48. Thea
thea
I bite down on my lip, my fingers hovering over the send button on my text and sigh, shaking my head at how ridiculous I was being.
Lue has asked me to go with her to pick out a dress for a dance that’s going on at her school this weekend. I’m thrilled she wants me to help, and that despite Logan and me barely speaking, she kept coming around and allowing me to be a part of her life.
Even if she still sarcastically calls me Mom.
I told her that Logan and I weren’t really married, that she doesn’t need to call me that, and if she did it where Logan could hear, he would probably be pretty ticked.
Lue shrugged at me when I said it, saying she didn’t really care.
She was turning into quite a spitfire in her old age.
My sisters, now knowing the truth of everything and being highly aware that Logan and I were technically husband and wife, thought that Lue’s jokes about it were hilarious and encouraged her to call them her aunts.
She was more than happy to oblige.
Even Ophelia, who had to go back to college, and Tori, who was sticking around for now, had gotten in on the joke.
I didn’t think it was funny.
Mostly because every time I heard it, my heart ached just a little bit more at how untrue the statements were.
I wasn’t really her mom, as much as I wanted to be. They weren’t really her aunts, as much as they and I wanted that to be.
I was terrified that we were only drawing this out, and any day now, Logan would serve me divorce papers and be done with me completely.
“Oh my gosh, Thea, suck it up,” I tell myself, flopping back on my couch and resting my splinted hand on my forehead. I have another week, possibly two, of wearing it and can’t wait to get it off.
The pain that hurts the most are the cuts on my leg. There’s one that is especially deep and hit one of my nerves, and that was the one that made me limp the most.I have a cane I can use to get around, but it was kind of useless when I couldn’t put too much weight on my wrist.
“Just do it. Worst he can say is no.” I shrug to myself and lift my phone, finally pressing send.
Lue invited me to go dress shopping with her. Is that alright with you?
There. Done.
Now we wait.
My phone pings in my hand before I can fully set it down.
Yes, of course.
Of course …Huh. Okay. That’s got to be a good sign.
A key turns in the lock, and I turn in surprise to find Tori entering the apartment. All my sisters now have keys, since they’ve been helping me a lot since I got home from the hospital.
“Hey,” Tori says, shutting the door behind her and coming into the living room, sitting in the armchair across from me.
I stare at her for a moment, her brown hair chopped shorter than I’ve ever seen it, and tattoos are on her legs and arms in intricate details.
It all suits her, this life she’s carved out for herself, and as much as I hate that she’s gone all the time, I am happy she seemed to find herself along the way.
“Hey, what are you up to?”
Since I’ve been home a couple weeks, Tori hasn’t mentioned leaving, but found herself busy around town, finding things to do and then helping Juniper and Annmarie at the bar when they needed it.
“Not much,” she sighs. “I was thinking of planning my next trip for when you’re better.”
I stare at my little sister for a moment, my heart aching. I miss her terribly, and she’s sitting three feet away from me.
“Thank you for coming…I needed you.” My words are slow and thoughtful, my brain telling me not to pressure her, and my heart just bursting with the need to tell her every thought, every worry, every concern I’ve had since we went our separate ways.
She nods her head, her eyes guarded.
I’ve wasted so much time allowing space and silence in between us, letting this whole thing fester to the point that she only came home when my life was in grave danger.
I don’t want that kind of relationship—the one where you only show up for the milestones of life.
I want the phone calls and random visits too.
“Tori.” I clear my throat and adjust in my seat, wincing slightly at the tinge of pain that radiates through my thigh.
“I’m sorry.” The words fall into the silent room, and Tori stares at me warily for a moment before I see her turn, pursing her lips and blinking.
“I’m sorry that I screwed up so royally that you felt like you had to leave and push everyone, especially me, away.
” Tears fall down my own cheeks now, the last few weeks falling over me in a jumble of emotion.
I just can’t hold it all in anymore.
“I love you,” I tell her, wiping at my cheek with my good hand. “I love you, and I really want you to forgive me.”
“Forgive you?” Tori finally looks at me, and her eyes, now looking into mine, allow tears to fall. “I don’t need to forgive anything because you didn’t do anything worth forgiving.”
I blink and what Annmarie said weeks ago hits me. “You don’t blame yourself for everything, do you?”
“Of course I do!” she explodes, standing from her chair, her breaths coming out in hot spurts. “I failed you and our sisters so badly that we ended up having to turn Eric in for actual murder to get out from under his freaking thumb.”
“I was the one who chose to bring him into our lives.”
“I encouraged you!” she says, placing her hand on her chest and taking a deep breath.
“It was this light at the end of a dark, dark tunnel. Mom and Dad were gone, and I had no idea what to do, so I thought if you had a partner, if you and he took over taking care of our sisters, I could finally have my own life again.”
Tori presses her hand to her chest, breaths heaving and her mind working through what to say. I’m shocked at her words, never having realized that’s what she thought she was doing, even if I never felt that way.
“I was selfish.” She shakes her head. “Selfish and self-serving and so fucking stupid for pushing you.”
“You didn’t like him, though.”
“I didn’t have to like him to use him,” she says, whispering the words like she’s ashamed to say them.
I sit up on the couch, frowning at her. “Astoria, nothing that has happened is because of you. If anything, I was the reason he was in our lives. I married him, for God’s sake, I brought that on us all.”
She takes a deep breath, brushing away the tears that fall down her face. “But I pushed you.”
I pause to think this over. We’ve had so many years of this festering, and now knowing that she’s been blaming herself, I realize that no matter what I say, it will take more than one conversation for us to move past this.
I was just grateful we were having the conversation at all.
“I would have married him either way, Tori. I would have because he was the same vision to me as he was to you—someone to save me from the dark place I was in. Someone who could take over the burdens, the responsibilities. I was in a weak place, and I used Eric to act like I was okay.”
“I did too,” she whispers to me, coming to sit beside me on the couch.
We both take a few minutes to breathe, both sitting in our thoughts.
“I thought you were angry with me all this time,” I start, turning to look at her. Her sad eyes connect with mine. “When you wouldn’t answer my calls and messages, I thought you were punishing me. ”
“I was punishing myself,” she breathes out. “I was angry at myself that everything had escalated so quickly, that I had encouraged it.”
“But.” I pause to think of her words when she left. “You were so angry with me when you left. Your words to me…” I trail off, not wanting to repeat them.
“I wasn’t thinking straight, and I shouldn’t have said what I did because I didn’t actually feel that way.
” Another tear slips down her face as she picks at her bracelet.
“It was my weird way of trying to make everything okay. Of trying to convince myself that none of it was my own fault, that it was all you.”
“Well, that worked,” I state bluntly, not wanting to tread water after being so open with her.
We’ve done that long enough.
“I owe you,” she says. “Apologies and some groveling and?—”
“Time,” I interrupt her, turning to stare at her. “Time and love are all I’ve ever wanted from you.”
“I’ve always loved you.” Her eyes well again as she looks at me. “You’re my big sister.”
Unable to hold myself back, I reach over and pull her to me, wrapping my arm around her shoulders and holding her tightly.
It wasn’t the end of our healing. It was just the start.
But I was so abundantly grateful to have even that.