Chapter Twenty-Five

Sometimes it's necessary to just come out with things and let them go as they go. It's time for me to throw my shit on the table and see what happens. It's time for me to move on a little bit. That means it's time for me to initiate a conversation with my mother about something neither of us probably ever want to talk about.

"Here," I throw some papers on the table in front of Sara. "Those are all the paper's the lawyer gave me dealing with Mom's and Dad's estate."

She chokes on the bottled water she's sipping on. "What?" She asks through a cough.

"It's everything from the estate. They didn't leave you anything, but I think that's because they never got over your whole gay thing." I can't help but let out a small chuckle. "In the end I guess I got the best of them."

Sara tentatively reaches out for the papers but pulls her hand back before she gets too close. "What do you want me to do with them?"

"Nothin' I guess." I pull a chair out and take a seat next to Sara. "I can't manage any of it until I'm eighteen. Since you're my guardian until that point and time that means you're in charge of it."

"What do you want to do with it?" She asks staring at the papers instead of me. This is probably the closest she's come to something of her parents in a while. She didn't really participate during the funeral. I got everything together and made all the decisions. She just had to show up to get me at the social services building.

I shrug. "The money will help with school and stuff, but everything else I would like see burnt to the ground."

"Were they still running that place?" We're both staring intently at the papers.

"The bed and breakfast?" Sara has been out of touch. "They sold it after it got out of hand for them. It ended up demanding too much of their time."

Sara turns her head and looks curiously at me. "So what did they do for money?"

"Got jobs. Laura ended up working for some hotel and Dad worked for some tourist thing." I lean forward in the chair and put my elbows on the table. "Them working out of home was the best thing that happened to me. They weren't around and that let me do what I wanted."

"Freed up your time to sleep with every girl willing, you mean?"

That honestly surprises me. I didn't think Sara would ever want to bring that up again. I guess I was wrong. "That didn't take up all of my time and I never took anyone back to the house with me. I knew what would have happened if Laura would have caught us."

"You would have been living with me sooner."

That's a possibility, but not a realistic one. I wouldn't have bothered to contact Sara then. I would have wanted to be stubborn and prove that I didn't need anyone to support me. I would have found someplace to stay. "We could hope that's the way it would be."

Sara stares at me for a moment, obviously thinking of the what ifs then nods her head. "We could hope."

"So you know though," I reach out for the papers and pick them up. I'm looking at them, but I'm not reading anything on the pages. "I never was like a sexual predator or anything. I mean, if someone wasn't into it or something I wouldn't force them."

"I know you wouldn't," Sara runs a hand quickly through her hair. "It surprises me that you have as much experience as you do. You're only sixteen."

"Sex was something I could control." That's the best explanation that I have. It's the only explanation that I have. She's kind of lucky she's getting an explanation at all.

"Can you honestly tell me that you don't think you emotionally hurt any of those girls you slept with?"

Sara must have gotten burnt in the past. "I never lied about anything. I was upfront about what I wanted. If they didn't get it, then I can't be blamed for that."

"I hope you don't run into any of them again, for your sake." Sara says looking away from me.

"It wasn't like that." I put the papers back on the table. "A lot of the women I slept with were well into their twenties." I'm thinking that might have been the wrong thing to say.

Sara turns slowly back to face me directly. "What?"

"You and I both know I don't look like I'm sixteen years old. I could easily pass for at least twenty, and a lot of people don't ask for IDs before they decide to fuck someone." I probably shouldn't be so defensive. Sara probably has a big problem with that statutory rape thing, not that I don't.

"Clubs and bars ask for IDs."

"That's easy to get around. You know that."

Sara shakes her head a few times. "Unbelievable," she whispers mostly to herself.

"Look, I'm willing to admit that some of them I probably did do wrong by, but what does that matter now?" I lean back in my chair and turn my head towards the ceiling. "It's in the past and if it happens to catch up with me, then I'll deal with it then."

Sara leans forward. "And how do you expect to deal with it?"

I keep focused on the ceiling. "I'll tell the truth. I'll tell them that I was using them as an extension to escape my fucked up childhood. I'll say I was using them as a way to control my life and my body and my self-esteem and that it had very little to do with them." I drop my gaze to Sara's. "I'll tell them every little thing that those pamphlets tell me that I'm feeling and maybe they can move on with their lives with a little more closure while I still try to figure out if I'll use Jenny in the same way."

"What do you mean use Jenny in the same way?" Sara asks carefully.

I close my eyes and rub at them with my thumb and forefinger of my right hand. "I can't say to myself or anyone else with any true amount of certainty that I won't twist my relationships into part of whatever rebellion I have playing out inside of me against everything that happened to me as I was growing up." My right hand falls to my lap and I open my eyes. "And I honestly don't see how you can either."

A spark goes off in Sara's eyes and I think I've said something that probably wasn't healthy. I honestly wanted us to get the estate stuff out of the way. I didn't have any plans to start a confrontation about anything. "What are you saying?" She asks slowly.

Maybe I can say I'm not saying anything. Maybe I can get up and walk away and avoid something that has already been avoided before, or maybe I shouldn't run away and should sit this one out. "A part of our past is realizing what it does to us now. You've got Catherine in your corner and that's an awesome thing because she's a great person, but what have you done to sabotage the relationship? What have you done to push her away so that she couldn't come close to your broken center?" My complete honesty has to be the best policy. "Me? I had or have a revolving door to my bedroom. No one gets a chance to stay long enough to get a chance at being anything more to me than a warm body."

There's an angry outburst on the tip of Sara's tongue, there must be. She's going to say something and I'm going to respond defensively and we'll have another fight. We haven't had a good one of those lately. I was starting to wonder where they went off to.

Sara's eyes have narrowed and she takes a few deep swallows. "You're right, Mel." What? "It took forever for me to trust Catherine. It took forever for me to let her get close to me. I was afraid to even let her touch me, because she made me feel things past my own self-loathing."

The muscles in my body relax and I feel like a deflated balloon, or better yet, I feel like one of those weird looking blowfish who've just realized they got all blown up over some speck floating in the water. "How long did it take before you actually decided that being in a relationship with her wasn't bad?"

"Honestly?" Sara releases a derisive chuckle. "I still have moments of doubt, not with her, but with me. I still wonder if I can do it and be nothing like my parents. But I know that if I let those moments take over my life again then I'm going to lose her and I'm not willing to do that."

I don't really have anything to say to that. I don't have any story to tell her that would fill in the empty space of my still undiscovered depths of anger and pain. I don't have a big realization that she has with Catherine. I have no idea what I'm doing with Jenny and I don't know how to figure it out. It's not like I can go up to her and tell her that I need to discover if our relationship is going to be about me wanting to control something in my life again or if it's me making an honest effort to try becoming someone who isn't as I am.

"I'm not superman." What did I just say and why did I just say it?

Sara moves her chair closer to mine. "No one is." She looks down at her lap. "When Catherine and I had been together for a couple of months, I told her about you. She told me we could go get you and take you away from them. She told me we should take you away. She said we didn't have to tell you anything."

"How long ago was this?" I'm not sure I really want to know.

Sara licks her lips and bites down on her bottom lip for a brief moment. "Two years."

I didn't want to know. "And you didn't listen to her because?"

"I wasn't strong enough." She rubs both her hands down her thighs. "I wasn't strong enough to walk back into their home and tell them I was walking away with you, and I wasn't strong enough to face you. I thought I was too messed up to even try and be a parent to you."

"And I reminded you of your rapist," I probably didn't need to add that in, but I'm sure that was part of her not being strong enough. Plus, I said reminded not remind. Maybe Sara will realize that little fact.

Sara drops her head. "You remind me of a lot of things Melinda and a lot of them aren't bad."

I cross my legs and my arms. I try to distance myself the best I can from whatever it is Sara is telling me. Despite what some might think, the truth hurts and in my case it hurts multiple times in multiple ways.

"You were two years old when I left," she says her head still turned downwards, "when I was kicked out. The first two years of your life, in a way, were the best of mine. When you were born, I knew from the moment I saw you that you were going to be able to be everything that I could never be. I knew you were going to be the best of everything I was, of everything the Sidles had to offer."

I feel like crying but I hold back. She's not going to make me cry, that's not what this conversation is supposed to be about. We're supposed to talk about the estate. It doesn't matter how she felt about me when I was born. That was a long time ago. I've grown up since then.

"Leaving you was the hardest thing I've ever done and I've regretted it ever since then, but I still look at you and I know that you're the best part of me."

I push my chair away from hers. "Where is this coming from? What is this about?"

Sara lifts her head and looks directly at me. "I need to tell you this. You need to know."

I shake my head. "No I don't."

"You do. You need to know because you're a better person than you think, Melinda." Sara closes the distance between us. I try to move away again but she grabs onto my good hand, stopping me from moving anywhere.

"All parents think their kid is special." It's weak but that's all I can come up with to say right now, besides it's the truth.

"That's probably true," Sara gives a half smile, "and I'm more than happy to be your parent who thinks that."

I open my mouth to say something but quickly close it again when I hear the front door open. Sara and I both turn to the door and see Catherine stepping through it. The moment she looks at the both of us, it's easy to tell she thinks she's walked in on something.

"Do you need me to leave?" She asks not even fully inside the apartment yet.

Sara looks to me. She's going to let me answer. "Nah," I shrug my shoulders, "You act as just as much as a parent to me as Sara does these days."

"Okay." Catherine closes the door. "Then what is it we're talking about?"

"I just threw some of the estate stuff at Sara," I try to answer as smoothly as possible.

Catherine looks between Sara and me. "Oh."

"I need to go to my room and look through some more stuff to see if I lost anything." I know I've got everything on the table and maybe both of them know it too, but they don't say anything as I turn around and walk away.

When I get to my room I close the door, for the most part. I leave it cracked open just a little so that if Catherine and Sara are going to say something then I'll have a chance of hearing it. I'm not really into this eavesdropping stuff, but they say more when I'm not around than when I am. I don't know if that's normal adult behavior or something, but I'm not a big fan of it. I know that the both of them talk to each other a lot. They've got that communication thing down pat, but I don't think they've got it down with me just yet.

A few minutes pass and I don't hear a single interesting thing. They're talking about Lindsey's classes and Catherine asks if Sara is going to go to the grocery store sometime this week, cause apparently we're running low on food supplies. Sara blames me for the shortage.

"Hey!" I call out before I think about it. "I'm not the only one that eats food."

Catherine and Sara laugh and I give up on my false search. I go back out to where they are and take my seat again.

"Couldn't find anything else?" Catherine asks. Her eyes have a slight glint to them, but I don't know what that means exactly.

I shake my head. "Not a thing."

"So how do you feel about this?" Catherine picks up the papers and starts reading them.

"It's all in Melinda's hands." Sara answers, cause the question wasn't directed at me.

"Isn't that a little unfair of you," Catherine says. "You're dumping everything on her."

"Yeah," I speak up. "Isn't that a little unfair of you?" I try and match Catherine's tone but it's a really bad imitation.

Sara doesn't look too amused. "Melinda, everything is in your name. It is literally all in your hands."

"That's easy to change," Catherine replies for me. "All she has to do is sign it all over to you."

Sara lets a heavy sigh escape. "Fine, then let's get this all worked out."

Catherine hands Sara the papers, which Sara slowly takes. I wonder why I didn't go to Catherine with the papers first. She seems to be on my side of the issue a lot, but then again I think she just wants to help Sara be a parent sometimes. Catherine, apparently, was on my side before I even knew her. I can't help but think that maybe if Catherine wasn't around that Sara would have never picked me up after what happened to our/her parents.

"Did you ever try and see me after you left?" Ending our conversation where it left off probably would have been for the best, but there are still answers that I want. There's still stuff I want to know and in order to get a chance to know it I'm going to have to ask questions.

Sara puts the papers down and she knows exactly what I'm talking about. She probably hoped that I would drop the conversation now that she's actually looking at the papers I threw down in front of her.

"Once I talked myself into going to see you. It was your first day of school. You looked beautiful and healthy and perfect. You weren't nervous at all. You walked right through those front doors like you owned the place. You didn't look like you needed me at all."

I remember that day, and I did take over that school on the first day. I wasn't going to hide in the shadows and not appreciate the time I had away from my 'parents'. That first day I knew I had a way out of the Sidle home. It's amazing how smart I became just after one day of school. Laura had told me to go to school and act normal; she said this as if I knew what normal was. She didn't want me to draw too much attention to myself but didn't want me to cower in the corner either. She didn't want me to give anyone any reason to believe that something wasn't perfectly okay in my world.

For the most part I listened to her, but I also figured out that if everyone was looking at me then everyone would be looking at Laura too. With everyone watching us so closely Laura couldn't possibly hurt me as much as she had been doing. That was my child's logic and it worked to an extent but that really only means that I got bruises where they didn't show. It means that Laura figured out another way to torture me without leaving marks.

During all this, the only thing I probably needed more than anything was my mother. I wish I would have seen Sara that first day. If I had, I would have grabbed hold of her and never would have let her put me down or brush me away. Seeing her would have… I don't even know if I would have recognized her.

"I was in college at the time," Sara says and I have to force myself to listen. "I deluded myself into believing that I could have a normal life, then. I thought I could participate in the real world without anything from my past getting in my way." She shakes her head in her own disbelief. "It ended up being that the single burst of confidence I had was torn down the moment I saw you. I wasn't good enough for you. I'm still not sure I ever will be."

Catherine's looking straight at me, urging me to say something. Probably urging me to disagree with Sara and to say she's good enough, but I don't know that. I don't know what good enough is. I can't be the measure of that. I don't want to be. "Well that's something you're going to have to decide."

Sara looks up at me confused. There's a question rolling around in her head waiting to be let free, but I don't think it's going to make it past her lips. Catherine's still staring at me. She doesn't know what's going on either, I don't think. Maybe she expected me to yell at Sara or maybe she expected me to run away, but I hear that people don't change if they continue to do the same things they did before. So, I'm trying to not do the same things.

When it comes to Sara, rationalization isn't my biggest skill. Sara represents all kinds of pain to me and I probably do the same for her. I reach out with my good hand and lay it on Sara's arm. "I'm not going to measure if you're good enough, Sara." I shrug my shoulders. "I can't decide that; only you can. But if it helps, then I think you're an incredible person." And that's all I can take. I drop my hand and get up from my seat. "I think we might need a break," I say as I point to the front door. I'm announcing my exit this time. "We can talk again later."

Neither of them stops me or calls out to me. This time I'm not running away angry. I didn't say anything that was too mean. I think I may have acted like a mature person. Still, though, after hearing all that I am angry at Sara. I'm angry and hurt and I really wish she had never left me. I wish she would have fought her parents and fought everything that happened to her. I wish she would have swept me away from all the bad things and taken me to all the good.

That's not a realistic wish. I know that. It was never realistic it could never be realistic. Life is a lot more complicated than that. The way she was, before, Sara probably wouldn't have been a good parent. She probably needed something to happen that would put her on the right track. Things work out like they should, right?