by Celeste, B.
Smiling, I remember how Mama taught Lo and I fractions through baking. Whenever she would make brownies or cupcakes for school bake sales, she would make sure we understood measurements and how to add and subtract the right amount of ingredients. It was the same for spelling. When everything was in the oven, she’d have us play with the magnet letters on the refrigerator, making silly sentences that didn’t make much sense but used new words we’d learned.
Mama cared about us. I never doubted that for a second when we were younger. She would sing to us and play with us in the backyard. Even after a long day of work, she would read stories that we’d heard hundreds of times. She never hesitated.
Until … she did.
“She still is,” I correct, though I’m not as confident in saying so. It’s hard when I live so far away from her and Grandma now.
“You sure about that?”
“What about you?”
One of his brows lifts.
“What’s your dad like?”
“An asshole.”
“Must be where you get it from.”
He glares. I smile. It feels good to get a reaction from him instead of the other way around. Still, the joy doesn’t last.
“So?”
“So, what?”
“Your dad.”
His jaw ticks. “The guy ditched. I’m not sure there’s anything to say. Not everything can be clean cut or rainbows and fucking unicorns.”
Is he implying that’s what my life is? “I don’t think anybody lives with that perception. Not even people who haven’t experienced loss.”
He snorts. “Think again, Mouse. People want to believe the world is this beautiful place. Some of us just aren’t as stupid.”
I know he’s only making his point to divert my attention away from his lack of answer. He doesn’t think I’ll notice—maybe he doesn’t believe I’ll push. After all, mice are known for being quiet.
They’re also known for being sneaky.
“Maybe you’re right,” I murmur. “Not all of us are capable of talking about our feelings. My Dad is like that. I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but he avoids tough topics at all costs. You know, like the one at the restaurant.”
Nothing.
I shrug, sighing lightly. “Mama used to tell Logan and I that men found it hard to express themselves because society told them it wasn’t okay to feel. Even before Dad left, I had this preconceived notion that men had it worse than women because they weren’t allowed to grieve or cry or do anything women could so freely. When I pictured Dad in that situation, I felt bad for him. Then he left and I wasn’t sure what to think, and then Lo died and…”
I wet my bottom lip. “And I stopped feeling bad for him and started blaming him instead. Mama never talked about how hard it was for men to express themselves after that, but I could tell she still believed it. Maybe you’re upset with your father too, but you’re afraid to tell anyone.”
He doesn’t make a single sound, so I turn slightly to him and see his sharp jaw tick. “I know we don’t really know each other, but I know how hard it is to feel like you have nobody to express yourself to. If you want, I can be that person for you. You don’t have to bottle everything up, Kaiden.”
His shoulders go back when I say his name, and ever so slowly he turns his head to meet my eyes. When his gaze locks on my face, I pipe down when I see how dark his expression is.
Reaching out, he gently tugs my face closer to his, leaning in ever so slightly until I can feel his breath on my cheek. My heart is going into overdrive as he brushes the pad of his thumb over my soft skin, leaving a trail of fire scorching the surface.
Suddenly, his caress stops. The darkness in his tight lips meld into morbid humor as they tug upwards at the corners. “That’s just the thing, Mouse. I never wanted a sister. Least of all someone as damaged as you.”
My lips part as he drops his hand and leans back, eyes distant like he didn’t just insult me. Resting back against the tree trunk, he looks out at the field.
Shaking my head, I stand up. “I don’t want a new sibling. That feels like I’m cheating on Logan. All I want is a friend while I’m here, because like it or not you’re stuck with me.”
He scoffs in disbelief. “You can run back to your mom anytime you want. From what I hear, you chose to leave her. Not the other way around.”
He sounds bitter about it. Is that what his problem is? “Not everything is so black and white. My choice to leave wasn’t an easy one to make.”
“You still left.”
My eye twitches. “It was for the best.”
“For who?” He finally looks at me, challenge flaring in his eyes. “You spew bullshit about men struggling with grief and their feelings, but what about your mom? You left her behind when she’s at her weakest. You have a place to live, someone who needs you, and you fucking left her.”
My fists clench at my sides. “I want to go home, Kaiden.”
Nothing.
“Kaiden—”
He bolts up and gets in my face, causing me to flinch back. A headache builds, radiating in my skull and making its presence known. “I could leave you here if I wanted. You know that, right? You have no friends. You have nobody to rescue you.”
Because you told everyone at school not to associate with me! I want to scream at him.
If there was even one person who would give me the time of day while we’re trapped in desks with the smell of dry erase markers permeating the air, it would make things easier. Even him, the very asshole who cemented my isolation, I would appreciate a simple smile from where others could see.
“Your point?” I whisper.
“I’m sure you had someone before.”
Before Exeter.
“I did.”
I had Lo.
“Then go back to them.”
If only it were that easy…
“I can’t.”
Hesitation. “Sucks to be you.”
At first, I think he’s going to leave me. He pulls his keys from his pockets and starts walking back up toward the car parked in the distance without a word.
Then he slows, and without another glance back at me says, “Are you coming or not? I don’t have all day.”
Kaiden can pretend he doesn’t care.
That he doesn’t want anyone.
But I’ll change his mind.
Chapter Eight
I dream of Logan. I can’t see her, but I can sense her presence and hear her laughter. At one point, I think I can feel her. Like when she’d grab my hand and lead us into the woods.
Then it all changes. My sister is nowhere to be seen, but Mama is. Her eyes are golden as she reaches out to me, but she doesn’t call me Emery. She tries holding my hand, but there’s nothing to latch onto. It makes her cry harder when she realizes Logan is untouchable.
I wake up with tears streaming down my cheeks. Furiously, I wipe them away and feel the heaviness settle in my chest. Glancing at the clock, I frown and realize I have time before I need to be up for school.
I think about what Kaiden said to me regarding Mama. I know how sad she is over Lo, so I thought leaving was for the best. Seeing me made her worse, and I wanted her to feel better and figure out her life without me burdening it more. Maybe I should have stayed, endured the torture that seeing me brought her like Grandma suggested.
Then again, Kaiden is no expert. He can’t deal with his own problems, so what makes him entitled to judge me and mine? He deflected his own issues with his father on me, and like always, I let him.
I’ll always feel bad for seeing Mama cry, but I shouldn’t have to carry the weight of burdening her with my absence or I’m damned either way. Plus, Kaiden doesn’t know the whole story. He never asked how Logan died and I never offered the information. He doesn’t know I’m sick or how Mama reacted when I got the official diagnosis.
Kaiden Monroe can pretend he knows everything about people, but he’s the biggest fool of us all. Unlike his blind fo
llowers at school, I won’t be so easily convinced he’s who I want influencing my choices. Too many other things already do, so I need what little control I do have to stay in my own hands.
Slipping out of bed, I stretch my stiff muscles and go to the bay window that I have yet to make into a reading nook. I used to tell Mama that I always wanted one, so I could put pillows and blankets on it and read while enjoying the view. Unfortunately, the view is nothing more than a paved driveway, stone pathway, and a few perfectly trimmed flower bushes between the street and sidewalk. The only time sitting here is worthwhile is when I see Kaiden sneaking in and out.
Sometimes he’ll come back looking angry, sometimes looking happier than when he stormed away. Does he go to the tree? Or does he go somewhere else? Does he meet up with Rachel or another girl? He hasn’t come back with any more shiners, and the one on his face is nothing more than a faded yellow bruise. Soon it’ll be like it never existed.
Pushing off the wall, I crack open my bedroom door. It’s quiet, since it’s not even five in the morning. There’s no light except for the tiny one illuminating over the sink in the kitchen. I gravitate toward it, wanting a glass of water to quench my dry throat.
When I turn around, I’m startled by Dad standing in the doorway in a pair of dark pajamas bottoms and a t-shirt. He looks tired, but more surprised than anything.
“I thought I heard someone up.”
I just nod.
He clears his throat. “Figured it’d be Kaiden, to be honest.” Walking over to the cupboard, he grabs a glass and fills it with water just like me. “Can’t sleep?”
It feels weird to be having a conversation with him like the restaurant never happened. I can avoid bringing it up, pretend it doesn’t matter, but it does.
“I had a dream about Logan and Mama.”
He’s quiet for a moment. Then, “Do you want to talk about it?”
It’s a painful question, like he’s silently begging me to say no. I take pity on him. “It isn’t anything I can’t handle. I’ve been doing that for a while—dealing with things on my own.”
I feel no guilt when he winces slightly at the statement. “I deserve that. We should probably talk about what happened.”
I want to ask him when. When I was little? At the restaurant? All of it? Instead, I stay quiet and follow him toward the table.
He pulls out a seat and sits, so I do the same at my usual spot. We’re surrounded by silence for a moment, nothing but the soft hum of the refrigerator filling the open space.
“Cam knows,” is what he begins with. “I have always been upfront about you girls and your mother with her.”
How relieving. Not. “Did you leave us for her? Or were you too afraid of us falling apart and ruining your reputation?”
I never knew what happened. I’m not sure I want to know now, after spending years coming up with my own theories … accepting that it doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. Maybe it does though, because time feeds the bitterness festering under my skin.
He unwraps his fingers from the glass and slowly nods. “I know it seemed like I loved my work more than you girls, but—”
“Don’t lie,” I cut him off. “I deserve answers after all these years, don’t you agree? I don’t want you to bullshit me like you did Mama.”
“Emery,” he warns firmly. “If there is one person that I’ve always been honest with, it’s your mother.”
I’m silent, unsure of what to say in return. Mama never told me that Dad lied, but she never told me why he left. He was just gone one morning and never returned. Lo and I thought of plenty of reasons why he went away, but Mama never confirmed or denied any of them.
“Why?” I whisper.
“We fell out of love.”
No response.
He leans forward, resting his elbows on the edge of the table. Mama used to scold all of us for doing that when we lived together. “I know it’s hard to understand, but people don’t always stay in love like in the books you read. The fairytale ending is just fiction, it’s not real life. Your mother and I weren’t good together, and we didn’t want to subject you girls to it.”
Life isn’t a fairytale? I scoff. “Do you think I’m a total idiot or just naïve?”
His lips part.
Crossing my arms on my chest, I glare at him. “Don’t you think I know what life is really like? I had to watch my twin sister die, Dad. I watched her deteriorate right in front of me. I had to see Mama break down and never fully recover, and then I had to go to a funeral and accept that my own dad wasn’t going to be there when I needed him.”
He tries to answer, but I hold up my hand. “If you fell out of love with Mama, then fine. But somewhere along the way you fell out of love with your surviving daughter, and I won’t ever understand that no matter how you spin it. I’m still alive, Dad.”
His body tenses as his gaze goes to the table. Like Mama, he can’t look at me. I realize in that moment that Kaiden is the only one who’s looked at me since leaving Bakersfield. Really looked at me. He doesn’t see Logan, Mama, or my past. He sees me in all my flawed frailty.
“Does Kaiden know?”
It’s a loaded question. Obviously Kaiden knows Lo died. I’m pretty sure there isn’t anyone who was at the Cantina that night that doesn’t. There’s always more to a story though, and I wonder how much Kaiden’s invested.
“No,” Dad says quietly, “he doesn’t.”
“About anything?”
He shakes his head.
Kaiden doesn’t know I’m sick. I don’t take him for an idiot, so he won’t be in the dark for long. I’ve already had one flare, and there’s always more to come. Worse ones. Tolerable ones. As long as the new medication cocktail I’m on keeps working, hopefully he won’t catch on until later.
Much later.
After all, he said he never wanted a sibling. Despite being hyperaware of Lo’s symptoms, no two cases are identical. Not even for twins. Her demise may not be mine, but the endless possibilities of fatality with lupus keeps me on edge.
Does it worry Dad?
“Lo and I would pretend you were on an extended business trip for work,” I admit with no emotion lingering in my tone. He finally looks up at me, his eyes pained and distant. “I would think about all the cool things you were doing on your trip and act like you’d bring us back presents. Lo would sometimes say that you were probably on one of those cruises where they take you to the Bahamas. She always wanted to go on one, you know. When she got sick…”
I force myself to breathe past the sudden nausea taking over me. It’s not the typical kind my system is graced with when the pain becomes intense, but a bone deep nausea of acknowledgment when it sinks in that Lo is nowhere on this planet as a breathing entity.
When she got sick, she would tell me that everything would be okay. She promised Dad would come home and Mama would stop obsessing and we’d be a happy family again. No matter what the circumstance, she remained optimistic.
Then she got worse.
Dad never came home.
Mama became manic.
The night before Lo passed away in her sleep, I held her hand as we curled up in her little bed. She told me I should pretend she’s going away for an extended vacation.
I’m finally going to the tropics, Em.
That was when I knew what she’d known all along. Dad wasn’t coming home, Mama probably wouldn’t be all right, and she wasn’t going to make it through the night.
I wonder if Lo is finally able to enjoy the sun without it hurting her.
“Emery…”
Maybe for the first time since arriving, I see how much Dad’s truly aged. His eyes are wrinkled at the corners and his forehead is creased with lines I don’t remember from before. He’s not even fifty yet, but he looks older.
I push up from the chair. “When Logan got sick, she was so strong. She’s always going to be the strongest person I know. Unlike you, who’s a coward. We had to pretend you
were coming back to make sense of what you and Mama couldn’t just explain to us. And what makes it worse is that you couldn’t just own up to your own mistakes long enough to say a final goodbye to your dead daughter.”
“Emery—”
I walk away from the table. “Did you enjoy it, Dad?”
A pause. “Enjoy what?”
“The trip.”
Nothing.
My teeth grind. “I bet Lo is loving hers.”
I pass Kaiden in the hall who’s still dressed in yesterday’s clothes, which means he probably just got in. He stares at me with arched brows and I wonder how much he heard.
We don’t say a word to each other as I pass him, but my shoulder smacks into his without any pain radiating from the petty contact. I’m angry at a lot of things—Logan leaving me, Mama checking out, Dad’s idiocy. Kaiden sees me but doesn’t see me. At least that’s what he pretends.
When I wake up the next morning, there’s a torn piece of notebook paper on my door with Dad’s messy handwriting on it.
Sorry, Emery.
I don’t want Dad’s apology.
I don’t know what I want from him.
Chapter Nine
I’ve only cried once since my diagnosis. It wasn’t when the doctor told me my immune system was compromised or when I saw Mama break down. It wasn’t when I decided to leave and had Grandma try convincing me to stay, or even when I called Dad and asked to move in with him.
It was when I couldn’t wrap my fingers around the doorknob to leave for school. My arms ached, my legs ached, my heart ached, and my swollen fingers wouldn’t straighten as I backed away from the door in defeat. I remember staring at the white wood until it blurred in front of me, then dropped onto the couch and realized I couldn’t even open a door by myself.
My body failed me in such a mundane way, I knew everything was about to change.
Grandma came into the room and saw my tear-stricken eyes, and when she asked if I was okay, I broke. I soaked the knit pillow she made until she pulled me in her arms so I could soak her shirt instead. I cried and she held me and told me it was okay, then she called the school and said I wouldn’t be in.
