Read Pieces of a Mending Heart Online
Authors: Kristina M. Rovison
“Great! See, I told you you’d be a natural,” Tristan laughs, the sound vibrating through him, and I could feel it because I was pressed against his back. My cheeks flush with color and I am glad he can’t see my expression.
Tristan flicks the reigns slightly, sending the horse into a slow walk. “Where do you want to go?” my knight asks.
I smile and reply, “
Anywhere
.”
He turns his head so I can see his smile. “Be prepared, it’s gonna be a long, bumpy ride,” he says with a mischievous tone.
I laugh, giddy with euphoria. The ride couldn’t possibly be bumpier than the walk here, but if it is, I know I have Tristan to hold on to.
Chapter 6
He
seriously
wasn’t kidding about it being a long ride. The watch on my wrist told me it has been almost forty-five minutes, and my butt is sore from bouncing on the hard saddle. I wasn’t complaining about the ride, mostly because I was stuck pressed up against Tristan.
In these forty-five minutes, we haven’t said a word. Not one moment of this time has consisted of any awkwardness, but rather a steady peace that fills me with happiness; real, pure happiness. My angel, my knight, the one to show me it is possible to feel again. The one to show me it is possible to feel such staggering happiness. All this contentment, just from a ride through the woods, with the light streaming through the tall trees like raindrops of sun and the air thick with the smell of pine.
“Here we are,” whispers Tristan, just loud enough for me to hear, but quiet enough not the break the spell around us.
I gasp as Dino takes the last few steps towards the edge of the woods. The scene in front of us is truly magical, as if we stepped inside a painting of heaven. For a split second, I wonder if I actually died the
day I killed myself, and this
i
s
heaven. The sun sits
lower in the sky, and the mountains,
closer than ever before, glimmer
with the rays of light being cast upon them.
A lake rests at the foot of the cliff-like structure, shining in the sunlight.
“Oh, Tristan,” I say, wrapping my arms around his waist even tighter. “It’s beautiful,” I whisper in his ear, the tickle raising goose bumps on his skin.
He pulls on the rope, stopping Dino in his tracks.
Turing his face towards mine, his nose brushes my
cheek and my heart stutters. Tristan smiles and pats my hand, which is clenching his shirt.
“This is our stop,” he says, shifting. With grace and expertise, he dismounts Dino and stands below me, reaching his hand out, waiting for me.
I take his hand and swing my left leg around and dismount, not nearly as graceful as Tristan, but good enough for
a beginner. I smile as I wobble
on my numb legs, bending my knees in an attempt to regain feeling.
The pins and needles don’t subside as Tristan leads Dino over to a patch of grass, where he promptly decides to lay on his side, basking in the sunlight. I laugh at the sight, never having seen a horse plo
p down with such finality. It’
s comical.
Tristan sits down with Dino, stroking his legs and stomach. I’m shocked by
his gesture, which is so loving
you
just know
he’s
done it a million times.
“Tell me how you know my aunt,” I say, walking over to the two beautiful creatures. “What’s your story?” I ask, unable to help myself. I want to know Tristan, really know him; his past, his dreams, his heartaches. If he’s my angel, the least I can do is try my best to be deserving of such a human being.
“I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours,” he says darkly, eyes taking on an intense look that frightens me slightly. “You’ll hear it anyways,” he mumbles.
My heart picks up, unwilling to be unaffected by his words. Telling
him my story would mean risking
this feeling of
perfection
. I don’t want his curiosity to intrude on my fantasy; my fantasy that everything is normal, that I am not a wounded soul on a mission to rebuild. Revealing my past would mean giving Tristan a free-pass into my future, and part of me is still hesitant to subject him to the horror that was my life.
Picking up on my hesitation, Tristan smiles, but it isn’t a kind smile. It’s more of a sneer, filled with bitterness and animosity. I’m afraid it’s for me, the nervousness and hurt dripping its way into my blood like morphine, but I keep my face schooled. Tristan’s expression immediately changes, shifting into a horrified look of disbelief.
He grabs my hands in both of his, instantly freeing me of the worries inside me. His eyes narrow slightly and I see his jaw smart, his teeth clenched. Closing his eyes, he takes a deep breath, and when he opens them, all signs of anger, fear, or bitterness are replaced with a glowing kindness.
“Katherine
,” he hesitates, looking at our hands. “Do you believe in angels?”
Stunned, my mouth pops open and a cold sweat breaks out across my back, making me shiver. What would sound like a bizarre question to others sounds like a lifeline to me; the final
lifeline I need before throwing myself into the ocean. I trust
him, and something inside of my heart
clicks into place.
“Absolutely,” I say, biting my lip as it trembles. His head swivels up, making his eyes level with mine.
“Do you believe in God?” he asks, sounding cautious.
“Even more so,” I answer immediately.
“Do you believe in second chances?” he says, sounding hopeful.
“Absolutely,” I say, eyes threatening to fill with tears.
“I’ve waited to hear you say those words for a long time. I’ll tell you my story, but only if you tell me yours first. I want to know about these,” he says, releasing my hands and pushing up the sleeves of my shirt, revealing my wrists and forearms. In one quick movement, he flips my hands over so the inside of my scarred wrists are exposed.
I instinctively want to snatch my hands back and run away, but I stay rooted in place, trapped in Tristan’s gaze.
“Do you believe in angels?” I ask, sounding breathless.
He sucks in a breath, and gives a strangled “Yes, I believe in angels. Yes, I believe in God. Yes, I believe in second chances.”
“Good. Then you won’t think I’m crazy,” I say.
Telling Tristan my story doesn’t feel like a betrayal; it feels like a weight is being lifted off my shoulders, as cliché as that sounds. I begin at the very beginning, with David’s story.
*
* *
The summer I turned ten years old was one of frightening close-calls. I was almost caught kissing Freddie Johnson in the closet during recess, almost caught climbing the tree in the
backyard
(
which I had be
en repeatedly told not to climb
,
)
a
nd almost caught with the guilt
of the
not saving my brother’s life.
David was sixteen at the time, in his second
year at public high sch
ool. He was wild and unpredictable,
but I cared about him
. Even though my parents had their hands full keeping him in line, he was a
lways there to play ball with me.
One day, as I got off the bus from school, I noticed he wasn’t there waiting for me on our porch, like he usually was. Our parents worked seventeen hours a day, five days a week,
so he spent an awful lot of time alone while I was at dance practice
.
I ran into the house,
backpack banging against my
body, waving my
math test
in the air and screa
ming “I got an A
!” through the house.
Immature for a fifteen year old? Yes, but I’ve always been so bad at math, I needed to celebrate, even if no one cared.
With each sile
nt moment that passed, my smile
faded and I started calling David’s name. I heard a massive thud from above my head, and I raced up the stairs, dropping my
math test
in the process.
I looked in his bedroom first, finding nothing. Then my room, also nothing. Finally, I opened the door to my parents’ massive master bedroom, finding nothing. I called David’s name again as
I walked towards their bathroom in tears
. I opened the door to see his body on the floor, in the fetal position, an empty pill bottle in one hand, a picture of me in the other.
Screaming, I shook him as hard as I could, yelling his name repeatedly, beating his back with my fists. Nothing happened, and my sobs turned into uncontrollable screeches as I watched my vivacious brother turn into a cold, lifeless statue of what could have been. I ran downstairs, falling down the last few and landing on my hands and knees, tears blurring my vision.
In the kitchen, I grabbed the phone off the receiver and dialed 9-1-1 as I ran back up the stairs. The operator tried calming me down, telling me to go back downstairs and unlock the front door for the paramedics, and then to start CPR.
Don’t worry, help is on the way,
she had said.
Five minutes later, I was slamming my palm into David’s chest, trying to follow the op
erators’ instructions. Being fifteen with the body of a ballerina
, I hadn’t had the proper strength to do
compressions correctly, so I improvised. David was breathing, but barely. The paramedics ran up the stairs and into the bathroom, one carrying me away
while
the others d
id
all sorts of things to David’s unresponsive body. Then I blacked out.
A year later
I transferred from public school to private school. My brother was sent to “The John Adams Developmental Facility for Traumatized/Disturbed Adolescents” in Canada, and I hadn’t seen him
since
. Other than a letter
once every other
week, we had no contact at all. The letters were sneaked; David’s friend would give them to me when he saw me walking home from school every day, and I would stuff it in my backpack.
You’d think the near-death of a child would make parents motivated to change, but my “parents” seemed completely indifferent to their son attempting suicide. The notebook that was sitting open on the counter was filled with two pages of his reasons for killing himself, and one p
age was an apology letter to me, but it was illegible.
No one, especially not me, knew what Davi
d was going through; at sixteen
, he had been drunk at a party and gotten an eighteen year old pregnant. Because the girl was eighteen, she was afraid of getting charged with rape, so she had the child aborted. David found out about his would-have-been child during a fight at school, in which a fellow student of his screamed out that he was a “punk-ass baby-making killer,” which made David slam t
he boys
head into the gym floor, giving him a concussion and broken teeth. My brother has always had anger issues, but that was the day everyone found out.
Not only was he coping with this drama, but he was now being incessantly bullied and teased in school for various reasons. Some rumors about him were true, others completely false, but even he couldn’t tell the difference anymore. David began using drugs, sneaking our parents’ Valium one tablet at a time. Then the time came when he was pushed over the edge, by no one other than our father himself.
A stern man with no conscience, our father was a firm believer in
“
spanking
”
sense into his children. After getting expelled from school for fighting, Father brought David home and pushed him into the kitchen wall, hard. I was upstairs, but I heard the door close so I ran to see what the commotion was.
I saw our Father hit
Dav
id repeatedly with a spatula; a
weapon o
f convenience. David was crying
and I had n
ever seen him cry. Not like that. The man we called
father was beating David into unconsciousness, and I becam
e terrified for my brother. I charged into the kitchen,
grabbed my father’s arm and
yanked
as hard as I could. He whirled around, smacking me across the cheek with the spatula, leaving a sharp sting that spread over my entire face.