Chapter 33
CHAPTER 33
My sister gapes at me, her jaw slackened. “You never told me that,” Mallory says, her voice laced with disbelief. “Jesus. No wonder you fully withdrew emotionally after you got back from DC.”
I glance at Jill whose gaze is locked on her fingers, twisting in her lap. “No wonder we lost our ray of sunshine,” Jill whispers. “You lost your sparkle that day and you’ve only just started to get it back. Like a star trying to twinkle from behind a storm cloud.”
“It was… it was too hard. I knew Holden already blamed me for the accident—” As I try to speak, my throat constricts as if being squeezed by a strong hand. I struggle to push out words through the lump that has formed, trying to keep my emotions in check.
“You don’t know that,” Jill interjects but I cut her off with merely a look.
“He punished me for that. He punished me until a couple months ago when he offered me this part.”
“Did Mom and Dad know?” Mallory asks.
I nod. “They didn’t know all the gritty details, but because there was an investigation, I had to tell them. I didn’t need a lawyer or anything, thank God.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Jill offers again, gently. “And there’s nothing in that journal entry that suggests Holden blamed you.”
She’s not wrong about that.
“Not yet.”
But we both know the weeks following Duncan’s fall were the worst.
As I run my fingers over the notebook paper, I can feel the ridges and valleys of the words that have been scribbled so aggressively in a cheap BIC pen. The ink has seeped into the fibers of the page, leaving behind indented letters that resemble braille. It's as if Holden’s words were waiting all this time, begging to be felt and understood, their urgency palpable on the rough surface of the paper.
Jill stands and slides into the open spot next to me on the couch, tapping the page with her trembling finger. “Which is why you have to keep reading. You can’t leave a fresh wound open and bleeding. You have to cauterize it.”
I shift uncomfortably, my mind racing with conflicting thoughts.
“What about an old wound?” I finally ask, my voice hollow.
Part of me wants to move on, but another part can't let go of the pain. It’s the only thing I’ve known for years and there’s a sick sense of comfort in the known versus the unknown.
“Even more reason to finally treat it with more than a Band-Aid,” Mallory said.
Jill's slender fingers intertwine with mine, her touch delicate and warm. A wave of comfort washes over me as we sit hand in hand and my sister’s arm glides around my shoulders, hugging me into her.
“Come on,” Jill says. “It’s time.”
With a deep breath, I turn the page…