Things We Didn't Say - By Kristina Riggle Page 0,75

good person does, after all.

That’s a phrase my mom always used, my whole life, whenever she was giving me a life lesson, either directly or by telling some anecdote for my benefit.

You share your sandwich with your friend, Mikey . . .

Don’t honk from the driveway; walk up to the door to pick up a date, Mike . . .

Love your wife, Michael . . .

That’s what good people do.

She never told me out loud to love my wife. But I heard it anyway. It wasn’t until I met Casey that I started to second-guess all those strident assertions. I began to think I hadn’t loved her, genuinely, so much as I’d talked myself into loving her. To be a good person.

My dad startles me so much I almost spill my bottled water all over the heated seats.

“I’m sorry” is what I’d heard.

“For what?” I was so lost in thought, I almost forgot where I was.

“For all this trouble.”

Then I realize it’s a “sympathy” sorry more than an apology. Still, these are two words I never hear coming from my dad.

“Teenagers,” I mutter, not knowing how else to respond.

“He’s a good kid,” my dad says, peering out over the road. “I don’t understand it.”

“I don’t either.”

“Must be his mother.”

“Dad.”

I look back. Dylan is sound asleep. He always could sleep in the middle of a marching band if he had to, so I relax about him overhearing.

“What else could it be? Maybe you should take him to a psychiatrist. My friend Arnold—”

“We took the kids to a counselor once, remember? It cost a fortune and they faked the proper answers and it kept them from getting their homework done and going to practices and stuff.”

“I’m trying to help.”

“I thought you weren’t going to help me anymore.”

He shifts in his seat, and it’s childish of me, but I enjoy his discomfort. “I’m worried about him.”

“Me, too.”

“What if he’s . . . got problems.”

This is unlike my father, to soft-pedal something. “Obviously he does, Dad. He ran away.”

“You know what I mean.”

I do know, of course. But I shake my head. “It’s not like that. He’s too calm, too steady.”

“Still waters run deep.”

Now this is familiar territory for Dr. Turner. The platitudes and proverbs.

“You remember my brother,” my dad continues.

“Yeah?” I ask quizzically. Uncle Joe was a factory worker last I knew, out in Oregon. We don’t see him; there was some kind of rift years ago, and Dr. Turner doesn’t discuss it much

“Our parents believed in letting us sink or swim. They figured we’d rise to our potential, or we would not, but that would be up to us. So they didn’t supervise our studies, or do more than grunt at our grades. If I hadn’t had Mrs. Ellis as a teacher, I might have gone half deaf in a factory myself. But she saw that I was goofing off in the back of the class, and she took me aside and she told me I was wasting God’s greatest gift. This was back when teachers could still talk about God in schools, you know.”

“Don’t start.” I spit that out automatically, but I sit up straight, intrigued in spite of myself.

“Anyway, she challenged me. She knew I was competitive in sports, so she used that spirit, and challenged me to get an A in all my classes that semester, and if I did, she’d get me a scholarship. Not a huge one, just a few hundred bucks from the Chamber of Commerce, where her husband was president. But a few hundred went a lot further than now. I had a lot of ground to make up, but I did it. Yes, I damn sure did.”

He smiles under his mustache.

“Huh,” is all I can think of to say. “Well, good for you.”

“Didn’t get the scholarship, though. She was a little overconfident that she could have a hand in picking the winner. Or maybe she knew she couldn’t, and just figured I needed some kind of carrot on the stick. But the thing is, it wasn’t that hard once I sat down to do the work. Obviously I was smart, smart enough to do well. I’d just never really tried before. And I thought then—and think often, now—what if Mrs. Ellis had never challenged me?”

“I thought we were talking about your brother.”

“Ah yes, my brother. Still waters running deep.”

He taps on the steering wheel, some rhythm I don’t recognize.

“He died in the factory. Got his hand caught in a machine; bled out before they