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Mostly, he didn’t talk about it. A few times a year, on his kids’ birthdays and on the anniversary of his first wedding, he would get a little sadder, a little quieter. On holidays, May would sometimes catch him, just for a moment, with a jolly smile that didn’t quite meet his dull eyes.
But, mostly, he didn’t talk about it.
And mostly, May didn’t ask.
At first, she was sixteen, and he was suddenly her stepdad and she knew, but she didn’t ask. Her mother had told her the whole story (or most of it, she would later learn) but asked her not to talk too much about it, and she kept that promise.
And then, she was seventeen, and her dad was dying. Well, not dying. He was maybe-dying. Might be-dying. Could be, would be, shouldn’t be-dying. And she couldn’t think anymore about death, couldn’t even imagine that sort of loss or she would lose the little semblance of calm she had left.
She was eighteen, and the world was ending. Her father was alive and her mother could’ve died and then everything was falling apart. She spent all day on the phone, listening to crisis and death, and she didn’t want to hear about anymore.
And all of a sudden, she was nineteen years old, no longer the little girl who had tried to kill herself, no longer the girl afraid of losing her parents, no longer much of anything she had once been. She was nineteen years old, two suitcases in hand, and doubt in her heart.
“Where do you want this?” Bobby asked, a mini fridge in his hands and a backpack over either shoulder.
“Just put it down by the door,” she said. “I’ll find somewhere with an outlet for it later.”
She dropped both suitcases to the floor, but Bobby carefully placed the backpacks down on one of the beds, her bed.
She looked around for a long minute, taking in the small room, her room.
“You okay?” Bobby asked.
She nodded. “This is the right choice, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I wish I had all the answers.”
“I just need you to tell me yes.”
He laughed. “Then, yes, this is the right choice.”
“Good. This is everything?”
“Yeah. Your mom and Harry went to go park. They’ll call us when they find a spot.”
She chuckled. The campus was swarmed with cars, likely due to twice as many students as usual stepping on campus for the first time. “That could be awhile.”
“Then, we better start unpacking.”
She threw herself back onto her bed, carefully avoiding the backpacks.
“At least put the sheets on before you collapse.”
She glanced down and then back up at Bobby. “They don’t clean these, do they?”
He shook his head.
She jumped up, digging in one of the suitcases for her sheets. “I’d say I need to take a shower, but those probably aren’t that clean either.”
“Aren’t you glad you’re not further from home?”
“I know Mom certainly is.” She threw her phone charger to him. “Would you plug that in?”
“She was a little worried you weren’t going to go to college after your gap year.” He bent down to plug it in under her desk.
“And would that have been so bad?”
Bobby sighed. “She worries about you, you know?”
“I always knew I was going to college,” she said, sitting on the floor. “I mean, yeah, Mom insisted on it, but also it was just the obvious choice for so long. But now, I’m actually here, and…”
“What changed?”
“The cancer,” she said. “Mom almost dying. The freaking pandemic. What didn’t change?”
“And the work,” he said.
“I liked being a dispatcher,” she said. “I was good at it. I felt like I was doing something important, and now… now I’m just another kid.”
“You’re not just any other kid, May.”
“Bobby, two weeks ago, I walked a guy through CPR over the phone and saved someone’s life. Next week, I have to learn calculus.”
“Listen to yourself, May.” He knelt down beside her. “Those lives you saved don’t suddenly vanish just because you’re doing something else. Two weeks ago, you saved someone’s life. What other kid here can say that?”
She sighed.
“Emergencies aren’t going away. If, in a few years, you decide that’s what you want, you can always go back to it. But you only get to be nineteen once.”
“I feel like I’m abandoning them.” The words surprised even her, spoken without thought. “The people who need help.”
Bobby sat, leaning back against her bed. “Guilt is a powerful motivator. It works. You do good work. For a long time, guilt was all I had, and it worked. But it also hollows you out inside, it leaves nothing else. If you want to be a dispatcher again, May, be a dispatcher. But don’t do it because of guilt.”
She let out a long breath.
When he spoke again, it was quiet. “I was going to kill myself. Once I had saved the same number of people who died because of me, once my guilt was settled…”
She hesitated. “What changed?”
“I found people who cared about me, and they gave me hope, and I hadn’t had either in a long time.”
Mostly, he didn’t talk about it, but now, he was, and now, no one was dying, and mostly, she didn’t ask, but—
“Do you miss them?”
“Every day. Bobby was a year younger than you. He’d probably be moving in to college now too. Brooke would be sixteen, just learning to drive.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“It’s okay,” he said, and he even looked like he meant it. “Nothing will ever make it better, but, if I didn’t get to be there for them, I’m glad I at least get to be here for you, for Harry. You two mean so much to me, you know that?”
“We love you too.” She wiped a tear from her eye.
“Come on.” Bobby stood. “Make your bed. Your dad wanted pictures.”
She groaned but stood, tossing the carefully lain backpacks from the bed to the floor.
“Yeah, yeah.” He laughed. “I’ll see about that fridge.”
She grabbed the fitted sheet from atop her suitcase, hesitating with it in her hands. “Hey, Bobby?”
“Yeah?” He looked back at her.
“Thanks.”
“Always,” he said.
Mostly, he didn’t talk about it.
Mostly, she didn’t ask.