She glanced at me again only briefly. Silence ensued as she jumped from one memory to another.

“All those trips I was taking with my mom to gymnastics… Elias, I’ve never taken a gymnastics class in my life. I was seeing a shrink. A f**king shrink. She didn’t want anyone to know. I didn’t want anyone to know.”

Finally, Bray turned her head and looked straight at me, giving me all of her attention, her eyes filled with intensity and with intent.

“You were the only person in the world who I felt deep down accepted me for the way I was, even though you had no idea there was something wrong with me. Who didn’t run the other way or talk about me to other people. Even my parents… Elias, they loved me, I know, but they were so exhausted by me. They didn’t want to deal with it anymore. I was always getting into trouble. Sneaking out. Getting picked up by the cops. Sent to Juvenile. They didn’t want to deal with me anymore.”

She looked away and a tear escaped her eye. She tried to hide it, but I reached up and wiped it away with the pad of my thumb.

“Tell me,” I urged her. “Tell me everything.” I had known growing up with her that she spent so much time with me because she had problems at home. I had seen it, the way her parents regarded her, how her father favored her sister and looked down on Bray, but until now I never knew why. I never knew, just like Bray had said, that there was something wrong with her, that she had lived all her life with this eternal struggle.

She gathered her composure, forcing down the other tears that threatened to turn her into a blubbering mess.

“I overheard my dad telling my mom once that he didn’t care anymore, that I was just a spoiled brat that hated authority and that I deserved whatever I got. They gave up on me. My mom and dad just gave up. They didn’t care where I went or what I did. I got worse after that. My highs and lows went from being a bad teenager to a very sick one. Some days I was the happiest person on Earth, while other days I wouldn’t get out of bed. I wanted to lay there forever. I would stare up at the ceiling and wish that the world would just crumble to bits around me.”

She caught my eyes.

“You were part of the reason, Elias,” she said, finally answering my question about the suicide attempt. That knot just got bigger in my throat. “Lissa, trying to be a good friend I guess, talked me in to seeing another shrink when I moved to South Carolina with her. I thought she was really trying to get involved and be proactive by helping me. No one who knew about my problems had ever really done that for me before. Sure, my parents sent me to a shrink, but I always felt like they did it for themselves and not for me. Or like it was their duty. So, when Lissa sat me down that day and she looked me in the eyes—she even held my hands, Elias. She came at me with all of the right things—I felt like, Wow, she really cares about me and wants to help. So, wanting to show her how much I appreciated the gesture, I agreed to go.”

Bray stopped and looked back out at the ocean again. The wind blew softly through her hair, pushing a few dark strands across her lips. I moved around to sit in front of her and then reached up and pulled the hair away, tucking it back behind her ear. But she never stopped looking at the ocean even with me in front of her. Her mind was lost in her darkest memories. I waited patiently for her to go on. She needed this moment to reflect, I knew.

“I never wanted to take medication. I was afraid that if I took it that would make it real, that I would believe I was crazy. I would prove my parents right. So I never did. The medication I was prescribed when I was sixteen, I only pretended to take. But in South Carolina, I was so caught up in Lissa wanting to help me that I took the medication the shrink she talked me into seeing prescribed.”

She paused and said, “It was the worst thing I could’ve done.”

“Why?”

“Because it was ultimately what made me want to kill myself.”

Confused, I just stared at her, longing for the answers.

“That shrink was a quack,” she said. “Had to be. After Lissa found me sitting in a chair with blood pooling on the floor beneath me, I woke up in the hospital to my parents and two women with tablets in their hands and judgment on their faces. They committed me. My parents left me in the care of the State and they went back to Georgia. Lissa, she visited me once but that was it. That was when I knew she was just like my parents. She cared about me, but she was exhausted by me and wanted to hand me over to someone else to deal with.”

I rested my hands on her knees.

“I was under the State’s thumb for two weeks before they released me. Before they felt I was no longer a danger to myself. I convinced them that I had never tried or really wanted to commit suicide before I started taking those pills. And it was the truth. I mean, yeah, I did have suicidal thoughts. I had them a lot, I won’t say I didn’t. But I never attempted it until after the medication. Idiots prescribed me something else, slapped me on the wrist and said, We hope we never see you in here again, Miss Bates,” she said, mimicking a man’s voice. “And they sent me on my way. After three more months living with Lissa—who by then avoided me as much as possible—I was done with her and with South Carolina.” She raised her eyes to me again. I felt a hot chill run through my back. “I was done hiding from the only person in the world who I knew loved me. And so I came home. To you.”

I just stared at her.

Ocean water continuously pushed against the shore. The clatter of voices and music steadily funneled from the beach house many feet away, though faint and not at all distracting. The wind was mild, moving between the two of us quietly, as if it had a mind of its own and wanted to give us this time together without interruption. Bray sat Indian style with her hands in her lap. Tears still clung to her lashes, but she couldn’t cry anymore. I could sense that she wanted to look me in the eyes, but now that she had told me all of this, she was ashamed.

I reached out and took both of her hands into mine and I turned her wrists up. She didn’t protest, but she watched me curiously. I wedged my thumb and index finger between the bracelets on her left wrist and when my finger found the scar, I caressed it. Then I lifted that wrist to my lips and I kissed it. I did the same to the other one and then placed both of her hands back into her lap, and I held them there.

“Before I have to say what I intend to say to you,” I began, “You have to tell me how I was partly to blame for this.”

Confusion flickered in her eyes. She shook her head no, her eyebrows drawn inward creating tiny wrinkles in her forehead.