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“We’ve never gotten along.” Kaleb’s smile disappeared. He slid his arms across the table and leaned his head toward mine. “Maybe because something inside her seems off, and I can’t get past it. She doesn’t even know how she feels half the time.”
“You’d know, right?” I returned. “I hope you don’t mind. Michael told me. About your ability.”
“I don’t mind. I know all about you. It’s only fair you should know about me, I guess.” He sat up, the moment of intimacy broken. “No big.”
“You don’t know everything about me.”
“I’d love to hear it all,” he said, playing our conversation off as casual, flirty. I didn’t bite.
“I don’t know about that. The road to where I am now was … rough. But I’ll give you the details. If you’re interested.”
Uncertainty clouded Kaleb’s eyes as the mood shifted. Staring out the window over the kitchen sink, he said, “I’m listening.”
“My parents died in an accident right after I started seeing rips. I was committed to an institution because I let it slip to a grief counselor that I thought I was seeing dead people. Oh, and also because I lost it so completely in the school cafeteria that my best friend had to carry me to the nurse.” I gauged his reaction, wondering how much I could tell him. “No one knew what to do with me, so they drugged me into oblivion.”
“How did you … get better?” He stared at me intently, searching for an answer I couldn’t give him, no matter how much I wished I could.
“All those drugs in my system stopped me from seeing the rips. Eventually, the doctors lightened my dosage, and I learned to keep my mouth shut about what I saw. I stopped taking my meds last Christmas. Meeting Michael … has made it all easier.”
“Did he tell you how my parents met?”
“No,” I said. “But Cat told me a little bit about their relationship.”
Kaleb leaned back in his chair, propping the sole of one sneaker against the edge of the table. “My dad is … was such a typical scientist. Crazy hair, clothes that never matched. My mom always had it together. She used to be an actress. They met when he was a technical adviser on a sci-fi movie she was in.”
“What’s your mom’s name?”
“Grace. Her stage name was Grace—”
“Walker.” I interrupted as the resemblance struck me. “You look exactly like her.”
“Lucky for me.” He grinned. “They married six weeks after they met.”
“That’s amazing.”
“Their connection was unreal, deep. My dad saw rips his whole life, but it didn’t start for my mom until they met.”
“Did it terrify her?”
“She had my dad.”
I wondered if it had really been that simple for her. “How did the empathy thing happen for you?”
“As far as we know, I was born with it. I cried a lot as a baby, but not because of colic. Once my parents figured it out, my mom quit taking acting jobs so she could be home with me all the time, act as a buffer. My mom made my life bearable.” He paused, staring down at the floor. I thought I caught a glimpse of moisture on his dark lashes. “I miss her. I miss them both.”
“Kaleb, you don’t have to—”
“No, it’s fine.” He looked up at me, his eyes clear. Maybe I’d been wrong. “Anyway, as I got older, I discovered other things that helped, like how quiet it got for me, mentally, when I was underwater. That I could close out a lot if I put up enough walls.”
I felt the need to lighten the moment. “Is that why you act like such a jerk?”
Kaleb granted me a grin. “Good call.”
“I blocked a lot out, too, after the accident, even after the hospital,” I confessed. “Kept my head down. I learned things—self-defense, sarcasm—all designed to keep people out, keep them away.”
“Did it work?”
“For a while.” I smiled. “It’s getting easier to let people in. You should try it.”
