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Annette looked at Rakell, puzzled, as if she had picked up on Rakell’s change in posture. She laid her hand on David’s shoulder, and said, “David, what’s with the twenty questions? Let Rakell enjoy the cake.”
“Oh, sorry, I just appreciate anyone in the numbers game like me. Does he continue to invest?” David prompted. That’s where Jake gets his unceasing question-pecking from…even if Jake’s probing felt more prying and forceful, his dad did the same with a gentler approach. She worked to assemble the splinters of what had happened to give him a functional answer without going into detail.
“Well, we moved to Australia to take over my grandparents' ranch, so he stopped working in finance, but he still kept up on the markets and…”
“Oh nice, Jake did say you grew up on a ranch and that you ride well. Sounds like your dad moved on from finance to ranching life?”
Rakell half-smiled, her eyes flicking up to him, then down to her plate before forcing them back up to David, coaxing herself to tell the truth about her dad. It’s a fact in your life… say it. You either lie or tell the truth; there’s no other choice. Just say it! she begged herself, digging her nails into her thighs, willing this moment to be gone. “Um, actually—my dad is dead, um…he…” Her voice cracked as she gulped back the flood of agony that always seemed to be resting just below her façade. No please, don’t cry, do not cry, it’s over, you’ve moved on. “He um…well…he passed away…he…”
Annette’s hand gripped David’s forearm as if to say, stop.
His eyes shut painfully before pouring over Rakell.
Rakell gulped in a breath, her ribcage closing in on her lungs. Her eyes dropped as she moved her fork around the plate, trying to slow time. She blinked, then opened her eyes wide, her hands gripping her knees. Fixed on David, she became acutely aware of the gazes sliding in her direction. She turned her shoulder away from Jake, unable to look at him.
Crinkling his soft blue eyes, David seemed to consider her, his hand cupping her shoulder. “I’m so sorry, so sorry,” he whispered.
Her chest rose and fell rapidly, wishing she were anywhere else. She purposely cleared her throat and tried to sound light. “It’s fine. It was a long time ago. I was in high school.” She took a quick sip of air to control her breathing, then forcefully added, “Seriously, it’s okay.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
I watched the muscle in my dad’s jaw twitch, straining to keep his expression soft as he said, “I’m so, so sorry,” to Rakell. I knew he was concealing shock, just as I was. He caught a glimpse of my troubled face but kept his focus on Rakell.
Her words had hit my ears, but my brain was taking its time to understand what she’d actually said: Her dad is dead. Was that it? “Wait, what? What did you say Rae-kale?” I threw it out there, unable to hold back. My tone was concerned, yet the spike in my voice was pinched with accusation.
I saw her eyes skitter around the table nervously before I noticed my dad looking at me in an earnest way as he briefly rubbed her shoulder. Her eyes had grown into huge saucers as she nodded politely at my dad, but I knew her well enough to see that she was teetering on the brink of an internal collapse. Watching her, I kept thinking that if he continued pouring into her with his fatherly emotions, she’d unravel. Dad, she’s not used to this. As if suddenly alarmed, he looked to my mom, who clearly sensed that Rakell was overwhelmed. She nudged Melissa, unspoken communication passing between mother and daughter. How do women always know this stuff? Why can men be in the same room, witness the exact same situation, but not pick up on the taut emotional strings about to break, and, more importantly, not know just how to save someone, to help get them out of it? Even my dad, a master of calmness when things exploded, didn’t register what was happening inside Rakell. I knew because I had witnessed it before. I’d seen firsthand that point when Rakell’s strength evaporated, leaving behind a puddle of panic.
Melissa jumped to her feet, picking up her plate. “Rakell, can you help me clear the dishes?” she asked, the cheeriness in her voice an obvious façade.
Rakell nodded her head almost too vigorously, as if grateful for Melissa’s invitation to exit this scene. Avoiding my stare, she answered, “Yes, yes, of course,” mimicking my sister’s upbeat tone.
“Wait!” I demanded, sounding harsher than I’d intended. She flinched, finally flicking her eyes to me, immediately looking away again. She had the same trapped look on her face I’d seen when confronting her about being an escort.
“No, I want to help,” Rakell shot back as she grabbed my plate. I huffed, almost snatching it back as she reached around me for my cousin’s plate. She shuffled her feet, making her way down the side of the table, manically lifting dishes off the tables as Melissa cleared them on the opposite side.
My eyes skittered from my mom to my dad, my dad’s features shifting from concern to stern as my hard-jawed expression landed on him. He gestured for me to slide down the bench closer to him and Mom. Lines sprang around his deep blue eyes, mirrors of my own, as he fixed a stare on me. “Listen, son, you have only one choice right now. If you care about her, your only emotion is empathy.”
The word empathy punched in the air, my chest tightening; I couldn’t imagine losing my father, my anchor, in high school. Then, Dwayne’s words from a few years ago after we’d been drinking, “Jake, you can’t empathize. The best you can hope for is to sympathize. Maybe you can get that it can be painful, but you can’t truly understand. We grew up differently, and mostly 'cause of our skin color, seems fucked up, but it is what it is.” My brain came back to Rakell losing her dad. I felt sad for her, but could I relate? Could I truly empathize with how that event came to define her and took her life apart?
My dad’s hand tightly gripped my forearm. “There is no other choice,” he added emphatically as if to ensure that I was getting the message.
Bullshit! Bullshit! Blinked in my head as I thought about her skating past conversations that involved her family. Outrage crowded out the lingering sadness I had for her; what the hell is going on?
I looked at my mom, who nodded her head in agreement.
“Dad, this is something I should’ve already known. Not something that comes up because you’re asking the girl I love information about her investment strategies, and she drops a bomb about her dead dad. Shit, this isn’t…this is a pattern. Bullshit, that’s what this is!” I said in a gruff whisper, trying not to let the whole family have something to talk about all weekend. “I openly share, and she shuts down every…”
My dad’s fingers dug into my arm as if he were physically trying to get the message through to me. “Jake, you said, ‘girl I love.’ That means the choice has been made. Empathy…period. Put yourself aside right now. She obviously doesn’t feel comfortable talking about it. It can’t be easy.”
My mom leaned into me and said, “Your dad’s right.” That’s how they approached everything, “Dad’s right, Mom’s right,” always saying it like it was a given, even as I’d heard the hushed arguments coming from their room, revolving around parenting. “Honestly, Jake, if you always jump to how someone else’s pain affects you, that means you’re making it about you, not them, and you can’t empathize with that perspective. Think about how she must feel and how she walks around with that stored inside her.”
I blew out a long sigh, my shoulders dropping. “Okay, yeah, okay.”
After hugs were given all around, I placed a few gifts in the back seat, then opened the passenger side, extending my hand to help Rakell into the truck. I kept my expression neutral, trying to disguise my consternation at having to learn about her father’s death in a public forum more than a year after meeting her, countless emotional conversations, and more than six weeks after telling her I loved her. Which, I was acutely aware, she had yet to offer me back. As I slowly walked around the truck, I wondered if we would ever be on the same page. Would she ever trust me enough to let me in? She’d held this painful life event in for so long. I could have been there for her. I could have comforted her. It would have explained so much about her. Damn, I feel like I’m always looking in a window half covered by curtains, trying to figure out what’s inside.
Weighted silence hung between us as I drove down the gravel road from my parents’ ranch to the highway. Whenever I took my focus off the road to glance at her, her eyes were fixed forward like there was something interesting in the blackness. The light pollution on my parents’ property was minimal, so she was staring into dead space, as if transfixed by a thriller. Getting off my parents’ ranch always seemed to take forever, but tonight it was worse; I had to drive slowly, with a lack of visibility in the darkness. There were always deer or other critters who didn’t seem to care that this path was well traveled by cars. My grip tightened on the steering wheel as I churned with how to handle the remainder of the night. My parents' words nagged at my brain. Should I press her? Tell her that if we are going to hope to move forward with this relationship, she has to start opening up to me instead of glossing over her past?
The night Winnie and Jenae told me that they’d learned Rakell was an escort crept back into my head along with Winnie’s words, “Jake, I did find out that her family declared bankruptcy when she was seventeen. Not sure if she was at the RADA on scholarship, but if she had to pay for it…not to mention what it costs to live in London.”
