TWENTY-FOUR

CLAIRE

“He was afraid he wasn’t good enough for me, but that was never the issue. It’s just . . . after everything that happened, I didn’t know how he could even look me in the eye.”

“But he’s still around,” Dr. Lang reminds me. “You said he still texts occasionally and your son video chats with him. You had a good conversation the other night. That doesn’t sound like someone who hates you, Claire. You said yourself he told you he still loved you. No strings attached.”

“I know, but. . . .” I don’t know what to say to this.

Dr. Lang removes his glasses. “If I can be frank for a moment—I don’t want to speak for Jesse—but it sounds like he doesn’t blame you for his brother’s accident.”

A knot of anger simmers in my stomach. I don’t understand how people can keep saying this. Someone died because of me. “How can he not?” I demand to know. “I was texting him. He crashed because I distracted him.”

“He was a grown man, Claire. He knew he was on the highway. There are laws against texting while driving, so even if you were texting him, he shouldn’t have been texting you. The phone should have been off. Or put away. Out of reach. I don’t think Jesse blames you. I don’t think any reasonable person would put the fault on you. So as a professional, I’m saying that your text messages did not kill Sean, Claire. By law, he should’ve waited until the car was stopped to respond to them. His choice to disobey the law—and the events that followed, though I admit are tragic—had nothing to do with you.”

“But then it was like . . . everything snowballed. Jesse’s mom left them.”

“Again, that was her choice. And before you go on, you had nothing to do with his father’s heart attack.”

“It was stress. From everything that had happened!”

“Claire,” Dr. Lang begins, “what would it take for you to stop blaming yourself? To forgive yourself for this?”

“I don’t know,” I admit. “Proof that it wasn’t me. That he wasn’t responding to my texts.”

“I don’t know how that’s possible.” He considers this. “No. It’s going to have to come from someplace else. You. You’re going to have to make a decision. You can decide to keep hanging on to these toxic feelings, which will—no doubt—have a ripple effect across every relationship you pursue, including your son’s, or you can decide that Sean’s death was what it was—an accident. No, the timing was not great, but the accident itself had nothing to do with you. If you can come to terms with this, then you can begin the process of forgiving yourself and healing. But until you stop carrying this guilt and blame, you aren’t going to be the best version of yourself, and that’s not good for anyone—Nolan, Jesse, your parents, your boss, but most of all it’s not good for you. I’m not saying the process is easy, or even something that can happen overnight. It will take time. It will be a ‘two steps forward one step back’ kind of thing. But the choice to take that first step is yours.”

When I enter the house on Monday evening, fresh from Nolan’s karate class, my mom tells me there is a package for me on the kitchen counter. I’m not expecting anything, and I don’t recognize the company name on the return address label, so I slice through the tape and open the lid. It’s a styrofoam cooler. Inside is a pint of Neapolitan ice cream—vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry—packed in dry ice. And a note:

Claire and Nolan—

Do not open until Tuesday at 7:00pm.

No name is signed to the card, but I know it’s from Jesse. I rearrange a few things in the freezer to make room and set the note on top so no one else will stake claim.

On Tuesday, five minutes before Jesse is supposed to call, I remove two bowls from the cabinet and two spoons from the drawer. I drag the ice cream scoop across the top layer, filling each of our bowls with all three colors. Nolan is sitting at the dining room table in front of the laptop, waiting for it to ring, letting us know Jesse is on the line.

“Why don’t you go ahead and call him tonight?” I say. He runs his finger over the touchpad, moving the cursor toward Jesse’s photo, and clicks it twice.

“It’s scary how good you are with that,” I say, placing one of the bowls of ice cream in front of him.

“Ice cream?” he asks.

“I think it might be from Uncle Jesse. Let’s find out.” I sit down beside him just as Jesse’s face fills the screen.

“Hey! Sorry! One second.” We watch him move away from the computer and into the kitchen. He returns a few moments later with his own bowl of ice cream.

“I thought this might be from you,” I say.

“Ice cream date. In honor of Nolan starting school tomorrow.”

I take another bite and shake my head.

“What?” he asks. “You don’t like it?”

“No, it’s not that. It’s just . . . this is perfect.” I can’t hide my smile. It’s unreal, how much Jesse has done—is doing—for Nolan. Every time I think he can’t possibly be kinder or more generous, he goes and does something like this. Showing that he cares. That we matter. My mom, Lynette, Hans, Dr. Lang—they’re right. I could do so, so much worse.

“Well, if that’s a ‘thank you’, then you’re welcome,” he says.

“Thank you, Uncle Jesse!” Nolan says.

“You’re welcome, little man. I wasn’t sure what flavor you liked, so I figured I couldn’t go wrong with three in one.”

“Which one are you eating?” Nolan asks, peering closer. Jesse tilts his bowl so we can see its contents. “All three. What about you guys?”

Nolan smiles as we turn our bowls to him. “All of them.”

Jesse smiles. “So let’s talk about school,” he says.

I let the conversation run a bit longer than usual, and the two of them talk about first days in a new place and how to be a friend and Spiderman’s most recent antics. Jesse had sent a series of photos from the grocery store over the weekend—Spiderman rejecting asparagus, getting stuck in a pile of oranges, trying to determine which brand of floss he wanted, and checking the eggs to make sure none of them were cracked.

When I send Nolan off to get his pajamas, I thank Jesse again for the ice cream.

“It was nothing,” he says.

I want to say more, but I’m not sure what, because it isn’t nothing. It’s everything to Nolan, who is everything to me. I clear my throat. “So, um, I know you’re busy with work, but do you think you can get away for a visit soon?” I ask.

“Well, the Labor Day holiday is in a few weeks, but, to be honest, I wasn’t sure if you wanted me to visit, yet.”

My heart sinks, that he would think this—that I would let him think it. “Yes. We would love to see you. For however many days you could spare.”

“We?”

“Nolan misses you.”

“And you?”

I hesitate. “I miss you, too. We both want to see you. You can have the guest bedroom for a few days.”

“Okay. So what if I came in on Saturday at lunch and left around lunch on Monday?”

I smile. “That would be perfect.”

This conversation replays in my mind, over and over, throughout the rest of the evening. I check the time on my phone. It’s been an hour and a half and I still haven’t fallen asleep. Jesse’s voice fills the space between my ears. “And you?” Do you miss me, too? is what he was asking. He deserved the truth, and I needed to be honest with him—and myself. Yes, I miss him. I hate that he’s so far away. I hate that our only conversations have been video chats with Nolan between us. I miss what we were when he was home. I miss what we were becoming. I hate how quickly I pulled away from him, and as I think about our fight in the hospital parking lot, I remember his last words to me that day: “It must suck to be so powerful.”

And something clicks, at that moment. When he said those words I thought he meant the power I had over him. I’d argued it wasn’t my fault he’d waited all those years for me. It wasn’t my fault that he always let me call the shots. I didn’t ask for that power. But, looking back, I don’t think he meant that. Not at all.

It must suck for you to be so powerful.

He wasn’t talking about him and me. He was being sarcastic—the implication that I thought I was powerful enough to be responsible for an accident that I wasn’t even physically part of. That I’d thrown all the blame on myself when Sean was the one behind the wheel. When he’d made the decision to respond to the texts. When his mom made the choice to leave. When his dad’s poor health resulted in a heart attack.

You are not that powerful, was what he was really saying. Still loving me aside, he didn’t blame me for anything that had happened. Not even close.

I am not that powerful, and while a heart can break, metaphorically speaking, I am not made of glass. I cannot physically splinter or fracture or shatter in this way. The damage is not irreparable. My mom, Lynette, Hans—they’re all right.

This can be fixed.

I grab my laptop off the floor and open up a new email message. I spill everything—all of this and more—firing off sentence after sentence, one conclusion after another.

By midmorning, Dr. Lang has emailed his reply:

I appreciate you being so honest. This sounds like quite a breakthrough for you.

What do you want to do about it?