Eenie Meenie Minie Mo

Chapter Twenty

“Kodi?”

  I snapped back into reality and stopped staring at the lake several stories below. “Yes?”

  “Would you like to talk about why you’re here?”

  My gaze traveled back to the lake. It had a fountain in the center. Two ducks went around and around the lake with babies trailing after them. I couldn’t stop staring because they were so cute and innocent.

  It had been my idea to do this. And yet when the time came to speak, I found that my throat was closing up.

  “I’m told this decision was up to you,” Mrs. Hendricks stated in that calming tone of hers. “It’s okay to be nervous, Kodi.”

  I nodded distractedly. One of the baby ducks was trying to copy its mom by bobbing its head underwater. It failed just a tad miserably.

  “You went through quite a tragedy. It’s been three years. It’s normal to experience late emotions,” Mrs. Hendricks continued. “What you’re feeling is okay. Just allow yourself to feel them. It’s not wrong.”

  I stopped watching the ducks and turned to the lady with her soft brown hair pulled back into a stylish bun. “Mrs. Hendricks…..My mom seems to be moving on. I know she’s still hurting, but it’d be wrong to pull her back into it. I had my opportunity to act like a normal person and deal with it. It’s just unfair to her, you know?”

  Mrs. Hendricks nodded. “Do you think your mom would be angry?”

  “No, of course not,” I said quickly. “My mom was normal. She went through everything normally. And now she’s moving on. I just…..why can’t I do the same?”

  “Because you’re shoving your emotions down,” Mrs. Hendricks said gently. “You can’t move on until you decide to open those wounds back up. Talk about it. It doesn’t necessarily have to be with me. I’m here to help you, Kodi.”

  I nodded. “I know. And it was my idea to come here. I just….” I took a deep breath, a lump growing in my throat. “I’m confused of how I feel.”

  Mrs. Hendricks, sensing I was on a roll, listened and waited for me to go on.

  “Have you ever lost someone, Mrs. Hendricks?” I asked.

  “I have. My younger sister. She was the reason I studied to be a therapist. To help others work through their grief.”

  “I feel like a terrible person because……..I didn’t feel anything. I didn’t even cry….” I found myself staring at the ducks again. “My dad, he…..He was a really good dad. And then….all of a sudden he just decided that he liked booze more than he did his own children…..”

  I swallowed back tears and it took an entire five minutes to relatively compose myself. “I wasn’t used to seeing him like that………It….really….hit me. Hard. It got to the point where I didn’t recognize him anymore. I didn’t even remember the dad he used to be….”

  A few tears slipped from my eyes and I didn’t bother to swipe them away. “I was so angry with him…..And….” A choked sob escaped me. “All I could think was that he killed someone else’s dad. I was thinking that there was a girl out there whose father had basically been murdered because my dad thought he could drive. I thought about some girl’s dad I hadn’t even known and how it would crush their family before I thought about my own father.”

  I hung my head for a minute, quietly sobbing. “And then being angry was better than being devastated. Better than the realization that my daddy had died in that wreck, too. It kills me that he killed someone. I don’t know what I’ve agonized over more. An it’s all sort of hitting me lately and I ……I just….I just can’t do this.”