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Show Woodworth/251 Jake killed himself, and we maybe could have done something. So now you're telling me to forget about it?" She can hear her voice rising, feel the swell. "That may not mean anything to you, but it sure as hell does to me. I'm not going to pretend I never had a brother. I'm not going to pretend that nothing ever happened. I'm not going to pretend..." "You don't have to pretend anything," Rachael interrupts . "Look at it this way. Right now, we don't know what the story is with your mother. If she's ok, then she's ok. If she isn't then there is nothing we can do about it. Now or later. And there is nothing we could have done about it before, either- Doing Ju-Ju dances in the living room won't make her better or worse, because however she is, that's how she is. And that's how she wanted to be, when you think about it. God, Marty, you know how much time you've spent trying to make your mother stop drinking, or trying to make her do stuff. And Ned has tried, and Megan has tried. But she wasn't going to change until she wanted to change. Nobody can tell another person what to think or what to feel." Megan plays furiously with her hair. "She's right," Megan says. "That's why I went to New York. Because there was nothing I could do. Everything just had to work itself out. I just thought it was because I couldn't stand it any more, but maybe it was because I realized that I would just get confused if I stayed here in the middle of it. It's a lot easier to think about Jake when you aren't surrounded by people thinking about him, too, and not wanting to talk about it." ;Pneir words are surrounding her, hemming her in. She |