18. Cami #2
“My pleasure,” Pedro said, and he meant it.
I didn’t look back. I’d learned that on the worst day of my life. You don’t look back. You walk through the door and you let it close behind you.
Behind me, Greta was still saying my name. Begging now. The same word over and over, the way Logan had said it at the altar.
It didn’t move me at all.
***
The hospital called that evening, the Caldwell collapse still rolling on a loop across every channel.
Sal answered, listened for a moment, then handed the phone to me with a strange expression on his face.
“It’s for you.”
I took it. “Hello?”
“Is this Camellia Brennan?” A woman’s voice. Professional. Clinical.
“Yes.”
“This is St. Mary’s Hospital. You’re listed as next of kin for Rosalie Brennan. She’s been admitted and is asking for you.”
My stomach dropped.
“Admitted for what?”
“I’m not able to discuss details over the phone. But she’s asking for you specifically. Room 412.”
The line went dead.
I lowered the phone. Stared at it for a long moment.
“What is it?” Sal’s voice was careful. Gentle.
“Rosalie.” The name felt strange in my mouth. Foreign. “She’s in the hospital. She’s asking for me.”
Silence. The television droned on in the background, still covering the Caldwell collapse.
“You don’t have to go.” Sal took the phone from my hand. Set it aside. “You don’t owe her anything.”
“I know.”
“She doesn’t deserve your time. Your energy. Your compassion.”
“I know.”
He studied my face. Whatever he saw there made him nod slowly.
“But you need to go.”
“I think I do.” I didn’t know how to explain it. The pull I felt, despite everything. The need for closure. For answers. For one final confrontation with the sister who had destroyed my life. “I need to see her. I need to... I don’t know. End it. Properly.”
Sal stood up. Held out his hand.
“Then I’ll drive you.”
***
The hospital was quiet.
Sal walked me to the elevator, then pressed a kiss to my forehead.
“I’ll be right here when you’re done.” He gestured toward a bench near the entrance. “Take as long as you need.”
I nodded. Stepped into the elevator. Watched the doors close on his face.
Room 412 was at the end of a long hallway. I walked toward it slowly, my footsteps echoing on the linoleum, my heart beating harder with every step.
The door was open.
Rosalie was lying in the bed, small and pale against the white sheets. She looked hollowed out. Empty. Like someone had scooped out everything that made her Rosalie and left only the shell behind.
She turned her head when I walked in. Her eyes were red. Swollen from crying.
“You came.”
I stopped at the foot of the bed. Didn’t move closer.
“The hospital called. They said you asked for me.”
Rosalie frowned, confusion flickering across her pale features. “I didn’t... I didn’t even know they were calling you. They must have just... you’re listed as next of kin.”
Of course I was. I’d never thought to change it. Never thought I’d need to.
“Why am I here then?” I kept my voice neutral. “If you didn’t ask for me.”
“I...” She struggled to sit up. Failed. Fell back against the pillows. “I don’t know. Maybe I did ask. I can’t remember. Everything’s been...” She stopped. Her hand moved to her stomach. Rested there for a moment. Then fell away. “The baby’s gone.”
The words hit me harder than I expected.
“What?”
“Miscarriage.” Her voice was flat. Distant. “The stress. Logan leaving. Everything falling apart. My body couldn’t...” She stopped. Swallowed. “It’s gone.”
I stood there. Trying to find something to say. Trying to feel something other than the complicated tangle of emotions knotting in my chest.
“I’m sorry.”
Rosalie’s laugh was bitter. Broken.
“No you’re not.”
I considered lying. Considered saying the polite thing, the expected thing, the thing that would make this easier.
“You’re right.” The honesty surprised us both. “I’m not sorry about your karma. About the consequences catching up to you.” I paused. “But I’m sorry you’re alone. I’m sorry you’re going through this without anyone to hold your hand.”
“I had someone.” Rosalie’s voice cracked. “I had Logan. I had a future. I had everything. And then you...”
“I didn’t take anything from you.”
“He was supposed to be mine.” The words came out like venom. “I saw him first. I rejected him and then you swooped in and took him and I had to watch you two together for years, knowing he should have been mine...”
“I didn’t know.” I kept my voice steady. Calm. “I didn’t know you’d met him first. I didn’t know you wanted him. How could I have known when you never told me?”
“You never know anything.” Rosalie spat the words. “That’s the worst part. You’re so oblivious. So perfect. Everything comes so easily to you. The job, the fiancé, the life. You just float through everything while the rest of us struggle. You make everything look effortless.”
“It wasn’t effortless.” My hands were shaking but my voice stayed steady. “It was never effortless. I just learned to hide the effort. To make it look easy so no one would see how hard I was working. So no one would know how much I was struggling.”
“And I learned to burn things down.” Rosalie laughed again. That bitter, broken sound. “We’re quite the pair, aren’t we?”
Silence stretched between us. Two sisters. Two strangers. Two people who had once shared a childhood and would never share anything again.
“Get out.” Rosalie’s voice was quiet now. Exhausted. “Just... get out. I don’t want to look at you anymore.”
I looked at her. At this woman who had been my baby sister. Who I had protected and defended and loved with everything I had. Who had once been small enough to fall asleep on my chest. Who had run to me first with every scraped knee and every broken heart.
My chest twisted, sharp and painful. Because despite everything, despite all the betrayal and the lies and the destruction, part of me still loved her. Part of me still remembered the little girl with the gap-toothed smile who used to climb into my lap and beg for one more bedtime story.
That girl was gone. Maybe she’d never existed at all.
“I wish you luck, Rosalie.” The words came out steady, but there was a crack in my voice I couldn’t quite hide. My eyes were burning and I blinked hard against the sting. “I hope you find whatever it is you’re looking for. I hope you build a life that makes you happy.”
I paused. Took a breath. Forced out the words that needed to be said even though they felt like glass in my throat.
“But don’t contact me again. Don’t call. Don’t write. Don’t show up at my door expecting forgiveness.”
Rosalie’s face crumpled. For a moment, she looked like the little sister I remembered, lost and scared and alone.
I almost reached for her. Almost crossed the distance between us and took her hand.
But then I remembered the laugh behind her hand at my wedding. The smirk in the photo. The eighteen months of lies.
“Cami...” Her voice shrank to that small, scared register.
“You made your choice.” I stepped back toward the door, my heart aching in a way I hadn’t expected. “You made it over and over again, every time you climbed into bed with him, every time you lied to my face, every time you smiled behind your hand while my life fell apart.”
I opened the door. Paused. Looked back at her one more time.
“Now I’m making mine.”
I walked out before she could see the tears gathering in my eyes.
My mother was in the corridor.
She was sitting in one of the plastic chairs, her hands twisted together in her lap, her face pale and lined with worry. And beside her, for the first time in longer than I could remember, was my father.
They both stood up when they saw me.
“Camellia.” My mother moved toward me, arms outstretched. “I’m so glad you came. Rosalie needs you. The family needs to come together. After everything that’s happened, we need to heal, to forgive, to...”
“No.”
The word stopped her in her tracks.
“What?”
“I’m not here to forgive anyone.” I kept my voice steady. Firm. “I’m not here to heal the family. I came because the hospital called and I thought Rosalie was asking for me. I’ve said what I needed to say. Now I’m leaving.”
“Camellia, please.” My mother’s eyes were filling with tears. “You’re my daughter. Rosalie is your sister. We’re family. Family forgives. Family moves on. Family...”
“Family was supposed to be there for me.” The words came out harder than I intended. “Family was supposed to protect me. To believe me. To stand by my side when everything fell apart.”
“I tried...”
“You asked me to understand the woman who was fucking my fiancé.” I stepped closer, and my mother flinched. “Five minutes after I found out. Five minutes after my whole life collapsed. You asked me to think about her feelings.”
“She was pregnant. She was scared. I was trying to...”
“You chose her.” The truth of it settled over me, heavy and undeniable.
“You chose her over me. And when I disappeared, when Greta handed me over to a stranger, when I could have been killed, no one even noticed I was gone. No one came looking. No one filed a report. No one demanded answers. You all just decided I’d run off to lick my wounds, and you went back to coddling Rosalie. ”
“We thought...”
“Enough.”
The voice came from beside her. Quiet. Hoarse. And it took me a second to understand that it was my father.
My mother turned to him, startled. “John...”
“I said enough, Linda.” He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t have to. He’d just done the one thing I had never in my life seen him do. He’d told her to stop. And she had.
He looked at me. His eyes were wet, his face gray and old in a way I didn’t remember, his hands shaking at his sides.
“You’re right,” he said. “About all of it. I knew something was wrong that day. I knew it in my gut the second he said your sister’s name.
And I knew it again when you didn’t come home, and I let your mother tell me you’d just run off, because that was easier than picking a side.
” His voice cracked. “I have spent your entire life choosing easy over you. I told myself I was keeping the peace. I was just being a coward. And it cost me my daughter.”
I couldn’t speak. My throat had closed.
“I tried to stand up, at the church. For about ten seconds.” A terrible, broken laugh.
“Ten seconds, and then I sat back down, because that is what I always do. I sit back down. I have hated myself every single day since.” He took a shaking breath.
“I’m not asking you to come back. I lost the right to ask you for anything in that church.
I just needed you to hear one person in this family say it out loud.
You didn’t run. You were taken. And not one of us moved to find you. That’s on us. That’s on me.”
The tears I’d been holding back spilled over.
Because this was the thing I’d never expected. Not from him. The only apology in this whole family that didn’t come with a but, that didn’t ask me to soften it or share it or hand it back wrapped in forgiveness. He just laid it down between us and let it be true.
“I don’t know what to do with that,” I admitted, my voice wrecked. “I don’t. Maybe someday. But not now. Not yet.”
“I know.” He nodded, and a tear slid down into the deep lines of his face. “I know, sweetheart.”
My mother’s mouth opened. “John, tell her she has to...”
“No, Linda.” He didn’t even look at her. “I’m done telling her what she has to do. We did more than enough of that.”
I stepped back toward the elevator. Looked at the two of them, my mother and my father, finally standing on opposite sides of something.
“Goodbye, Mom.” I pressed the button. Then, softer, to him: “Goodbye, Dad.”
It wasn’t forgiveness. But it wasn’t nothing either.
The elevator doors opened.
“This isn’t you.” My mother’s voice was desperate. Pleading. “This cold, hard person. This isn’t my daughter. This isn’t...”
“You’re right.” I stepped into the elevator. Turned to face her. “The daughter you knew is gone. She died on a warehouse floor when the family she loved threw her away like garbage.” My eyes went to my father one last time. “Most of her, anyway.”
The doors started to close.
“This is who I am now.”
I watched my mother’s face disappear behind the metal doors.
The tears came then. Silent. Streaming down my cheeks in the empty elevator. I let them fall. Let myself feel the grief of it, the loss of not just a sister but a whole family. Parents who should have protected me. A sister who should have loved me. A life that should have been different.
But grief wasn’t the same as regret.
I didn’t regret walking away. I couldn’t. Not when staying would have meant shrinking myself down to fit their expectations, accepting crumbs of love from people who had proven, over and over again, that I would always come second.
The elevator reached the lobby.
I wiped my face. Straightened my spine. Walked across the polished floor.
Sal was exactly where he said he’d be. Sitting on the bench near the entrance. Waiting for me.
He stood when he saw me. His eyes scanned my face, taking in the red eyes, the tear tracks, the grief I couldn’t quite hide.
He didn’t ask questions. Didn’t demand explanations.
He just opened his arms.
I walked into them.
“It’s done,” I whispered against his chest. “It’s finally done.”
“Are you okay?”
I turned the question over. Really turned it over.
My sister was lying in a hospital bed, alone and broken. My mother was probably still crying in that corridor, wondering where she’d gone wrong. And my father, for the first time in my life, had finally said the thing he should have said years ago. Too late to fix any of it. But he’d said it.
And I was here. In the arms of a man who loved me. Who had chosen me. Who would never let anyone hurt me again.
“Yes.” I pulled back. Looked up at him. “I’m okay.”
He kissed my forehead.
“Let’s go home.”