When We Were Them by Laura Taylor Namey

Author:Laura Taylor Namey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Published: 2021-11-02T00:00:00+00:00

— graduation week — Tuesday

I’M HERE, AREN’T I?

That has to count. Father Sprouse keeps one of those instant coffee pod machines on the console behind his office desk (wide, prehistoric mahogany). I’ve declined his drink offers for almost a year of bimonthly counseling sessions. That’s what Mom calls them. Father Sprouse calls them pathways toward healing. Fitting. Oh, one time it was a refuge where I could freely explore my feelings. Clever. A safe harbor, a spirit renewal—I’m not kidding. Two weeks ago, he’d picked at the white clerical collar around his neck and said life was about collecting snippets and snapshots. An inner scrapbook. But then grief came last year. An etherized kind. And flipping through all those pages—this is what he said—I didn’t know where to place it. How to fit grief into all that cropped color.

I only kept today’s meeting to avoid attracting attention at home. But now that I’m here, I decide this session will be different for Father Sprouse and me because I’m different. I might lose the best friends that dominate all my pages.

Today I start by saying to his rote coffee offer, “Vanilla, please.”

He’s just fixed himself one of the red pod brews, the decaf kind. “Oh?” His face hangs long and soft, but I’d bet in the way back, Father might’ve been pretty cute. I am used to distracting myself in this office, girded with so much red-honey wood and musty antiques, sometimes I think I’m in the belly of a ghost ship. “Then vanilla it is, dear.”

Through the miracle of modern machinery, I have a perfect, froth-topped coffee. He rolls forward on squeaky wheels. “How are you handling the week so far?”

I am a scrapbook of every kind and color of regret, that’s how my week is. But my friends are the last topic I want to discuss. A gray box and I will figure it out. “I’m in the middle of finals, so it’s been busy.”

“That must feel overwhelming,” he says. “How have the exams been going?”

“About like I expected.” I shift in the leather chair. “I have a question,” I say before he can ask another of me.

“Of course.”

I already feel the gentle tap of my own conscience. Still, I go. “Why would my mom confess her part in Audrey’s accident after being absolved, over and over? I don’t know if she’s still doing it, but I know she was.”

(Can you sink a ghost ship?)

I have been holding that part of Mom for two years, since Adrienne shared it with me. It comes up whenever I see my mother between two rosebushes in another kind of prayer. I finally say it today because I simply want to not be the most world-rocked, off-kilter human in this room, or in any room. Just for a few minutes. I desperately want a break, some relief from myself. I meet Father’s eyes, putting more apologies in mine, because he really is a nice guy.

But I don’t know how he can answer my question without violating the sacred confessional.

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