Chapter 53
53
“ I ’m checking in, Big Brother.” Darcy's voice came over the phone. She wasn't overly excited, but she also didn't sound depressed. Simon counted that as a win.
“How are you feeling? Is everything stable?” He had to ask.
“Yes, sir,” she replied. That told him what he needed to know: She was not pleased with the weekly check in he’d instituted. To be fair, she was already checking in with Mom all the time, too. From what he understood, Darcy's fences had gotten a little taller and her locks a little tighter after the scare she'd given them.
He tried to apologize for the way he and mom were reacting, but it came out as an excuse. “We were petrified, Darcy.”
“You being petrified doesn't mean you get to control my life!”
Simon bit his tongue. He paid her bills. Though he understood at the heart of it that shouldn't mean he got to actually control her life, it irritated the hell out of him. She needed some parts of her life monitored.
Darcy was already talking. “I’m considering getting an apartment. ”
He jerked back so hard, he would have smacked his head into the wall had he been standing any closer. How in the hell was she going to do that? She didn't have a job or any income at all. But he tried not to act like an asshole. So, he asked, “What's your plan?”
“My plan is to go out and look for an apartment.”
He took a breath before he spoke. “Apartments are going to require first and last month's rent, maybe also a deposit.” He started rattling off the kinds of things she could expect like bills—many of which would also require a deposit because, as far as he knew, she didn’t have any credit history at all.
“Thank you,” she told him dryly, “for that very informative Google search that I've already done.”
She was trying every last nerve. But he was being a dick. He was being a dick to everyone lately. He was mad at the world, even though he kept reminding himself that this was the choice he would make time and time again.
He'd known he couldn't have Carlisle and his family. In the end, he would always choose his mom and Darcy. They needed him. Carlisle didn't. As much as he hated to admit it, he needed her far more than she needed him.
Focusing back to the call, he caught the tail end of Darcy saying, “—and Mom's going to help with money.”
He was shaking his head so hard he thought it would fly off. Simon made himself sit down on the couch, so he didn't rattle his limbs off. With what money?
His mother was missing days at work. Shouldn't he have been consulted about this? And, if mom was only helping a little, what was Darcy going to pay her rent with? What would happen when she was evicted for not paying?
He didn't like this at all. He couldn’t even process what a crappy idea it was, and he wanted to tell Darcy to “put mom on the phone.” But it was Darcy's phone. He calmed down by telling himself that he would call Mom later and let her know what crazy ideas Darcy had.
“Carlisle should never have told you to sell your paintings.” He didn't even realize he'd said it out loud. How mad he was. How, every time he thought about it, it boiled in him because that's what started this whole thing!
Simon had believed at least the ramifications of Carlisle's misplaced praise were over, but clearly, they weren't.
“What!” It wasn’t a question. Darcy was mad.
“I'm sorry. I didn't mean to?—”
“What did you say?”
“I just meant that she's the one who told you to try and sell it. She's the reason that you went out to the gallery, stayed out too long, missed your medication . . .” And it had all gone downhill from there.
Darcy could have died .
Even the thought still left him petrified. The back of his throat constricted. His whole body felt as if his bones froze through the center of each limb. He couldn't imagine life without his sister.
But as he calmed himself down, he realized his sister had gone dead quiet, too.
The voice that came through was not Darcy's usual, forceful self, but a soft, quiet, sad retelling. “You and Mom have always treated me like I can't do anything.”
“Darcy . . .”
“Shut up!” There was the force he was used to. He tried to listen.
“You acted like buying the paints and canvases was something that you did to keep me busy so I didn't cause other problems. And I tried not to cause other problems. I'm expensive. I'm a lot of trouble. I'm a burden and I know it—” Her voice cracked and Simon couldn’t take it.
“No Darcy, please. I?— ”
“Shut up!” she told him again.
Oh God . He did not want his sister to feel like a burden. What could he tell her so she didn't feel that way?
“Carlisle told me she loved my work. She gushed about how amazing it was.”
“Mom and I love your work too, Darcy.”
“But you tell me that while you're treating me like it's a hobby you used to keep me in the house. How am I supposed to trust that?”
Shit. He'd not seen it that way.
“And it doesn't matter how good you think it is. You're my family. All the times you were like oh Darcy, this is so amazing they don’t mean much. You're my brother. You're supposed to say that. But Carlisle had no reason to tell me unless she believed it. She told me her cousin tried to buy the painting off her and looked me up online.” Darcy was thrilled—rightly so, if he admitted it—by Carlisle’s praise.
He hadn’t realized his own praise fell on deaf ears or was countered by his over-parenting.
Darcy was still going. “And if you want to know how I'm going to pay my rent, I sold a piece already.”
“What?” He was stunned.
She repeated herself. “I. Sold. My first piece. The gallery wanted my art. I screwed up. I didn't get it to them the next day like I said I would.” She sounded upset with herself, as if she were confessing. “Because I was at the gallery too long, then I went to the coffee shop to celebrate, and everything got out of whack. I was afraid I ruined it. But they said they would take it and two other pieces. They sold the first one Saturday.”
She’d just been released from the hospital and she'd already sold a piece . He didn’t even know if there was an art scene in Des Moines. Well, he didn't know but for the first time he was willing to bet Darcy did. She had blazed right through Omaha and gone to Des Moines. She was smart and, apparently, she was a lot more capable than he and his mother had given her credit for.
“Don't you dare be mad at Carlisle for what she said to me.”
His sister's accusation was an arrow piercing straight through his ribcage and into his heart.