I shrug. “Maybe, nothing has happened yet.”
“How are you feeling about it all?”
I give her a smile, because of course this is the one question everyone ever asks me about any of this. “I just want him to go to jail,” I say. “I mean yeah, I’d love the suit to go away, but more than that, I need this guy to go to jail and not be able to do anything like this again. He needs to pay for what he did to Ruby, what he did to all of them.”
Now it’s Liz smiling at me.
“What?” I ask, confused.
“That’s a pretty selfless way to look at this, Caleb.”
I shrug, shuffling in my seat a little. “The guy’s an asshole, he should be in jail.”
Liz nods. “He should, yes,” she says. “But that’s not what I’m interested in right now.”
“What are you interested in?” I ask, not sure where she’s going with all this.
Her smile widens as she puts her notepad and pen on the table between us. “I’m interested in why, after all of this,” she says, waving a hand around the room. “Your main concern is Ruby?”
I give her a look that I’m sure screams, what the fuck, as I ask, “What are you talking about?”
She laughs now, actually fucking laughs.
“What?” I ask again, frustrated.
Liz holds a hand up, shaking her head slightly as she says, “It’s just incredible, Caleb. That you, after everything you’ve been through, everything that’s happened to you, all you can think about right now, is Ruby.”
I exhale, a hard breath leaving my lungs. “I love her.”
Liz’s smile softens. “I know you do, that much is obvious. What I want to know is why you held back this time. Why you didn’t do what you did when you found Professor Keller outside Ruby’s window, and instead you let Ruby—”
“I didn’t want to do that again,” I say. “I don’t want to be that person.”
Liz leans forward now, her eyes meeting mine as she smiles at me and I feel something shift, something weird happens that I don’t know how to understand. “What?”
She lets out a chuckle. “Don’t tell anyone, Caleb,” she says with a wink. “But I think you might be making progress.”
I walk out of my session feeling strangely free. Lighter almost, as though I’ve somehow lifted the weight of everything I’ve carried for the past two years off me. Well not lifted exactly because I know it’s going to take a long fucking time to get rid of this burden. But, shifted maybe, or something like that.
I know this isn’t a quick fix type of thing but for the first time in a long time, I’m starting to feel as though I’m not constantly taking one step forward and then two steps back. Like I’m not some giant fucking punching bag either.
When I get back home, Sie is sitting on the front porch. She smiles as I walk up the steps and join her. “Hey, you okay?”
Sie shoots me a sideways glance that screams seriously and makes me laugh. “Shouldn’t I be asking you that question?”
“Yeah, I guess,” I tell her.
“Well?” she prompts, knowing I’m not about to volunteer anything because that’s not what we do.
I take a deep breath, letting it out slowly as I sink back into the seat. “I’m okay,” I tell her. “I mean, yeah I’m still a fucking mess, but I’m getting there. Slowly.”
“So the therapy helps?” she asks, nudging me.
I glance over and see she’s smirking at me. “It does,” I reply, rolling my eyes. “Maybe you should try it?”
Sienna slides across the bench seat and rests her head on my shoulder. “I’ve thought about it,” she admits. “I mean I talk to Reid, obviously, but it’s…”
She trails off, but I know what she was about to say; it’s not the same. And she’s right. It’s not the same, even if Reid lived through so much of it too.
“My therapist thinks I should talk to you,” I blurt out.
“Really?” Sie asks, lifting her head a little.
I smile, wrapping my arm around her shoulders. “Yeah. She figures we both have a ton of shit we want to talk about but neither of us knows how to.”
Sienna chuckles. “Well, we’ve never exactly been the kind of people who shouted from the rooftop how fucked up our family is.”
“No.”
“But you can tell me,” she says, her voice quieter. “Just because I wasn’t there, Caleb, it doesn’t mean I don’t want to know.”
I close my eyes at her words, the guilt once again swirling in my stomach. “I know,” I sigh. “Reid said the same thing to me.”
Sie shuffles beside me, turning so she’s sitting sideways on the bench and facing me. “He told me what you said about that night,” she starts. “Don’t be mad, I think he…he…”
I nod, not mad, just sorry I ever had to put those images in his head. “It’s okay, Sienna,” I tell her, my hand resting on her shoulder. “I get that you two talk to each other, you’re a thing, right?” I add in an attempt to lighten the situation.
Sie doesn’t smile, just leans closer as she puts a hand on my cheek. “Yeah, but you and I are a thing too, Caleb,” she whispers. “We’ve been a thing our whole lives.”
I can see her eyes glistening with unshed tears and it breaks my heart a little. “I’m sorry, Sie,” I whisper, pulling her against me. “I wanna talk to you, really. I’m just…I’m afraid.”
“Of what?” she chokes out.
I take a deep breath. “I don’t know, that you’ll see parts of him in me.”
“Caleb,” she whispers. “If he’s in you, then he’s in me too.”
I nod, but don’t say anything.
“That day we left,” Sie says. “Outside the airport when I begged you to come, you wanted to, didn’t you?”
I shove a hand through my hair, squeezing the back of my neck. “Yeah,” I say, the word rough and raw as I force it out.
“I knew you did. I could see it in your eyes,” she continues. “I could tell you were lying when you said you had to stay. That it was better that way.”
“Every day after you left, I wanted to come,” I say, staring out at the quiet street. “Every single day. I mean, I was happy you’d escaped of course, but a part of me—”
“Hated it too,” she whispers.
I nod. “I felt so fucking guilty for that.”
Sie moves her hand to my cheek, turning me so I’m facing her again. “I felt guilty for having left,” she whispers. “I knew what I was leaving you with. I knew it was going to get worse and I, I…”
“Sie,” I whisper, pulling her close as I wrap my arms around her. “We were two dumb teenagers, trying to do what was right. I don’t blame you, okay? Just like I don’t hate you or resent you or whatever thing you’re thinking right now.”
And it’s true, despite what I’ve told Ruby or Liz about that day or the two years that came afterwards. I don’t resent her, not anymore. Because while we were both dealt a shitty hand in life, with an alcoholic father and a mentally ill mother, I know that there is nothing I wouldn’t do for my sister. Nothing.