Chapter 20 Eight Hours to the Winnipeg Petco #2
I now understand what it means to feel your blood boil.
Not so much at what she’s saying (I’d assumed as much) but the way she’s saying it.
Reducing my year of heartache and pain to something silly.
I set my paddle on my lap, looking absurd in this giant red boat.
I might as well be arguing about the dissolution of my marriage in a plastic clown shoe.
“But I respected you enough to let you make your own choices,” she continues, ignoring the way my face is turning red.
“But you couldn’t respect me enough to let me make mine.
And the worst part is, I knew you wouldn’t.
I knew from the second you showed up you were angling for something, but I got caught up in nostalgia and hope like an idiot. ”
Her pointed words jab me between the ribs, one after another.
“The only reason we didn’t immediately elope in the first place was because of the timing with your divorce, but if I could do it all over again, I would’ve married Peter that day without ever telling you!”
“You wouldn’t have!”
“I would so,” she spits. “I would’ve married the crap out of him!”
What can only be described as a feral howl releases itself from my throat. At Laurel, the lake, my stupid paddle. I must look petty and childish. I may as well be calling out for our mom and crying about how unfair it all is. “You’re so self-centered, Laurel.”
“I get it.” She punches her paddle into the air. “I was a horrible sister and you hate me.”
Despite it all, I somehow manage a laugh. “Laurel, I wish I could hate you.” I practically beat my chest with my palm. “It would be wonderful to write you off—but I can’t because I love you and you’re the only person I’ll ever have.”
It’s so simple and primal, it decimates me.
She’s my rock.
Our parents took off at the first opportunity. My husband left. It’s only a matter of time before Ethan leaves. Laurel’s the only person who’s ever felt permanent. She’s all I’ve ever had. But I’m not all she has. She’s ready to dispose of me. She’s leaving me behind for something better. For more.
My love for her pricks at my insides. I love Laurel with such untamed vehemence I have to keep it close. Otherwise, it’ll explode from my heart like a defective box of thumbtacks.
I want to let her in, but she’s not saying anything back.
It’s dangerous, the way fear can corrode, and I feel my defenses going back up in real time.
“God, you’re so desperate to leave me behind, aren’t you?
You can’t wait to twist yourself into a pretzel so someone will keep loving you.
You’re no better than our parents. It’s so pathetic. ”
She flinches like I’ve slapped her. I might as well have, because I know at this moment, even if we find a way past this, I’ll never undo that flinch. I’ve struck her once, and now she knows I’m capable of it.
She considers for a moment but then says, “If you think any of that is true, you’re a bigger idiot than I thought.”
My eyes burn with unshed tears. I have no words, and that’s the worst part, because I hate that. I hate feeling my emotions seep out of my body like sweat and having nothing to say. Nothing to do but sit in my own awful feelings.
I stand up, not sure what I’m about to say but desperate to say something . “Laurel—”
But I don’t get to whatever I was ramping up to because my kayak flips over, and I topple into the water with a percussive flop.
My ankle catches and knocks against the boat on my way to the water’s surface. The cold water stings against my shins, my belly, and the side of my face as though I’ve walked into a sliding glass door. The only difference is that shattered glass doesn’t shoot up your nose the way lake water does.
I see the paddle bobbing in front of me when I come up for air and grab on to it. I dart my head around, but the kayak isn’t anywhere.
“It’s in the tree,” Laurel tells me before I have to ask. She’s headed for me at an impressive speed. Is she, like, really good at kayaking?
I squint up at her. “The tree?”
“The fallen tree to your left. When you went down, it flew in the other direction and got caught in the branches.” I follow her finger and, sure enough, I see a moss-covered trunk jutting into the side of the lake with a long red kayak half in the water, half hoisted up by one of its branches.
“Here. Get in with me. I’ll take you to it. ”
She holds my paddle while I grip the side of the boat. “Not like that. Reach your left arm all the way to the opposite side,” she instructs, and I clumsily follow.
I heave myself into the boat, drenched from head to toe, shivering as steady drips of water fall from my head in wet plops. My eyes wander between our chaos and the stillness of the lake, tracking the way we’re drifting through the water, the world moving around us in slow motion.
“I can’t wear white to your wedding now. So that’s settled.”
She laughs, a quick reprieve from our present fight. “You still could.”
“It’s a little translucent now.”
“We’ve all seen your tatas. No modesty left in this group.”
She looks at the tree line like there’s something up there she needs to see. Then, apropos of nothing, she asks, “What are you more afraid of? Petey and I getting divorced or staying together?”
The question slices through me. The familiar refrain I’ve been repeating all weekend, This won’t end well , is right there on the tip of my tongue. But that fear for her wasn’t my immediate feeling when she told me she was proposing. It was loneliness.
“I’m not leaving you behind, Charley. I’m building a life with someone I love.
” She wipes her eyes with her wrist, and when she pulls it away she looks devastated…
for me. Her anguish on my behalf is written all over her face.
“You’re so afraid of becoming our parents, you never became anyone.
You never go for things you really want.
You never take risks. It honestly makes me sad, Char. ”
My voice is quiet, and I can’t even look at her when I say, “I’m taking a risk with Ethan.”
“Are you, though?” she asks.
When she accepts that I’m not going to respond, she wades over to the kayak, and we free it from the tree with our paddles.
“I’m getting married today, Charley. You don’t need to be happy about it, but I’d prefer if you were there. Not because I like you right now, but because you’re my sister, and I love you. Understood?”
I nod.
She juts her chin in the direction of the neighboring boat. “Good. Now get out.”
Once I’m seated, she hands me my paddle with apparent bitterness, which is a difficult emotion to convey with object work alone.
Then, before my paddle has even touched the water, I hear the first bloodcurdling scream.