by Teri Blake
She shook her head one more time and slowly reached for it, then tugged it off. “I might not get to choose how long I get to stay, but I do get to choose how I feel about it.” Her hand dropped to the bed still clutching the mask. “I want the nose piece off too.”
Paxton came in behind Quin and helped Ryla lean forward so he could take the cannula off. “You know this is going to—”
She raised an eyebrow. “I know.”
“Please, Ryla. Please put it on.” The longer she wore it, the more likely she would still be here when Mom and Dad arrived.
She closed her eyes and coughed softly, though it seemed to jar her whole body. A minister came in and Quin gave up her seat for him. She moved back to the doorway and only partially listened as he spoke.
Paxton tugged her from the room out into the hall and slipped a bottle of water in her hand. “You holding up?”
Light poured in the front windows from the slowly rising sun. People on the outside were getting ready for a regular workday. Everything outside Rosewood House was normal. “I’m dealing because I have to. I’ll fall apart when no one’s around.”
He nodded gently. “You know where to find me if being alone isn’t sufficient.”
The pastor met her in the hall and shook her hand, though she couldn’t remember his name or anything he said. It didn’t matter that it seemed important, her mind simply couldn’t hold onto anything. She wandered back to her seat but before she could even sit down, Ryla was wracked with a deep cough, then a sigh, and she went limp.
“Ryla!” Quin screamed without meaning to. Paxton appeared at her side and slowly tugged her back from the bed. Helpers took over the scene and she couldn’t speak or move. Nothing seemed real.
Just that Ryla would never open her eyes again.
Chapter Nine
Duggy hopped slowly through the house from one room to the next. For once, he’d lost his focus on the front door. Quin listened to the steady light thump of the poor ownerless rabbit as he paced the house. If only she were a rabbit and could be without understanding.
Paxton had stayed for an hour after everyone else had left, but now the house was empty. Silent. Never had it been so silent. Childhood memories were cast on the walls like frozen moments. She’d ignored them before, telling herself she was there to see Ryla, not the past. Now they taunted her. She’d had Ryla during all those long-ago moments. But had she lived them to the fullest? Had she cared?
One image drew her to stand. Her artistic eye caught the composition first, then as she opened her heart, she saw the girls as they were. She and Ryla, alone on the stretch of beach as they’d spent so many summer days. Ryla wore a birthday hat, but it hadn’t been her birthday. She’d been threatening to wear it to attract the attention of…what was his name? Quin couldn’t recall.
Ryla had a sweet devilishness to her eye in that picture. Quin touched the image, tracing the face of the child she once knew. A child who would be hurt when that boy asked Quin to the next school dance…and she’d accepted without even considering the damage it would do. Ryla always forgave her. Now Ryla was gone and she couldn’t even remember the boy’s name. Yet that picture had been on the wall all this time to remind Ryla.
The next picture was of the two of them and a horse. She’d been riding with Ryla leading. Her sister looked tired and held the lead rein in only one hand, the other was pressed to her chest. Quin closed her eyes and tried to recall what year they’d gone to the dude ranch. She looked about fifteen, which would put Ryla at thirteen. Had she been dealing with chest pain all that time or was it a moment that didn’t tell a story?
She’d hated that ranch, but Ryla had talked about each horse for weeks. She’d known their names and feeding times. She’d learned how to saddle them and groom them. Ryla had been a typical thirteen-year-old girl for a few weeks that summer. Head over heels in love with horses.
The next image was the senior art fair at school. Quin had taken first place and stood proudly in front of an oil painting of some fruit. Now, after years of study and learning her own technique, it didn’t even look like a Quin Morris painting. Tucked in the bottom right corner of the frame was a picture of Ryla’s senior art exhibit. It was a watercolor of the ocean, with beautiful soft hues. It came from a knowledge of water, waves, and living with a perpetual view of the subject. Yet there was no award on Ryla’s painting.
She tugged the image free and glanced at the back. Mom and Dad hadn’t even told her Ryla had entered the art fair. She might have come home if she’d known. Written in Ryla’s beautiful, scrolling script, Sr. art fair 2010, watercolor on canvas, good but not good enough.
How had she never known Ryla could paint? Or that she had talent? She’d been so lost in her own world, painting cities and complex oddities, anything but what she grew up with, trying desperately to break away from Mom and Dad and their perpetual pushing for excellence…
Quin clutched the curled photo to her chest. “Why didn’t you tell me? I could’ve done something. I could’ve helped you. I could’ve helped you be somebody people remembered…”
Tears flowed down her face as she slipped the image back into the frame. Each and every item in the house would need to go somewhere and the house would need to be sold. Her parents wouldn’t want to keep it and she couldn’t. Her little apartment was home.
Duggy landed a few feet from her and froze as he sometimes did, craning his neck to the side to look up at her. His dark chocolate eyes watched her closely. She’d never picked him up and somehow assumed that he’d probably bite or kick her if she did. He wasn’t all that friendly, it seemed. She reached for him and he allowed it, though his little body quivered under her fingers.
“What am I going to do with you? You were like her child. I can’t just take you down to the pet store, but I can’t keep you either.” He pressed his nose into her chest as if to hide from the world, just like a child.
She softly stroked him from head to haunch and though he didn’t calm down, he didn’t try to get away either. When she set him down, he hopped toward Ryla’s room. She’d stayed out of the way after Paxton had pulled Ryla from the room. Even when they’d wheeled her out, Quin had hung back, not wanting to be in the way. Now, many hours later, she hadn’t gone back into the bedroom.
With slow steps, she followed Duggy’s lead. Everything had been thoroughly cleaned by the hospice nurses. Ryla’s bed was made to perfection, the equipment had all been pushed out of the way. It didn’t look like a room where death had won just a few hours before, but nothing could dispel the feel.
One bookshelf along the wall across from the bed held the only thing that could be counted as decoration in the room. Most of the shelves had empty vases or figurines, but one shelf stood out with three intricately leather-bound books. The spines had no title or author.
Quin slowly pulled the three volumes from the shelf and dusted off the first one. The leather was green and supple, with an engraving on the front of a woodland scene. She opened it and inside in young print, it read: Ryla Lynn Morris 2002-2005.
In 2002, Ryla would’ve been in fifth grade—young, impressionable. Quin flipped through the diary. Two words stood out on every page: Quin and Rosewood. For someone writing a diary, it seemed odd that she would focus so much on her sister, but who else would Ryla write about? She’d never had other friends. Quin was so close in age that it hadn’t seemed necessary.
The next volume was just as dusty but blue. The engraving wasn’t of anything specific, just swirls and patterns. She opened the cover. Now the writing was neater, more sure, almost exactly like the script of the woman Ryla would become. The Rosewood Diary, Ryla Morris, 2006-2010. That name made sense, with how often she’d mentioned the house, like it was a character in her own story.
The third volume was thicker and a heavy turquoise leather. The engraving covered the front with flowers and swirls. The only writing on the inside cover was The Rosewood Diary: a study of the beginning of the end.
; As Quin flipped slowly through the pages, she saw months pass between entries, sometimes as much as a year. All relatively recent, since high school graduation. All long and detailed. She refused to read any of them until she could start from the beginning. There had to be something in them, something she could share with the world. At the very least, she could rekindle the connection with her sister that she’d given up when she’d left twelve years before.
All the writing in the final book was in similar blue ink, as if she’d used the same pen for every entry. Though it was obvious her writing had changed over the years. Details only an artist would notice. Quin closed her eyes and felt the spine of the book, impressing the texture into her mind, trying to feel the connection to her sister. What had made her choose that journal? What had drawn her to write her thoughts? Would Ryla want her to read them?
Noise in the front entry drew her out of her thoughts and she laid the books back on the shelf then reached for Duggy by her feet. She wasn’t going to chase him around if she didn’t have to. On her way out of the room, she deposited him in the open-topped cage Ryla had rarely used to keep him from trouble.
“Quin? Ryla? Anyone home?” Dad’s cheerful voice came from the front door.
She was horrible at news. Horrible at telling anyone anything that wasn’t exactly what they wanted to hear. Mom and Dad had always dealt with the hard stuff when she was a child and she’d never forced herself to learn the skill. Now, here she was, having to deal with it on a big scale. For the girl who never failed, failure was fast becoming her closest companion.
Dad’s face fell the moment he saw her. “Ryla?” he murmured.
She couldn’t say what needed to be said. Instead, she shook her head and let her tears say what her mouth couldn’t.
“No…” He closed his eyes.
Mom seemed strangely distant as she laid her baggage on the floor at their feet. “When did it happen?” she asked in her usual matter-of-fact way.
“Early this morning.” Quin choked. She should’ve called sooner. They could’ve had the same chance she’d had if she hadn’t looked at the visit with her sister as a waste of her time— except for the one positive that she would miss her parents in Cincinnati.
“You couldn’t have called us before last night? You told us she was sick, not doing well, that we needed to come home. You couldn’t have told us that she was within hours of death?”
Quin shuddered under her mother’s condemning voice. The same voice she’d used growing up. The same voice that had told her to “try again” every time she’d tried to draw or paint as a child. “I didn’t know…” Except she had. She’d just made a promise that she hadn’t kept. Now, she’d never make anyone happy. She’d broken her promise to Ryla and let her parents down.
“I understand. What happened?” Dad with his calming, ever-balanced tone stepped between the two women.
The thought of the books on the shelf acted like an anchor to Quin’s heart, not only holding her, but giving her a steady place in the storm. An echo of Ryla herself. “She was much sicker than she let on to anyone.”
Mom frowned, then shook her head. “It’s not like we didn’t know she was sick. She’s had a heart condition since she was eighteen. Let’s get settled in and then we can start discussing plans for her service.”
Quin wanted to yell, to speak up, to step outside of her old role of accepting everything Mom said. She wanted to finally prove she was her own person. But if she did, would she then take away the vehicle for her mother’s grief? Was her take-charge nature just the way she handled stress?
“I’m not ready to deal with arrangements yet and Paxton assured me before he left that I didn’t have to meet with anyone until tomorrow. He said I should take the rest of today and just process.” And until a few minutes before, that was just what she’d done.
Dad directed Mom toward the stairs and nodded. “I don’t know who this Paxton is, but there’s wisdom in that. We’ll get through all of this. I sure will be sad to see the house go, though.”
“Paxton Daniels. He’s the next-door neighbor and her hospice care nurse.”
Mom nodded over her shoulder. “That’s nice that he gave you the freedom to relax, but the job has to get done.”
Dad led Mom up the stairs and the soft closing of a door still didn’t quiet her heart or mind. Quin let herself collapse onto the sofa. The peace that she’d been searching for all day, the peace that she was sure would not come until Ryla was laid to rest and her house was sorted and sold, felt even further away now that her parents had come. Even though they would help, the cost would be her own grief. She couldn’t grieve with her parents there.
Which meant she couldn’t grieve at all.
Chapter Ten
What had the minister even said that made Ryla’s life any different from anyone else’s? Quin searched the scattered few people who’d attended the funeral. Many were talking and joking as if they’d been through the hard part of the whole ordeal and could now move on. Even her mother sat at a table of old friends reminiscing, but not about Ryla.
Small groups of people sat around long folding tables with squeaky folding chairs. She was the youngest person there. Paxton sat with his small group of caregivers, but they remained separate, leaving her alone with her Dad and a plate of finger sandwiches that looked as dry as the beach.
Did anyone care? Would the end of her own life be any different? She had a few pieces of art, but not enough that more than a few people would see her name with any sort of recognition. She had no children, no husband, no life other than painting, and she hadn’t even thought about that in days. With trembling fingers, she pushed the paper plate away.
Dad laid a gentle hand on her arm. “Do you need any help at the house?”
Yes, she certainly did. But not from her parents. After just three days of their help, she was ready to wave at them as they drove away. Not so much her father, he was too passive to be a bother, but Mom had taken over the whole house, leaving her with no time to process her own grief or the things Ryla had told her the day before she’d died.
Paxton had invited her over to get away, but that seemed incredibly rude. Even though the house had been theirs before—and they certainly acted as if it still was—leaving her parents alone was like leaving guests. Today was the first day in three that she’d even seen Paxton. His brief hug as he’d walked through the viewing line hadn’t been nearly enough.
“I think I can handle everything from here. I did finally call Ben and asked him to make sure my apartment was fine. It’s not like I have any pets or plants to care for.” Or anything at all, anymore. How had she lived so long as the center of the world as she knew it? It had taken her two full days to even call Ben to let him know. If she cared about him as she would a boyfriend, she would’ve thought of him first. Instead, she’d taken comfort from Paxton when he’d been there.
“Ryla and I shared something deep and personal the day before she died. I really need some alone time to go through it all in my head. I’ve told Ben that I’m not coming back for at least two weeks.” She’d also told him he was only her business manager from that point on. Then he’d quit. He hadn’t wanted to work for her at all. He’d wanted a relationship with her and saw the job as his way in.
“What about your career?” Dad leaned forward, his brow rippled as his eyebrows bunched.
“My career?” Was probably dead in the water until she could get back home and hire a new marketing manager. No one knew about her painting slump and that she hadn’t touched an easel in quite some time. She didn’t want either job, painting or marketing.
This time, if she could paint again, she’d find someone to market for her who loved art and wasn’t looking for anything but a job. She’d take what Ryla had said and make it count. Friends would be friends, work would be work. No mixing and no more putting work above friends and family. “I’ll get to it.”
“Your mother and I sacrificed a lot to make sure you had every
opportunity. Don’t throw it all away because of a little grief. Ryla wouldn’t want that. She was strong and capable. You are too.”
With alarming clarity, that was the last confirmation to prove her parents had known nothing about Ryla. Even less than she herself had. Ryla kept mementos to remind her of her past, years later. Ryla wouldn’t want her to forget or keep doing something just because she always had. “You’re wrong.”
He pressed his lips together and glanced away. Part of her didn’t want to attack him. He’d been a doormat his whole life. He was probably only parroting what Mom had said. But he should have his own mind. His own thoughts.
“She would want me to feel what I feel.” Quin stood up and raised her voice. “She would want me to give up my life for a little while to remember why hers was important. And it was.”
“Sit down, Quin Morris.” Mom glared at her, her voice stuck on every “s” like a snake.
She hated being stared at in public, but she’d made a scene, now she had to live with it. “I’m finished. But I won’t sit down. You can all sit around and talk about everything but the fact that a lovely young woman died. You can talk about your bridge clubs and your golf tournaments. But Ryla didn’t care about any of that.”
Paxton appeared at her shoulder and leaned forward, his mouth almost brushing her ear. “It’s okay for them to grieve differently than you. Why don’t you come out and sit in my car for a minute?”
The twenty or so people sitting around the church basement cast glances at her, their expressions fluctuating between anger and guilt. She was pretty sure the angry ones had only come for the food anyway. Paxton gently took her hand and led her out.
“Why do I always do things that hurt people?” She hadn’t meant to, but her words probably only hurt one person in that room, the man she hadn’t actually wanted to.
