When Glass Shatters

by J. P. Grider

  He wanted to kill his father for dying and leaving them with such a mess to clean up. Why couldn’t he have just updated his Will? Would it have been so hard to do? It certainly hadn’t been money that kept him from going back to the lawyer and changing it. So Noah had to believe it was pure laziness. Or a deliberate attempt to turn the knife in Noah’s back one last time. Though, Noah didn’t really believe his father would plan his and his new wife’s death just to toy with his son’s life. He just wasn’t thinking clearly right now.

  Noah took one last look at his sister’s glassy eyes, Carter’s black eyes, and the fire in Lorraine’s eyes, and flounced out the back door. He couldn’t stand seeing their pain any longer.

  But why was it up to him to take their pain away!?

  He was ready to scream. His thoughts already were. Before walking into his own apartment, he pulled back his elbow, and with full force, punched the steel door in front of him.

  Shit shit shit shit. Fuckin’ shit, that hurt.

  Just as tears were starting to blur his vision, his opponent flung open. “What the hell was that?”

  Sofia. Why the hell did he even start things up with her again? “I punched the fucking door.”

  “Okay.” She moved to the side and let him walk by. “Do you have ice? I can get you ice.”

  “No. I don’t.” Noah sat his ass down on the couch and cradled his hand.

  “I’ll go see if your stepsister has any.”

  “She’s not my fucking stepsister, Sofia. Will you stop calling her that?” He was angry, and now he was taking it out on Sofia. What the hell was wrong with him? Why was he getting so angry lately? Before moving back to New Jersey, Noah barely got angry. After his stint in the mental hospital four years ago, he’d barely shown any emotions at all. So, what the hell was going on here?

  Sofia left and returned a minute later with an ice pack and Lorraine.

  “Go away,” he addressed Lorraine.

  “You punched a steel door?” she asked with no inflection at all.

  “Go the fuck away,” he repeated. Sofia handed him the ice, and with it, he covered his knuckles.

  Lorraine didn’t listen. Not. At. All. Instead, she sat on the coffee table directly in front of him. “We have to fix this.”

  He held up his ice-covered fist. “Working on it.”

  “Not your hand, you fool. This life. Our lives. Whether you like it or not, we’re in this together. I don’t care what your judgemental butthole feels about me, but if we don’t stick together and come up with some answers to this piece of crap life we just got handed, then we’re going to have worse than a twelve year old snorting heroin. Much worse.”

  Sofia sat down next to Noah and wrapped a long arm around him.

  “Not now, Sof.”

  She removed her hand, but she didn’t get up. “Lorraine,” Sofia started, and Noah wondered what she could possibly have to say to Lorraine. “Noah belongs at Duke. He’s going to be an aeronautic engineer, or something like that, he has to—”

  “Sofia. No. Not now,” Noah directed. “Can you give us some time, Sof?” he asked, his tone much softer than before.

  “You mean I have to leave again?” She stood and placed her hands on her bony hips.

  “Please.”

  “Are you going back to Duke or not? Can I at least know that?”

  Noah looked at Lorraine, who looked right back at him. She was right. This was their life. Whether he wanted to admit it or not, whether he asked for it or not, what their parents built when they’d married, and what they’d left when they died, was now up to the four of them to keep together. He couldn’t split up the family. Not when they were barely being held together as it was.

  He looked up at Sofia and said, “No, Sof, I’m not going back to Duke.” He stood up and led her to the door. “I’ll call you later, okay? Maybe not today. I’m sorry.”

  “Wait. What?”

  “Sof, I’ll call you. I don’t know when right now.”

  She looked over at Lorraine and then back to Noah. “Fine. I don’t need to be involved in this mess you’re in anyway.”

  On a sigh, Noah laughed. Sofia left. Lorraine stayed seated just where she was.

  So, Noah joined her.

  As he sat, he said, “Sorry about what I said earlier.” He dropped his head. “Before you slapped me.”

  “Yeah. I was pretty pissed.”

  Noah looked up and into her eyes. Her beautiful eyes. “I didn’t mean that. I’m sorry I used something you told me in confidence against you.” He leaned forward, his injured hand still covered in ice by his other hand. “And I wasn’t judging you. It wasn’t judgement.” Noah tilted his head and smiled. “It was jealousy.”

  “Oh?”

  “The thought of you with other guys, and then you lumping me in with them, I didn’t like it.”

  “I wasn’t lumping you in. I was laying it all out on the table right from the start. That’s all.”

  “I appreciate that.” He nodded. “I’m sorry we made things weird, especially when we have so much to deal with together right now.”

  “Yeah. We can’t afford any more weirdness.”

  “No, we can’t.”

  When Noah sat back against the couch, Lorraine said, “Can we be friends?”

  “Friends?”

  “I mean, we can’t continue where we left off, but we can’t consider each other siblings, not now. Not after...anyway, so can we be friends?”

  Noah winked. “Yeah. We can be friends,” he lied. Friends really wasn’t going to cut it, though. Not for him. Not when it just now occurred to him where his anger was actually stemming from. She was his stepsister. In every sense of the word. No matter how anybody wanted to look at it, his father married her mother, and because of that, Noah and Lorraine were bonded by that marriage as stepsiblings. Just as he and Carter were, just as Carter and Norah were, and just as Norah and Lorraine were. Step. Siblings.

  And that made him mad.

  Because he was already so immensely and so unrestrainedly in love with Lorraine.

  And he could never have her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  When facing a difficult situation, was it a sign of weakness and failure to ask for help?

  Lorraine sure hoped not, because she finally decided that she couldn’t address Carter’s heroin use on her own. And Noah agreed that he was no more qualified than she was in taking this on.

  When she reached her grandmother on the phone, Lorraine listened to updates about her grandfather—he was regaining his speech, though slowly, and some of his motor abilities were returning. It was still too early to give a definite prognosis, but they were hopeful. Her grandmother was still working with the insurance company to get him moved up to New Jersey. Lorraine would keep her fingers crossed for that.

  “So, why are you really calling, Rainy? I can hear in your voice that you have something to tell me.”

  Mimi was too perceptive. “Well, I kind of have some bad news. Carter’s been doing drugs.”

  “Drugs?” As expected, Mimi was surprised.

  Lorraine went on to tell her grandmother the recent details in Carter’s life, and then she explained the current situation with Norah's guardianship. By the time she finished speaking, Lorraine thought Mimi had hung up. “Mimi? You still there?”

  A sniffly Mimi spoke up. “I can't believe I left you children. What was I thinking?”

  “Mimi, it's not your fault.”

  “But you’re a child yourself. I should have never left.”

  “It's okay. You had no choice. Plus, I should have taken you up on your offer for us to move down by you.”

  “Would you want to? I will make room for all of you.”

  “I know. I’ll talk it over with Carter and Norah, but in the meantime, what should we do about Carter?”

  “Talk to his school counselor. They need to know, plus they’ll have a list of drug centers for young teens. You know where your insurance information i
s, right?”

  “In those folders by the den.”

  “Right. So you can look online for any therapists in the plan who specialize in drug treatment. Maybe the school counselor can help you. Lorraine, please call me each day. Keep me abreast of everything. And please don't worry about worrying me. That's my job, and the only way to get through this is by all of us pulling together.”

  “Thank you, Mimi.”

  “Try to keep communication open with your brother, too. If he doesn't want to talk, keep trying. Find a way. It's so important.”

  Lorraine took Mimi’s advice right away and as soon as the moment arose, she attempted to talk with Carter. She knocked twice and turned the doorknob when Carter told her to come in. “Got a minute?” she asked when she entered.

  Carter was sitting back against his headboard playing a video game. He nodded.

  “You feeling okay?” She sat in the game chair he usually used for gaming.

  “Yeah.”

  “Your face? Still hurt?”

  He shrugged, continuing his attention on TV screen, but said, “A little.”

  “Takes a while for the pain to go away, but it does. Eventually.” She should know, it wasn’t that long ago she had her own broken nose and black eyes.

  Carter scoffed.

  Lorraine thought about what she just said. “Guess your face doesn’t hurt as much as your heart, huh?”

  Her brother rolled his eyes, but kept playing his game.

  “Carter, look, I know you don’t really want to talk about this, but I really think we ought to. And please don’t groan,” she said to the groaning he did in response to talking.

  “Whattya want me to say, Lorraine?”

  “What’s on your mind? You gotta be hurting. I mean, isn’t that why you’re doing drugs now, because it hurts?”

  “God, Lorraine, I only snorted it three times. Three. I’m not an addict.”

  “And the pot. You’re smoking that too.”

  “Just a few times,” he shrugged. “It feels good, Lorraine. To forget.”

  “Forget?”

  “Yeah. Forget. That our mother died. See, you’ve forgotten already. That’s what I’m trying to do.” He was talking finally, but his eyes were still on his game, his fingers still working the controller.

  “Carter, can you put down your game and stop being sarcastic. You know damn well I haven’t forgotten. And I know you really don’t want to forget Mom either. You just want to forget the pain you feel over losing her. I get that. I’m in just as much pain.”

  Carter did put his game down and he finally looked at his sister.

  “It hurts like hell, Carter. I know that. Maybe we didn’t take the time to mourn her like we should have.” Lorraine shrugged. “Maybe we were so hell-bent on making things return to normal that we skipped over the most important part of moving on.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Mourning. Feeling sorry for ourselves.” Lorraine brought her hand to her chest. “I know I haven’t given myself a pity party, and well, maybe I should have. Maybe you should too. Instead of snorting or smoking away Mom’s memories, I don’t know—” she shrugged again. “Maybe we should remember her.” Lorraine let out a light chuckle. “Remember that time she was so excited she made that huge three tier cake for my sixteenth birthday party—”

  Lorraine wasn’t done telling the story when Carter started laughing and said, “She was pulling you by the arm and running so fast that she ended up flinging you into your own cake.”

  They both started cracking up.

  “Your friends started laughing and you were in tears because your dress was ruined.”

  “I got over it.”

  “Yeah. When Donny Crenshaw started licking your dress with his tongue.”

  “Ew. Carter. That’s gross.”

  “It’s true, though. I may have been only ten, but I remember the look on your face when he started doing that.”

  Lorraine laughed. “And Mom started beating on his head with paper plates.”

  Carter sighed. “I miss her so much, Rain.”

  “I do too, Carter. Every single second.”

  “I feel like I’m walking around in a nightmare. My old friends don’t even talk to me anymore. They just look at me like they feel sorry for me. That first day back to school, they all knew, and none of them even came up to me. It was like they were trying to avoid me. I think that hurt just as much as Mom dying.”

  “Oh, Carter, I wish you’d told me. Is that why you got in that fight?”

  “Yeah. It was with Matt. He was kind of my best friend. He was just looking at me and not saying anything. And I could tell he was feeling sorry for me. I hate that, Rain. I hate when people feel sorry for me.”

  “Yeah, I do too. But they can’t help it. They’re putting themselves in your shoes. No one wants to lose their mother.”

  “It sucks.”

  “It does.”

  “I’m not gonna do it anymore, Rain. Heroin. I promise.”

  Lorraine smiled. “I’m not sure it’s that easy a decision to make, Carter. I mean, look, you got in a fight over it. I think we need to find someone you can talk to about it.”

  “No. Please don’t make me go to a psychiatrist. Please.”

  “Not a psychiatrist, Carter. A therapist or something. Maybe a group thing. I was gonna tell your school counselor.”

  “No. No, Rainy, please don’t.”

  She sighed. “I wanna do the right thing, Car. You’re such a smart kid; I’d hate to see you mess that up.”

  “I won’t. I promise,” he begged.

  “Let me look online for some groups. If I can find one myself, we’ll leave school out of it. How ‘bout that?”

  Carter dropped his head and murmured, “I guess.” He looked back up at his big sister. “Promise you won’t tell school?”

  “As long as you promise to go to whatever I find online.”

  “Promise,” he muttered under his breath.

  “Good.”

  Carter picked up his game controller, and Lorraine took the hint. Before she left his room, she said, “Carter?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Anytime you wanna talk about Mom, I’ll listen.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Anytime you wanna talk about anything, you can come to me.”

  Carter nodded and went back to his game.

  Lorraine closed his door and silently prayed they’d made some progress.

  On her way down the hall, she figured she’d stop in on Norah, but found she wasn’t in her bedroom. When Lorraine emerged in the kitchen, Norah was on her way out. “Hey, where are you going?”

  Norah shrugged. “Out. I’m meeting Ashley and Kyle.”

  “Where are you meeting them?”

  “Probably McDonald’s. Kyle’s sick of Dunkin’ Donuts.”

  “Oh. Okay.” Lorraine didn’t see a problem with that, but she thought about what Noah had said to her about asking who she’s hanging with. “Hey, why don’t you have Ashley and Kyle come over for pizza tonight.”

  “What? Why?”

  “I don’t know, just because.”

  “You don’t trust me now?” Norah said defensively. “Just ‘cause Carter’s hanging out with druggies doesn’t mean I am.”

  Lorraine couldn’t believe the attitude she was getting from this usually docile girl. “Whoa, Nor, where’s that coming from? I just thought it’d be nice to have your friends over.”

  Norah bit her bottom lip and cast her eyes on the floor. “Oh. Sorry.”

  “Norah? What’s going on?”

  “Nothing. Nothing. I’m gonna go okay?”

  Lorraine nodded. “Just check in with me every couple hours or something, all right.”

  “Sure.”

  “And oh, Norah?” Lorraine went after her, stopping her before she walked out the front door. “Don’t be home past seven, okay? Tomorrow’s the first day back to school after Spring Break and I’d really like you to be in
early.”

  “Fine.”

  Lorraine sighed. She hated being the grown-up. She really did.

  As Norah walked out the front door, Dean walked in.

  “Hey, what are you doing here?”

  “You never called me yesterday, and I wanted to make sure everything was okay. Y’know, with Carter and all.”

  “Oh, yeah, sorry about that. It got kind of crazy. Come in.” Dean followed Lorraine into the kitchen. “Want a cup of tea or something. I don’t have the coffee machine anymore. Noah took it to his place, and I don’t think we have anymore coffee grinds that my grandmother left. I don’t even know where Noah put the coffee pot. Or even how to make it.” Lorraine rambled as she searched the cabinets for the percolator.

  Dean’s hand was suddenly on her back. “Rain. I don’t need a cup of coffee.”

  She turned around and found him inches from her. “Oh. Okay, I just thought—”

  The very next moment, Dean’s lips were on hers. At first, Lorraine hesitated, keeping still and unmoving, but then, as his mouth pressed more firmly, she relaxed and opened her mouth to let him in. He took the cue and wrapped his arms around her lower back, but she left her hands cupped around the counter’s edge behind her.

  And then the back door opened and they broke the embrace. Wide-eyed and embarrassed, Lorraine brushed over her moist lips with her fingertips and said, “Noah.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Did he walk out?

  Or stay the hell in the kitchen where the two of them were swapping spit?

  To prove he could be “just friends” with Lorraine, he stayed.

  “Hey, Rain, Dean, whassup?” That was how the cool and collected said it, right?

  “Noah,” Dean responded.

  “What’s going on?” Lorraine asked, her hot little body nowhere near cool and collected.

  Noah sat himself down at the table and drummed his hands a few beats. “Just wondering how Carter’s holding up.”

  Lorraine pulled out a seat at the table and sat, while Dean did the same. “He’s good. In his room playing a videogame, but the swelling in his face is definitely down.”

  “Like brother, like sister, I guess,” Noah joked, hoping to emit a light-hearted energy, though he was anything but at the moment.