Blank Slate Kate

Chapter 11

Even as I bolt, I wonder who'll come after me. I didn't deliberately take off to test Ryan and Jake's loyalty to me, but it might turn out to be interesting. I can already tell Claire would only follow me in the hopes she'd see me get hit by a bus.

I slow to a walk almost at once, knowing I can't run away from all this even though I want to, and in a few moments Jake catches up to me. A flash of disappointment hits me, but I suspect I'd have been equally disappointed if Ryan had chased me and Jake hadn't.

"Kate, come on. You have to deal with them."

"I know. But I hate her," I say. "And I don't know him at all."

"Well, I have to agree about her," he says, giving me a half-smile. "She's the poster girl of bitchy in-laws. But he doesn't seem that bad."

"But I don't know him."

My voice comes out as a wail, and he puts his arms around me. I burrow into his chest as he says, "I know. I can't imagine how this feels to you. But I really think we should go back there and find out a little more. Okay?"

"No," I mumble, but I know he's right. "Fine, let's go."

He leads me back with his arm wrapped around my shoulder but releases me when we meet my husband, looking sad and worried, at the Starbucks door.

"I'm sorry, Donna, I was pushing you too hard. You don't need to know everything right now."

I frown. He doesn't get it at all. "I do need to know. That's the whole problem. I know less now than I did before you showed up."

"I'll tell you anything you want to know," Ryan says, but somehow I can sense that he's already deciding what he'll keep from me. Maybe he's never been honest with Donna either. Is that why she ran?

He starts back inside but I catch his arm. "Wait. Do I really call your mother Mom?"

He gives me a half-smile. "You don't call her anything. Once or twice you've written 'Mom' on a gift tag or something, but mostly you just avoid the issue."

I try to smile back but I don't like this. Donna's hiding instead of dealing with her problems. That's not a good way to live. I need to fix it for her, for me.

We head back inside, to the table where Claire sits alone looking unimpressed. When we reach her, she puts on a fake smile and says, "Come sit down beside Mom, Donna. I'll take care of you."

With a hacksaw, if the coldness in her eyes means anything. I return to my original seat across from her and say, "I'm going to call you Claire, if you don't mind. I'm an adult, and so are you, so we don't need the Mom thing. Okay?"

Ryan drops into his chair like his knees have given out, and Claire says, "Well, if that's what you want, dear. I just thought it would be nice for you." She sniffles like she's struggling not to cry. I don't buy it for a second. "But of course, if you'd rather not..."

I give her a smile even more fake than hers. "Thanks so much for understanding. I appreciate it." Turning to the still stunned Ryan, I say, "Okay. So I left because I didn't want any more treatments. What happens now? I'm not at all sure I want to try again."

He takes a deep breath, clearly pulling himself together, then nods slowly as he lets it out. "I'd feel better if you didn't try, to be honest. They warned us about short-term memory problems, and we agreed at the time that you no longer being depressed would be worth those, but this goes far beyond that."

"Fifteen years beyond," I agree.

"At this point, the doctor seems to think we try therapy and some anti-depressant drugs you haven't tried before, in the hopes that the ECT will have taken care of enough of the depression that those treatments will fix the rest."