I stare at this woman, tears streaming down my face. I turn my heavy head toward Ian. “Did you know? Did you know that’s where they were going?” I plead for him to tell me no, but he doesn’t.
How could he not know? How could he keep this from me? I’ve been sitting here playing house with their daughter, in their house, and it’s because of me that they’re dead.
My sister was on her way to see me to make amends. And I did this to her.
“Oh, God,” I choke out. I’m going to be sick. I turn away from my audience. Ian grabs for me again, but I fight him off.
“Don’t touch me.”
“Chris, please. Don’t do this.”
“You knew,” I accuse.
“Yes, but . . .”
“You knew this whole time, and you didn’t tell me!”
“Chris, it wasn’t something that would have changed things.”
Oh, my God. He knew.
“Oh, God.” I am a murderer. And I did this.
“Chrissy, please, you’re thinking too much, please.” He reaches for me again.
I jerk back. “Don’t touch me.” I scowl at Ian, who looks defeated. I turn to look at Pippa, who has witnessed this whole horrific event. She’s standing next to Ian, looking so little and innocent. I bring my hand to my mouth and inhale. “Oh, Pippa. I’m—”
I can’t. I can’t do this anymore. I turn to Ian. “I need you to take Pippa.”
“What do you mean, take Pippa? Where are you going?” Ian looks panicked.
“I need you to take her. I can’t care for her right now.” I turn to race down the hallway.
“Chris, please. Don’t do this,” Ian says, sounding desperate.
I whip back to face him. “Don’t do what, Ian? Stick around and finally hear that after all these years of being a horrible sister, it was me who stuck the final nail in the coffin?”
“Honey, it wasn’t like that. This wasn’t your fault.”
“Stop!” I scream. “You knew,” I choke out. “You knew. How could you keep that from me?”
“Cause it didn’t matter.”
“Oh, it didn’t?” I Beg to differ. “I pretty much murdered my sister and your cousin, and it doesn’t matter?” I cry.
“Jesus, Chrissy. It wasn’t like that.” He comes at me and latches his arms around me, but I fight out of his embrace.
“How was it not?” I yell. “How was it not?” Breaking down, allowing his arms this time to wrap around me, the first painful cry shooting up my throat. No. I can’t do this. I beat my fist on his chest.
“Why? How could you keep this secret? Oh, God, what have I done?”
“Because of how you are reacting right now.” He’s breathing just as erratically as I am. “Because you’re taking the blame.” He pauses. “And I know you. It’s going to cause you to run. And leave again.”
In all of this. The tragedy. The loss. He was worried about me leaving? I’m so fucked up right now. I can’t listen to any more of this. I close my eyes and shake my head. “I need you to take Pippa. I need you to watch over her until I can get my shit together.”
“Chris . . .”
“No! Don’t Chris me. Just don’t.” I put my hand up, telling him not to move closer. I give him one last look, and turn and walk away.
I NUMBLY WALK OUT of the facility and into the quiet, empty streets. I find my way by cab back to the house and I walk into the guest room and fall onto my bed. I grip my pillow so hard I break skin and cry. Sometimes you think you have a handle on life and its hardships, and then you’re thrown such a heavy anchor that no matter how strong you are, you have no choice but to go down with it. And that’s how I feel. There is no way of spinning the news that was just thrown at me.
My sister was on her way to see me.
How do I register that? After so many years, she was coming to wish me well. She knew about my success and wanted to be a part of my life. I lie here and imagine her convincing her husband to spend money they probably didn’t have to take the trip to California to see my show, in hopes I wouldn’t blow her off.
In hopes I would talk to her. And how pathetic would I have been. Would I have? Would I have been a snobby bitch and turned my back to her? I cry harder into my pillow, unable to answer that question, because the person I’ve become is not someone my sister would have been proud of. And to know all she wanted was for us to make amends kills me. But in the end, it just ended up killing her.
I go from being extremely distraught to extremely angry. How dare Ian hide something so huge from me? He was afraid of my reaction? He damn well should have been. How do you keep something so life changing from a person you love? Would he have ever told me the truth? Will Pippa grow up to learn this and hate me for having a huge part in taking her parents away from her?
With no thought to my actions, I sit and start tossing the pillows across the room. I stand to grab anything near me, violently whipping it across the room. The lamp makes contact with the wall and shatters, knocking down a framed painting.
I’m not done either. I take the items that are sitting on the dresser and hand swipe them straight onto the floor, breaking perfume bottles, make-up and some random photo frames as they all meet the wooden floor.
“Why?” I scream at the mess I’ve made. “Why? Why? Why?” I cry into my hands. Breaking, I drop to my knees, the glass cutting into my skin. “Why?” I weep into the floor.
I’ve ruined so many lives because I needed to save my own. Ian’s. Amy’s. John’s. Poor Pippa’s. My anger back, I clench my fists and beat them against the floor, welcoming the pain of the glass cutting into my skin. I let out a guttural scream. The pain is seeping through my tears as I cry so hard, I choke on my own sobs.
I lose track of time while I break apart on the floor. When my body loses its fight and my throat is hoarse from the horrible sounds leaving my mouth, I begin to settle. I weakly pull myself from the floor. Finally registering the mess I’ve made, I investigate the glass that’s sticking into my now bloody knees and knuckles. Glass and smeared blood now layer the floor. Great, now I can feel horrible about trashing my sister’s house. I don’t make an effort to clean anything up. I need to get out of here. I know Ian will come looking for me here first. And I can’t be here. I can’t look him in the eyes. But mostly I can’t bear to look at Pippa.
I take off my blouse and wipe my knuckles and knees clean as best I can. I discard my skirt in exchange for a pair of yoga pants and one of Ian’s hoodies. I find my phone on the floor and see seventeen missed calls from Ian. I don’t bother reading any of the text messages. I just dump the phone back on the floor and I leave. I walk out the door and begin walking.
Thank God for small towns, because everything is within walking distance. On autopilot, my legs take me to the one place I have been avoiding. It takes me close to an hour to walk there, judging by the way the sun is starting to set. Thankfully, I remember where they are because I would hate to get lost in here. I finally make it to the plot, where the grass is freshly laid, and I stare at the two matching headstones.
Loving wife and mother, and loving husband and father. I kneel down in front of my sister’s headstone and stare off into space for the longest time before I speak.
“You know, I never told you this, but I never went home that day. I told you I was, and when you came home, I told you all the things I might have done, but I didn’t. I continued to follow you. I snuck behind the bushes of the school pavilion and I saw you with Justin Walker. I watched as you two kissed and he totally felt you up.” I laugh numbly to myself. “Of course, I didn’t understand at that time what he was doing, so I was so scared for you. I almost jumped out of the bushes and attacked him. But then you started laughing. You laughed and he laughed and you both just lay in the grass, staring at the setting sun and talked for what seemed like hours.”
I swipe at a tear escaping down my face. “To this day, I think about what you two talked about, if he was your escape back then. I barely made it home before yo
u, and when Mom came barreling out yelling at you, it was because of me. I tripped over the vacuum when I got home. I was so worried about you catching me, I wasn’t paying attention. That’s why she was up waiting. She heard the commotion.” More tears begin to fall. “If I had just listened to you that day, she wouldn’t have hit you. I didn’t listen and it caused you pain. And I’m sorry,” I choke out. I lay my head down on the grass and cry. “Why did you name your daughter Pippa? Why would you do that, Amy?” A question I will never get an answer to. I sit up and focus on the headstone, as if I stare at it long enough she’ll appear.
“If I had seen you, I would have hugged you. I would have told you that I was selfish and that I loved you. I would have told you that you saved my life when we were kids and I’ve always wanted to say thank you for that. I just wish I could have saved yours.” I can’t see through my clouded vision, unable to keep up with the wetness flowing down my face.
“I promise I’ll take care of Pippa. I won’t let you down. I’ll do whatever it takes to make your death mean something. I love her already, Ames. She’s just like you when we were kids. When you would tell me I was your princess in training and you would teach me everything I needed to know to become beautiful like you. And you were. You grew into an amazing mother . . . and I am so, so sorry.” I weep. “I’m so sorry I took you away from your daughter.
“Can you ever forgive me for leaving you? I shouldn’t have left.” I break. I cannot force any more painful confessions out without choking on the emotions that are lodging in my throat. I’m holding my stomach because the pain in my heart hurts more than the physical pain of my open wounds.
The sun sets by the time I pull myself together to stand. I press a kiss to my fingers and place them on the top of my sister’s headstone. “I love you, Amy.”
And I leave. I walk back toward the house, stopping at the old high school to rest on the park swings. The same swings where Ian and I shared our first kiss. I have no clue of the time, but it’s been dark for a while. I shiver at the drop in temperature and wrap my arms around my body to keep in some heat. I swing slowly back and forth and think about what I do now.
I have so much love for two people, but I’m not sure I can continue to take any more people down with me. I made a vow to my sister and I plan to keep it. I just don’t think I can keep it here. In this town.
I’ve completely lost track of time when the blue and red lights of a police vehicle break my numb thoughts. I see another set of lights and the sounds of vehicles braking suddenly. I hear doors opening and slamming.
“She’s here! I found her!” I hear a deep voice I know so well. I see a shadowy form running toward me, and Ian comes into view under the park light. He comes barreling at me, dropping to his knees in front of me. “Are you okay?” His hands are frantically checking me for wounds. “Please talk to me. Are you hurt? There was blood in the room.” He sounds close to losing it.
He makes it to my hands and I wince. He lifts them to see the damage I caused. “Oh, Chrissy, what did you do?”
I bow my head in shame. I can’t answer him.
“I’m going to take you home.” He stands abruptly and turns toward the commotion by the street. “I got her. She’s fine,” he yells.
“Thank God.” That’s Henry’s voice.
Ian kneels back down in front of me. “You scared me to death.” He places his shaking hands on each side of my face. “Honey, please look at me.” I lift my sullen eyes and connect with his. They look scared and nervous, and I can sense fear. “Please don’t slip away from me again. Please. Stay with me here and fight, okay?”
“I can’t do this.” I finally speak. No emotion in my voice.
“What? No. Don’t say that. Your place is here with me. With Pippa,” he pleads.
“I’m going back to California. I can’t stay here. I don’t belong in a place that I destroyed.”
“So you’re just going to leave? And what about Pippa?”
“I’ll have Patti watch over her until I can figure out living arrangements back home.”
He pauses, looking wounded by my intentions. “You were never truly planning on staying, were you? All this talk of you staying and us making plans, it was all just another lie from you, wasn’t it?”
“What? No. Why would you say that?”
I look at him and it registers. The phone call.
“The call.”
“Yeah, the damn call. While I was making plans for us here, you were signing the deal on your new life back in California.”
“That’s not true, Ian.”
“When were you going to tell me? When I came home one day and you were all packed?”
His anger is building.
“Ian, I made those plans in the beginning. Everything got so busy and I was never able to put a stop to my original plans. Because of our plan.”
“Our plan,” he stresses. “But those are no more now I guess, huh?”
I stall. His intense stare burns holes into my broken soul.
“No,” I simply reply.
“And what about me? What do I do?”
“You move on. You forget about me and move on,” I say, defeated.
With that bold statement, Ian stands all too quickly, startling me. He turns and kicks in the side of a garbage can. Kick after kick, I watch in horror as he dents the can in rage. He stops suddenly, fighting to get air into his lungs. He turns to me with desperate-looking eyes.
“I love you, Chrissy. Why do you continue to fight that?”
He doesn’t get it. I jump off the swing. “God, Ian, I’m not fighting you. I am fighting everything around us that doesn’t allow this to fit. One after another, every time we find this happy place, a wrench is thrown our way, breaking this perfect hold we have on us. I don’t belong here. I never have.”
He looks shocked. “I thought we were fitting perfectly. What—do I not meet the criteria of your ritzy life back home? Is settling into a mediocre town with a mediocre man not good enough for you anymore? Those wrenches are just excuses. You keep acting like you’re so alone in all this; can’t you just see for a second that it’s not just you in this fight? Or has your new life turned you so shallow that you can’t see what is right in front of you?”
His low blow hurts.
“Fuck you, Ian.”
“You’re right, fuck me. Fuck me for watching a woman I have pined over since the day she left me. Since the day I watched you choose. And to know your choice wasn’t me.”
“It wasn’t about choosing you. It was about keeping me alive.”
“I would have kept you alive. I would have cherished you.”
I want to pound his chest with my fists and tell him how unfair life is and tell him if I could bring us back to that time, I would redo so many things.
But I can’t. And I won’t.
“I chose to save you,” I say calmly. “I chose to allow you a future without me taking you down with my bullshit.”
“You were the love of my life.”
“I was drowning, Ian. And that meant you were downing with me. I couldn’t do that to you.”
“Chrissy,” he says, stepping closer. “If I hear you tell me one more time what you think or thought what was best for me, I swear to God . . .” He’s panting, his anger seeping through his pores.
He turns away from me. I can hear his heavy breathing, and I feel like I’ve stopped breathing at all.
I don’t know what went wrong here. Or with us. I made a choice. And the day I did, I knew I would make my bed and lie in it.
I can’t change what I’ve done. Nor can I take it back. Even more sadly, I cannot change the present. Nor can he. I can’t tell Ian things will be different, because I’m scared they won’t be. I love him with all that I know, but being with him brings back a past in me that I hate. A lifetime of abuse and sadness. It reminds me of the first week I made it to California, when I locked myself in my dirty apartment that was paid in full for the week with a gas s
tation razor and disassembled it while sitting in the bathtub, wishing away all the hurt that filled me.
I think about where I would be, or where anyone I know would be if it wasn’t for Lexi banging on my door that night with the wrong room number. I was a lost soul before Ian and I knew no matter how much I pretended I was building a new life, I would continue to be just that—lost.
I whisper, “I’m sorry,” before I turn around and walk away. Before I know it, I’m sprinting through the football field trying to find some sort of shelter to hide from Ian. I want out. I want to go home. To wherever that is and I want to be free of all this pain. And truth and judgment.
I make it past the field sidelines before he swoops me from behind. “Let me go!” I scream and fight him. I kick with force hoping he releases me, but he doesn’t. “Ian, let me go,” I say again with less force, but he denies my requests. He walks past the field and makes his way back to the playground. He finally lets me go and I stumble a few steps to get my bearings.
I whip around with vengeance, ready to give it my all until I see his face in the streetlight. And I stop.
Clear in my tracks.
His face.
“You know,” he starts, “I followed you.”
“Tonight?” I ask, confused.
“To San Francisco. It was a few months later, but I followed you.”
“What? Why?”
“Because I loved you and I refused to let you go.”
“Why didn’t you ever say anything?”
“I saw you outside St. Markey. You were with a guy. And you were actually smiling. I’m not sure how or why, but you two looked happy. You looked happy.”
“Why didn’t you ever come and say anything to me?”
“Because I didn’t want to disrupt your new life. In the end, as much as I wanted us, I wanted you to be happy more. And you looked it. So I walked away.”
I know exactly the moment he was talking about. It was shortly after I met Brent. He had just helped me make a ton of commission off a painter by putting a good word in, and I was happy. But it most definitely wasn’t because I was in love.
My So Called Life (Love Not Included Series Book 3) Page 22