as it turned out he might just overhear me. Pretty sure that’s not something the normal sister has to worry about. Diary reading, sure, but mind reading? That had to be new.
Then there was Jocelyn. Normally, just thinking about him was enough to make my blood pressure go up, and now I actually had to meet with him? Maybe Mom was right to worry: I might end up decking him.
I rolled over with a huff and yanked the covers up over my shoulder. I took a few deep breaths, trying to hone in and make use of any techniques I may have picked up from the two yoga classes I attended before quitting out of sheer boredom. I was more of a kickboxing girl. Though, as there were no punching bags handy, I would have to rely on breathing and mellow thoughts to calm me down.
I hated him. He’d abandoned us, plain and simple, and I hated him for it. Not so much for what it had done to me personally, though that did hurt – or it used to hurt, I’d since moved past it – but more for what he’d done to Mom. She tried to hide how much it tore her up inside, but I knew. Even as a kid I could see how much it hurt her to hear his name or have him mentioned, so I stopped talking about him altogether. At night I would lie in bed and hear her crying in her room when she thought I was asleep. And even after ten years, sometimes I would still catch her looking too long at a picture, or wiping her eyes when she was sitting alone.
It made me furious that someone could have hurt her so badly. That someone as kind, and compassionate, and amazing as my mom, had been fated to fall in love with someone as self-centered and unworthy as Jocelyn. Though I knew that none of this was her fault, which is why I usually tolerated her constant defense of him. She had always – and it seemed would always – hold him up on a pedestal, and while I didn’t like it, at least I could understand it.
It was Ryland’s admiration of the man that made no sense to me. They had never even met. Well, I guess that’s not technically true as Jocelyn had been there when Ryland was born and spent a grand total of two weeks with him before disappearing, but as far as I was concerned, that didn’t count. Other than those two weeks, Ryland had had no contact with him whatsoever. He wouldn’t have known his own father from a stranger on the street, yet anytime Jocelyn was mentioned Ryland was enraptured. I guess I could understand a little. He was almost like the mystical Dad, out there somewhere, maybe doing astonishing deeds: fighting dragons, killing Martians, swinging over large gorges on vines – you know, Indiana Jones stuff. Ryland could still have a dream, because he didn’t know any better. He had no memories of a man who said he loved you one minute then was gone the next. He didn’t have to remember a father who used to call me mo ghile beag or “my little darling”, which was the only Gaelic I knew, only to miss ten of the seventeen birthdays I’d had so far. He didn’t know how much Mom had suffered, and still suffered, because of the man he idolized so much.
Ryland didn’t understand. And that was why I never dispelled his Dad delusion by telling him the truth. Why do that to him? He’d figure it out on his own one day when he was older and knew a little more of the world, but until then I let him think what he wanted because it made him – and Mom – happy.
With a sigh, I rolled into a more comfortable – and less tense – position. After all, there was no need to induce an aneurism when for all I knew I wouldn’t even have to see the man. If he really was one of the head masters, then he would probably always be busy. All I would have to do was stay out of his way. That should be easy enough.
I closed my eyes and took another deep breath, determined to find something else to think about, preferably something that would encourage sleep, not keep me from it. I pictured the magnificent vision I’d seen in this