Come Home from Whitley

Note: This is a real memory that has been fictionalized around the edges in pursuit of therapeutic writing and locations have had their names changed or generalized. This piece came to me like a sorrowful child needing acknowledgment. I fought it, but in the end it was correct about what I needed. If you are easily disturbed by psychologically wounded places in a person's life, take stock. There is no lifeguard in the pool and you have been warned.

“Wake up. Please. You need to come.”

I roll over in bed, squinting and fumbling for my glasses. There’s a hazy figure next to me, and for a moment my heart lurches and stutters like I’m in a horror movie. Before I can scream, her voice—and it’s definitely a her—says quietly, “Please come. It’s okay. It’s just me.”

Just me? I don’t know any “Just Me” and there certainly isn’t anyone that… small… living in this house. We decided on that before we got married. No children.

I fumble around for my glasses as the little form tugs at my wrist, then skitters off toward the door. She slips out before I can catch more than a swish of her long, dark hair.

I glance back. In the half-light intruding from the partly-open door I see my husband, fast asleep under a worn, caterpillar green comforter. He has the gift of sleeping fast and hard, while my relationship with sleep is much more skittish, with sleep often playing coy and hard to get, while I chase despondently after it every night, begging for more. It appears tonight I’ve been dumped, yet again, though I’m sure that sleep would point the finger at me for leaving first. My husband will have to sleep for both of us tonight.

I adjust my blue and white sleeveless nightie and hike up a pair of oversized Kirby print pajama pants that tend to pool around my ankles. Prying my nightguard from my upper jaw, I leave it on the bedside shelf, slip on my glasses, and leave the bedroom.

She’s sitting on the stairs right across from the door, waiting for me. I nearly swallow my tongue and spit out my heart at the same time. Everything from her bangs, gently curled across her forehead, to her somber brown eyes to the little fuzzy stuffed dog clutched in her arms is completely familiar and terribly wrong. That dog is, at this moment, back in my bedroom, sitting on my bedside shelf, waiting for any night when I feel sick and frightened and need a piece of childhood security to hold onto. This girl only exists in photographs and memories of people who knew-me-when.

She’s dressed in a montage of old, favorite nightdresses. One moment it’s the long, white nightie with a lace chest and a little pink ribbon at the neck. The next it’s the greenish blueish black plaid number with ruffled cuffs that clamp at the wrists. No, red-and-black plaid? The next it’s a pink polka-dotted Minnie Mouse number, made of lighter material with short, ruffled sleeves for those sweltering Southern California summers. Her clothing shifts and changes like scenes in a dream, but her face is one hundred percent still and solid and very, very sad.

I really don’t know what to do. Scream? Reach out and touch her? Turn around and wake my husband to tell him I’m either having a complete nervous breakdown or a Touched By An Angel moment?

She saves me the choice. “I need you to come. Will you come?”

I try to find my tongue without choking on it. “C-come where?”

“Whitley Island.”

And then my heart does stop, because this little girl would never hurt me on purpose, but she wants me to go back to a night where someone did.

“You… shouldn’t even know about that,” I say. I check behind me. I closed the bedroom door, right? Right. Should I take this conversation to the kitchen?

She doesn’t answer. She just looks at me.

“I don’t… why? What for? I can’t change anything. This is some ghost of Christmas past stuff? I don’t need to look at it again. I wrote it out.” There’s heat in my voice. I try to keep it low because it’s not her fault, but she poked this wound and it’s hard. “I wrote it out again and again. Ever heard the song Engine Driver? ‘I’ve written pages upon pages trying to rid you from my bones.’ I did that. I wrote letters and journal entries and word documents and I talked about it to anyone who would listen for two years. It’s been four years, finally, and I just recently got around to the stage where I don’t have a burning need to talk about it to any ear I can bend.”

She listens to me, her nightdress flickering and her arms winching tighter around the fluffy dog.

“Everyone says to write about it, that it will help. Well, I guess it helped some. I’m mostly back to normal. A little more bruised, a little wiser, a little angrier, but I’m back. Practically from the fucking dead.” I flex my jaw and put two fingers to my lips, shutting my eyes. “I’m sorry. It… it hurts and I’m tired and I… haven’t I looked at it enough?” I ask, suddenly plaintive. “Haven’t I turned it over ten thousand ways? Why do I have to go back?”

Strange, how, in a few moments it is no longer anything but rational that my childhood self is sitting on the stairs, telling me we need to take a trip back in time. Strange how I am fighting her like this is nothing more than a badly needed trip to the doctor’s that I’ve been putting off forever, instead of violating the laws of space and time. But I am in the grip of the same effect that alters her nightdress and I have already passed from stranger-danger alarm to acceptance that reality is never quite what it seems.

She stands, hauling herself up on the wrought-iron rail and running her hand along the plastic ivy vines and dangly Christmas lights I’ve wound around them. I connected those lights to a timer and I keep them up all year, replacing each strand as it burns out. That way, the entire stairway acts as a festive nightlight from sunset to sunrise.

“I like your lights,” she says. “Can you do my room?”

I can’t help but smile at her, and she smiles back. We both know that’s just a child’s wish, the kind you say because you’re wistful enough to ask, but know you won’t get your way. Not yet.

“You gotta come ‘cause she needs you,” she finally answers. “She’s stuck there in the dark, alone, trying to say all the right things but there’s nobody there to say the things she needs.”

I shut my eyes again, pressing my lips together. I never really think about her, because I’m always thinking about the person sitting next to her, the person who used to be called Best Friend. But her? No. I don’t think about her. Thinking about her hurts worse than thinking about Best Friend because it seems like Best Friend could have only ever acted one way, while there were a hundred thousand things she could have done differently to change things. To save it all. To make it hurt less. To stand up for herself.

“Please. She’s scared and alone.” Her little hand is on mine and she looks up with all the responsibility of an oldest child who still doesn’t know how to sister properly. “You have things to say.”

The community of me across time would have had to send this one, the little me. The others would know how hard it is to move me on behalf of a self that should have known better.

I say, a bit stiffly, “It’ll be cold. Let me get my hoodie.” I turn and make my way around the base of the stairs, through the kitchen, and to the back door where I keep a blue felt Eeyore hoodie that my middle sister gave me a year ago. I don that, then jam my feet into a pair of Deerfoam red yarn slippers lined with faux fur and shuffle back, half tripping on the pooling pajama pants.

She’s gone. Where she sat, there is a pair of rental car keys laid on the stair step.

Trying to swallow my heart back into its anatomically proper place, I lean over and take the car keys. When I straighten up, I am sitting in the back seat of a boxy little van. I am in a port city in Washington, with all that state’s attendant chilly drizzle, and I am not alone. There are two people in the front and I recognize both of them, with entirely different reactions.

A nearly-thirty-year-old Dusty is sitting in the driver’s seat, jacket-bundled against the January cold of an already frigid city and there is still a small smile on her face. It’s small because there’s enough newness in driving the first rental car she’s ever put in her own name—in a city where she’s never driven—to keep her alert to the road. Focus is required, though to have focus while she’s driving, music or conversation is a necessity. The radio is on so she doesn’t slip the bonds of reality and zone out, distracted by a writing scenario she hopes to put together or a movie scene that was particularly compelling. Still, there’s a smile there, which means things haven’t gone to hell yet.

She’s proud of herself. She’s doing a great thing. Not only did she adult properly by renting a car and figuring out how to drive this city’s confusing roads (“This city was designed by two people who hated each other,” remarked her Best Friend) but she’s here to help. This is her Best Friend’s last week in the city. Best Friend is moving to another state, fleeing an emotionally abusive husband, and there are all manner of loose ends to tie up. There are the last few boxes to ship, goodbyes to be said, and final therapy sessions to attend. Dusty has come from another state, volunteering emotional support and chauffer services all the way up to the airplane departure gate. She imagines it will be difficult, but also full of good conversation, good bonding, and sleepovers with hot chocolate and movies. She’ll be able to ease her Best Friend’s transition and prove that she’s a worthwhile friend and human being to them both.

They are staying together at Whitley Island, a little rock off the coast that you can only reach via ferry. A friend who lives there offered her guest home as haven to the both of them during this last week. It is a beautiful, retreat-like place that’s surrounded by miles and miles of forest. You have to drive long, windy roads and turn at just the right spot to get there and the GPS is wonky about telling you where that right spot is because there’s barely a signal out in that area, so Dusty has had to memorize the turns which makes her nervous. Still, she’d gladly do all this and more for her Best Friend.

That woman is sitting in the passenger’s seat, and when I look at her, I want to cry all over again.

Best Friend is leaning against the window and appears to be half asleep. It’s been a long day and both have filled up on good pub food and good conversation, eschewing the drinks. They left the pub not long before, and now Dusty drives them to the ferry station.

The ferry is a novel experience for Dusty-as-driver. You drive the car past a booth where you either flash your pass or pay your fare, then pull past into a vast car lot. Soon after you park in your forward-facing spot, you are hemmed in by other forward-facing cars that pull in around you one by one until nobody can move. There everyone sits, parked, waiting for the ferry to come back. It’s a three or four story vessel with a couple levels for cars and higher levels for people to lounge. Once you drive on and park on the bottom level, the ferry becomes a fun experience for anyone with an ounce of wonder. You can leave your car and climb stairs to the upper levels and wander the wind-whipped deck or sit inside at diner-style tables and stare out the window. Ordering food and drink is optional, soaking in the watery beauty as you cross is not.

The ferry hasn’t yet come when Best Friend begins showing signs of distress.

I hear Dusty’s breath catch, hear her pulse quicken. A silent plea starts up in her head and echoes in my own, and it begs, Not again, not now.

Best Friend’s head lolls against the passenger window, then jerks upright. She does this a few times, then swivels her head around to stare, owl-like, at Dusty.

“How did you get here?” she asks. “You’re in Texas.”

Dusty steels herself and answers as straight-forward as she can. It’s not like this is the first time her friend has disassociated in front of her. She can handle this. Calm is key. “I flew here a few days ago to help you. You might not remember right now, but I came to help you move. Earlier today we cleaned out the last of your things from your old apartment and dropped the key in through the window, so your husband can find it. Right now, we’re going to Whitley Island, to your friend’s home where we’re staying the night.”

As Dusty speaks, I lean forward. I do not look at the Best Friend, I look into the face of someone who is about to shatter so hard it will freeze in time and twist future interactions for years to come. I cannot change a thing, but in this moment, I am the one come through time to speak the truth over this frozen fragment of myself. I grip her shoulder, perhaps too tightly, but tight enough to show all the damns I give for her, damns she wishes she could get from the woman one seat over.

I say, my voice a little harsh with the pain, Not six months ago, she confessed to lying to you for ten years. She said she never had Dissociative Identity Disorder, which made every time she ever disassociated in your presence or over Skype or in text a lie. She said she did it because she was afraid no one would ever love her otherwise. She confessed it and you forgave her and chose to continue as her friend and immediately offer her un-earned trust in hopes of an easy rebuild. Look at her, right now. What is happening? What does this look like? You will try to rationalize it, call it by some other name and say it isn’t DID, but it is the exact same act you have seen before. It is a lie, a performance to make you afraid for her, so she can wring bloody proof from your soul that she is loved.

As Dusty continues to explain to Best Friend all that they have done that week and how it leads up to the Best Friend’s inter-state move, Best Friend’s eyes grow rounder. Her mouth hangs open in horror, and she slurs, “No. No, this is a mistake. No I have to go home.” She fumbles drunkenly with the door-latch.

My guts twist alongside Dusty’s. Dusty’s heart is slamming against her ribs like a trapped bat, her mind an explosion of terror. This could not have happened at a worse time. Her Best Friend is clearly disoriented and needs someone to watch out for her in this time of mental confusion. Dusty will have to leave the car and follow her until she can somehow bring the Best Friend to her senses. But this isn’t even her car! It’s a rental car in her name, and even if it were her car, leaving it here will logjam traffic onto the ferry if she isn’t here to move it at the correct time. She is completely hemmed in, there is no way to exit and find another place to park. Neither she can she drive alongside her friend if she walks off. How will they get back to the island if it gets towed? Will someone sideswipe the rental in anger, or get out and key the car?

It will come down to a choice. Does she leave the rental car and damn the consequences, or let her friend wander, dazed, off into the night?

Exactly, I murmur, pressing the knots already gathering in Dusty’s neck. Exactly. This is the worst possible time this could have happened tonight. Almost like it is scripted. Look at the choice you are being asked to make. You are being asked, “How important am I?” You have been told by mutual friends that she has done this sort of thing in the past, run off into the night in the hopes that someone will chase after her. That someone will care for her, no matter how difficult she makes it. Look at this for what it is. Look at her for who she is, not who you want her to be.

It is worse. This is not merely letting Best Friend wander off into the night. Dusty believes her friend is perpetually on the edge of suicide and has tried to pull her back from that void with all her strength for years. With every fiber in her body, Dusty is sure that her friend leaving this car is not just a harmless, confused wandering, but that it will end in Best Friend’s suicide, if someone doesn’t assault her first. She is sure that Best Friend’s life is in her hands, no less than if she were clutching her friend’s wrists to drag her up over the edge of a cliff. Before man and God, blood will be on Dusty’s hands if she does not act. She must be her sister’s keeper.

Dusty’s mouth opens in a torrent of words, and I grieve for my younger self, whose gift is not in encouragement in the spoken word, but tales in the written word, drawn out over weeks and months of carefully woven storytelling. Heedless, she jams words together, hoping some combination of them will stop the catastrophe unfolding in the car. She tries to hold the door shut by sheer force of will, begging and crying, telling her Best Friend how scared she is and that she needs her friend to stay in the car. She talks about how bad it will be for her if her Best Friend walks out into the night, baring her need and vulnerability in hopes that it will keep her friend in her seat or break through the confusion. Some part of the Best Friend wants to protect her, right? If she can reach that part by being someone who needs protecting, then she can keep the worst from happening.

Her Best Friend’s attempts at the door handle subside. Dusty seems to have broken through, but it is temporary. Best Friend forgets within a few moments and tries the door handle again, claiming that she “needs to go home.” Dusty knows that is impossible, they don’t even have the key to her Best Friend’s apartment anymore, so she hyperventilates like a squirrel after a hawk-alarm is called and hurls fistfuls of words at the situation, hoping to defuse it again. She repeats the cycle several times, praying that they can just make it onto the ferry. If they can make it onto the ferry, then even if the Best Friend leaves the car, so can Dusty, and they will have a short window of time to process this situation in a different setting.

An eternity later, the blessed ferry comes and all the cars load on in twos and threes. Not another soul knows what is happening inside the boxy little rental. Her friend seems to have fallen into a fitful sleep. Dusty should feel grateful, but instead her soul feels pinched and frozen. She has passed the first hurdle of the night, but she will still need to get her friend from the car into the house and then, hopefully, into bed. If her friend can just sleep for the night, it may reset the muddling that was just triggered by God-knows-what.

I smooth stray, frizzy hairs back from Dusty’s face, kissing her throbbing temple. If only she looked out for your heart half so much, this night would never have happened. She has told you so carefully that suicide would not be her own choice, but would be a result of being abandoned and alone, that by now you believe suicide is practically a forcing of her hand by others. She dresses up blaming others for this choice in beautiful words because she has a God-given gift with words and persuasion that she constantly misuses, and you dare not believe she would ever hurt you on purpose for any reason. You dare not believe she would ever lie to you again, even though she lied to you for ten years. You have let her lay the burden of her entire life on your shoulders, and this isn’t even the first time.

I am angry with Dusty. Angry that she does not see it, refuses to do anything but absorb all the blame into herself like a sponge sucking up a rancid spill, but I haven’t the heart to yell. She is terrified of having her map of reality torn from her hands and being cast adrift, and that day is coming. It is just over a month away when the house of cards that is this friendship will fall for good. Even so, tonight is worse than that day because tonight she’s in unfamiliar territory and there’s no one else to turn to, and Dusty’s soul is screaming underneath that rictus of a face, and I carefully wrap my arms around a body wound so tight it might snap if I squeeze too hard. I’m so, so sorry.

There is no water-watching tonight. There is no clambering out to explore the ferry. No quick trip to the bathroom. There is only white-knuckled steering-wheel gripping and desperate, silent prayers from the driver’s seat. It is possible Dusty has never felt this alone in her life.

When Dusty pulls the car off the ferry, she has to face the windy road. Night on Whitley Island is naturally dark, devoid of any light pollution that might prove helpful to drivers deprived of GPS. Dusty has to watch the turns carefully and count the off-shoots from the road, passing miles of trees and the occasional cow-dotted field. Her thoughts are so fragmented that she can barely pray. She seizes on a passage ingrained enough that she can never forget it—the twenty-third Psalm—and begins praying it aloud. She keeps her voice low so she does not wake her friend as she repeats the phrases.

She gasps her way through, “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” Again. Again. Again. She says the stanza like it is a charm, a ward. She is witless with terror and has no understanding of how to banish the evil that has corrupted her night and set things right again. She hopes that God will hear her feeble recitation and understand that she is sending up the strongest SOS she can.

I do not look at Best Friend. I know that she still appears asleep because Dusty keeps looking to see if she has woken up. I will not acknowledge her as I whisper to Dusty, I have no proof, and you will never know for sure, but she may not even be asleep. Understand this, that if she is awake, she rejoices to hear you. Her own heart sings and soars because she is seeing proof that someone cares for her. Your distress is what she seeks. In a dozen variations and guises, she has repeated this moment with you throughout the last four years. She fills the void in herself at the cost of your sanity and soul.

Trembling, Dusty turns in at the correct driveway, drives the car down the mile or so to the guest house, and parks. Taking a moment or two to breathe, she pulls the keys out and pockets them. She exits the car, then circles around front to wake her friend. She makes a brief mental note to hide all the knives in the kitchen so that her friend cannot hurt herself with them while she isn’t looking.

The evening blurs. I cannot remember, properly, if that is all that happened that night. I remember that, eventually, Best Friend is led to bed. I remember that, eventually, Dusty collapses in a room on the other side of the house, onto the comfortable guest couch she has made up to sleep in. She desperately wants to call her husband, but the signal out here is so bad that it isn’t possible. She is sure she’s the only responsible party in the house and she doesn’t have a line to anyone else at night when she most needs it. I remember that, over the course of the week, going to bed becomes the thing Dusty most looks forward to, because it is a relinquishing of the load she carries by day. She cannot possibly be responsible for anything while she sleeps, so she shuts the door on the entire day and finds her nest with relief and gratitude every night.

I sit on the edge of the couch where she has curled herself up with a massive comforter and pull her hair back. “Hey,” I say. “Look at me.”

She turns her pale face up, her forehead pinched with anxiety. She is so afraid that more is about to be asked of her and she’s not sure she has any more to give, not without at least a night’s worth of sleep.

I cup her cheek so that my fingers also cover her ear. The gesture cracks a dam somewhere, and tears spring to her eyes and from there down her cheeks. She shoves the comforter against her mouth, whimpering into it, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”

I curl over her, digging my arms around and under her shaking body and I hug her fiercely, protectively, the way she desperately needs to be hugged right now. Let that be enough, for a moment. Let it soak into the cracking, jagged places that scream for help and healing.

But it isn’t enough. There’s more she needs to hear. After a while, I pull back, placing my hands on either side of her face, cupping her ears. She grips my wrists like she’s afraid I’ll vanish.

“There are some things I need to tell you,” I say, softly. “About your time, here. This is not the only night she will do something like this, though it is the worst.”

Her face crumples. It hurts, but I continue.

“One night, she will seem disoriented while you are both here in the house and will talk about wandering out into the night. She keeps trying the handle at the back door. You will do what you did tonight, begging and pleading and crying for her to stay, and she does. Another night, she will seem to be in so much physical pain from the chronic degenerative disease she told you she has, that she looks for knives to cut herself with. She has told you in the past that if she can ‘trip the pain gate’ with a worse but temporary pain, it will stop the chronic pain for a while. You have hidden the knives, but you…” and here I pause, my thumbs stroking her cheeks gently. “Dear little girl. You forgot the kitchen scissors.”

Her eyes widen. “I didn’t think--!”

“I know. You didn’t think they were a problem. When she can’t find the knives, she will take the scissors. You will wonder if you should overpower her and take them, because you are strong enough to do so, but you fear irreparably damaging the friendship. You tell her that you will let her trip the pain gate, but that you will be standing there as she hurts herself, watching to make sure she doesn’t slice too deep or hit an artery. She appears to be in too much pain to even answer in words, but she nods her understanding. She presses the closed tip of the scissors into her flesh, and it looks like she is doing it as hard as she can, but Dusty… Dusty… Dusty.” I bend over her again, forehead to forehead. “She never even broke skin. To trip any kind of pain gate, she would have to do something as drastic as breaking a bone. It is another act.”

Understanding crashes over her like a tidal wave, wrecking everything in its path. It is not the disturbing act itself that wounds, it is Best Friend’s utter and complete disinterest in the state of the soul of the person who has sacrificed and poured out so much for her benefit. The inability to love back. The willingness to use her up and squeeze her dry. And Dusty is weeping, stuffing the comforter into her mouth and moaning long, jagged, animal sounds that shred my own lungs and make it hard for me to breathe.

“These are the worst, but there are more. It is almost as if every other day must have a crisis scheduled into it. You will be grateful when you close the door on a day when nothing bad happened, but even more grateful to close the door on a disaster. This week will impact you so deeply that, six months from now, when you try to tell a friend about it, muscles in your torso will spasm uncontrollably. Your body is encoding this as trauma because you genuinely believe Best Friend’s life is in your hands, that you are all alone in this, and that at any moment you will fail.” I hesitate, then say, as gently as I can, “There is a very real chance that she never needed rescuing from her husband. If anyone needed rescuing, it might very well have been him.”

The horror in her eyes is unbearable. I understand it. I know it. She has lashed out at the man a few times, even trying to educate him about his wife’s supposed suffering over the years. Now the context of her words and actions inverts with a sickening lurch. “I’m t-ry-ing so h-h-arddddd,” Dusty sobs. “I don’t und-und-underst-a-a-a-and. If, if, if I can just-just get her on the p-p-plane to her n-n-new home, she’ll be ok-okay, right?”

“I know you believe that. I know you hope for that. But four or five months after she moves there, you will learn she has moved right back here.”

Dusty gives a cry like she’s been shot, curling around her abdomen. Her entire trip here, all the time, effort, and love she is giving, all the horrible nights she’s suffering, will be for absolutely nothing.

I hold my tongue and let her grieve the dammed sea out. There’s nothing either of us can do to change what will happen. She will play this cursed game of relationship Jenga another month, moving with care and precision, begging the tower not to fall over on her turn, perpetually shocked and horrified when it does, and scrambling to rebuild it before the other player storms off forever. But a month from now, she will be the one who leaves the table, and on that day she will not be alone. She needs to know what she will find inside herself when the debris settles, and who will be at her side every step of the way.

“I have thought about this for years,” I say to her, holding out a tissue box. “And the kindest conclusion I can come to is that she does not know how to love. Because of that, she cannot love you. She only does what she feels she must to survive. She perpetuates her own hell and inflicts it on everyone around her.”

She takes a fistful of tissues and pitifully honks her nose into them. I wait until she is done, then I continue. “Which is why I’d like you to come with me for a little bit.”

She lifts bloodshot eyes overflowing with confusion and loss.

“I need you to trust me on this. There are two things you need to see.”

The moment she takes my hand, I am home. I am standing inside by the front door of our house in Texas in the dead of night in pajama pants that need a good yank upwards. And this entire night is immediately worth it for the look of wonder in her eyes.

She has only been in this house a year, herself, and the changes she has made are minimal. Well over half the issues that need urgent repair are still before her, and she hasn’t even begun to consider painting the walls herself. Gently, tenderly, I take her by the arm and walk her around our house to show her the work of four years.

“We fixed that leak in the dining room,” I say. “And most of the downstairs is bright yellow, now. See how we covered that one wall in Fejka leaf panels and little birds? We kept the ivy and the hanging birds and butterflies, too, once the walls were painted. The downstairs windows don’t leak anymore, and we finally got all the sliding glass doors replaced with ones that seal properly.”

I take her up the corkscrew staircase that she has recently finished painting to look like mossy stone steps, and then over to the guest bedroom. I let her walk in, and she claps her hands together like a child, the grief evaporating for a few precious minutes. The entire room has been painted a base black with blue and purple galaxy swirls and countless stars, wall to wall, floor to ceiling. A friend’s intricate Lego spaceships are hung or displayed tastefully throughout the room. “We call it the star room,” I tell her. “It’s one of the last we painted. Our youngest sister and Mom helped me.” I do not say that painting the room Best Friend slept in the last time I ever saw her helped me erase any trace that she set foot in this house.

“You will spearhead repairing and decorating this place for the next few years. You grab onto it, pulling this house back from the edge, which may have pulled you back, too. Look at all this beauty, all this restoration. All that came from inside you. Even the hole in the master bedroom ceiling gets fixed. That ceiling looks brand new, and it’s the TV room now. We never did move our bedroom into it. Actually, my husband and I sleep downstairs in the front room now, ‘cause we found out it has the best sound protection in the house.”

She turns to me, a starved look in her eye. I nod once to her, then take her by the hand and lead her down the nightlight staircase. I put one finger to my lips, then open the door to the bedroom.

The light falls on him, but he still doesn’t wake. She crosses the room in two breaths, standing over him, her arms clamped rigidly to her sides. She needs him so badly I can nearly taste the despair. I glide over next to her and loop an arm around her waist. I whisper the final thing she needs to hear into her ear.

“In a month, it comes to a head. She visits for your joint birthdays and it all goes to hell again. But this time, you’re not alone. He’s there. He’s watching and listening and he sees you being crushed yet again, and he says no, not this time and not ever again. He begs you to let him send her away, and you almost can’t let it happen. But then, you realize it’s less frightening to consider suicide than to think of facing her one more time, and you let go. He will not stand for what she is doing to you, and with all the calm civility in the world, he tells her to pack her bags, buys her a same-day plane ticket, and drives her to the airport and out of your life.”

She crumbles into my arms and I grip her firmly, propping her up. “Look long and hard. Memorize it. Hold onto this. This is what love looks like. This is what someone who treasures your heart does. He listens to you every time you have to talk about it, even if it’s the fortieth time, and he reminds you of the truth you can’t see. He helps you rewrite your map of reality. He wraps his arms around you and never uses love as a weapon against you. He shows you every day that he loves you. He does not fly into a rage or collapse into despair if you say the wrong thing. He listens for the best interpretation of what you’re trying to say, not the worst. He does not punish your heart for reasons you can barely understand. He does not demand of you things you do not have to give, only asks that you give him your love and devotion in return. Don’t stay on Whitley Island, reliving that terrible drive with someone who can’t love you. Release it to rest in the past. Come home.”

“Can we forgive her?” she asks, brokenly.

I blow a slow breath through my lips. “It takes time, but I think we can. Some of the time. Recently we were able to look at her memory with compassion and pray for her in that light. That was a long time coming.”

She shudders through her next breath. “Can we forgive me?”

I pull her head close and she rests it on my shoulder. “We’re doing our best,” I say. “And that’s all we can ever do. But we sent me out after you, so I’d say that’s a yes.”

Between one breath and the next, she is gone. I am standing alone, next to my sleeping husband.

I watch him for a little while, thinking through the events of the evening. This is going to be one interesting conversation with him come morning, that’s for sure. And just like that, I’m swept off my feet by the need to be close to him.

I cross the room just long enough to shut the door and plunge the room back into darkness. I lift the caterpillar green comforter and slip in behind him. Half-asleep, he shifts over to accommodate me. I press my face between his shoulderblades as he re-settles in place and plunges back into the depths. I breathe in deep, slipping into a state of comfort and gentle joy.

I am home.