The Trouble Is

Chapter 54: Finding a Way

"You are going to have to find a way," he says.

I'm clueless, I think. I have no idea what he is talking about. Maybe I missed something he was saying, like a time-warp kind of thing.

"Huh?" My eloquence knows no bounds.

"You are going to have to find a way to forgive her," East says, speaking softly. "Not like a big, grand gesture thing . . . more like a one-step-at-a-time kind of thing."

"What are you talking about?" I respond not so quietly. I'm startled at the sudden idea that the death of someone requires my forgiveness. I feel the sweat forming down my back as my shoulders hunch forward.

He puts his hands on my shoulders, and the weight of him settles me.

"You are going to have to find a way to forgive her," he says again as he pulls me into his arms. I lay my head against his chest, feeling his pounding heart, his trembling arms. We are in unchartered water here, discussing the taboo topic of Katie's death.

Until this moment, I didn't even know how angry I was. East's words are like a spotlight on my heart. I don't want to hear them anymore. I can't find the words to say that, so I reach up and cover his mouth with my hand.

He brushes my hand away with a shake of the head. understand the desire to wall yourself in a bit. You feel the need to kind of protect yourself against this big, heart-breaking thing in your life. But it separates more than you know. It separates you from everyone. Eventually, it will break you much more than the loss of Katie will break you.

"I know you think you are alone in this, but that's like something out of some teen-angst novel. You are not alone unless you choose to be. I am here. I am with you."

I let this sit for a few minutes, checking to see if he is finished. I hope he is finished. I'm confused over the whole idea of a wall and forgiveness and all those words. He's never said that many words to me. All I can focus on is that Katie has done nothing that requires forgiveness.

"Forgive what?" I ask.

He holds me tighter and so very still.

"Forgive her for leaving you." His voice is a raspy whisper. And somewhere in that rasp, I realize how hard this is for him. I hear the truth in his words. I hear the sound of someone who truly knows my heart, even when I do not.

He sits down, pulling me onto his lap, my back against him.

"Someday," he says, whispering, "someday, you will be able to hear her name or smell her perfume or hear her laugh in a crowd, and all those memories will flash through your mind. And it will be good. I promise, it will be good. Oh, it'll still hurt. It will always hurt. But somehow, the hurt becomes not so sharp, not so damaging. But first, you have to let the wall down, one little brick at a time. It's when you start to let the wall down that the good things can come back in."

I think about this. I do forgive her, yet I don't forgive her. I don't know what I feel or think anymore. I believe that East believes it will come. And I believe in East. So the math works, I suppose.

Maybe I can just let things blur a little bit, like East's bokeh, I think. If I can focus on the one big thing that matters about Katie, then maybe, just maybe, the rest of it will blur into the background for now.

I tell all of this to East through tears and sniffles and snot. I turn to face him, and he wipes my face with his shirt, then kisses my forehead, eyes closed.

"What do you see?" he asks. "What are you focusing on right now?"

I think about this and am surprised to feel something other than tears. It's not happiness, but it's not total despair, either. It's somewhere in between. I picture Katie and me, hand in hand, wearing those blinding white tennis shoes and ribboned ponytails. It's that picture from Katie's room. It's from that first day, when we began. It hurts, but it's a beautiful kind of hurt. The hurt of acknowledging something incredible, something magical, that is now gone. I try to set the hurt free for a moment in order to grab that feeling of having someone beside me. I think I catch it for just a moment.

I explain all of this to East as he nods slowly.

"It did not even last for one second," I say. "But it was something that was a wonderful moment for us. It was the start of everything that we became. And when I pictured it, it was like this little light broke through the cracks."

He thinks about this and then pulls me close.

"Light comes in through the cracks," he whispers.