The next morning, lying on the red-plaid couch in her living room, Alma was awakened by the sound of the front door opening. She had spent the night there, because her parents had refused to let her be alone in her room. Her hands were resting on her stomach, both loosely wrapped in clean, white gauze. She had been given medication for the pain, but she could still feel the ache.
“Hey, Alms,” said a voice. “What’s all this I hear about you setting fires around town?”
James was there in the doorway. Alma could tell he was trying to be lighthearted, but his voice was unnaturally cheerful and his forehead furrows reminded her of their father’s.
Alma sat up. She tried to smile, but she didn’t know what to make of his sudden presence.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“Spring break starts today,” James said. “Although I came a little earlier than I would have. Mom and Dad called me in the middle of the night. They think we should talk. The four of us. Together.”
Alma knew then. This was what she had been waiting for, what she had been dreading. Her parents had not asked many questions last night because the nurse with the gray-streaked hair had quickly taken them aside and told them about her panic attack and her burns. By the time they had arrived at home, in the early hours of the morning, everyone had been too exhausted to talk.
But now the moment had come. This would be, Alma felt sure, the Discussion to End All Discussions.
After their long night, her parents had been asleep too, but now they came out to the living room. Alma and her mother sat side by side on the couch. Her father and James sat in the matching leaf-print armchairs across from them.
“There are several things we need to discuss,” her father began. His fingers laced. His brow furrowed. “Alma, it is imperative that you tell us the truth.”
“The truth,” Alma repeated. The truth. Tell the truth, Alma, Dr. Parry had said.
“The panic attack last night,” her mother said gently. “Was that the first one you’ve had since December?”
Across from Alma, her father unlaced his hands and leaned forward. The creases in his brow deepened. James’s movements mimicked their father’s. Alma’s mother put her arm around Alma.
Every time this had happened before, every time they’d had the Discussion, Alma had felt like she was being shrunk down and taken apart and placed beneath a microscope. She had wanted to hide from view. But today, suddenly, Alma realized that Dr. Parry had been right. Her family was trying to help her.
And they didn’t know how.
They needed to know the truth.
Here was something that she could do.
“I’m still getting the panic attacks,” she said. “Not just last night either. It hasn’t happened as much over the last three weeks, but before that, I was having a lot. Sometimes every day. Sometimes even more.”
“Oh, Alma,” her mother breathed. She scooched closer to her daughter, pulling her in.
Alma’s father’s eyebrows lifted, taking his forehead furrows with them. “But why didn’t you tell us?” he asked. “All this time—we had no idea.”
Alma shook her head. “I couldn’t—I didn’t want to tell you,” she said, “because I didn’t know how to fix it, and I kept disappointing you. And I was—I was angry, even though I didn’t realize it at first. You made me move here to Four Points, and I didn’t want to.”
“You really loved Old Haven, didn’t you?” Alma’s mother said. She touched the dried yellow wildflower that was woven into Alma’s hair. That flower had grown by the front steps of their old home.
“I did,” Alma replied, her voice breaking, her eyes on her bandaged hands.
“Plus, middle school is tough,” James said. “It was tough for me too.”
Alma’s father was slower to respond. “We bought the law practice,” he said finally, “because we had a lot of debt from law school. This seemed like our chance to have a better life. I knew you wouldn’t be happy about leaving Old Haven, but I thought you would acclimate. And when you didn’t, I suppose I thought that you—that you weren’t trying.”
He paused, and Alma kept her gaze down, her insides heavy and her eyes filling with tears. She wondered if it had been a mistake to tell them about the panic attacks after all. Maybe she had been right to keep it a secret. Maybe her father was going to tell her to try harder, to do something.
But he didn’t say anything.
And when Alma finally looked up, she found that he was looking right at her, and he was crying.
“You were trying though, weren’t you?” he said softly.
Alma’s own tears spilled over. “I was,” she said. “I was trying, but I couldn’t—I couldn’t stop the panic attacks. I can’t stop them. I can’t make myself better. But I was trying. I am trying.”
Alma’s father came to sit on the other side of her. He put his arm around her shoulders, and she felt a teardrop land in her hair. “I know you were,” he said. “We weren’t listening. I wasn’t listening. And you weren’t being honest. So we have to figure out—together—how to help you. What you, Alma, need.”
“We’re sorry that you felt you couldn’t tell us the truth,” her mother said. “And that you thought we were”—she paused, and when she continued her voice was choked by tears—“disappointed in you. We’re not. We always want to know the truth, Alma, whatever it is, because we love you.”
James had scooched forward in his chair, toward the three of them on the couch. “And I’m not so far,” he said, bumping Alma’s knees with his. “I can come home sometimes. I miss you, you know.”
“You do?” Alma asked.
“Of course I do,” James said.
These were the things that Alma had wanted to hear for the last three months: that her panic attacks were not her fault, that she was not a disappointment, that she was loved. To hear them now, after she had told the truth she had kept so carefully hidden, gave her the same feeling she’d had when the ShopKeeper and Dr. Parry had called her Alma of the Growing Light.
It was the feeling that her family was seeing her brightness, her Alma-ness, at last.
Her father laced his hands together again, but his brow stayed unfurrowed as he shifted to look her in the eyes. “Now, why don’t you tell us,” he said, his voice gentle but very definitely firm, “why you’ve been sneaking out of the house?”