“She what, Caleb?” Liz prompts.
“She wouldn’t have been able to handle it,” I spit out, my words harsh as I struggle with even having to talk about this.
“Why?”
I shake my head, rolling my eyes as I stand and walk over to the window of her office. It looks out over the parking lot, the street that leads to her office building. I stand with my back to Liz, wondering why she’s pushing this, why we have to go down this path when it has nothing to do with what’s happened here in Hawthorn.
“Caleb?”
“Because she cares too much. She’s too good,” I eventually say. “She wouldn’t have been able to do what she needed to do.”
“And what’s that exactly?”
I suck in a breath, my eyes closing as my mind flashes back to everything that happened back in Providence. The arguments with our father, the drunken fights that almost always ended in some kind of scuffle between the two of us. If I was lucky, he passed out before it got bad, but more often than not, it didn’t go that way. More often than not I had to physically stop him from doing all the things he threatened me with, the venomous words he spat out at me.
It got worse over the years too, as the bar and our family legacy continued to disappear into an ever-expanding black hole of debt and loans and Ray fucking Bowen. And as this happened, so too did Dad’s drinking. And his violence.
I finally turn around and find Liz watching me, as though she’s just waiting until I’m ready to talk. “She wouldn’t have been able to stand up to him,” I finally say.
Liz nods once, the movement small and barely noticeable as she swallows and says, “And do you resent her for this, for feeling like you had to be the one who—”
“No,” I say, cutting her off. “No fucking way do I resent Sie for that. God, she’s my sister, all I ever wanted to do was protect her.”
Liz offers me a small smile now. “Kind of makes you a carer too, doesn’t it?”
I shake my head. “No, it makes me her brother,” I say. “And me staying while she left was the right thing to do.”
I watch as Liz puts her notepad and pen on the coffee table in front of her before resting her joined hands on her crossed legs. She looks up at me, a kind smile on her face as she watches me for a few seconds, almost as though she’s gauging my true feelings on all of this.
“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with resenting your sister for leaving,” she starts and almost immediately I’m cutting her off with, “I don’t resent her!”
Liz holds up a hand. “You were dealt an unfair hand in life, Caleb,” she continues, ignoring my comment. “And you tried to make the best of it by protecting your sister and salvaging what you could of life at home. It’s natural to be angry about this, just like it’s natural to resent others who managed to leave. It doesn’t make you a bad person.”
I let out a humorless laugh, unable to believe what she’s saying is even remotely true. “We were both dealt an unfair hand,” I say, making my way back to my chair. “A shit life that neither of us asked for or wanted. I just chose to get her out of it so she could go on and have a good life.”
“A life you deserve, too.”
“So what?” I half shout, pissed off now. “What should I have done? Left as well? Let everything really go to shit? Or should I have told Sie to stay, let her try and wrestle our drunken asshole of a father out of the bar and into bed on a nightly basis? Let her be the one on the receiving end of his threats and his fists? Jesus.”
Liz doesn’t say anything now, just sits there quietly watching me, as though she’s waiting for me to say more. I don’t though, turning and pacing the room, my hands on my head as I try to process what the fuck I’ve just said and why.
No one knows about the shit my dad did to me or tried to do. I never told anyone and I never bothered to explain the occasional black eye I got when he somehow managed to hold his liquor better than usual.
And I definitely didn’t tell anyone about the times I hit back. When it was the only thing I could do to stop him.
“My father was a violent drunk,” I eventually say, my heart pounding behind my ribcage as I actually say the words out loud. “He didn’t care where his fists landed or who they were directed at. There was no way I could’ve let Sie stay and have to face that.”
“I can absolutely understand that, Caleb,” Liz says, her tone kind. “And I’m sure if your sister knew the why of all this, she would understand too.”
I scoff, my hands pushed back into my hair as I turn and face her. “You think she’d understand about all the times I had to hit him back?” I ask, my question laced with sarcasm. “How that makes me no different to him and no different to my best friend’s dad who beat the shit out of me? You think she’d be so forgiving of the fact I beat the shit out of my girlfriend’s professor if she knew the things I’d done to our own father?”
Liz stands now and walks over to where I’m standing, stopping in front of me. She doesn’t say anything at first, just waits, almost as though she’s checking to make sure I’ve finished talking.
“Do you think she’d be afraid of you?”
I let out a hard breath, suddenly exhausted. “I don’t know, she probably should be.”
She smiles now, stepping closer as she puts a hand on my arm. “Well, I think,” she starts, gently squeezing, “that you are being incredibly hard on yourself. I know you think what you had to do makes you a bad person, but, Caleb, that’s just not true.”
“Easy for you to say,” I mutter, turning away from her.
“Why don’t you try talking to your sister,” Liz suggests, ignoring my comment. “I’m sure she’s dealing with her own issues from your childhood. She probably wants to talk to you about it.”
I nod my head in acknowledgement, because of course Sie has her own issues, how could she not. Just because she didn’t have to go through the last two years like I did, doesn’t mean she didn’t go through her own shit. God knows we both had eighteen years of it growing up with him.
“Have you ever spoken to her about your childhood or those two years you were alone in Providence?” Liz prompts.
“No,” I reply.
“Why not?”
I lift a shoulder wondering how I explain that that’s just who we are. We don’t talk, we bury shit, bury it so deep we can try and pretend it doesn’t exist.
“I know it seems hard, Caleb,” she continues when it’s obvious I don’t have an answer to her question. “But I think you might be surprised by your sister’s reaction. I think you might actually find that she carries her own guilt and worry about all of this.”
I look up at her, the easy smile she gives me, the reassuring way in which she sits there watching me. It’s so fucking hard not to want to believe her, but at the same time, a part of me can’t. Just like a part of doesn’t want to burden Sienna with all of this shit I carry.
“I know it doesn’t seem like it,” she adds. “But one day, I promise this will get easier and I think a big part of that will be when you start sharing with your sister what you’ve been through, when she starts sharing it with you too. You might find you have more in common than you think.”