Read Waking Olivia Online

Authors: Elizabeth O'Roark

Waking Olivia (30 page)

T
hings I’d prefer
to counseling: a 20-mile run. An entire afternoon spent hearing about Nicole’s sex life. Letting Betsy beat me in a race. But when you tell someone you’ve dreamed about killing him and he doesn’t run for the hills, going to counseling seems like the least you can do.

The psychologist is in Denver; someone Peter found many months before. He specializes in post-traumatic stress disorder, which is my apparent diagnosis. Really it’s just a fancy way of saying that I’m a mess because something fucked-up once happened to me.

I give him my whole unfiltered history. He listens without betraying even a hint of surprise, as if it’s the most normal thing in the world.

“A lot has happened,” he says when I conclude. “What’s led you to seek treatment for it now?”

So I tell him about the dreams I’ve been having, about Will’s fall and how panicky it’s made me. “I always felt like
I
was the only danger in his life, and now there’s this whole universe of things that could hurt him and I can’t control any of them,” I say rapidly. I sound nuts. I know it, and it’s
exactly
why I didn’t want to be here in the first place. “It makes no sense, and I
know
it makes no sense, and I keep panicking anyway.”

“It makes perfect sense,” he counters, still completely unfazed, and I wonder if it’s his job to assure everyone who walks in his door that they are normal no matter how crazy they sound.

“How could that possibly make sense?” I challenge him.

“Imagine being a child,” he says. “A child who’s watched someone kill people, who’s been attacked by that person herself. How do you protect yourself against that?”

“You can’t.”

“Exactly.” He nods. “Unless you tell yourself that it’s
you
—that you’re the monster, that you’re the dangerous one, the crazy one. Because you can always feel safe from yourself. It’s not uncommon in situations like yours.”

“Situations like
mine
? You actually have more than one patient who watched a parent die and now dreams that she’s killed her boyfriend?”

He laughs. “No, but plenty of people have suffered horrific abuse, Olivia, and the mechanism they use to cope with that is often similar to yours. You took on your father’s persona because it made you feel safe. And it’s taken being unable to protect someone you love to reveal the fallacy in that.”

It sounds far-fetched, and yet something about it feels kind of, sort of, right.

Will waits for me outside. “How was it?” he asks.

“Okay,” I sigh. It was better than okay, but I’m not going to admit that to him since he’s been pushing me to do this for nearly ten months.

“Still want to kill me?” he teases.

“I don’t
want
to kill you,” I say, glaring at him. “And it’s not funny.”

He laughs. “It’s kind of funny.”

“Maybe I do want to kill you after all,” I mutter.

He wraps his arms around me from behind and kisses my neck. “That’s my girl,” he laughs, and for some bizarre reason he sounds proud.

I
t isn’t all solved
in a day. It’s not even solved in a month. But over time I finally believe that there is no monster under the bed, and I realize that I
wanted
there to be one. It made me feel safe, believing the evil in the world was housed somewhere inside of me. The truth—that none of us are ever completely safe, that there are no assurances—is scarier. But I’m getting used to the idea, the way everyone does.

The nightmares abate. My father gets life in prison without parole. And when Will turns to me, at Peter and Dorothy’s wedding, and tells me he wishes it was us up there at the altar, I tell him I wish it were too.

A
year
to the day after our first kiss, the one that took place while I pretended to be asleep, I collapse on the couch beside him after afternoon practice, freshly showered.

“How was work?” I ask.

“Good,” he says, lifting my legs and placing my feet on his lap. It’s something I’d never have allowed anyone to do a year ago, but my days of barefoot running are over. On the rare occasions when I have a nightmare, I’m not even out of the bed before Will’s stopped me.

“I took a family climbing at Garden of the Gods. It was their kid’s first climb and you wouldn’t believe the smile on his face once he got about 20 feet up.”

“You’re not taking any future children of ours climbing. I hope you realize that.”

“Of course I will,” he says with that sideways grin of his. “You know you’re incapable of telling me no.”

“In
bed
, yes. Parenting, no. But since today’s our anniversary I’ll let you think you’re right.”

He shakes his head. “Our anniversary isn’t until December.”

“But the first time we kissed was a year ago today. I know you remember it. In your bed at the farm.”

His eyes widen and his jaw drops just a bit. “You were
awake
? You did it on
purpose
?”

I laugh. “Of course I did.”

“Jesus,” he says, grinning at me. “You were even more evil than I realized.”

“You loved it.”

“I loved it
too
much. Thinking about that kiss tortured me for weeks,” he says, lifting one foot gently and kissing the arch in a way that has me trying to stifle a moan and failing. “You like that?” he asks.

“Yes,” I say, my voice the tiniest bit breathy.

“Your feet are soft now,” he says, kissing the arch again. “Almost like girl feet.”

“These girl feet can still kick your ass in a race.”

His mouth moves to the top of my foot, to my ankle. “We both know that’s not true,” he says with a low laugh.

“You’re just dying to race me, aren’t you?”

“That wasn’t entirely what I had in mind.” He smiles lazily at me, a
suggestive
smile, and my heart thumps once—
hard
. “I’m just saying that all the barefoot running in the world won’t make you as fast as me.”

I swing my legs off his lap. “That sounds like a challenge.” I stand and begin backing toward the door.

“I was just trying to get laid,” he says, but he jumps to his feet with that gleam in his eye, a tiny hint of wildness about to be set free.

“I think you need to earn it,” I reply, and with a whoop, I’m bolting out the door, past the parking lot and into the fields newly glazed by moonlight. I am running hard but it’s a
good
hard, and I feel the entire world in my bones—not a horrifying one from a time gone by, but this one with the wind and the dry grass crackling beneath my feet like tiny fireworks. Here are the things I love: I love the smell of winter coming in, I love the burn in my muscles as I sprint across the field and the icy air whipping through my lungs. And I love the boy behind me, the one who’s closing in fast. I love him so much that I slow my pace, realizing that, for the first time in my life, I want to be caught.

Epilogue

A
fter Olivia graduated
, we left for Seattle, where she began to race long distance. She had enough endorsement deals to get by on while she trained, and got a part-time job as a nutritionist, using the degree she swore she didn’t care about.

I went back to work for the same guide company I was with before, but it wasn’t the same. A funny thing happened after I got everything I thought I wanted: I didn’t want it quite so much. I still loved climbing, but I’d grown to love other things so much more. There came a point when I could no longer stand the look on Olivia’s face when I left for an expedition, or the fact that no matter how hard I promised her I’d come back in one piece, neither of us entirely believed it.

But mostly, I gave it up because I missed her. Two months in Peru, the trip I’d dreamed of, was the longest two months of my life. I missed her first marathon win during that trip. So I moved on to other things, things that allow me to be where I am today, waiting at the rest station for her during the Western States Endurance Run, a 100-mile race she has a damn good chance of winning.

“How much longer, Daddy?”

Our son has asked me this no fewer than 100 times over the past hour. We are waiting at mile 70, and she’s been running for over 11 hours.

“Any minute now,” I tell him.

“That’s what you said last time,” he tells me reproachfully, reminding me a great deal of his mother.

“Should we go down to the bottom of the hill and run back up with her?”

He’s off like a shot.
His mother’s son to the end.
We jog to the bottom of the incline and wait, and despite her exhaustion, her face lights up when she sees us there.

“Mommy!” shouts Matthew, “you’re winning!”

She laughs, fatigue cutting the sound a little short. “There’s still 30 miles to go, baby. No one’s winning yet.”

“Daddy already
told
me you’re going to win,” he informs her, sounding a little put out.

She smiles at him. “Well, he
is
the one with the fancy degree, so I guess he’d know.”

I thought I would miss climbing when I went to medical school, but I like what I do. And it certainly comes in handy when you have a wife who tries to run 100 miles at a time. I’m nearly done with my residency, but I have a feeling things will still be pretty busy even when it’s over.

When we get into the rest station, my mother brings the baby over, and Olivia holds her with that kind of awestruck look she tends to get sometimes when she’s watching the kids, as if she can’t quite believe she’s created them.

“How do you feel?” I ask, pulling off her shoes. Blisters, bad ones, are unavoidable in this race, and she has several.

But when she looks at me her smile is dreamy. She takes in the family around us, the family we made, and her eyes grow damp. “I feel complete,” she sighs. “And it’s all because of you. You saved me, you know that?”

She sets off for the last leg of the race, giving me, Matthew, and the baby each a quick kiss. We begin packing up our gear to head to the finish line, where Brendan and Erin wait. I still think that them dating is a recipe for disaster, but Olivia reminded me that people thought the same thing about us once upon a time, so I’m keeping my mouth shut.

“How’s our girl holding up?” Peter asks.

“She’s good.” I smile. “I think fatigue is setting in. She almost got emotional.” I shake my head. “After all this time, she’s still under the impression that I saved her.”

“You did save her Will,” my mother replies. “And she saved you.”

I guess she’s right. And one day I’ll tell Olivia exactly that. But right now? It’s time to go to the finish line and watch my girl win a race.

THE END

About the Author

E
lizabeth O’Roark lives in Washington
, DC with her three children.
Waking Olivia
is her third novel.

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Acknowledgments

T
hank
you first to my amazing editor, Jennifer Roberts-Hall. You were the perfect sounding board for all things Olivia-related, and I don’t know how I survived without you until now.

To Katie Foster Meyer, who basically determines right off the bat if a book gets published or goes in the trash. Thank you for reading and re-reading, for caring more than I do about NCAA compliance, liability, and keeping Olivia just on the right side of an assault conviction.

To Linda Russell at Sassy Sassy Fabulous PR for a million things. Thank you for holding my hand during the past two months, and for not laughing too hard at all my social media faux pas.

To my magnificent beta readers: Laura Ward Steuart (who, like Katie above, has to read a lot of my garbage to get to a keeper … thanks for sticking with it!), Nancy Coleman, Amy Meyer, Karen Metcalf, Erin Thompson and Deanna Wolstenholme.

To Amy Meldrim Foster for answering all of my cross-country questions, and Kari March Designs for gorgeous teasers and cover.

Many thanks to my friends (you know who you are), my kids (but God forbid you ever read this), and my family for their unflagging support and encouragement.

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