Dark Road Home

by Anna Carlisle

  Tom crawled over his sister, and Gin thought he was going to cradle the dying woman in his arms. Instead, he picked up the gun. “I’m sorry,” he gulped. “I’m so sorry, Chrissy.”

  Then he shot her in the forehead and she went still.

  Gin tried to get to her feet, but the floor was slick with blood and she slipped and fell back down. Jake was motionless, and she couldn’t reach his wrist to see if he had a pulse. She had to get her phone, had to call for help—

  Tom, directly in front of her, had the gun pressed to the underside of his chin. “This family is cursed,” he mumbled. “All of us. Cursed.”

  “Don’t you do it,” Gin ordered him. She managed to get her hand around his splayed leg, saw the streak of red her palm left on his khaki pants. She squeezed as hard as she could, trying to get his attention. “Don’t you dare. This has to end now.”

  Only his eyes moved, rolling in their sockets. For a moment they focused on Gin, and then his hand slipped. The gun slid down his chest, his hand coming to rest in his lap. Gin took it from him and he didn’t resist.

  She pushed it into her purse as she finally got her phone out. The 9-1-1 call was quick—Gin knew precisely what to say to convey the gravity of the situation. The paramedics would be here soon to care for Jake; there was nothing she could do for him until they arrived. She left the phone lying on the table and walked out of the room, knowing there was one person who needed her the most right now.

  Olive had opened the door a crack and was staring out with wild eyes. “What happened?” she demanded. “Were those gunshots?”

  “Oh, sweetheart,” Gin said, picking the girl up despite her size. Olive didn’t resist, wrapping her arms tightly around Gin’s neck and beginning to sob. Gin carried her back into the room, closing the door behind them with her shoulder. There was no way she was going to let the girl see the carnage in the kitchen.

  They sat on the bed and Gin rocked Olive and crooned softly into the girl’s hair, promising her that it would be all right, her heart breaking at the lie.

  36

  On a gray morning the following week, Gin stood between her parents at the back of the small group gathered near the fresh grave. Olive held her father’s hand, and Gin prayed that Brandon Hart would be strong enough to be the man his children needed him to be. Each of them carried a white rose that they would lay on the casket when the priest was finished with the service.

  Gin would be back here in a few days’ time, when Lily would finally be laid to rest on a sunny slope in the old section of the cemetery, near where her grandparents were buried. By then, she hoped that Jake would be able to attend. The doctors had assured him he’d be well enough to be at Lawrence’s funeral, which had been delayed a week to ensure Jake’s presence, but they were making no guarantees that he’d be allowed to leave the hospital before then. Still, in the hospital, Jake had promised Gin that nothing would hold him back.

  But he’d also promised that he’d never again allow her to leave Trumbull. Either the man was reckless with his promises, or . . .

  She couldn’t think about that today, not even with the ghost of his kiss on her lips. It hadn’t been much of a kiss in some ways—kisses delivered in busy hospital rooms over the tangle of IV tubes rarely are—but it had certainly been memorable.

  The priest invited the mourners to prayer, and Tom sobbed audibly.

  Of everyone gathered here, he was the one that Gin doubted would ever recover. But in some ways, his fate had been set long before his spiral into addiction and depression. It had started when a lonely man attempted to compensate with work, borrowing a family that could never really be his. It had escalated when that man poured all his hopes and ambitions into one child, while cruelly ignoring the other. Christine had devoted her life to trying to build a happy ending, to assure her brother’s success.

  It was possible to feel compassion for her. Gin thought back to a day in early summer, seventeen years ago, when Lily had come clattering down the stairs with her Walkman earphones jammed in her ears, singing out of key. The rest of them had been playing cards, and as they all looked up, Gin watched their faces, rather than her sister.

  Tom had been entranced, the glow of Lily’s irrepressible beauty seeming to light him up. Jake had laughed and shaken his head, the response of a big brother, a buddy, a tolerant friend.

  Only Christine had faltered. The pain that had passed over her expression had been easy to dismiss as annoyance, a match to Gin’s own irritation at having to include her annoying kid sister in everything they did.

  But it hadn’t been annoyance, Gin understood now. It had been a bewildered sort of envy, the excruciating knowledge that she—who had tried so hard, who had given her all—could never compete with Lily, who simply was.

  It was impossible to say whether Lily would have grown up to master her own untamed energy or if, in the end, it would have been her downfall. But then, on the cusp of adulthood, the seed of new life already growing inside her, she had been magnificent. And Gin might have been the only other person in the world besides Christine who understood how much that hurt.

  Something that her mentor used to say, during Gin’s fellowship, came unexpectedly to mind. Amor est vitae essentia—Latin for Love is essential to life. Perhaps, in the end, that was where life had failed Christine: she had not known enough love. Her mother had died before she could hold her infant twins; her father had found comfort in his work and in the son he hoped would grow up to carry on his legacy. Christine had been left alone and bereft, doomed ever to try to win the attention of men who paid her too little mind.

  Lily, on the other hand, had never doubted her place in the world. She had seized and savored, loved and delighted, run as free and far as her feet could take her. She had easily eclipsed them all, burnt more brightly than the rest of them even dared to dream.

  But now, it was as though Gin was only beginning to wake up to the world. Lily was gone, but her memory finally had a place of honor in Gin’s heart. Letting her rest had freed Gin to begin living. In the last week, she had extended her leave of absence; moved some things over to Jake’s house, where she was staying so she could care for Jett while Jake was in the hospital; and covered more ground strolling with her mother than she had running. She had no idea what would happen next—and she didn’t really care at the moment.

  The pastor finished his remarks, and Olive and Austen stepped forward, holding their father’s hands. They dropped their flowers into the grave, the white petals fluttering in the breeze. As Olive turned back, her gaze caught Gin’s, and she gave a tiny wave.

  Gin nodded back. In the months to come, she would offer to bring the girl here, if she wanted to come. Gin had helped usher hundreds of people out of their life on earth, and while she didn’t know if that qualified her to soothe someone else’s grief, it surely couldn’t hurt.

  Gin’s job had taught her that there was no recipe for saying good-bye, no best practices for letting go. But she could try. And in trying, she might finally learn to be free.