Chapter 9
The next morning, Keisha got up, headed to the clinic, looking at a long full day, since every day seemed to be that way. She even ran home at noon to check on Kelly, who sent her away, almost angry that she felt the need to come home and check on her baby sister.
With a sigh, Keisha headed back out again, wondering how to make life a little easier on her sister.
It was something she wanted to talk to Kelly about, but her sister was so resistant to everything right now—particularly after this latest fall—that Keisha really wasn’t sure what to do.
All day she kept it in the back of her mind, and she also couldn’t stop thinking about Jaxon.
She hadn’t expected to reach out to him, but neither had she expected him to reach back.
But he did and had been there for her in every way.
She groaned, wondering what the hell she was doing with her life by filing for a divorce.
Why she had even gone in that direction?
Yet she couldn’t imagine any other option.
If she’d asked him for a break, or a chance to slowly get used to having him home again, would that have gone over well? Not likely.
As far as he was concerned, this was his house too. The fact that he’d come back home from rehab, and she hadn’t even given him that space to land, also revealed an awful lot about her, and she didn’t like any of it.
Toward the end of the workday, when her vet tech asked her if she was okay, Keisha looked up at her, sighed, and said, “Yeah, just, you know, personal problems.”
“Those are the devil for all of us,” she agreed. “If there’s anything I can do to help somehow, let me know.” And, with that, her tech locked up and headed home for the day.
Keisha looked around and realized she’d gone through the entire day but had little recollection of the patients and clients she had seen, and that wasn’t a good thing at all. It was also very typical when she got caught up in all the problems with Kelly—and now with Jaxon.
She called her sister and asked if she wanted Keisha to pick up something for dinner because she was too tired to cook. Kelly barely answered, giving her a monosyllabic reply. The entirety of the exchange included, “No, nothing. I don’t want to eat.”
And that wasn’t the right thing either, so, unsure what to do, Keisha picked up groceries anyway, knowing she would have to cook instead of just picking up something to-go that would make her life easier. Yet, if she didn’t get her sister to eat, things would go downhill again.
Once she was home, she unloaded the car and headed inside to find her sister in the living room, reading.
She barely even looked up. Keisha frowned, headed to the kitchen, then quickly unloaded the groceries.
She put on water for pasta and brought out veggies and some really nice Italian sausage she had picked up.
With the meal cooking and feeling some of the fatigue wearing off, she once again picked up the pieces of what was masquerading as her life right now and headed into the living room, adding a smile as she announced, “Dinner is almost ready.”
“I’m not hungry,” Kelly muttered in a sour tone.
“Maybe not, but you also need to eat, Kel.”
“Or what?” she snapped glaring.
“Or else you’ll end up in the hospital again, and I know how much you love that,” Keisha pointed out in a calm tone, before returning to the kitchen.
She served up dinner, hoping Kelly would get out of her sour mood, but it wasn’t to be.
Keisha went ahead and sat down to eat, but Kelly still refused to come into the kitchen.
Keisha sat here after she’d finished her meal, morosely wondering what avenue she had for helping her sister, yet trying to get her own life back.
It would be nice to think a better life was out there for her and Kelly, but Keisha had no idea how to push Kelly, without pushing too far.
Kelly slowly made her way into the kitchen, while Keisha still sat here, hugging a cup of tea. Kelly frowned at Keisha. “What’s the matter with you?” she asked.
She shrugged. “I’m tired. It’s been a long day. There’s pasta if you want it. If not, I’ll take it for lunch tomorrow.”
“I thought you were buying your lunches out,” she remarked in a mocking tone.
“No. That’s not in the budget.” She frowned at Kelly, trying hard to suppress her anger.
“Look. I get it. You don’t like your life.
You don’t like a whole lot about things these days,” Keisha pointed out, “but you sure aren’t making it easy on me either.
There is food if you want it. If not, don’t eat.
I don’t care.” Immediately horrified at herself for having said that, Keisha got up and walked out.
She headed upstairs to the shower, but it still didn’t wash away the guilt from telling off her sister.
Keisha probably needed to do more of it, but she didn’t have to do it in a mean way.
Still, that was hard to do when you were angry.
And why was Keisha angry? Maybe because her entire life was a mess right now, and she didn’t have a clue how to fix it.
She was also damn confused after having spent time today with Jaxon.
The same damn attraction was there, even if she hadn’t acknowledged it.
She wanted to acknowledge it, and there was no reason why it shouldn’t be there.
There was nothing wrong with the way she felt.
They were still husband and wife, and they had had a robust relationship prior to his deployment, but then he got injured and eventually came home.
So, it’s not as if those feelings shouldn’t be here, but she was the one who had started the divorce proceedings, and she was wondering how much of it was because she’d been so overwhelmed with his injuries, same as she already felt overwhelmed by Kelly’s injuries.
When he had returned, his interactions with Kelly had been brutal, and Keisha had made no effort to understand him or Kelly at all.
Keisha had been stuck between a rock and a hard place, with nowhere to go at all.
This was Keisha’s family home, left to her with the passing of her parents as the eldest child, and Keisha’s sister was living here too, yet not thriving at all.
It wasn’t a good place for Kelly, as far as Keisha could tell, but she knew that any suggestion that Kelly should move out to a special home and should move on with others like her would be met with Kelly’s incredible anger and hurt, not to mention a sense of betrayal. Keisha just didn’t know what to do.
Her hand automatically reached for her phone to call her own therapist. Then she slowly put her cell down again.
It’s not that she shouldn’t talk to somebody, but it was fairly late, and she wasn’t even sure that she could afford late-night calls.
Therapists always said to call anytime, but a bill was always attached.
If she really needed her therapist, Keisha would call her and damn the bills, but right now it was more a case of needing the comfort of knowing somebody was there to talk to.
In a weird way, it was also what she had done with Jaxon earlier today.
She’d reached out and had been absolutely stunned when he had shown up, looking to help.
She knew that he didn’t want the divorce since he’d been dragging his heels about signing the papers.
She wasn’t even sure that she wanted a divorce herself, but she wasn’t sure she wanted a marriage right now either.
It was too complicated with her sister, and, yes, Keisha deserved a life of her own, but she also couldn’t bail on Kelly.
She just couldn’t do that right now. Not when Kelly’s health was constantly in this precarious situation.
Every time she made a step forward and tried to do things, her body seemed to fail her and pushed her back into a wall that neither of them recognized or could see a way through.
That just made things all that much harder.
Keisha wanted her sister to improve, yet it was hard to see a way forward.
That was the reason Keisha had initially gone to see someone to talk her way through all this mess.
The trouble was, Keisha hadn’t been going recently, and now her work with the animals was keeping her alive and mostly sane.
But what if something happened to her? She had to seriously contemplate what the outcome would be for Kelly. The house would be hers, except that, while Keisha was married, it would probably automatically go to Jaxon. And he probably needed a place too.
Feeling the weight of the world on her shoulders, Keisha quickly turned off the lights, curled up in a ball, and let herself cry. Always silently because the thought of somebody hearing her would never be okay, not now that she was responsible for the care of her sister.
She remembered one of the questions that Jaxon had asked her at one point in time, about whether Kelly even needed care.
She was in a wheelchair, but he’d seen so many other people in wheelchairs who lived alone and who took total responsibility for their own daily care.
For Keisha, that remark had seemed sacrilegious.
Why had he even asked such a thing? Now she was more willing to take a look at the hard facts, and the reality told Keisha that she wasn’t sure she could do this for much longer.
And, with that fresh perspective, Keisha understood where Jaxon’s question had come from.
Her response had been anything but kind, and maybe she was the one responsible for all the ill will in the house at the time the three of them all lived here.
She hadn’t been aware that Kelly had been insulting and disrespectful to Jaxon.
Then Jaxon had his own issues for sure, but he was also her husband.
She winced as she realized how many pitfalls she’d slid herself into and hadn’t seen a way out.
It seemed as if Jaxon had been the final straw that had broken the camel’s back, but literally it was probably more like he had been the last straw.
When he had moved out to Timber’s place, it had been a massive relief, and yet Keisha didn’t feel any better.
It was a relief only because the situation at her home had changed and because she could breathe for a moment, but only for a moment because Kelly was still intent on making Keisha’s life difficult.
She winced at her own wayward thoughts. However, her sister was still causing trouble, and, whether Keisha was ready to admit it or not, that thought was always right there in the back of her mind.
It made sense that Kelly was causing trouble because she was petrified of her own future and couldn’t see a way out.
Keisha fell into a deeply troubled sleep. When her phone rang in the middle of the night, she reached out a groggy hand and answered it, only to hear that same mocking laughter in the background. This time, there were words to go with it.
“Are you sure you made the right choice?”