by Jessica Roe
Finally, Micah had been able to stand it no more. He might have been able to deal with it if the abuse had been aimed solely at him, but he couldn't sit by and watch as it took over our lives too. He left town, for good. I was devastated. Completely and utterly devastated that he was gone. Heartbroken. I'd lost my big brother after all and it felt like I'd never get him back, all because that family couldn't accept the fact that their son had been responsible for his own actions.
And even though I still felt awful for them and a part of me understood that their lies were coming from a place fueled by grief, I still hated them for ruining my big brother's life and causing him to leave me.
I had never hated anyone before, never felt such an ugly, consuming emotion, but I hated them with a passion. Hated them all.
Chapter 7
Ophelia
THE HOUSE IS quiet and still when I finally arrive home, almost silent but for the low murmurings of a TV on somewhere in one of the rooms.
I walk into the living room, lit up only by a low lamp and the flickering lights of the television, to find my dad fast asleep on his recliner. The TV is still on from where he must have dozed off watching it. His cheeks are ruddy, and I realize he probably fell asleep crying. I hadn't thought it possible for my heart to hurt any more than it already did, but it does at the sight of a strong man like my father looking so utterly. . .broken. Broken and helpless. My dad, he's always been the strong, gruff, silent type, the type of man who rarely shows emotion. The type of man you could never even imagine crying, let alone seeing actual evidence of it.
Suddenly I'm awash with a sea of feels. I mourn heavily the loss of all these years we could have had together. And it's my fault just as much as it was my parents', despite what I've always let myself believe. They weren't the only ones who could have made more of an effort to rekindle our destroyed relationship.
Shutting down the TV, I pull off Dad's shoes and tuck an old tartan throw around him gently, careful not to wake him when he so clearly needs the sleep. Since I've been home I've heard him pacing back and forth almost every night, worrying himself to death over Mom. They were high school sweethearts, and in one of those rare moments he was willing to confide something deep, he confessed to me that he'd loved her ever since the first day he'd seen her when he'd been just an awkward, gangly fifteen year old boy.
Losing her will destroy him.
Leaning down, I kiss Dad's forehead with a fondness that blooms within my chest and spreads out across my soul. I know that no matter what happens from here on out, I'll never let another day go by where I don't talk to my daddy for the rest of his life.
As I turn off the little lamp in the living room and move into the more brightly lit kitchen to put away the dishes drying on the rack, I wish for the millionth time from the very depths of my heart that Micah were here with us right now. More than anything in the world all I want is my strong big brother's support. It's probably strange that I still feel that way about him after he hasn't been here for me for so many years now, but I do, and no matter what, I will never blame him or resent him for anything. I understand his need to run, I really do. What happened back then destroyed him, heart and soul. I'd only ever caught the tail end of the hatred that had been aimed Micah's way; I can't even imagine what it must have felt like to have been the sole focus of it. To have had to watch as my family suffered for something cruel that I'd been unjustly accused of. So no, I can't ever blame my brother for leaving, even though it killed me when he did.
Just like I've done secretly every night since I've been home, I call his cell, no longer even surprised when it goes straight to voicemail.
“Come home, Micah,” I urge, I plead. My voice shakes even though I do my best to steady it. “I need you. We all need you. Surely you must have listened to my other messages by now; you must know how sick mom is. How can you stay away? I just. . . Please come home. The past is in the past; let it stay there. Come home.”
Hanging up and dropping the cell aside, I spread my palms out over the granite kitchen counter and lean forward, taking deep breaths to steady myself. I do not need to cry again. I cannot cry again. Not now, at least. Not until later on tonight, when I'm in bed alone and I can stifle the sound of my sobs with my pillow.
Suddenly desperate to see my mom even though I've been avoiding that very thing for hours now, I run up the small staircase and quietly enter my parents' room. As always these days, it's very warm in here, but on a freezing cold night like tonight I don't mind a bit.
Mom and Aunt Ellie are all tucked up in bed together, and now I understand why Dad was asleep downstairs – he'd been giving the two sisters time alone. Aunt Ellie is fast asleep and snoring her lovely face off, but Mom is still wide awake, watching the almost silent television and stroking her younger sister's curly hair affectionately. I know Mom sleeps a lot during the day at the moment, so often finds it difficult to sleep at night. She says she doesn't mind, that there's a peacefulness about the dead of night that she's come to appreciate, but it must get lonely.
She smiles when she sees me pop my head around the door and silently gestures me in. Quietly as I can, I kick off my shoes, tiptoe around the other side of the bed and crawl under the covers next to her. I've missed my mom over the years so, so much, and I hadn't even allowed myself to realize it up until now. But it swamps me suddenly; a heavy feeling that settles like a weight on top of my chest.
“My little Phee,” Mom murmurs contentedly, slipping her arm beneath my neck and holding me tight against her. There's nothing in the whole world quite like being held in your momma's arms, no matter how thin and frail they may have become. It's comforting in a way nothing else ever will be.
I should probably be the one comforting her right now and not the other way around, but from the way she's pressing her nose against my hair and breathing me in, she seems to need this just as much as I do.
Suddenly I feel like a lost, frightened little girl and words are spilling from my treacherous lips before common sense can stop them. “Please don't die,” I beg her, turning to bury my face in her bony shoulder before she can see my tears.
“Oh, honey,” she coos, stroking my hair and holding my head against her. “The treatment is working.” I don't know if she really means her reassurances or if she's just saying them to make me feel better, but I gobble them up greedily regardless. She hugs me tight and kisses the top of my head. “Of course I'm going to get better, especially now you and I have reunited. We have so much to catch up on, don't we? And I wouldn't miss it for anything in the world.”
I nod, giving her a watery smile. “We do.
They were just words, but they were mom words and they soothed me just as much as a reassuring murmur from her would when I was a child and I'd been afraid for some reason or another. Usually of an invisible monster lurking beneath my bed.
“Besides, the devil himself wouldn't win a fight against me right now,” she adds with a cheeky smirk. “He ain't strong enough to drag this old broad downstairs just yet.”
I snort at that, because we both know my mom's getting the express elevator right up to heaven.
Not really meaning it because there's absolutely no place in the world I want to be now but here in her arms, I say, “I should probably get to bed so you can rest.”
“Nonsense,” Mom replies with a knowing smile. “All I do is rest. I insist you stay right here next to me and give your old momma some snuggies.”
And so the two of us make ourselves comfortable in what little space Aunt Ellie has left us from her spread-eagled position, and we spend the rest of the night watching TV and affectionately listening to my sweet aunt snore her cute little face off.
Chapter 8
Ophelia
BY THE TIME a new dawn has rolled around I'm already feeling a lot better than I did the night before. Much more like my tough, totally in control self and not the emotional mess I had been, despite how little I ended up sleeping. After thinking everything throug
h for hours after my mom finally drifted off to sleep, I'd made the firm decision to end things before they could even begin. Even though a huge part of me wants desperately to go find some nice, cozy rock to hide myself under while the world carries on without me for a little while, I know the sensible, the right, thing to do is to go and talk to Nathan now he's sober and coherent and make it absolutely one hundred percent clear that from this point forth, we need to stay far away from each other for as long as I'm back in Norson Lake.
I sit staring at the clock on my parents' living room wall, counting down the minutes until it's late enough for me to call Ivy and not feel guilty about waking her early on a Sunday morning. When I finally allow myself to call, she tells me Nathan's already left for the gallery; something to do with having to deal with an art shipment that couldn't wait.
And so with that in mind, I find myself making the short drive over to Fortune. It's a smaller town than ours, but posher, richer. Snobbier. Doesn't stop them all swarming our lake every summer though.
Nathan's gallery is just where I remember it from when he’d proudly took me all those years ago, back when his gramps owned the place and running it had just been an exciting dream that filled up most of Nathan's thoughts. I park in the lot, clutching tightly at the steering wheel with clenched fists as I will myself to work up the courage to actually go inside.
I need to man up, to get out of this car, to walk in there and confidently inform Nathan that scenes like last night cannot happen again. Ever. That's all, that's all I need to do. Shouldn't be too hard. . .right?
It takes me a good fifteen minutes, but I finally gather up every little bit of strength I possess and drag myself into that gallery.
I halt when I pass through the doors, momentarily stunned by how incredibly amazing the place looks these days. Nathan's gramps had really known his stuff and it had always been wonderful, but Nathan has taken the gallery to a whole new level of awesome. His gramps would be so, so proud of him, and I'm extremely impressed. Nathan has clearly put so much work in here, and his love for the place shines through every inch like the burning sun. It shows on every wall, every surface, every work of art which has been carefully selected and placed in the best possible position to make the most of it. Not a thing in the large room has been lazily done, not a single piece of art has been treated with any less respect than it deserves.
Stepping closer to one particular piece, a drawing that seems to have been created with interesting swirls of charcoal, I study a beautiful image of the side of a young woman's face. Passion flows from this piece; whoever created it clearly has a deep love for his subject. My Life, it's simply entitled, the artist's name Walt Vega. Taking a step back, I make a mental note of it, considering purchasing it for Shark. It would go perfectly with the simple grey, white and black décor scheme we have.
Spinning, I take in the whole room again, stepping through the maze of wall dividers and marveling at each turn.
I'm impressed to the point that I've almost been completely distracted from what I came here today to do. The work Nathan has put into his gallery is bigger and better than either of us ever could have dreamed when we'd been younger.
Despite everything that's happened between us, despite our past and our downfalls, I'm truly and genuinely happy for Nathan that he was able to follow his dreams and take over the art gallery he'd been so passionate about. Even as a kid when most boys his age were only concerned with catching a glimpse of side boob, this place had always been his main focus in life. . .besides me. He somehow managed to break free from the hold his powerful parents always had on him, throw aside their overbearing influence when it came to every decision he ever made. After I'd left Norson Lake at the age of seventeen, I'd always imagined him caving and just giving in to their fancy ass lifestyle, joining the family law firm with his dad and marrying some posh chick his parents had set him up with, so rich she probably bathed in hundred dollar bills and pooped pearls and rubies.
I'm so proud of him for not doing any of that, for going his own way and taking the harder route in life. He stuck with it although it was probably more difficult than anything else he could have done. He did it, even though it meant giving up his parents' money and security.
And clearly it paid off.
I’D BEEN AT the lake, of course, because it was summer and deliciously hot and the lake was the only place for teenagers like me to be on days like that. It had been packed, as was usual for any given summer day; because it wasn't only kids from our town that swarmed the place. Kids from all the nearby towns flocked to Norson Lake to cool off and kick back during the warmer months.
It could be quite annoying sometimes, to us locals, to have our town pretty much overrun by tourists, but we didn't really mind. Mostly because all the businesses in town could hitch their prices up and those idiots wouldn't realize a thing, but also because being at the lake every summer was like being at one giant frigging party. And as far as I was concerned, the best parties were always the ones with the most people.
There had always been a deep, unresolved rivalry between the little cluster of towns in our area, had been like that for generations before me. It was all down to high school football, of course, because why wouldn't it be for something as lame as that? But there was a longstanding, unspoken rule that while at the lake. . . Well, everyone just got the hell along and petty rivalries were temporarily forgotten. Lake time was party time and that was that.
As was standard when it came to me, I'd been getting myself into mischief that particular day, a summer's day when I'd been sixteen years old. Eamon Fairclough, Norson Lake High's most popular sports star, the jock that everybody worshipped, was giving me grief like he did every day of the week that ended with a big ol' Y – though to be fair, my loud mouth and I were giving it him right back. But it was all in good fun, we all knew that. Though not the smallest town in the area, Norson Lake was still pretty little by some standards, and like most people in our class, Eamon and I had known each other since we were in diapers. So though we did our best to shoot our mouths off and wind each other up every chance we got, it was mostly done with an underlying affection and good humor. It just happened to be that the two of us were very alike – larger than life and always wanting to be the center of attention. Obviously we were going to clash.
Our little sound offs usually ended the same way – with us baiting each other into doing something stupid and the pair of us both being too stubborn to back down from it even when we knew it was a bad idea. I swear to God Eamon was the reason I got into so much trouble at school at least like, 85 percent of the time.
On this particular day we'd somehow ended up daring each other to jump off the large rocks by the lake – the stupid high ones that no one ever jumped from because they were dangerous and sharp and anyone who even attempted it would have to be the biggest, most reckless dumb ass on the planet.
But the thing about me was, ever since I'd been a child I'd never been able to resist a dare or back down from anything that might prove to be even the slightest bit of fun. Because something I'd discovered was that sometimes the scariest things in life often ended up being the most exhilarating. It was possible my recklessness had gotten worse in the three years it had been since Micah had left home – the therapist the school had briefly forced me to meet with once a week had cited some nonsense about my needing to prove myself to everyone, to prove I was just as strong as ever. I called absolute bull on that one.
“Fine. I'm doing it!” I declared to Eamon and the crowd of people who'd gathered to watch us, folding my arms across my stomach beneath the strings of my red bikini and deciding in that very moment that it was the best idea I'd had all week. “I'm jumping off the Death Rock.”
Yep, the Death Rock was what kids had taken to calling the biggest of them all, that huge, jagged rock that towered over the rest of them, and us. And I was going to jump from it. Nice move, Phee.
Everyone around me who could claim even the tiniest sliv
er of common sense began to protest my announcement with worried voices. The Norson Lake kids were scared about me getting hurt, but the rest of those bozos just didn't want lake time ruined by my guts being splattered all over the bottom of the lake.
“Phee, stop being such a dummy!” one of my classmates cried, nervously twirling one of her braids around her fingers as she glanced anxiously back and forth between me and the rocks.
Dryly, and sounding a lot less worried, another chimed in, “Gonna get yourself killed, idiot.” That was Betty. She'd been my best friend back then and more than used to my audaciousness.
Even Eamon was beginning to look like he regretted starting the whole thing in the first place. A bead of sweat grew on the side of his head. “Yeah, come on, Phee. You were willing to do it; you win. Let's just drop it now and go swim.”
But they all knew me better than that. It had been announced many a time before that if nothing else could be said about me, it was that I was a stubborn pain in the ass but good for my word. Once I'd made a decision, I stuck to it no matter what the consequences might be. Phee Quinlain backed down from NOTHING. If I said I was going to do something, I would do it, and nothing or no one could stop it from happening. Maybe there was a time when the only person who'd been able to talk me down had been my big brother, but he'd left, and no one else was up to the task.
That was something else my therapist had found very interesting.
And so, ignoring the sea of faces surrounding me as they tried to talk me out of it, I pushed through them and scrambled my way up the side of the sharp, knobbly rock wall. I was aware the gathering crowd below probably had a great view of my butt in my bikini and belatedly wished I'd thought to put on shorts first. Meh, too late for that now. It was a good job I had a great butt for them to view, I supposed.