Disclaimer: I still can't afford to buy them
AN: I need to apologize for being so demanding about feedback last time. I had been having a bad day, and the lack of responses made me doubt if anyone even liked this story. But that was no reason to threaten to discontinue. I am not going to do that again. Instead, I simply say that feedback makes me extremely happy (and thanks to those anonymous reviewers to whom I couldn't reply), and are very encouraging. So, please review, even if you want to tell me what you didn't like
Dealing - Chapter 9
One step forward…
Kirsten felt that she was close to loosing control. And if there was one thing she knew about Ryan, then it was that if he watched her break down, he would blame himself for it. She would have to keep herself together, at least until she was out of his sight.
"Now that this is cleared up, how about I give you a break. I'm pretty sure you have more than fulfilled your daily quota of words already, and there are still things that need to be discussed later. You're going to need your strength." She was pretty sure that Ryan could hear how false the cheer in her voice was, but he did not comment on it and she decided to accept it.
She left the pool house, carefully closing the door behind herself, not wanting any unexpected noise to shatter the fragile hold she had been able to give the boy inside. Making her way back to the main house, she couldn't keep herself from picking up the pace. By the time she reached the doors, she was almost running.
Her husband and her son looked at her expectantly as soon as she entered the room, but the curiosity on their faces was soon replaced with concern. "Mom?" "Kirsten? What happened?" Trying to figure out how they knew that something was wrong, she realised for the first time that while on her way here, she had lost what little control she had had and tears had started to make their way down her cheeks. At the same time, the anger inside her seemed enough to make her explode. Not a good combination.
"Seth, go up to your room." She hadn't used this voice in quite a while, feeling that she had lost her right to tell the boys what to do when she herself had failed so badly. Right now though, that didn't matter.
"What? Mom no, I want to know what happened. We have to be united in this battle, remember? We need to..."
"Seth. Upstairs. Now." No need wasting any more words than necessary. She had more important things to talk about, and they didn't concern her son.
Seth could apparently see that she was serious, because he grudgingly left the kitchen. "No eaves dropping!" she shouted after him, needing to make sure that he would not end up getting caught up in this argument. None of this was his fault.
"Kirsten? What is going on?" The fact that Sandy didn't seem to even have an idea what she could be upset about made it even worse.
"What is going on? I'll tell you what is going on. Ryan thought that I blamed him for what happened with Trey. And do you know why?" She didn't wait for Sandy to answer, his befuddled expression giving away that he was still clueless. "Because I consider Julie Cooper my best friend. Now, do you have any idea why this supposed friendship could lead to that kind of thought?"
This time, she did pause, taking the time to watch the expressions chasing each other over Sandy's face. The one that stayed in the end could best be described as shock mixed with a good amount of remorse. He seemed at a loss for words, staring at her without seeing her. But she did not have the patience to wait until he put together a well thought out explanation. She wanted an honest answer.
"How could you, Sandy? How could you not tell me what that woman did to Ryan? How could you let me go on believing that she is my friend when she is everything but? How could you allow me to spend all this time with her, knowing how horrible she behaved, knowing that she didn't even hesitate to hurt our son? How could you not tell me that what I was doing was hurting him?"
She finally stopped yelling, looking at her husband expectantly. She had no idea what she wanted him to say, but she needed answers.
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Sandy closed his eyes, not sure if he was trying to shield himself against the unveiled accusation he could see in his wife's face now or if to hide from the disbelieve he was sure was going to follow his admission.
"I... God Kirsten, I never thought about that. I was...I don't know why, but Ryan thinking that way never came to my mind. And before you say it, yes. Yes, I should have thought about, should have known that he would misunderstand it. I should have talked to him about it."
Just like he should have talked to Ryan about what happened with Trey, and about his feelings regarding Trey's coma and subsequent disappearance. The was so much that they ought to have talked about, so many ways in which he had let the boy down. No wonder he wanted to get away.
"Yes you should have though about Ryan's feelings. But do you think that's it?" He couldn't stand it when she looked at him like this, as if he had somehow let her down. It was a look he had seen more than enough of over the last year, and he had really been hoping never to incur it again. Yet once more his wife was looking at him as if she wanted to say, "You are not the man I married."
He knew what she was talking about, knew that she was enraged by the fact that he had kept Julie's betrayal from her. But while there was no excuse for the way he had neglected to take Ryan's feelings into account, he had had good reasons for not telling her. And he was not going to let her condemn him without making her listen first.
"What, you think I should have told you?" This time he was the one who didn't wait for an answer, after all he already knew what it would be. "When was I supposed to tell you? When you were in rehab and couldn't even bear the thought of coming home? Do I need to remind you of how overwhelmed you were when I told you what had happened with Trey? Do you think I wanted to put you through something like that again? Was I supposed to tell you when you had just given me that long speech about how you wanted to fix things when you'd come home? How you wanted to make a life for yourself outside of the Newport Group, and how good it was to know that there was a friend you could rely on to start building that life?"
"Sandy!" She looked shaken, so shaken, but somehow he couldn't stop yet, couldn't just take her accusations without reminding her of the reasons why he had to deal with all of this alone. He never blamed her for her alcoholism, but a part of him was still hurt over the fact that she had not been willing to come back, back to him. The possibility of loosing her had been to real back then, scaring him too much to simply forget. And even knowing that throwing all this at her was not right, he couldn't stop himself. He had been keeping this inside for too long.
"Time and again, you told me how important she was to you, what a good friend and how much that friendship meant to you. According to you, your only other friend was Charlotte, the woman with who you locked yourself away in the woods. I wanted you to come home, Kirsten; I needed you to come home. Are you really expecting me to believe that if I had told you what Julie did, you would still have come back."
"Of course I would. Sandy, I didn't come back for Julie, I came back for you and the boys." Her anger was still visible in her face, but now there was also an earnest sincerity. Unfortunately, he couldn't simply accept her words. Too fresh was the memory of countless pleas for her to come home, of being denied again and again. Too deep still the hurt that her dead father had managed to do what he himself hadn't.
"It didn't feel that way. You came for your father's will reading and took of again. Was that when you wanted me to tell you about Julie, after I had spent hours driving myself crazy with worry about you? Kirsten, you almost relapsed. How could I have added any more problems to that?"
He was no longer yelling, his voice having lost strength during the last sentences. Kirsten suddenly looked so small. So defeated. He shouldn't have done this. No matter how much she had hurt him, hurting her back was not the answer.
"I'm sorry, honey. I didn't mean to throw all this at you. I just, I need you to understand why I couldn't tell you. I didn't want to risk loosing you again."
He looked at Kirsten expectantly, holding his breath in anticipation of her answer. He needed to know she understood. She had to know how much he had always disliked Julie, had to understand that what the woman had done to Ryan had made his dislike turn into disgust. She needed to understand that the only reason he had ever been civil to Julie was to protect Kirsten.
"Sandy." There were tears in her voice, and again he berated himself for loosing his temper. "I know that the last summer was hard for you. And the way you described it, I can see that my behaviour hurt you. There is obviously still a lot that we need to talk about, things we should maybe have talked about a long time ago. And we will do that, because You and I need to be open with each other if we ever want to get past what happened. If this morning taught me anything, then it is that we all need to talk more. But something I need you to know, that I need you to accept and never question again is that you can't keep things from me. Even if you think they might hurt you, I still deserve to know. I deserve to know when people I consider my friends betray me. And yes, it hurts, but knowing that you didn't tell me hurts almost as badly. I need you to trust me again, Sandy, otherwise this won't work."
He nodded, overwhelmed with relief when she took a step towards him and embraced him tentatively. He closed his arms around her, holding on to her as tightly as possible. He had missed this, even missed arguing with her without questioning everything he said before it left his mouth. Maybe having lost his temper wasn't so bad. And she was right. Julie didn't deserve Kirsten's friendship, she never had and she certainly didn't now. Kirsten deserved to know about these things. He smiled at the thought of what Kirsten would probably do and say the next time she crossed ways with Julie Cooper. He couldn't wait. But then he remembered what had started this whole conversation, and he couldn't keep himself from stiffening.
Kirsten looked at him questioningly, and he felt bad for destroying the short brake they had been giving themselves. But he knew that this was far from solved. Kirsten was not the only one he needed to talk to.
"I need to talk to Ryan, tell him that it was my fault that you didn't know about Julie, tell him that we never blamed him." He knew this wasn't entirely true, knew that there had been a time when he had asked Ryan if he had been the one who shot Trey and hadn't been sure about the answer, but this is different. The other is something that he will also have to talk to Ryan about, but right then and there, he needed to set this straight, before Ryan came up with other ways to misinterpret what they did and said.
Kirsten let him go, and he was pained to realise that the distance was not only physical. She had allowed herself to forget about Ryan's role in this for a moment, but now she obviously remembered, recalled that she had not been the only one who had been hurt by Sandy's silence.
"I already told him that I never blamed him, but I am sure it will be good to hear it from you as well. And Sandy…" she paused, waiting till he met her eyes. The anger from before was back. "You better give him a damn good explanation of your reasons for not telling me."
He nodded and turned away from her, welcoming the escape from her piercing gaze.
"Sandy."
He halted his steps but didn't turn back. He tone had turned even colder, and he didn't want to see the expression accompanying that voice.
"There is another question you should ask yourself. One that Ryan won't pose, but surely will think about. If Seth had been the one that Julie tried to send to jail, would you have kept it from me?"
He shuddered, feeling himself loose his well-honed self-control. The question was horrible, but even more horrible was the fact that he knew the answer. It was not one he was proud of. Not wanting to face is wife before he had come to grips with this new bout of shame; he didn't turn back but instead stepped through the doors.
Making his way to the pool house, he once more repeated in his head what Kirsten had told him. Ryan had thought that Kirsten blamed him for everything that had happened with Trey because she had still considered Julie her best friend. Since Sandy had forced himself to accept Julie's seemingly permanent presence in the house for what he had thought was Kirsten's best interests; he must have given the boy the same impression. No wonder Ryan had wanted to leave.
Sandy stopped, taking a couple of deep breaths to regain his composure. Talking to Ryan would not be any easier if he was a complete mess when he did so. They needed to get this supposed blame out of the way. Later he would try to figure out what exactly to make of the realisation that, no matter how convinced he was that he treated both his boys basically the same, he obviously had quite different standards when it came to the burdens he expected the to bear.
Because while he had believed Ryan capable of getting over the ramifications and consequences of Julie's actions on his own, and had therefor not deemed it necessary to inform Kirsten so she could help him; he knew that if Seth had been the one innocently sent to jail, not only would he have told Kirsten, he probably would have forced him to go to a therapist to talk about the horror of spending a night in juvie. Yet he had done nothing of the sort for Ryan.
He needed to remember that behind Ryan's tough façade, he was hiding a boy who was actually younger than Seth, a boy who had probably been through more traumata than Sandy would ever know. He had to finally get it through his head that Ryan's ability to seemingly shrug off the most horrible experiences was not something he should encourage, not something he should rely on.
He was still a kid, and Sandy was ashamed to admit that he hadn't treated him as such for quite some time. This would have to change before it was to late, before the damage became irrevocable. Because Sandy knew that Ryan would take his treatment and the difference in comparison to Seth not as a sign of his guardians misplaced trust in Ryan's abilities of solving problems on his own, but rather as a sign of his place in the family. "Not an Atwood, but not a Cohen, either."
Sandy sighed, pushing the thought away for now and entering the pool house.
"Ryan. You got a minute, I would like to talk to you?" When no answer came, he let his eyes sweep across the room, trying to determine where the boy was and if maybe he had fallen asleep. Sandy couldn't see him anywhere.
But what he did see caused him to gasp in shock. The bag, the one Ryan had packed the day before to take it with him on his boating trip, was gone. And so was Ryan.
Again, please tell me what you think. I welcome constructive critizism!
