“Are you fucking kidding me right now?” Her arms flew up into the air, drawing my attention back to her. “I can’t have kids, Char. I’ll never be able to know the joy of giving birth. What if I can’t even enjoy sex? Who wants someone who only lies there and doesn’t feel a damn thing?” Flecks of spit flew from her mouth and into the air. Her anger was hitting a whole new level. “Hell, I can’t even feel when I need to take a shit anymore, because nothing from my belly button down feels like it’s there!” Her rage was excruciating. At me. At the world. At herself. She didn’t have to say the exact words for me to know. It was written all over her face and displayed in the wild look darkening her eyes.
I didn’t know what to say, how to remedy this, or how to make her stop. Maybe I shouldn’t do anything. Maybe I should let her get it all out. Maybe this was when she would finally let go, accept the way things were, and come back to me. Maybe this moment would break her hard enough so she would finally surface from the depression she had been drowning in.
“You think you have so much stress. How could you be the one carrying it all when you’re not me?” Her chin dipped forward, and I swore I could see all the fight in my sister seeping from her in the form of big, fat crocodile tears.
I hated seeing her this way. This wasn’t who she was. “I’m sorry this happened to you. I really am, Emma. Not for any selfish reasons you might think I have, but because you’re my sister, and I can’t stand seeing you have to go through this. I can’t stand to think of all the pain you’re in every single day.” Her head lifted, and she looked at me. “I see the faces you make when you think no one is looking. I hear the grunts of frustration beneath your breath. I see the pills you stack into a pile in the center of your palm and cram into your mouth before you think I’ve seen. I know you don’t want to let me know how much pain you’re actually in, but I see it anyway. You might have thought you were hiding everything from me, but I’ve seen it all, Em. I know this is the hardest point in your life, but you have to cut me some slack because it’s hard for me too.”
Silence surrounded us when my mouth closed. Neither of us were willing to speak to break it. I didn’t know what more to say, and I was positive she felt the same. For a moment, I thought we’d said all there was to say. Until Emma decided we hadn’t.
“I know it is.” Her voice quivered when she spoke. “Trust me. I know it is. That’s why I want you to put Mom in a home.”
The words came at me, nearly blowing me over with their weight. Had I heard her right? “What?”
“You heard me.” She wiped beneath her eyes with the tip of her index finger. “I want to put Mom in a home. It’s time. It’s too much right now. Neither one of us can look after her the way she needs.”
“But you said—”
“I know what I said.” She sighed. “That was before. Things are different now, and she’s not getting any better. It’s getting worse. It might not seem like it, but I’ve been paying attention. I’ve already started looking into a few places for her actually.”
When had she found the time to do that? Was that what she’d been doing while locked in her room for hours on end? “You have?”
“I’ve narrowed it down to two. I’ll call tomorrow and set up appointments to check them out. If we’re going to do it, I want to pick the best.”
“Okay.” Relief trickled through me at the thought of not having to worry about our mother anymore. It was soon replaced by shame, because what kind of daughter was I for thinking such a thing?
Emma didn’t say another word. Instead, she continued on her path inside the house. I watched her, noticing Dawson standing in the kitchen. My stomach clenched at the sight of him. I wasn’t sure how long he had been there or how much of our argument he had heard, but from the look on his face, I was sure it was enough. Emma surprised me when she didn’t acknowledge him. She continued to roll right past him.
“I guess I picked a bad time to come by,” he muttered, staring after her.
I slipped through the back door and closed it behind me. Unable to bring myself to stand without support, I leaned against it, waiting until my heart slowed to its normal rhythm. So much had been said during the length of that one conversation and so much decided.
Our mother would be going to a home. I would be staying for as long as my sister would allow me to. And Emma would never be the same.
The accident was tearing us apart as if we were all paper thin.
“SO WHAT WAS ALL the yelling about earlier?” Dawson tipped his beer up and took a sip. We were sitting outside on the bench near the fire pit again. This seemed like it was becoming our spot. The place where we vented to one another about the things that had happened throughout the day. Lately, I sat and listened to Dawson talk about his dad and how his body was reacting to his treatments. Not tonight. Tonight seemed to be all about Emma and the argument he’d overheard us having. “I don’t think I’ve seen either of you that angry before. What happened?”
I melted into the bench a little more and closed my eyes. I was mortified to tell him what Emma had overheard. Now that I had cooled off, I knew it made me sound like such a self-centered bitch. “I was talking to Sadie, my friend from school.”
“Uh-huh, I remember you mentioning the name once or twice.”
“I ended up saying a few things Emma took out of context.” I let out a long sigh. “Well, maybe more along the lines of a few things I shouldn’t have. Emma overheard me venting about stuff to Sadie, and she took it straight to heart.” My stomach churned as her facial expression drifted through my mind again.
“Oh hell,” Dawson drawled. “So that’s what set her off? What did she hear you say?”
I folded my legs beneath me and dropped my gaze into the fireless pit in front of us. “I don’t know. Stuff. I was venting. I wasn’t really paying attention to everything that came out of my mouth. It was like word vomit, you know?”
“Word vomit?” He chuckled. “No. I don’t think I know what you mean by that. Care to elaborate?”
I smirked at him. “You know what word vomit is, don’t even play.”
He took another swig of his beer, his Adam’s apple bobbed with the force of it. Our eyes locked, and I noticed when his lips quirked into a smile. “You’re right, I do. Just wanted to see if you would entertain me by giving me your definition.”
I rolled my eyes, my smile never wavering. “Anyway. I said some stuff I wish she hadn’t heard, like how I didn’t need some guy’s number because I wasn’t coming back anytime soon and there was no point in starting up a relationship with him.” I thought back to the conversation, trying to remember what I had said. “And something about how I have too much here to focus on right now, how I barely have enough time to focus on myself. She took it as me being selfish or something.” My gut continued to twist as everything rushed back to me again. I sloshed my half-full beer around in its bottle, watching the dark color of the liquid move around inside like a wave. I took another sip.
“Ouch. Okay, so she heard you vent. What did she say to you about it?”
“That she was glad to know how I really felt about being here. She said it sounded as though I was blaming her and Mom for holding me back.” The words tasted bitter on my tongue. I wasn’t sure if it was because of the sliver of truth embedded in them I didn’t care to admit, or if it was my beer growing warm. Either way, there was a funny taste in my mouth. I took another swig. It was the beer.
“Warm already?” Dawson chuckled.
I glanced at him. “Yeah, how did you know?”
“Aside from the fact that you’ve been holding it since we’ve been out here, which is going on forty minutes now?” He paused as though he was waiting for me to say something, or at least that’s what I thought. “You do this thing with your nose when you take a sip of a warm beer. It crinkles or something, like you’re so damn disgusted with it, but you’re still determined to drink every last drop.”