“You keep saying that, but—”
“No,” I cut her off, shaking my head adamantly. “Listen to me. It is my fault.”
“Okay, Blake. I’m listening,” she replied softly, giving me the floor.
With a deep breath, I told my story. The one I never told, not even to Travetti. “So, Jake … He was normal. He was so fucking smart—way smarter than me. And if you think I’m talented with my drawing, his stuff would’ve blown you away. I mean, even at ten years old, he was winning awards at school and shit. I can’t imagine how it would be now … you know, if he could.”
I cleared my throat and pushed a hand down to the nape of my neck and squeezed. “I was the wild kid—”
“Can’t say I’m surprised,” she interjected gently.
Giving her a short chuckle, I nodded. “Yeah. I was always getting into trouble. I drove my parents crazy, but they loved it back then. I kept them on their toes, while Jake kept the peace. He, uh … he kept me out of trouble, too. He’d always try to talk me out of doing shit or keep me from fucking up. Sometimes, I’d listen, other times I didn’t …
“So,” I went on, folding my arms against my knees, “there was this old abandoned house, down the street from where my parents live. This thing was so fuckin’ old and dilapidated, there were literal holes in the floor and the stairs were missing treads. But we were kids, you know. We weren’t thinking about how dangerous it was to be in there; we just thought we were cool, breaking into this shitty old place.”
I stood up and began pacing the length of Audrey’s porch. I didn’t look at her, couldn’t face her, but I felt her eyes on me with every step I took. “Sometimes, we hung out in the backyard and pretended we were explorers. Like, I’m not making it up when I say this place was a jungle, it was so overgrown. And there was this gigantic tree back there with these huge, gnarled branches. It looked like something right out of a Tim Burton movie, creepy as fuck, and it didn’t help that there was this old wooden swing hanging from one of the branches. We’d freak ourselves out, making up stories about it, like how it was cursed or haunted, and we’d dare each other to sit on that fucking swing but then we’d chicken out and go home.
“One day, we were hanging out back there and I decided, today’s the day I’m gonna sit on that fucking swing, and I told Jake he had to, also. But he was such a pussy.” I laughed somberly through my nose, stopped my persistent pacing, and slumped with my shoulder against one of the porch posts. “He told me not to and said some stupid shit about ghosts and whatever the hell else, like something was gonna get me if I sat on the damn thing. He just wanted to go home.”
My voice cracked, and Audrey stood. She walked the three steps toward me, but I took a step back, holding out my hand to stop her from getting any closer. I didn’t want to be coddled. Not now. Not when it came to this. I needed to feel this pain, this shame, and all this fucking guilt.
“I made fun of him,” I said in a low, graveled tone. “I said he was a baby and that if he wanted to go home so badly, he could go. I told him to leave me alone if he was gonna ruin my fun, but he wouldn’t fucking leave. He was so legitimately scared that something was gonna happen to me and he didn’t want me to be alone when shit went down.
“So, to prove how fucking tough I was, I went right over to the thing, sat down, and nothing happened. It felt sturdy, and I was just laughing at Jake ‘cause he made such a big deal out of nothing. So, he says to me, ‘Great, now let’s go home,’ but I couldn’t leave it at that, could I? I had to keep pushing shit. So, I started swinging and acting like a fucking asshole, still laughing at him. But then, Jake starts telling me that the branch looked like it was gonna break …”
I pinched the bridge of my nose, still able to hear his frantic pleas for me to stop, to get off the swing, to knock it off and go home. The tears stung the back of my eyes and I tried to steady my lungs with one deep breath and then another. But what was the point? I lost the battle against my quivering chin and burning eyes, and a tear slipped over my cheek.
“There was this sickening noise, this cracking, and I could feel the branch begin to give and fall. It happened so fucking fast, but I managed to jump off. I had busted my knee open, but I felt like I had dodged a bullet, it was so crazy. Then, I started to make some asshole joke about it really being haunted or something, when I realized Jake wasn’t saying anything. At first, I thought he’d high-tailed it out of there when he saw the thing coming down, but I turned around and found him pinned under it.”
“Oh, God, Blake.” Audrey could barely speak, her voice coming in nothing more than a whisper, as she stepped closer and wrapped her hand around my wrist. “I don’t even know what to say. I just …,” her voice splintered and she cleared her throat, “I just feel like nothing I could say right now would be good enough.”
I shook my head and pulled my wrist from her grasp. I expected an expression of hurt, but it didn’t come. She just simply watched me, so patient and accepting of everything I was, and I couldn’t begin to understand how she could do that.
“Don’t say anything,” I told her. “I don’t need you to. Hell, I don’t even want you to. I just needed to get that shit off my chest.”
“Do you feel any better?”
I shook my head. “No. Not really,” I admitted. “I guess it’s sort of nice that someone else knows now. That fucking branch hit him in the head and he almost died. Hell, he should’ve died, all things considered, and that’s because of me. So, yeah, it’s my fault I’ve spent the past ten years of my life doing nothing but whatever I could do to take care of him, because it should’ve been me. Not him—me.”
In a hurry, I moved away from her, to take a seat once again on the porch steps. Slowly she came to sit beside me.
“Oh, Blake,” she said softly, laying a hand against my shoulder, “I understand the guilt, but it was an accident. Your life doesn’t have to stop just because—"
“Oh, yeah?” I turned to her. “And what about his life? It consists of watching TV, listening to music, and playing with his dog. So, if that’s the only life he gets to have, then why should I have a better one?”
Her expression drooped with pity and sorrow as her head shook. “If you had a better life, so would he.”
“How the hell do you figure that?”
She offered me a small smile and slid her hand across my shoulders. When her temple touched my arm, I closed my eyes and asked nobody up above to let me keep this. For as long as I could, for as long as I was allowed.
“Part of taking care of someone, is making sure you take care of yourself, and that includes your own happiness. And I know this, because when I’m happy, Freddy is happy,” she explained quietly. “So, if you were happy, Jake would be happy, too.”
I swallowed the information, letting it settle in my gut, before I tipped my cheek to press against the top of her head. “How do you know that’d work?”
“I don’t,” she confessed. “But I’m just guessing because God entrusted me to care for Freddy, and He entrusted you to care for Jake.”