“Something to keep me ‘entertained’?” Caleb repeated, his mouth twisted in horrified surprise. “Is that really what you think of me?”
“Caleb, that was years ago. It’s not a reflection on you; it’s a reflection of how jaded and cynical I was back then. I’m not that person anymore, and I have you to thank. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, and I am not exaggerating in the slightest when I say that. I love you, Caleb.”
“I don’t know, Jo. Even if I could understand you lying about your parents—and I’m not saying that I do, but just for argument’s sake—even if I could, why didn’t you tell me about your sister?”
“Lanie is a self-centered, backstabbing drug addict. I try to forget she exists.”
Caleb, who worshipped his own sister, looked pained to hear me speak about my own flesh and blood in such a manner.
“Trust me, Caleb. Lanie is a story for another day.”
“What if I hadn’t found out? Were you going to hide this from me forever?”
“I never meant for it to get this far. In the beginning, even while I was falling in love with you, I thought this was temporary.” I put up a hand to stave off his outraged protest. “I know, I was wrong. But you can’t imagine what I’d been through. By the time I met you, I had been completely lost for five years. I couldn’t imagine anyone being permanent in my life ever again. And then you left, and I felt justified for thinking that.”
“Jo, my contract ended,” he objected. “I had to go back to New Zealand. I didn’t leave you.”
“I know. But you don’t understand what a mess I was back then. I didn’t trust anyone; I didn’t know how. And then you wrote a few months later and asked me to visit you, and I started to think that maybe I could trust you. Maybe you were different, maybe this was something real. I was happier than I’d been in years, and I was too afraid of wrecking things to tell you the truth. I promised myself I’d do it when the time was right, but the time just never seemed right, and then we were moving to New York together and I couldn’t tell you because I’d been lying to you for so long.” I reached for Caleb’s hands, but he pulled them out of my grasp. Choking back tears, I continued. “I’m sorry, Caleb. I’m so sorry. I know that an apology is probably too little and much too late, but I don’t know what else I can do. I’m sorry. I should never have lied to you. You are the only thing that means anything to me in this entire world, and I would die if I lost you.”
For one long, awful moment, Caleb stared at me with eyes as blank and cool as steel. It was a look I had not even imagined his empathetic face capable of making, and it made me sick. I had always known Caleb would someday realize I wasn’t as good a person as he, certainly not as good a person as he deserved, and that day had arrived.
But then Caleb wavered. His spine remained rigid and his jaw clenched, but there was a minute softening of his eyes. “Don’t say that.”
“I would,” I insisted, my voice shaking with emotion. “I would die without you.”
Caleb grimaced and lifted his shoulders in a half-shrug. “I don’t quite know what you expect from me, Jo. If what you’ve told me about your life is true, it’s horrible, but—”
“It’s true,” I promised. “And, Caleb, there’s more.”
“What else? A brother you keep chained in the basement?”
“A podcast. Have you heard of Reconsidered?”
He nodded slowly. “I haven’t listened to it myself, but I’ve heard of it. True crime?”
“Yeah. And the murder at its center—the one being ‘reconsidered’—is my father’s.”
Caleb frowned down at the frame still in his hands, at my father’s jovial face staring up at him. “That can’t be. Someone would’ve told me if it was about your family.”
“My last name isn’t really Borden,” I admitted. “I mean, it is now. I went to the San Francisco County Court and filled out the appropriate paperwork and everything. But I was born a Buhrman. As in Chuck Buhrman.”
“Fuck, Jo,” he said, flinging the frame onto the bed. He ran his hands through his hair, hurt glistening in his eyes. “You never even told me your real name?”
“I’m not that person anymore,” I insisted, gesturing to the teenager in the picture. “Caleb, you have to believe me. Please—”
“Stop it,” he said, standing up and backing away. “I don’t know you at all. You’ve lied to me about everything. Everything.”
“I love you,” I said, my voice strangled. “That’s not a lie.”
“Don’t,” he said, his words loaded with disgust. “That’s not fair. You can’t expect me to just shrug and be okay with this.”
“Please—” I started, but Caleb turned on his heel and stalked out of the bedroom. The door slammed, and everything inside me shattered.
From Twitter, posted September 24, 2015
chapter 12
The morning we buried what was left of my mother, the sky was clear and the air was crisp. It was the kind of early autumn day that made you feel good to be alive, if you were the type of person who believed the weather could reinforce your soul, or if you were doing something other than attending a funeral.
I made my way across the cemetery lawn, the ground unsteady beneath my feet. Grief tilted my vision, and the sight of the tent erected over the open grave, the chairs neatly lined up beside the earth’s gaping maw, stopped me in my tracks. How could we commit my mother’s ashes to the earth and then walk away? How could we have buried my father and left him here? I bit my lip to keep from crying out, and blood filled my mouth.
Sophie, Peter’s youngest daughter, patted my arm gently. “Are you okay, Josie? Do you need a minute?”
A large, warm hand landed on the small of my back, and Caleb said, “I’ve got her.”
Sagging with relief, I turned gratefully into his embrace, resting my forehead against his sternum.
“You came,” I said against the smooth fabric of his dark suit.
Caleb kissed my head tenderly. “Of course I came.”
The burial was harder than I had anticipated. Watching the remains of my mother and all our lost chances being lowered into the ground was gut-wrenching, but in the end it was Aunt A who nearly undid me. Aunt A, the bravest, most resilient woman I knew, was weeping openly, a spluttering sob occasionally tearing through the quiet, making the rest of us look away. She clutched Ellen with one hand and clawed helplessly at her own chest with the other. I wanted to comfort her, but I did not, part of me fearing that her complete and total grief was contagious.