Letters to Nowhere #1 (Completed!)

Letters to Nowhere: Part 93

"I'm sorry about the garage." My face heated up as I slid on my flip-flops by the door and walked all the way inside.

            "It's okay," Bentley said with a shrug.             

            I glanced around, spinning in a circle, taking everything in and feeling none of the heavy emotions I'd felt in here earlier. "It's kind of like turning on the lights in a haunted house and realizing it's just a bunch of...stuff," I said.

            Bentley found a bucket, and after setting his broom down, he flipped it over and nodded for me to sit down. I stared at it, thinking of that day in laundry room with Jordan when he had made me say it out loud...my parents are dead. Why couldn't they just be dead? Why did I have to put them somewhere?

            I sat down and Bentley pulled over a stool to sit on. "It was never my intention to keep the real details from you forever, even if your grandmother would have preferred that. I just didn't think you were ready to hear it yet."

            I stared at my hands. "I don't think anyone is ever ready to hear that."

            "No, I suppose not."

            "I don't know how to stop hating them." My voice shook more with every word and when the tears tumbled out, I didn't try to hide them like I normally would with my coach. "I feel like I'm going to be angry forever. All these months I've just thought of their accident as a really bad thing that happened and something I had to work through, but I've never felt like a victim. Until now. I'm the victim of them being idiots. I'm the thing that's left in the aftermath. Aren't people wired to think about these things when they become parents? Shouldn't they have said, 'You know what? We might kill ourselves driving drunk and then Karen would be an orphan. Maybe we shouldn't drive?'"

            "You're right. They shouldn't have been driving," Bentley said. "And you have every right to be angry, and no one should tell you otherwise, and no one can tell you how long it should take for that anger to fade."

            I looked down at a broken trophy near my feet. "It felt good to throw stuff, though."

            Bentley laughed a short laugh. "I bet it did."

            I thought about his albums and the affectionate way Bentley had talked about Anna and Eloise in the garage a few weeks ago. "Do you think it's wrong for me to hate them? It seems like you're supposed to put people on a pedestal after they're gone and make them sound even better than they were, but I haven't been able to do that, and I really can't do it now."

            "I don't think anything you're feeling can be labeled as wrong," he said. "It is what it is."

            "Why did you want to keep the autopsy report from the media? I know why my grandma would want that, and my dad's law firm, but you?"

            He nodded like he'd been expecting me to ask that question. "When I heard about your parent's accident, I was devastated for you, of course, but I knew my head was much clearer than your grandmother's or anyone emotionally close to your parents. And I knew whatever story was told by the media would haunt you for the rest of your life. Think about every televised gymnastics competition you've ever seen, think about the ones Stevie's been in. Do they ever forget to mention that her dad was an Olympic sprinter?"

            I shook my head and started chewing on my thumbnail, anticipating the fact that I was about to implement Jordan's Plan A. It was time. I needed to know what he really thought of me. "Did you feel guilty about keeping it secret from me? Is that why you've been letting me learn new skills even if I'm not ready to compete them? Even if I might not ever be ready?"