“What are you two up to in here?” She stood near the doorway, frowning at the raw egg and wrappers scattered across her counter.
“Making breakfast. Here.” I handed her the plate by way of a peace offering.
“Cal’s making breakfast. I’m just eating it.” Kiernan managed to throw me under the bus from clear across the room.
“Thanks a lot, bro. Merry Christmas to you, too.”
Kiernan grinned and shrugged as Mom took her meal to join him.
“Well, since your brother did all the cooking, it seems only fair that you should do the cleaning.” Mom smiled brightly at Kiernan and if my hands weren’t covered in melted butter, I would have high-fived her. “I expect this room to shine before a single present gets opened.”
Kiernan slumped in his seat and stifled a groan by shoving his last bite in that big mouth of his.
I definitely made out on the deal. It took him nearly twice as long to clean the mess as it took me to make it. I listened to him grumble about me being a ‘slob’, wiping counters, washing dishes, and reshelving ingredients, while I sat back and enjoyed my eggs, which—notably—turned out as good as they smelled.
***
Mom was a big believer in celebrating, but she wasn’t a big believer in ‘stuff’. Yes, we had a lot more stuff than most people, but to her that was just another reason why we didn’t need more. Made sense. How were we supposed to appreciate anything we had if it was constantly being replaced? Gifts were light. Some books I needed for school, a few I actually wanted to read, new clothes, concert tickets, and a stack of video games and movies.
I was pretty excited about our haul. Especially the concert tickets, though I had no idea who I was supposed to give the second one to. But what really had me on the edge of my seat was what came next.
Jade—and her mother—were one their way over.
To our house.
This was going to prove interesting.
During my first encounter with the woman, I hadn’t exactly been paying a lot of attention to her. Over time, I’d built her up to be this giant evil beast of a woman with claws, fangs, and a razor sharp tongue. But she wasn’t. At least not on the outside.
Her outer appearance actually resembled Jade very closely. Only older and more worn. The way I feared Jade would someday look if her life continued the way it had been. But things seemed different now.
She was ushered inside through a whirlwind of hugs and greetings, where Kiernan deposited her on the couch across from me, immediately claiming the seat beside her. “Sit down. I want to give you your presents.”
“Presents?” Jade hugged a shoulder bag to her chest as she glanced around the room and her eyes bulged at the stack of gifts awaiting her under the tree.
They weren’t all from Kiernan. Having only two sons, Mom didn’t have cause to buy girlie things very often. I was guessing she’d had a field day at the mall. My cheeks ached, trying to hold back a smile. Finally, Jade was getting something she deserved.
Her mother hovered in the doorway, looking nervous and embarrassed. It seemed just deserts were on the menu for the day. Until Jade took pity on her.
“Mom, will you sit with me?”
There was a flash of anger as I watched the relief wash over Marilyn’s face. I must have had a serious problem if someone’s kindness towards another person was enough to piss me off, but Jade’s mother was the last person on Earth to deserve it. Especially, from Jade.
But that didn’t matter to her. She really was an Angel.
“Are you all just going to sit around watching me?” A dark flush crept into Jade’s cheeks, settling into a warm burn that cast off more heat than the fireplace.
The smile had vanished from her face and her eyes darted anxiously from one person to the next.
When they reached me, I smirked at her. “Yes. So you’d better get to it, or it’s going to be a boring show.”
“Cal!” Task accomplished. All eyes turned to us as Mom smacked my arm. I could have sworn I even heard Jade chuckle before she tore into her first present.
When she’d finished opening everything from Kiernan and Mom, and thanked them both a zillion times, I still hadn’t decided what to do with the tiny box tucked neatly away in my pocket. I couldn’t just whip it out and hand it to her in front of everyone. And the fact that I felt the need to hide it spoke volumes toward the foolishness of giving it to her at all.
In the end, I decided to make as little of it as possible. I didn’t need to see her face when she opened it. And I didn’t need her thanks. She didn’t even need to know who it was from. Though the angel wing would probably give that much away.
I waited until she retreated upstairs with Kiernan and dug her jacket out of the closet. Zipping it into the pocket, I left it for her to find. That way she wouldn’t feel pressured to wear it, or even keep it, if it made her uncomfortable.
They were gone for a long time. Hours without resurfacing. I thought Mom would go up and check on them, but she didn’t. If I’d taken a girl to my room in high school . . . Yeah. No way. But as we all knew, things were different for Kiernan. And evidently, Mom felt inclined to let him spend his Christmas any way he pleased.
Jade’s mother, for the most part, seemed to be struggling just to keep up with my mother. Not a task I envied her. Mom was on a mission. When it came to holiday dinners, she was this multitasking super woman extraordinaire. You either kept up, or got run over.
I steered clear, spending most of the afternoon stretched out on the sofa, reading a new book.
Dinnertime didn’t need to be announced. You could smell it. And it smelled . . . amazing.
Kiernan and Jade joined us in the dining room as we rearranged decorations to fit the gargantuan turkey Mom had baked to perfection, along with every side dish imaginable. Settled around the table, we started passing bowls until everyone’s plates were filled to overflowing. Then, we dug in.
Food was not something we were shy about in our house. We could afford the good stuff, so we bought the good stuff. We cooked the good stuff. And we ate the good stuff. We enjoyed the good stuff. Not to unhealthy proportions—except maybe on holidays—but we didn’t hold back.
Something both Jade and, strangely, her mother found very amusing. They watched us stuff our faces and then they laughed. Both of them. Something that seemed to surprise Jade as much as it did me.
“What’s so funny?” Dropping my fork in a puddle of gravy, I sat back to watch them.
They laughed and smiled at each other. Jade looked so damn . . . happy. She was practically glowing. My ceaseless prayers for Kiernan took a backseat for a moment as I offered up a new one.
Please, let this work. Please, let this be her life from now on. Let her be happy. Please . . . just let her be happy.
But I’d been praying for a really long time without answer.
“Dinner was fantastic, Claire. Thank you.” When the meal was over, Marilyn stood, collecting Jade’s plate along with her own and rounded the table. “Can I help you with cleanup?”
“That would be great. Thanks.” Mom gathered a few empty bowls and headed into the kitchen.
A heavy sadness crept over Jade, weighing her shoulders and her smile down, as she watched them go.
“You okay?” Kiernan had noticed it, too.
“Yeah. I just . . . I don’t know . . . It’s just . . . Too good to be true, ya know? Like . . . Like . . .” She seemed unsure what she was trying to say, but I knew exactly what she was feeling.
“You keep waiting for the other shoe to drop?” Because I’d felt it, too. Too many times to count.
She caught my eye and I knew she felt it, the understanding between us. The recognition of shared fears and disappointments.
“Yeah. Like this can’t possibly last. This can’t possibly be my life and I should hang on to it for as long as I can.”
“Good things do happen, Jade.” Kiernan’s lips pressed into a flat line as he scooted closer to hers. “It’s
okay to have hope.”
“But what if . . .”
“You dare to hope and it’s taken away?” I knew what that felt like, too. Every single time they’d started Kiernan on a new drug, recommended a new therapy, I’d had that rising tide of hope wash over me. And every time the therapy failed, every time the drugs were ineffective, I felt that wave of utter heartbreak and disappointment crash down.
The look Kiernan shot me warned that I was on dangerous ground. “You can’t be afraid to hope, Jade. Life without hope . . . That’s not life. Trust me.”
He was guilting her into having hope. A low-handed move to begin with. But when that fragile hope hinged on an addict’s ability to stay sober . . .
“You’re right. I should be thankful for what I have and not waste it being afraid that I may lose it.”
“There’s my girl.” Kiernan cupped her chin, running his thumb over the cheek of ‘his girl’. His girl. And she closed her eyes to savor his touch.
My stomach felt heavy, as though I’d eaten one too many helpings of mashed potatoes and gravy. Extracting myself from their private moment, I went upstairs to lie down and digest.
***
I woke with a sudden start, stunned that I’d actually fallen asleep. Stretching out a kink in my neck, I went in search of anyone who could tell me what I’d missed. The house was quiet. The only sounds coming from where Kiernan’s bedroom door hadn’t quite shut all the way.
Muffled, tear-filled sobs.
Angling myself to the gap, I saw him clutching something to his chest as he cried his eyes out.
He’d cried a few times in the beginning, though not as much as you’d expect. He’d cried for the fight ahead of him, the pain, the loss of our father . . . but this time was different. There had always been something buried beneath his grief in the past. Hope, helping him to hold on, giving him strength. That was gone now. He no longer cried for a difficult future, but the lack of one. His sorrow was all encompassing, and it swamped me.
I felt it, too. The significance of the sun setting outside his window. The end of what would be his last Christmas. And it cut deep. My soul felt brittle. Worn too thin and on the verge of shattering. But I didn’t have that luxury. Kiernan needed me. He needed me to be strong for him. To lend him my strength when he lacked his own. So, I slapped on another layer of duct tape and crazy glue, and held it together.
“Hey.” The door swung open wider on my knock and I watched Kiernan scramble to shove a notebook under his comforter as I stepped into the room. “It’s just me.”
“Oh . . . Um . . . Hey. I was just . . .” He swiped at the tears trickling down his cheeks and I ignored the ones still gleaming in his eyes.
“It’s okay. We don’t have to talk about it.” Not talking was better than listening to him lie to me. He was hurting. He knew it and I knew it. We both knew why. And we both knew there was nothing either of us could do about it. So what else was there to talk about, anyway?
I sat on his mattress beside him and waited. He struggled against it, but there was no stopping the tears in his eyes from falling. And when he surrendered, I wrapped my arm around his shoulders and I held him. I held onto him while he cried. While he got it all out. And I took it all in.
I took his heartbreak, his rage, his terror of the unknown. I let it sink inside of me, beneath the armor and the walls. I let it eat at me. Strangle me. Tear me apart.
Because it was better me, than him.
I could take it.
The sun sank and darkness filled the room long before Kiernan finished. Wiping the tears on his sleeve, he twisted to stare out his blackened window.
“You can’t tell her not to have hope, Cal.”
I wasn’t surprised that we were pretending the previous hour never happened. I was surprised that this was how we were going to do it. “I wasn’t telling her not to have hope. I was warning her not to get her hopes up.”
“Why shouldn’t she?” Kiernan shifted to face me again, and though still red and puffy, the sadness in his eyes had been replaced with something else. Anger. “You saw her mom. She’s doing really well. Things are good for her. Finally. She should enjoy that. She deserves to.”
“I’m not arguing that. But what if you’re wrong? What if everything comes crashing down? There’s nothing worse than false hope.”
“Yes. There is. No hope. I’ve seen that look in her eyes before, the hopelessness. I won’t let you put it back there. Everything’s going to be fine.”
“And what if it’s not?”
“It is.”
“What if it isn’t?”
“It is! It has to be.” Because he wouldn’t be around to pick up the pieces if things fell apart again. “You don’t care about her. You don’t care about anyone. All you care about is getting to play the damn hero. You enjoy watching everyone else’s lives turn to shit just so you can swoop in and save the goddamn day. She doesn’t need you. Stay the hell away from her.”
I was on my feet, backing toward the door with Kiernan right in my face. The moment I cleared the threshold, he slammed it hard enough to knock the picture of the two of us hanging on the wall to the floor. The frame cracked, but I couldn’t have cared less.
Across the hall, I sat on my bed, fisting the sheets and counted to ten. And then twenty. And then . . . I’d reached a hundred before there was a knock at the door. I didn’t have to open it to know who it was. Or what he wanted. Kiernan had come to apologize. Just like he always did. That was how this went.
His mood shifts were becoming more and more common. Whether a direct side effect of the tumor pressing on the personality center of his brain or a culmination of the constant stress he was under finally breaking free, I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that he’d lash out at the safest thing he could, which happened to be me more times than not. And then he’d apologize for it.
That last bit was unnecessary. If anyone was overdue a meltdown or two, it was Kiernan. I was a big boy.
I could take it.
Seventeen
He hit the ground like a ton of bricks. One minute we were laughing about our serious need to practice some of the new games we’d gotten for Christmas, and the next he was twitching and jerking on the living room floor.
“Kiernan!” I dropped down beside him and had to forcibly stop myself from reaching out. Any type of restraint during a seizure could seriously hurt him. “Mom!”
Violent muscle spasms wracked his body, jolting him clear off the floor. “Mom!”
Footsteps thundered down the stairs. “Cal? Oh, my God. I’m calling 9-1-1.”
She bolted for the kitchen, while Kiernan continued to convulse, spittle flying from his mouth. All of the color drained from his face. His lips turned an unnatural shade of purple. And his eyes . . . they rolled back into his head until all I could see were two white, veined orbs.
“Kiernan? Kiernan, dammit, you fight! You hear me? Don’t you dare give up on me. Kiernan!”
Oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
Please.
Please, no.
Not now.
Not yet.
“Kiernan!” The force of holding back the hysterics building up inside of me was tearing up my throat like jagged glass, causing an ache to rival the one in my chest. “Kiernan, please. Hold on. Just hold on. The ambulance is coming. Please. It’s almost over. Just hang on. It’s almost over.”
‘Almost’ turned out to be nearly seven minutes long. Seven minutes that felt like seven lifetimes. And when it was over . . . When he lay there limp, unconscious, and wrung-out, I thought . . . I was so sure . . .
“Pease. Please, no. Not yet.” The broken plea fell from my trembling lips. “Not yet, dammit! Not yet!”
I wasn’t ready. This couldn’t be it. I couldn’t even remember what the last thing I’d said to him was.
My hands fisted in my hair, tugging painfully at the roots. “Kiernan. You can’t go. Not like this. You can’t—”
I saw it. The gen
tle rise and fall of his chest.
An animalistic sound I didn’t even realize I was capable of making filled the room as I fell forward. On hands and knees, I crawled to my brother and brushed my fingers over the pulse point in his neck. Faint and thready, but it was there.
“He’s alive.” I meant to shout the words. Scream them to the Heavens. But after traversing the tattered wreckage of my throat, they came out as little more than a whisper.
Mom heard them, anyway. She flew past me to gather his head in her lap as I sank to my rear and watched them. Watched as her lips moved over quiet words of comfort. Watched her shaky fingers comb through his unruly hair. Watched her cradle her baby in her arms. All the while, telling myself over and over again that he was alive.
My little brother was still alive.
For now.
Despite their noisy sirens and flashy lights, EMTs don’t actually move all that fast. Busy gathering equipment and organizing paperwork, I couldn’t help thinking if it was their kid laid out on the floor, there might have been a little more pep in their step. Mom didn’t exactly make things easier, refusing to release Kiernan. I had to literally hold her back while they hefted him onto the stretcher and into the back of the ambulance. But when Mom climbed in after them, I had no doubt they wouldn’t be wasting any time getting to the hospital.
The mobile side-show screamed to life and I was at once grateful we didn’t have any nearby neighbors. My heart told me to get in my car and follow them. Not to let that ambulance out of my sight for a moment. But my head reminded me I had one other stop to make along the way.
Gravel pinged against the undercarriage as my tire peeled out and I punched Jade’s number into my cell.
“Cal?” She was scared. I hadn’t even opened my mouth, yet, and she was already frightened.
“Jade, are you at home?” I needed to get to her. To be with her. I couldn’t think about anything else.
“Yeah. Wh—?”
Angel (Pieces #1.5) Page 12
