“Let me ask you, what made the NCBI release him so quickly?”
“That’s part of what I need to talk to you about. I’m afraid I’m seeing how screwed up in the head I am. I need to talk to you.”
“We’re talking, Amanda. It’s going to be okay. And you’re not screwed up.”
“I… I don’t remember things… about my dad. Well, sometimes I do, like today.” Her words were coming out fast now. “When we were driving up the hill to his house I thought I was traveling back in time. I saw myself wrecking my bike, and I had absolutely no memory of that. Then… then we got into the house, and all these memories came rushing back like someone was playing a DVD in my head, you know?”
Riley watched Amanda speak, tears sneaking their way down her face.
“The images were so real. I was reading on the chair. I was listening to a bedtime story. I was asking him not to go to work. What’s wrong with me?” she demanded, reaching out with her hands in frustration.
Riley grabbed Amanda’s hands and held them. “Let me show you something, Amanda.”
Riley guided her up the stairs and into what was obviously a guest bedroom. On the bed were several scrapbooks.
“Just for the record, Amanda, it’s important for you to know that your father met me at the courthouse as he was leaving the hearing for the divorce. The marriage was over by the time we began our relationship.”
Amanda didn’t respond initially. Then she said, “No one wants to think of their parents apart, you know. But I’ve never thought of my parents even together. I just couldn’t figure out why he was never there.”
“But you have to know, he was there. Look here. Your dad and I put these photo albums together. Several are of him and me, but you’re probably not interested in that,” she said, opening one of the albums. There were several pictures of Amanda swimming, as if taken from the corner of the gymnasium. She flipped a few pages, and Amanda saw photos of the senior class production of Gone With the Wind, in which she’d played Scarlett O’Hara. “Your dad was with you, but the conflict was so damaging to you that he pulled away. He couldn’t let you go. He had no intention of ever doing that. He just wanted you to have your space, to let you figure things out on your own. If that was possible.”
“Why wouldn’t it be possible?” Amanda asked, flipping through the photos.
“I mentioned to you the last time we were together a thing called parental alienation syndrome, do you remember?”
“I dunno, maybe, I guess.”
“It’s where one parent, usually the parent the child lives with most of the time, uses a child to hurt the other parent. It’s also called malicious mother syndrome.”
Riley eyed Amanda closely, watching for a defensive reaction regarding her mother. To her surprise, Amanda continued flipping through the book and looked up at her. “I’m listening.”
“The incident, for example, that you describe about being locked in the back of a car while your mother demanded money from your father is classic manipulation of the child and the noncustodial parent, who was your father, in this case. It could be argued,” she continued gingerly, “that your mother used you as a prop to compel your father to pay money to see you.”
“What if he really owed her that money?”
“Doesn’t make it right, honey,” Riley quickly said. “Putting a child in that kind of situation is, in my mind, criminal.”
“That’s pretty strong, don’t you think?”
“No, I don’t, actually.”
Amanda put down the photo album, walked over to the window, and stared into the darkness. Riley saw her look down and notice a book on the end table.
“What’s this? This is you?” Amanda asked, distracted.
“Yes, that’s me. My book, rather. The courts have a lot to learn about this sort of thing.”
Riley walked over and took it from her.
“It’s great that you’re published.”
“I think I’m one million five hundred thousand on the Amazon bestsellers list. Awesome.” She smiled. Riley was being exceptionally modest. Her book had done well and had been chosen as a text at several universities. She wished to move past the book quickly, though. This was about Amanda, not her.
Riley did smile inwardly as she remembered Zach poring over the pages, saying, “You have to attack this thing like a military problem. You have an enemy who has outer defenses, and they are holding someone hostage. What is your shaping operation? What are your interim objectives? How do you create the conditions for a successful attack while not harming the hostage? What is your defeat mechanism, that one thing that will assure you victory?”
After a while, it had all became perfectly logical to her, though it was never in her nature to ponder the complexities of warfare. Psychology according to Sun Tzu. Wonderful.
“Can’t you see this is exactly what they’re doing? They are fighting a war, and Amanda is their point man. She makes first contact on their behalf. Then they develop the situation. She is trained as spy and infantryman rolled into one.” Zach’s words, now more than ever, seemed terribly poignant as she had begun to dismantle the first surface layer of Amanda Garrett’s psyche. Amanda is their point man. She makes first contact…
“Well, I’d like to be published one day.”
“Really?”
“I know, it’s not cool, but I like to write. Mom tells me it’s for losers.”
Riley stared at her a moment, noticing how much of Zachary she saw in her face. Strong cheekbones and the eyes, she felt as though Zachary were staring directly at her. Flint green specks burned brilliantly in what could only be called jade irises.
“What?”
“First of all, it’s totally cool. Just look at me. Secondly, you look so much like your father. He was such a beautiful man. And I know, Amanda, that you have his heart, too. Your father was a writer. He helped with this book.” She patted the hard cover of her opus. “And he wrote some other things, too.”
Amanda looked down at the carpet. “I’m just so confused, you know. I need to go back to the house, I guess, and spend some more time there maybe. It was, I don’t know, so good to be… home. I felt at peace.”
Riley felt the sting of tears forming but managed to hold them back. “He always wanted you there, and I think you could see how much he carried you in his heart.”
Amanda wiped her eyes and then dried her hands on her jeans. “Does this make me a worse person than I already am? That I abandoned my father?”
“Honey, you never abandoned your dad. You never had a chance. But what you can do, now that you understand more, is honor him the way that he honored you.”
“How can I do that? He’s dead. Gone.”
“You’d be surprised at how much more in your life he could be, even now, Amanda. I’d say, if you have even one half the character of your father, which you do, then you’ll find a way to keep him with you. Just because he’s gone doesn’t mean you can’t have a relationship with him.”
“Like he did with me? I was gone, really, but from what it looks like, he tried to keep the memories close.”
“Something like that.” Riley smiled tightly. She was straining under the pressure. She wasn’t sure she could convince herself of the truth of her own words, much less carry the burden of helping Amanda to restore her relationship with her dead father. Riley knew that she needed to grieve but was sacrificing her own healing for Amanda’s.
Just as she had promised.
CHAPTER 33