forkful of potatoes into her mouth—to cover a grin, I suspect. Jill, Jessica’s mom, only smiles and nods for me to follow her husband.

  We head out to the garage, and Tom throws me the keys to the small SUV as he climbs into the passenger seat. I take a breath, climbing into the opposite side.

  And just sit.

  After long, silent moments, Tom looks over.

  “Well?” he prompts.

  I turn to him.

  “This is really nice, but…”

  “But?”

  “It seems silly. I don’t even own a car.”

  “No big deal,” he says. “You’ll be the official family driver from here on out, until you get your own car.”

  “I’m not going to have money for a ca—” I break off as a thought pops into my head. I look at him with a smile.

  “What now?” he grins back.

  “Know any good used car dealers?” I ask, sticking the key into the ignition.

  Jessica’s family is different from the Jamison’s, not as loud and exuberant, hugs given sparingly, but they are still so far above what I have ever known. Her parents are quiet and steady, warm and welcoming me into the family from the beginning, as if I already belonged but only just showed up. They clearly love one another; they just aren’t as public about it as Emma and Dr. Jamison.

  I’m woven into the tapestry of their family so completely that I’m even given some chores to do along with Jessica. When the summer is coming to an end and I begin talking about moving out again, they ignore me, not making a big fuss and I find myself staying—again.

  Turns out Tom does have a friend that owns a car dealership and he helps me find a good used car cheap, one that I pay for somewhat guiltily using Grandpa Henry’s money.

  The pain of losing Henry doesn’t ever ease; I just learn to live with it. I avoid places in town that I know he might be. Jessica tries to tell me things she hears about him, but I plug my ears childishly, his name too painful to even hear. I don’t want to know what he’s doing, even as I yearn for the sight of his face, the touch of his hand, the kiss of his lips so much that I cry myself to sleep every night.

  Then it happens, the one thing I had feared.

  I’m driving home from work, and as I pull through a stop sign, I see a heartbreakingly familiar car coming the other way. I quickly pull to the side of the road, ducking, peering up over the steering wheel. My heart pounds, my hands sweat. My reaction is completely visceral, and I feel that I’m coming apart at the seams as I sit and watch, hoping and dreading.

  It’s Emma.

  I breathe a sigh of relief, then begin trembling in aftershock. It wasn’t who I thought—but was almost as bad. Waves of longing crash over me, and for an insane moment I consider turning my car around and following her. Then I scoff at myself.

  “Okay, Kate, get a hold of yourself!” I command.

  I try to imagine if it was Henry in the car and the pain that suffuses me is overwhelming. I think that if I were to see Henry somewhere I would probably have a heart attack if my body’s current reaction is any indication. At the very least it would undo the progress I’ve made in learning to try to live without him—no matter how small that progress. I figure getting out of bed, and trying to make a life is better than nothing.

  I’ve met a few new people in my college classes, though I still struggle with trust issues and believing someone would want to know me without malicious intent. I’m seeing a psychiatrist again, at the insistence of Jessica’s parents, who are worried about my deep depression after Henry. Having seen and felt the result of untreated depression firsthand in the form of my mother, I agree. I don’t need pills—refuse to take them, as a matter of fact—just someone to help me work through everything. She’s helping me learn to trust, to believe in myself, and to deal with being without Henry. She keeps encouraging me to date, but I know that isn’t going to happen for a very long time, if ever.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  My psychiatrist encourages me to make peace with my father. I discovered that my birth parents are unknown, as I had been left on the steps of a hospital—not as romantic in reality as it sounds. So I decide to try to see him.

  I pull up in front of the house next door to the house I had grown up in, ironically in the place where I had once made He
nry leave me to avoid being seen.

  My father is home—odd since it’s the middle of the afternoon on a Saturday. He has his head pushed underneath the open hood of his old car. It’s a peculiarly normal thing for him to be doing, something I don’t remember ever seeing him do before. I watch him for a few minutes, searching for the anger within. There’s a little rumble of it deep in my stomach, but mostly it’s gone.

  I climb out of my car, and he jumps at the sound of my slamming car door, hitting his head against the open hood, cursing as he rubs the spot. His eyes fall on me and his hands still as he watches me come near with disbelief.

  “Hi,” I say, as I come to the other side of the car from where he stands.

  “Hi,” he echoes, his voice reflecting his bewilderment. He picks up a rag lying over the fender and wipes his hands.

  “Car trouble, huh?” I say.

  He looks down at the engine as if there might be something there to explain my presence.

  “Yeah, I keep thinking I’m gonna keep this thing going for a few more years, but it has its own ideas.” I nod and he looks beyond me to where my car sits. “That yours?” he asks.

  “Yeah, I just got it about a month ago.”

  “Runs okay, huh?”

  I shrug. “It seems to.”

  “You ever need it looked at, I can…” he trails off, looking at me uncertainly.

  “Okay, I might take you up on that sometime.” My answer surprises him.

  He’s silent a minute, watching me, shifting nervously. “You wanna come in, have a soda or something?” he asks, sounding as if he expects a no.

  “Sure.” Again, his eyebrows raise in shock at my reply.

  I follow him in, sitting at the table while he washes his hands in the sink. I take the opportunity to look around. I’ll be honest, I expected the place to be in complete disarray, dishes piled in the sink, floor splattered. It’s clean, and organized. When he opens the fridge to retrieve sodas it’s filled with food—and most unusual of all, no beer or other alcohol that I can see. As he sits across from me I really look at him for the first time.