A Light at Winter’s End

by Julia London

  “My attorney called today,” Holly said, looking at Hannah. “We can sell this place now. If it’s okay with you, Wyatt has expressed an interest in buying it.”

  “Oh.” Hannah put her fork down. She glanced nervously at Wyatt, then Holly. “It’s hard to think of selling it, isn’t it? But sure, whatever you want to do, Holly. It belongs to you.”

  Holly put down her fork too. “I know Mom left it to me, but I told you I would share it all with you. Do you remember that?” She meant it sincerely. She guessed that someone who had been as addicted as Hannah must have forgotten things, being too stoned to know what was going on around her.

  But Hannah clearly bristled. “Yes, I remember, Holly. Unfortunately, I remember most things. But Mom left it to you. It’s yours. And I want you to have it.”

  “You want me to have it?” Holly repeated disbelievingly. “I don’t feel right about it. This is our inheritance. Not just mine.”

  Hannah gave a little self-conscious laugh as she stopped Mason from throwing his food off his tray. “Holly, honestly. I don’t want it. I would much rather you have it. That seems to me the right thing to do.”

  The right thing to do? If Hannah remembered most things, as she said, then she would remember that she’d felt slighted by their mother leaving everything to Holly. Hannah had never thought it was the right thing to do. Suddenly, Holly understood. “Oh, I get it,” she said disbelievingly.

  Hannah did not look at her.

  “You want me to have this house and this land as my pay-off for taking care of Mason.”

  “Holly,” Wyatt said softly.

  “No, it’s true,” Holly said to Wyatt. “Isn’t it, Hannah?”

  Hannah shook her head. “Don’t be absurd. That is obviously not what I meant.”

  “Then what did you mean? Because before you left, you were pretty incensed that Mom had left it to me when you had done so much for her. Do you remember that, Hannah?”

  “Yes. I remember that too,” Hannah said stiffly. “But I am thinking a little more clearly now, and I don’t want it because Mom left it to you. She was very clear in her wishes and I would like to honor those wishes.”

  “Bullshit,” Holly said, and stood up from the table. Wyatt tried to take her hand, but Holly yanked it away.

  “God, Holly,” Hannah said angrily. “What is the matter with you? You act like you gave birth to Mason and have to give him away to a total stranger. I don’t want what Mom wanted you to have, okay? But even if I did, would it really be so bad if I did want you to have it as my way of thanking you? Am I not allowed to say thank you, or I’m sorry, or anything else?”

  “You can say whatever you want,” Holly said curtly. “God knows, you always have.” She walked away from the table.

  “She’s not herself,” she heard Wyatt say, his way of making an excuse for her. That was the problem: Wyatt thought she needed to be excused for being frustrated with her sister. Holly kept walking, out onto the porch. Milo was there, lying beside the door. His tail started thumping against the porch; he lifted his head to her, waiting.

  She ignored him, folded her arms tightly around her, and stared out at the brown yard, the old windmill that didn’t squeak anymore, the barbed wire fence that she guessed Wyatt would take down once he bought this place.

  She heard the door open behind her, heard Wyatt’s footfall. “This has to be getting old for you,” she said flatly.

  “What?”

  Holly glanced at him over her shoulder. “This drama. Me.”

  Wyatt looked sheepishly guilty, as if he’d been caught with his hand up her skirt.

  “That’s what I thought,” Holly said.

  “I understand this is really hard for you—”

  “Could you please stop being so understanding?” Holly exclaimed. “Please stop! Yes, this is hard for me, but I don’t need you to make excuses for me. I know I am making it harder on everyone. I know that, and I can’t seem to stop myself, but I don’t think that means my feelings or my … my issues,” she said, gesturing to herself, “are any less valid. There is a lot of stuff between me and Hannah, Wyatt. A lot of stuff you don’t know about. My problem is that I don’t know how to work it all out. I know I have to, but I don’t know how to do it, and right now … right now I can only manage to focus on handing Mason over to her. That’s it.”

  “Okay,” he said. His expression was wary; his blue eyes were locked on hers, as if he were afraid he would miss something significant if he looked away.

  Holly took a deep breath. “I need … a break.”

  Wyatt’s brows rose but he did not speak.

  “I need some time on my own to … to cope with what is happening. And it’s not just Mason, I swear to you, it’s not that. I have come to terms with it, I really have. But there is more. All these feelings have bubbled up inside me and I need to figure it out.”

  “You mean … without me around to be understanding,” he said coolly.

  Holly ached with regret. The hurt on Wyatt’s face was devastating. “I love you, Wyatt,” she said desperately. “I do. I love you with all my heart. But I don’t want to ruin what we have, and I will if we continue like this. I know myself, I know that I will blow it, and I don’t want to do that. Can you … do you see what I am saying?”

  “No,” he said. “That’s not the way I do things. When the going gets tough, people who love each other circle the wagons. They don’t go out to fight battles alone, because they are usually outnumbered.”

  “Wyatt … I just need some time.”

  He looked skyward. He pushed both hands over his hair and locked his fingers behind his neck for a moment. “I can’t believe this,” he muttered. “So, what are you saying? That all we’ve been together, all we’ve become, is gone?”

  “We’ve been playing at a fantasy,” Holly said softly. “We were pretending to be a happy little family.”

  “Jesus, Holly, we are a family. And we can still be a family.”

  “You can be that. Grace can be that. But Mason and I can’t be that, not anymore. And now I have to face up to the fact that I don’t really understand who or where or what I am, because of all of that?” she said, gesturing to the house. “That happy family we’ve been? It was a smoke screen.”

  “A smoke screen,” he repeated, and pressed his lips together. “A fucking smoke screen.” He dropped his gaze to the ground, folded his arms tightly across his chest. Holly moved to him, put her arms around him and rested her cheek against his shoulder. Wyatt stood stiffly. She kissed his cheek and stood back. “I don’t want it to be like this, but I need some space.”

  “Take all the space you need, Holly,” he said through a clenched jaw, and stepped away from her. “Milo, come,” he said, and walked away without looking back. Holly watched him as he went around the side of the house, Milo trotting behind him. She wanted to call him back, but she couldn’t make herself do it. She realized, as saw he got into the truck and drove away, that she was silently weeping. Her heart, having suffered so many fine fractures with the blow of losing Mason, now shattered completely into tiny pieces.

  Holly stayed outside for a long time, sitting on the porch steps, shivering in the cool night air. She wished for a beer, but of course, with Hannah around, she had none. She could hear the sounds from inside, heard Hannah cleaning the kitchen, heard Mason babbling happily, Hannah speaking to him softly.

  Holly gritted her teeth against the pain of her loss.

  A little later she heard Hannah in the living room. Then moving upstairs. She guessed it was Mason’s bedtime. More time passed. More numbing, blank minutes. Holly had no idea how much time had passed when she heard the door open behind her, heard Hannah come out, and felt the jacket she draped on Holly’s shoulders.

  She sat beside Holly on the steps. “It’s cold out here.”

  “I guess,” Holly asked dumbly.

  “Did you break up with him?”

  “More or less.”

  “Why?”
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  “Because I need to figure some things out,” Holly answered honestly. “A lot of things.”

  Hannah sighed. “I hear you. Me too. What things?”

  Holly was suddenly reminded of another night the two of them had sat on their porch. It had been summer, and the sun was beginning to set. Bobby Briggs had broken up with Holly after two months of “going out,” which was all that Holly had been allowed to do at the age of fifteen. Holly had been crushed by Bobby’s abrupt brush-off.

  “I’m glad he broke up with you,” Hannah had said that evening.

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “No, seriously. I heard he’s been hanging out with Gretchen Moyer. Plus, I had him in Algebra II, and he’s an idiot. You can do way better than him, Holly.”

  “He’s really a great guy, Holly,” Hannah said softly now.

  “I know,” Holly said, sniffing. “The best. But I need some space. I’ve been thinking a lot about where I am going in life the last few days, and it’s not fair to drag him through all my baggage.”

  “I know the feeling,” Hannah murmured. She leaned over her knees and grabbed her toes.

  “How, Hannah?” Holly blurted. “Why did you get hooked on drugs? I mean, you had everything going for you. I’ve tried to make sense of it and I can’t.”

  Hannah snorted. “Do you think I can? It’s really complicated.”

  “Tell me,” Holly insisted.

  Hannah regarded her a long moment, as if she were debating how much to confide. But she nodded. “Okay. I’ll try my best to explain. But can we at least go inside? It’s cold out here.”

  They sat on the couch in front of the cold hearth, facing each other. Hannah spoke in a very calm way, as if she’d repeated the story a thousand times. “I was never one of those people who could stop with one drink,” she started. “Even in high school, when we’d get beer on a Saturday night and drive out to the old silo, remember? I couldn’t really stop with one beer. I liked the way it made me feel, and the more I liked it, the more I drank.”

  “You drank in high school?” Holly asked. “I didn’t know that. You were so … perfect.”

  “I drank,” Hannah said with a shrug. “Then I went to college and I didn’t drink. I was working and going to school, you know, and I didn’t have time. Every once in a while I’d go out with friends and I would just … binge,” she said, grimacing a little. “But I never felt addicted. I would stop for weeks, then do it again.”

  After college, Hannah said, she’d begun her working career, and the drinking had worsened with the introduction of Friday night happy hours. “It got to where I could drink more each time, and it took more for me to get drunk, but when I did, I was wasted.” She confessed to Holly that she’d had blackouts, and once ended up in bed with a man she’d met only that night. She remembered nothing about the sex they’d had.

  “Oh my God, Hannah!” Holly said, horrified. “You could have been killed!”

  “I know. That’s when I stopped drinking. It scared me to death, and I didn’t even realize I could drink that much.” She smiled ruefully. “In true Hannah fashion, I just made up my mind and stopped. No pain no gain, right? It never occurred to me to get help. Just do it.”

  “Mom,” Holly said.

  “Yeah, Mom,” Hannah said with a shake of her head. “Remember what she used to say? ‘No crying, no whining. Just do it.’”

  Holly couldn’t help but smile. “Then what?”

  “Then I blew my knee out skiing, remember? And I had my first taste of pain pills.” Hannah told Holly that her knee had hurt so badly that if the prescription said take one, she took two. She confessed that she’d gone to two different emergency rooms to complain of the pain, just to get more. But she hadn’t gotten hooked on the pain meds then, because she hadn’t known how to get them.

  “And then I met Loren,” Hannah said with a sigh, and shook her head, glancing away. “You were right about him, Holly. From the beginning you were right about him, but I was too blind and in love to see it. Loren had a way of making me feel like the brightest, most beautiful woman in the world. Can you believe it?”

  “But you were,” Holly said. “You didn’t need someone like Loren to tell you that, did you?”

  Hannah’s laugh was sour. “I guess I did. I didn’t feel that way at all. All my life, I tried to measure up—”

  “To what?” Holly exclaimed disbelievingly.

  “I don’t know. Something. Whatever I did, it wasn’t good enough for Mom. She always thought I could have done more. According to her, I was too smart, too pretty not to be out conquering the world. But the more I conquered, the more I achieved, the more she raised the bar. It was never good enough.”

  “Good God,” Holly muttered. “I was never you. That was my crime. I never shone as brightly as you at anything.”

  “I know,” Hannah said sadly. “But I guess, in my case, I was good enough for Loren. And he was a drinker.”

  She said the drinking had started up again when they became engaged, and neither of them thought much about tying one on Saturday night and being hungover the next day. “We thought that was just life. But Loren would lay off after that. Me? I was a firm believer in taking the ‘hair of the dog.’ For days.” She grimaced; the memories were obviously painful. “I knew it was growing beyond my ability to control. I knew it. But I convinced myself I could handle it. The only time I didn’t drink was when I was pregnant.”

  “What about the pills?”

  Hannah’s face colored. “I started with some pills Loren had after his back surgery. That’s when I found out about his first affair. That killed me, Holly. It made me feel so small and unattractive and stupid. But his pain pills made me feel like I could float along and not think about it. Pills on top of booze. If that doesn’t make you feel good, nothing will. And then … it got really bad when Mom got sick.”

  Hannah told Holly how she had borrowed pain pills from their terminally ill mother—had even convinced the home nurse that their mother was losing them or throwing them away. “I thought I could quit the pills whenever I wanted, but from time to time I felt like I had to have them just to be normal.”

  She told a silent Holly how, after their mother had died, she needed the pain pills just to function. The days of getting high were fewer and farther between. She was taking twenty pain pills a day, supplemented with Xanax and Valium and Ambien, pills she had been prescribed at different times in her life and had abused. She described the lengths she had had to go to get them—doing things that made Holly cringe—just to feel like herself again. But what had finally precipitated her cry for help was the time she left Mason in his crib to go get pills and then was involved in a fender bender.

  “That did it,” she said. “I knew then that it was really bad, that I needed help. And still it took me another couple of weeks to actually go to treatment. All my life had been building to that point, all the pressure to succeed, all the disappointments, all the things that made me feel good … I turned into an addict without knowing it. All that time I thought I could stop … until I had to stop and I couldn’t.”

  “I don’t know what to say,” Holly said.

  “There is nothing to say,” Hannah said. “But now you know.”

  Holly considered her sister, so beautiful, so accomplished. So tortured. “I felt so stupid when you called me from Florida,” she confessed. “I couldn’t believe you could be an addict like that, and I didn’t know. I felt so self-centered and useless.”

  “Oh, Holly, no,” Hannah said, and touched Holly’s arm. “You have to understand that I was a master at hiding it. A master.”

  “Still, you are my sister. How could I not know? And now I worry that you will relapse.”

  “I have the same fear,” Hannah confessed. “All I can tell you is that I have two amazing guys in my corner. Mason most of all. I will spend my whole life regretting what I have done and trying to make up for it. If I ever think of a pill or a drink, I think of Mason, and th
e craving goes away. And then there is Rob. He’s been there for me. He understands. He’s got my back. That’s the best assurance I can give you. I know it’s not much, but it’s my word.”

  Holly nodded and picked absently at her jeans. “I don’t know how to forgive you, you know,” she said softly. “I want to forgive you, but I can’t seem to do it.”

  “I hardly blame you,” Hannah said wearily. “I can’t forgive myself.”

  “Keeping Mason has been the best thing to ever happen to me. I love him, Hannah. I can’t imagine a day without him in it. It’s a cruel joke the universe has played on me, because I can’t tell you how hard it is to give him up.”

  “But you’re not giving him up,” Hannah said. “You will still be in his life, as much as you want. You can come every day if you want.”

  Holly shook her head. “Thanks for that. But it’s not the same and we both know it. I can’t be his mother. No matter how hard I try, I cannot be his mother.”

  Hannah didn’t dispute it.

  Nevertheless, Holly thought they’d at least made some progress that night. They’d laid their cards on the table, and it was a beginning. But it was not the end. They had a long way to go to find their place as sisters again, but they agreed on two things: They would sell the homestead to Wyatt. And they would check in with each other once a week, every week, so that they could at least attempt to rebuild their relationship.

  The next two days flew by. Holly didn’t feel quite as awkward because Hannah seemed more like the sister Holly had known all those years ago when they’d lived under the same roof, and less like the sister Holly had come to avoid in the last few years.

  Hannah kept things superficial by making small talk: Mason was growing like a weed. Wouldn’t it be great if the windmill actually worked? Remember how Dad used to plant tomatoes that grew as big as softballs? Holly had the feeling that her confession had taken a lot out of Hannah. She sympathized—it had to have been very difficult for Hannah to admit all that she’d done. Holly had been appalled by Hannah’s confession, but she admired Hannah more than she could say for having the courage to tell her the truth.