Sugar

by Seressia Glass

  Siobhan suppressed a sigh. “Mom, my ‘troubles’ were over years ago. I’m clean now. I’m living right.”

  “You’ve said that before,” her mother retorted. “You promised us your troubles were over before. Then you relapsed. You broke Mike’s heart, and mine, and Colleen’s, your father’s. It was a good thing you grandmother wasn’t alive to see how far you fell.”

  “Mom.” The edges of the phone dug into her hand as she tightened her grip to keep herself grounded, keep her emotions in check. She’d had enough emotional upheaval over the last few weeks to last her a lifetime. “I’m sorry about that. I’m sorry for what I did to you and Dad, and to Mike and Colleen. I’ve already apologized over and over for my failings and shortcomings. Are you ever going to forgive me?”

  This time her mother sighed. “Can you swear that you’ll never use again?”

  Pain and disappointment shafted through Siobhan and she closed her eyes against it, fighting to keep it in. “You know I can’t make that promise, Mom. No one with an addiction can. All I can promise is that I’ll try and I’ll fight to stay clean.”

  Silence filled the distance for a long moment before her mother spoke again. “You know what you need to do, Siobhan. You can’t let that man and his family go on thinking that you’re something you’re not.”

  Her mother’s words stabbed her deep, deep where hope dwelled, where love lived. Deep enough to cause a mortal wound. “You don’t have to worry about that. After the stunt Colleen pulled, I had to break up with him.”

  “That’s for the best, don’t you think? You don’t need to hurt them the way you hurt your husband and daughter.”

  Emotions churned inside her, fighting to claw their way out. “So I’m supposed to spend the rest of my life alone? Am I supposed to keep on hurting because none of you can forgive me?”

  “That’s not fair, young lady,” her mother reprimanded her. “You hurt a lot of people through your careless selfishness.”

  “I was hurting too!” The words bludgeoned her throat as they escaped. “It wasn’t selfishness, you know it was—”

  “All about you, as always,” her mother cut in. “You need to think about more than just yourself. You owe that to us. At the very least, you owe that to Colleen.”

  Gravel filled her mouth as Siobhan drew in a breath and spoke the hardest words she’d ever uttered. “I don’t owe Colleen anything anymore. I’ve done my penance. I’ve turned my life around. I know I can never make up for lost time with Colleen, but I’ve tried to be part of her life. She came to my place of business, provoked an argument in front of my customers, then tried to have me arrested when I slapped her. She told me that she wants nothing more to do with me than to watch me suffer, and I will not give her that. I am done suffering for past sins.”

  “How dare you turn your back on your daughter like that!”

  “I could ask you the same question, Mother,” Siobhan answered, her heart in her throat. “Why can’t you give me the same chances you want me to give Colleen?”

  “We gave you every chance. People reach a limit, Siobhan, where they simply can’t take any more.”

  “Exactly, Mom.” Siobhan choked down the knot of grief lodged in her throat. “I love you, all of you, but I can’t do it anymore.”

  Thick silence. “Well.” Her mother breathed a shaky sigh. “If that’s how you feel, then I suppose there’s nothing else we need to say to each other. Colleen is better off without you. I hope your friends will be there for you when your life falls apart again. You take care of yourself.”

  “Mom . . .” Siobhan began, but the line went dead.

  She lowered the phone, her mind and heart numb. That wasn’t right, she knew. She was supposed to feel something, something other than this gaping, cold emptiness that seemed delicate yet voracious. Maybe, maybe this was what it felt like when hope and love died.

  The phone clattered to the desk as she shot to her feet. She had to find a way to distract herself. Something that required concentration so that she wouldn’t think about the joy of numbness, the sweet haze of feeling nothing, like wrapping herself in layers of cotton batting to insulate herself from the rest of the world, from the pain that, if she let it, would warp and surge and metastasize into something dangerous and deadly and unstoppable.

  Her mind immediately filled with thoughts of Charlie. Charlie, with his teasing grins and welcoming arms. Charlie, with his ability to make her forget everything but being in the moment with him. Charlie, who had made her happy. Charlie, who had everything she wanted and wanted to share it with her.

  She couldn’t take it, couldn’t reach for it no matter how much she wanted it, no matter how much she loved him and had come to love his siblings. While her mother wasn’t right about her being selfish, Mary Malloy was right that Siobhan couldn’t risk destroying another family.

  Her heart thumped once, hard, and suddenly the emptiness collapsed beneath a tidal wave of agony. Her back bowed under the weight. A dying animal sound ripped from her throat, followed by another. She clamped her hands over her mouth to hold the cries in, an ineffectual dam against the flow.

  Arms swept around her, squeezing tight, preventing her from being swept away. Siobhan hung on to Nadia as waves of grief battered her, knowing she needed to excise it, needed to swim through it and make it across because holding it in, trying to bury it led to trying to numb it, led to popping pills to inure herself to pain that never completely vanished. “Nadia. I . . . they—”

  “Shh. You don’t have to say anything. I heard enough.” Anger laced her partner’s voice, but Nadia’s hand was tender as she brushed at Siobhan’s bangs. “Do you need me to call Anne?”

  Siobhan sucked in a breath, held it, then sucked in another one. The emptiness remained, and she knew she should worry about it but couldn’t seem to muster the care needed. “No, I’m not on the edge,” she answered. “I don’t need therapy talk.”

  “How about friend-and-partner talk then?” Nadia gave her another squeeze. “I know it hurts to think about it, sweetie, but you have to let your mother go. You have to let Colleen go. You can’t keep letting them hurt you like this.”

  “I know.” She did. She bled from a thousand cuts daily thanks to throwing herself again and again against her family’s sharp-edged refusal to forgive her. Despite four years being clean, despite owning her own business, they would forever see her as the strung-out woman who’d endangered a child and killed her marriage. “I know, but they’re my family.”

  “They’re your blood, I get it,” Nadia said into her hair. “But you have chosen family too, and your chosen family loves you like crazy. Come upstairs with me.”

  “You don’t live there anymore. You live with Kane, and he’s probably waiting for you.”

  “Kane will understand. I’ll call the girls over and we’ll have a night in. Or even better, I’ll call my dads and have them come down. You haven’t had a kitchen battle with Victor in a while.”

  That brought a smile to her face. She and Victor Spiceland were cut from the same cloth in that regard: if someone was unhappy, you comforted them with food. Granted, some of Victor’s concoctions scared you out of your sadness, but his intentions were good.

  “You’re so lucky, to have your family support you unconditionally. To love you like that.”

  Nadia hugged her again. “I know. Just as you know they consider you part of the family too. If that’s not enough, there’s another family that would be happy to have you as their heart.”

  Her gut clenched at the thought of Charlie and his family. “I can’t. I can’t risk it.”

  “Every day is a risk,” Nadia pointed out. “We take a risk whether we get out of bed or hide beneath it. You remember those early days when we first got out of treatment and had to function on our own? How scared we were?”

  “Scared shitless, wondering how we were going to cope.” Actually, she’d been scared shitless, knowing that she’d be alone, truly alone, for the first tim
e in years. Compared to Nadia, whose family had rallied around her, Siobhan had been on a countdown clock to relapse or worse until Nadia’s family had made room for her.

  “Thanks, Nadia,” she said, hugging her friend. “I think I’m going to go home and crash instead. I’d be shit for company, even with your dads. Maybe we can go visit them this weekend. A change of scenery will do me some good.”

  “I’ll hold you to that.” Nadia studied her. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

  “There’s a new soufflé recipe I want to try,” she answered, deliberately avoiding Nadia’s statement. She couldn’t promise that she wouldn’t do anything stupid when she had a record of stupid mistakes trailing behind her.

  “All right, then. I’ll call you later.”

  Siobhan agreed, knowing that if she didn’t, Nadia would follow her home and probably camp out outside her door, just to make sure she was okay. She was anything but and far too emotionally exhausted to fake it to her best friend the entire night.

  With another hug from Nadia, she made her way to her car and headed home. She could feel her scarred-over wounds cracking, threatening to split wide again. Keep them covered, keeping the pain buried deep was a necessity in order to survive but the will to do so eroded with each breath she exhaled. She was an emotional masochist. Why else would she keep reaching out to her parents, reaching out to Colleen? Why did she keep hoping that they would forgive her, welcome her back?

  Let them go. That was Nadia’s advice, but even though Nadia knew her better than anyone she couldn’t understand this pain. Nadia’s parents and brothers hadn’t turned their backs on her. Nadia had been afraid of disappointing her family, but they’d rallied around her instead. Siobhan had not only disappointed her family, she’d been disowned by them.

  Why was she bothering? No matter how successful she was, she would forever be a failure at the most important things. She would always be an addict who had endangered her daughter. Once people knew, that was all they saw, all they could see. Even Charlie had had doubts and she’d convinced him to overlook her past. She shouldn’t have, not when her past was so determined to make her suffer in perpetuity. Why pretend to be other than what everyone thought she was?

  The words slithered through her mind as an insidious whisper. Why bother? You’re not normal, you’ll never be normal, so why bother trying? What makes you think anyone would want to take a chance on you again? You need to resign yourself to the fact that you’re going to spend the rest of your life alone and miserable.

  That voice. She white-knuckled her steering wheel. She’d heard that voice so many times over the years. Telling her that she wasn’t smart enough, thin enough, enough enough. Sometimes the voice sounded like her mother. Most of the time it sounded like her stern father. The only thing that silenced that voice, even for a little while, was taking pills.

  Pills. Her mouth watered and her stomach cramped with the thought, proving that she wasn’t cured, would never be cured. She wanted the pills. She needed the pills. Without them she wouldn’t be able to get through her day, wouldn’t be able to manage the pain that constantly beat at her, wearing her down. She had to work. Nadia depended on her to manage her share of the café. Their staff looked to them for their livelihoods. They needed her to be capable, and she couldn’t be capable if she allowed the pain to cripple her.

  She’d be doing it for them. Just a few pain meds to start, so she could appear normal, so they’d stop worrying about her. Just a few, so she wouldn’t disappoint them.

  No. No, she couldn’t think like that. Couldn’t even allow an aspirin to pass her lips. She knew it wouldn’t be one, or ten, or two dozen. She’d take them until she was numb, until the pain stopped or she did.

  No, she thought again, as she turned onto her street. Her mother was right, Colleen was right. She deserved the hurt, deserved to suffer. It was the only way to pay for her sins, and she’d just have to resign herself to a lifetime of payments.

  She frowned as she caught sight of two towheaded teens on bikes near her mailbox. She lived in a low-key neighborhood, but it was almost fall and bored teenagers were a fact of life. As she approached, one pointed toward her. The other slammed her mailbox closed, then hopped on his bike to pedal away.

  Recognition flared, pushing her misery away. “Oh, no you don’t,” she muttered, accelerating and honking her horn.

  They slowed to a stop as she approached. Charlie’s brothers looked tired, scared, and sad. What the hell was going on?

  “Kyle, Finn, what are you doing here? Why are you wearing backpacks?”

  “Uh . . . ” Kyle’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he glanced around nervously. Finn kept his eyes downcast, but misery telegraphed itself through every line of his body, bowed beneath an overstuffed backpack. “We just came by to leave you a note, asking you to go see Charlie. We’ll take off now.”

  “No, you won’t. Not until you tell me what’s going on.” She threw the car into park, then killed the engine. “Does Charlie know you’re here? Why is Finn upset? Did you guys get into a fight?”

  Even as she peppered him with questions, her mind jumped to the only logical conclusion for both of them to be on their bikes with backpacks, far from their house or the school, and Finn’s tear-streaked face. Oh God, they were running away.

  “Come inside,” she ordered, getting out of the car. “We’ll talk.”

  Kyle shook his head, and she wondered if she’d have to chase him down the street. “We gotta go. You should go see Charlie.”

  Dear God, please let me find the right thing to say. “Kyle, Finn’s tired from pedaling all the way over here. I think he could use a break. Why don’t we go inside for a little while? You and I can talk while Finn has something to eat.”

  Kyle looked at his younger brother, indecision twisting his features. Then the O’Halloran family bond won out, and he nodded.

  Siobhan breathed a sigh as she escorted the boys up the driveway to her front door, relieved that she’d said the right thing to get him to agree. Now she had to hope that she continued to say the right things to keep the boys from running away and breaking Charlie’s heart.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Kyle squared off with her once they made it to her kitchen. “You gotta promise not to call Charlie.”

  “You know I can’t promise that,” Siobhan answered. “He’s got to be frantic that you’re not home. He’s probably already called the police.”

  “He doesn’t know yet.” Kyle eyed her warily as he built a massive sandwich for himself and a matching one for Finn. “I left a note explaining things, but he’s been working late a lot. He probably won’t get home until after dark.”

  God, by nightfall they could have been out of town, on a bus, or picked up by random strangers. The thought made her stomach turn. “And Lorelei?”

  “She’s working late tonight too.”

  “So you planned this out,” she said, her dread growing when he nodded. “Why, Kyle? You know this will hurt your brother.”

  “Charlie’s being mean,” Finn announced. “He yelled at me.”

  Concern gnawed at her gut. Charlie being mean to his brothers? Yelling at sweet-natured Finn? “Why would he do that?”

  “We had a fight.”

  “Who had a fight?” Siobhan wondered. “You and Charlie?”

  Kyle nodded, but Finn said, “It was my fault.”

  “No, it wasn’t,” Kyle insisted, but his younger brother ignored him, turning tear-filled eyes to Siobhan.

  “I had a nightmare about Mom and Dad. I hadn’t had one in a while, but stuff got bad, and I got worried and then . . .” He shrugged, hanging his head.

  Kyle took up the story. “I went to Finn’s room to make sure he was okay. Charlie ran in and instead of making Finn feel better like he usually does, he yelled at him.”

  Siobhan sank onto a barstool, disbelief weakening her knees. “Charlie yelled at Finn?”

  Kyle nodded, his face pale. “Charlie told Finn to shut up and deal
with it, that life’s not fair. He said Finn wasn’t a kid anymore and Charlie wasn’t going to be around forever, so he needed to grow the eff up.”

  “Oh God.” Shock slid down her back like ice, followed by a heated blast of anger.

  “So I pushed him,” Kyle said. “I told him to shut up and leave Finn alone. He . . . it was like he woke up or something. He apologized to Finn, then to me, and then he just walked out of the room like a zombie.”

  “He isn’t the same no more,” Finn said, sniffling. “He acts like nothing’s wrong, but you can tell.”

  Kyle swallowed hard as he fought for composure. “Charlie misses you. He sleeps on the couch every night. He works late, and he— He fake-smiles at us like people did after the funeral. He hasn’t been the same since you broke up with him. And then those people came.”

  “People?”

  “Like the people who came after Mom and Dad died,” Finn explained. “Asking us if we were all right but making it seem like something was wrong.”

  God, he meant the child welfare people. Pain stabbed at her, so sharp and deep she couldn’t breathe. “I’m so sorry, guys. I’m sure Charlie didn’t mean to lash out at you like that. He’s just—he’s got a lot to deal with right now.”

  “He could deal with it if you were there,” Kyle told her. “You make him happy.”

  “Can’t you get back together now?”

  The hope in Finn’s eyes cut her to her soul. “No. We can’t.”

  “Because of your daughter?” Kyle asked. “Because of what she said?”

  Siobhan knotted her fingers together. “I made a lot of mistakes a few years ago. Bad mistakes. I had problems and I tried to fix them with pills. Doing that hurt my family. I’m still trying to make it up to them.”

  “But you apologized, right?” Kyle asked. “You said you were sorry. You said you wouldn’t do it again.”