Chapter 39

Ranée drove me home, and true to his word, Sean had managed to put a muzzle on her. She didn’t ask me about anything besides the weather even though I could feel every atom in her straining to squeeze the details out of me. When we got back to the apartment, I headed straight for bed. “I need to sleep.”

“Hey!” I turned around in my doorway, waiting for her dam of questions to break. Instead she ran down the hall to grip my shoulders. “You going to be okay?”

“Eventually.”

“Then let a nap do its magic.”

It was three hours before I woke up and stumbled out again in search of food.

Ranée smiled at me from the sofa. “Hi, sleepyhead. I’ll order Mexican.”

And somehow, an hour later, we’d settled on the sofa, a shared blanket spread across our laps with a dozen tacos between us. She pulled the whole story out of me before we even got to the flan.

“So he’s living his stupid hermit life with his stupid hermit hair in his stupid hermit town,” I concluded.

“Team Jack,” she said.

“Ranée! You’re supposed to be on my side.”

She fell quiet, shadows chasing each other across her face. “You okay?” I asked. I’d never seen this expression on her before, like she’d lived a decade in those quiet moments.

She sighed. “I thought I understood how hard Sean’s job was because we talked a lot while he was working at that hospital. This was before I even met you. He’d call to decompress, and I’d come up with these motivating pep talks to help him get back in there. So I thought I got it, and that I was being supportive. Now that I work at the barn…”

“I thought you loved volunteering there.”

“I do. But it’s only been four months and we’ve already lost some kids. The idea is that they’re at-risk and we’re trying to connect them to a supportive community, or with these horses because they’ve been let down by so many people but the animals, they don’t judge. Then maybe they can connect to the human part of the community. It works sometimes. But a lot of times it doesn’t. These kids, it’s not enough for them. The damage runs too deep, and we can’t reach them. I mean, how stupid to think we can. We haven’t lived a fraction of what they deal with. So they don’t die like the kids Sean worked with, but it feels like that a little. One of the caseworkers came in last week and told us this girl I’ve been teaching every week got picked up by police when they found her half-dead of an overdose under the freeway. They gave her Narcan, so she survived the moment. But for how long? The caseworker says the client won’t be back. And it makes me sick inside. Could I have done something else? Become her mentor?”

She pushed the blanket off and gathered up our empty food containers. “But I can’t do anything. And all it showed me is exactly how much I didn’t understand what Sean was going through, how much harder it was than I knew.”

“But you’re sticking it out. You’re there and you’re feeling and you’re trying. Jack isn’t. I can’t do anything about that.”

“Yes. Because I think it works for some of them. But talk to me if I ever get word that one of the kids I’ve tried to help actually dies. It’s hard enough knowing it might only be a matter of time.”

She climbed back onto the couch with me. “Look, you know I’ll have your back forever. But I don’t think it was fair to say Jack isn’t trying when you haven’t fought the same kind of fights.”

“That’s not fair. You’re acting like I don’t understand what it feels like to work hard and fail.”

She was unmoved. “I’m not saying you don’t work hard. You do. You’ve faced a lot of challenges, but I don’t think you’ve ever had to face real failure, the kind that cripples you because there’s nothing in the world that you can throw at it to fix it.” She sighed and smoothed her side of the blanket. “I’ve only had to deal with that for the first time in the last few weeks, and unless there’s some major life story you’ve told me, you’ve never faced the kind of stakes that are so high that it’s win or die.”

I wanted to tell her she was being dramatic, but something about the quiet way she said it stopped me. Her words about high stakes had echoed Jack’s. We sat in silence for a long time, and she didn’t try to scrub away the sadness and put on her cheerful face. Finally, I broke the silence. “I had no idea that it was so hard for you sometimes.”

“I know. Because I didn’t tell you. But Jack tried to.”

An ugly, gray feeling crawled up through my stomach and spread through my chest. It was shame. “Ranée…I think I basically told Jack he was weak for running away.”

Her gaze sharpened. “Weak? Did you use that word?”

“No, but I basically implied that he was because he was…”

“Being a stupid hermit?”

“Something like that.” The shame crawled up the back of my throat like acid reflux.

“But you didn’t say that he was weak. And you can come back from that.”

“I need to call him and apologize.” The urge was overwhelming, almost like panic. “What should I say?”

She pressed me back against the couch as I leaned over to fumble for my phone. “No. Don’t call him. You’re right that this isn’t your problem to fix. That’s the first thing you have to see. This is a problem that you can’t solve by hammering at it. You can’t. He has stuff he needs to work out, and maybe he will. But he might not. Not for a long time, if at all.”

I shrank away from her, curling in slightly to protect my core from her gentle words.

“I don’t know exactly what you’re feeling right now, but I can see on your face that it’s hard. And I’m so sorry for that. But you’ve been overdue for a heartbreak. I would never wish it on you, but I don’t think we get to avoid them forever.” She leaned over and drew me down to her lap, letting me keep my arms wrapped around myself. It felt like the only thing holding me together when all the pieces inside of me wanted to fall apart, fractured by the unbearable sadness I could finally feel. It wasn’t a sadness over things not working out with Jack. It was the tiny glimpse that Sean, then Ranée, had given me of the magnitude of the pain that Jack must be carrying. And if it was enough to curl me into a ball, how was he still standing?

We stayed that way for a long time, an hour or more, just quiet, while I cried. The tears I’d cried the previous night were because I’d been hurt by Jack. These were because I hurt for him. They were quieter and infinitely harder.

And when I stopped crying, Ranée sat me up and put her hands on my shoulders, looking me in my swollen eyes. “That’s the kind of crying someone does when she’s giving up on a relationship. I don’t know how you guys can make this work, but just ask yourself if you’re ready to quit on something that matters this much to you. And that’s all I’m going to say about it.”

Then she put on Netflix and watched old episodes of Murder, She Wrote in silence until I finally fell asleep again and Ranée made me go back to my bed.

By Saturday afternoon, I felt more human again. I’d made myself a real breakfast, gone to the gym, and run Ranée’s insights through my mind so many times that they got enough mileage to qualify for the Boston marathon. For all her bulldozer tendencies, she’d found the kindest possible way to tell me a hard truth: I lacked empathy.

I did. Whether I hadn’t had the experiences necessary to develop it was beside the point. It was me who lacked some of the basic emotional skills that a real relationship required, not Jack.

I sent Jack my first text since walking away from him.

I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pushed.

It wasn’t meant as an invitation to say we should try again. Nothing had changed except that I realized I’d judged him far too harshly. But that didn’t suddenly mean we had a path to move forward. All of the same obstacles blocked it.

But it didn’t really matter what I meant, because by the time I was getting ready for bed, he still hadn’t answered.

Ranée stopped by my room with a cup of chamomile tea. “I have a feeling you’ll need this tonight.”

“I’m okay.”

“Then why do you look so sad?”

I tapped my cell phone. “I texted Jack a few hours ago, told him that I shouldn’t have pushed. He hasn’t texted back, and I don’t think he’s going to.”

She sat on the bed. “He’s tried in big and little ways to tell you how deep this pain runs for him. He may not believe that you really get it this time.”

“That’s because I don’t. A tiny bit, maybe. More than I did. But nothing like what he must have gone through to walk away from it all.” I plucked at the bedspread a couple of times. “About that. I have a plan. But it’s hard.”

“I’m listening.”

“Do you think I should volunteer at Benioff?” That was the children’s hospital. “Maybe it would help me understand things better.”

She looked thoughtful. “I know Sean mentioned that they were always looking for volunteers at his hospital. The kids need the company or someone to play with them, and the parents need a break. I’m sure every children’s hospital is like that. It’s going to be hard watching the staff facing down battles that can’t be won and fighting them anyway. It’s going to wear you out, but…I don’t know. My time at the barn has made me softer and stronger at the same time.”

I turned the idea over in my head. “It sounds so hard.”

“Maybe this is something life is trying to teach you right now. I think you have the right idea.” Then she slipped out.

I sat there and thought about nothing else for the rest of the night.