Bitter End (33 page)

And part of that time was for Bethany and Zack to forgive me.

When I say it that way, it sounds like they were bitter
and hateful and didn’t want anything to do with me again, and it wasn’t like that at all. They were hurt. And I couldn’t blame
them. And it took a while for that hurt to go away and for them to come back to a place of feeling as if… well, as if I belonged
to them again. Cole had stolen me away and they had gotten me back, but it was as if they didn’t know what to do with me when
the tug-of-war was over.

Plus, life did move on. For those who weren’t lying in bed living on painkillers and wincing every time they tried to turn
over and trying desperately to forget the good things about the guy who just a week ago was holding her hand, life did move
on.

There was prom and finals and graduation. There were summer parties. Movies. Mini golf and dates and college orientations.
There was life, moving on, and I missed it. Not because I couldn’t go physically but because I couldn’t go emotionally. There
were whole days when I couldn’t leave my bed, not because of the bruises and scars but because getting up and facing the world
for another day felt too frightening and too pointless. In some strange way, Cole had given me what I’d so desired all these
years. Because of what he’d done to me, I was finally able to understand why my mom had done what she’d done. Because of him
I truly understood the meaning of bleakness. Of desperation. Of sadness.

Bethany went to college, just as she always said she would. She was three states away, which, at times, felt like the other
end of the world. She made new friends and got
serious with a guy named Bryce and joined an environmental activist group and a sorority—“an academic one. You know me,” she’d
said, but from the lilt in her voice I guessed that it was a very social academic sorority.

And Zack got a job on a cruise ship—“just a waiter for now,” he’d said, but he was working hard for a part in one of their
shows. He sometimes really was at the other end of the world. And he hardly ever called.

But when they both came home for Christmas break, we went to the mall together, and over smoothies in the food court, I brought
up Colorado and, though they gave each other that same hesitant look I’d seen them give each other so many times, they agreed.

“It’s our gift to ourselves, remember?” I’d said, though the truth was I just wanted to see things through to the end. My
questions about Mom had been answered. Now it was time for me to let it go, and part of me needed this trip so I could say
I’d made it just like I’d always said I would. So I could adopt at least some of Bethany’s determination.

The drive was like every road trip movie I’d ever seen. The three of us, rattling down the road in the RV Zack’s grandpa rented
for us, all of us squished in the cab together, laughing, leaning on one another, playing license plate bingo, eating far
more potato chips than could possibly be considered healthy, and switching off behind the wheel.

Just past the Colorado state line, we pulled into a gas station parking lot and made sandwiches, then ate them in
the loft sleeper, pulling the curtain shut and whispering just as we’d done in our bedroom closets so many times as kids.

“When do you want to go to the mountain?” Bethany asked, pushing a wad of sandwich into her mouth. “Right away? Or…?”

I sipped my soda, digging my bare toes between the mattress and the wall of the RV, and grimaced as the fresh tattoo on my
shoulder rubbed up against the RV wall. I smiled. I still couldn’t believe we’d let Zack talk us into matching tatts after
all. Georgia was going to throw a fit when she found out.

“Doesn’t make any difference to me,” Zack said, answering Beth’s question. “This is Alex’s show.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Now that I’m out here, I kind of… I don’t know…”

“Don’t want to do it,” Zack said. Statement, not question. “You’re afraid.”

I nodded, tears welling up in my eyes. “What if I don’t feel her up there?”

Nobody answered. We just ate our sandwiches, our faces shadowed by the gingham curtains, our legs intertwined, our backs up
against the wall of the RV. We’d never, in our lifetime together as a threesome, considered what would happen if the trip
was a failure.

Turned out, all it took to make up my mind was seeing the mountain pop up in front of the windshield—one minute not there
and the next so big it filled our whole vision—twinkling in the dusk.

We all gasped. And then we got giddy. We practically had to force ourselves to pull in to the hotel parking lot and check
in; we just wanted to keep driving, keep rattling up and up and up until the clouds were on our heads. After we checked in,
while Bethany ordered pizza for a late dinner, I strode directly to the tiny balcony attached to our room.

I watched. I waited. I breathed in while the breeze whipped my hair around my face. I looked for her. Felt for her.

Nothing.

After a while, the adjoining door between our rooms burst open and Zack plowed through, singing a song from
The Sound of Music
at the top of his lungs. Bethany giggled, joining in—something about the hills being alive—but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t
take my eyes off the mountain. What if I missed something? What if she showed up and I missed it? It was as if I was looking
at my whole life, jutting out of the ground in front of me. I couldn’t blink. Who could?

The sliding door rumbled open behind me, and Bethany’s arm wrapped around mine.

“You okay?” she asked.

I nodded, but didn’t realize until Zack stepped up on the other side of me and reached over to wipe a tear from my cheek with
his thumb that I’d gone so long without blinking that my eyes were watering. “Yeah. No,” I said. “She’s not here. We came
all this way, but… she’s not here.”

Bethany sighed and laid her head on my shoulder. Her hair smelled like apples and I had a thought that this was just one more
change in all the changes that Bethany had gone through since going away to college. But her hair felt so good when it blew
in my face. So comforting.

“She’s here,” she whispered. “You’ll find her.”

Zack reached around my waist, pulling me in close.

“Plus we’re here. We’re always here,” he said, his words tight around a toothpick.

“We don’t have to go up there,” Bethany said. “We can just go home.”

My free hand reached up to my collarbone and felt the familiar leather strap of my necklace, which Celia had found in the
parking lot of The Bread Bowl the day after Cole had left me there bleeding, and had fixed by clamping a clasp to the broken
ends like a regular necklace.

Bethany was wrong. We did. We needed to go up there. And not just me, either. All of us. Because, in a very real way, we had
all been victims of my mother’s death. We had all suffered. We all needed to go up there and see that the mountain was just
a mountain and she was no more there than anywhere else. We needed to see that we couldn’t fix her… we couldn’t fix me… by
climbing a mountain, any more than she could fix herself by doing the same.

I held my fist around the dream catcher, feeling the little feather in my palm. And for the first time ever it occurred to
me what I would do.

I would climb, broken, to the top of Cheyenne Mountain.

And I would leave her necklace there. In a tree, maybe. Or on a rock. Or maybe I would dangle it over a cliff and just let
it go.

And I would climb back down, both of us—all of us—whole again.

There was a knock at the door—the pizza being delivered—and Bethany left to pay, leaving Zack and me out there alone. I gazed
at him. We locked eyes. He smiled, very gently, and pulled me in tighter. Then he reached over, brushed a strand of hair out
of my face, then pulled the toothpick out of his mouth, leaned in, and kissed the top of my head lightly.

“Race you to the top,” he said.

I grinned. “You’re on.”

He chuckled. “Those are some big fightin’ words. You sure you’re up to it?”

“I’m up for anything,” I said. “I only look all patched up like Frankenstein. On the inside, I’m buff, baby.” And I was almost
surprised by how much that was true. There were still scars, both inside and out, but something about being here made me feel
as though I could finally let them go. All of them.

He reached down and brushed the hair out of my eyes again. “You are the strongest person I’ve ever known,” he said, and something
about the way he said it made it the truth.

“Pizza’s here,” Bethany said, stepping back out onto the
balcony, but she twined her arm back into mine and rested her head on my shoulder again, just as she had been before.

None of us made a move toward the pizza. Instead, we just stood there on the balcony, arms interlocked, staring at Cheyenne
Mountain, until darkness took it away from us.

First and foremost, thank you to my amazing agent, Cori Deyoe, for the endless encouragement, advice, and friendship. You
make me believe in myself.

A huge thank-you to my editor, Julie Scheina, for your tireless enthusiasm and hard work and for pushing me to always look
deeper. And thank you to everyone at Little, Brown who worked to make this novel the best it could be, including Jennifer
Hunt, Diane Miller, and Barbara Bakowski. Also, thank you to Erin McMahon for the cover design.

A special thanks to my friend T. S. Ferguson for the idea, and for the help with the early stages of the manuscript.

And thank you to my personal in-house teen editor, my daughter Paige, for telling me when I use a word that teens don’t use
or name a character a “gross” name and for always being willing to read the rough drafts. For the record, I totally think
Alex and Zack should get together, too.

Thank you to the 2009 Debs for all your help and support and for holding my hand when I’m feeling that I’m made of lame, especially
Michelle Zink, Malinda Lo, Saundra Mitchell, and Sydney Salter.

Thanks, as always, to Cheryl O’Donovan, Laurie Fabrizio, Nancy Pistorius, Susan Vollenweider, and Melody O’Grady for never
tiring (outwardly) of hearing me drone on and on about the horrors of being a writer.

Finally, thank you to my family, especially to my husband, Scott, and to my kids, Paige, Weston, and Rand, for the patience
and the love and for pretending not to see me cry when the revisions came. I love you so much.

In college, I majored in psychology. I’d always had an intense interest in human thought and behavior. Always wanted answers
to why people did what they did, what motivated certain actions or inactions.

During my junior year, I took two courses in psychology of women. The first was a classroom course, but the second was an
independent study, and I got to choose my own topic for the semester. I chose domestic violence.

I wanted to learn about the cycle of abuse, about what happens to a woman emotionally and cognitively when she suffers abuse.
My goal was to discover the answer to the ever-popular question, Why doesn’t she just get out?

I’ve heard myself say the words “I would never…” plenty of times. “I would never let someone abuse me. Hit me once and I’d
be outta there, baby!” In fact, I’ve heard lots of women say something along those lines. “If a man
ever hit me…” we like to say, and then we have all kinds of strong and powerful things to follow up that phrase. I wonder
how many women stuck in an abusive relationship with no idea where to go or what to do had once said, “I would never…” or
“If a man ever hit me…”

So I spent the semester learning about the cycle, or pattern, of abuse. I learned about the tension-building stage and the
abuse stage and the honeymoon period of an abusive relationship. I learned all about learned helplessness and battered person
syndrome. I had it down pat. I knew exactly what went on in a woman’s mind when she stayed with an abuser.

But what about her heart? Where is the heart in those textbooks?

Because we don’t often enter romantic relationships based on what’s going on in our minds. And we don’t often stay in them
for what we’re thinking. We
love
, and because we love, “I would never…” becomes an incredibly inaccurate prediction.

I suspect that Alex is not much different from a lot of women out there, stuck in a relationship with a guy who is really
great and would actually be perfect if it weren’t for this one horrible thing he does every so often. She loved Cole, and
he gave her lots of reasons to love him. She loved their relationship. She loved the good times. She loved the way he made
her feel special. And she was willing to forgive him, to make excuses for him, to feel sorry for him, because she loved him
so much.

And, also like a lot of women out there, it’s this special
ability of Alex’s to love that makes it so important that she get out of the relationship before she loses the capacity to
feel much at all.

In some ways, I feel like this book, this exploration of the “love” side of abuse, is the completion of a project that I began
more than a decade ago in that independent study on domestic violence. And Alex has helped me understand that if you’re not
actually in the situation, maybe you have no idea what you would do at all.

As always, thank you, reader, for taking this journey with me.

—JB

Q: What are the traits of an abuser?

A:
Abusers can be emotionally controlling and manipulative, jealous, cruel, and relentless, without empathy or conscience.
An abuser can make you feel insecure, guilty, unworthy, confused, and intimidated and can try to alienate you from your other
friends and your family. An abuser can also be physically threatening; boys are more likely to be physically abusive than
girls.

Once a person has revealed a violent, mean, or abusive side, he or she is capable of doing it again. The attacking behavior
is not caused by you—it happens in spite of who you are, what you mean to the abuser, and what you do. It comes from a problem
in the abuser, although he or she may blame the outbursts on you or on external circumstances. If you tolerate, minimize,
brush off, or make allowances for the attacks, they will get worse.