Chapter 12 Collins #2
I sighed. Joanie Cartwright, you subtle but master guilter.
“I don’t know, Mom. I like the apartment.
Brady is nice. I like working at his store.
” And I did—too much, probably. It was easy work, and it kept me busy.
I didn’t have time to think about my camera collecting dust under my bed or my ever-dwindling bank account.
The proximity to the little gaggle of ghosts he had in there felt less than ideal, but Brady’s quest idea lit the smallest hope lantern in my chest. It wasn’t bright enough to push out the dark—not yet, but maybe it could be.
“Okay,” my mom said. “That’s good. I’m happy to hear that.” She handed me a potato peeler, so both of us could start peeling plums and peaches. “Your sister said you spent Friday night with Brady, too.”
“Mo-ther,” I whined. Joanie just laughed. She had a lovely laugh—light, like the wind chimes on the porch. I, unfortunately, inherited my dad’s laugh, which sounded like a whale mating call.
“What?” she said innocently. “You normally don’t make friends so quickly.”
“He’s my boss and my roommate,” I said. Even though she was right, I didn’t usually make friends quickly, or at all.
I was naturally distrustful, which was both fortunate and unfortunate.
It meant I didn’t feel like I had as many people as others did, but it also meant that I generally felt safe from harm at the hands of others.
It came from a place of fear, not from a place of not wanting more.
“So you’re not friends?” she asked.
“I mean, I guess we are kind of becoming friends.” I shrugged. “But it’s only been a week.” Never mind that in that week, I’d spilled my deepest, darkest, and most personal secret to Brady. The secret that I didn’t even tell the other half of my soul and had no plans to.
“Does that mean you’ll have more for me when I see you next weekend?”
“Only one way to find out.” I gave her an annoyed look and went back to peeling peaches. She laughed and let the silence fall. Well, the silence between us. Music was coming from the old radio in the living room. Marty Robbins, it sounded like, but I couldn’t be all the way sure.
I couldn’t remember the last time I had seen my mother two weekends in a row—maybe over Christmas a few years ago?
Whenever I came home, I felt this weird pressure to be “good enough.” And it wasn’t because my parents ever made me feel like I wasn’t, but because they always made me feel like I was.
I wanted to be the version of me that they saw, and too often, I felt like I fell short. So it was easier to avoid the situation altogether.
I heard the door to my parents’ bedroom open. You had to go through the laundry room right behind the kitchen to get to it, so it took a second for my dad’s head to poke through.
“Hey, peanut,” he said with a smile. “How’s it going out here?”
“Like riding a bike,” I said as I peeled a plum and watched its skin drop into the scrap bowl. “Are you ready to go?”
Dex nodded. “All good. I’ll wait until your sister gets here, and then I’ll be off.”
“How long will you be gone?” I asked. It was one thing when I said goodbye to my dad when I was the one leaving, but when it was him, it tugged at me. I felt like I was seven years old again, looking out the front window, waiting for my dad to come home.
“Just a week or two,” he said. “Shorter route this time. Will you be here when I get back?”
I swallowed. “Yeah, I think so.” I felt the warmth of my dad’s smile all the way to my toes. He slung his arm over my shoulder and kissed the side of my head. My mom made her way under his other arm just as the front door opened.
“Clarke!” Dex called. “Get in here. We’re having a family moment.”
“What does that even mean?” Clarke called back as her footsteps approached the kitchen. “Oh,” she said when she saw the three of us.
“Get over here, loser,” I said. I was feeling uncharacteristically sentimental.
Clarke gave me a halfhearted dirty look before coming to join in our group-hug moment. My dad squeezed his arms around the three of us. “Yeah,” he murmured. “This is what it’s all about. This is the good stuff.”
His words triggered an unexpected lump in my throat that refused to be swallowed. When we pulled back from the hug, he gave my mom a kiss before putting a hand under both our chins. “Be good, you two.”
“I’ll walk you out,” my mom said. Dex winked at us before grabbing her hand and making their way toward the front door.
“He’s been doing that our entire lives, and I still hate watching him go,” Clarke sighed.
“Yeah,” I agreed—hoping that my sister didn’t hear the voice wobble. It was much easier to do the leaving than it was to watch someone go, even if you knew they were coming back soon.
The front door opened and closed, and when my mom returned her eyes were slightly glassy. It didn’t get easier for her either. “Clarke,” she said. “Apron.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The three of us fell into an easy rhythm of peeling and cutting, jarring and boiling until things were ready to seal.
My mom always started with the classics—tomato sauce, spiced peaches and plums—before moving into more of a variety of options.
Peach salsa, plum jam with cinnamon and nutmeg.
All of the smells wafting around the kitchen shouldn’t go together, but they did.
Clarke was quieter than usual. She was normally the pillar of every conversation.
Every time I tried to make eye contact with her, she avoided me.
I picked a plum up and noticed that it was nearly spoiled, but when I went to throw it in the trash, Joanie stopped me.
“Uh-uh,” she said. “You know better.”
“It’s nearly rotten, Mom.”
“And you know those ones make the sweetest jam, my love,” she said, and put a hand on my cheek. “Still good.”
About an hour later, the rotary phone that was mounted on the wall behind the counter rang. My mom wiped her hands and quickly made her way over to swipe it off the hook. Clarke still had barely spoken to me.
“Hello?” she said. The thought of answering the phone without knowing who it was gave me hives.
Her eyes scanned the kitchen, and she sighed.
“Yes, it’s on the table,” she said. “No, I can bring it to you. The girls can finish up.” I looked at the kitchen table and saw my dad’s leather wallet sitting in the middle of it. “Love you, too.”
When she put the phone back on the hook, she said, “That was your father.”
“Yeah, we figured,” Clarke said. “Noticed he didn’t have his wallet when he got to the truck stop?”
My mom nodded. “Are you two okay cleaning up?” We were mostly done—the last set of jars was getting sealed.
“Yeah,” I said, and Joanie untied her apron and pulled it up over her head. “You should get going. We don’t want you driving home in the dark.”
My mom nodded. “Lock the door when you leave. Love you.”
“Love you,” Clarke and I said together.
As soon as the front door shut, Clarke pulled her hair out of the confines of its ponytail.
I let out a faux gasp. “Rule breaker.”
“Ponytails give me a headache. You know that,” she said.
This was only the second time she’d spoken directly to me all day.
“So how was your week? And weekend?” Clarke asked me before I could ask her the same question—small talk was good.
Easy. “I didn’t hear anything from you aside from the few texts. ”
I shrugged. “Fine.”
“Right,” Clarke scoffed, which threw me for a loop. “Always fine.”
For some reason, I felt like I was about to step on a mine, but I was deeply unprepared for that, so I changed the subject. “So…” I started. “We haven’t really had a chance to talk about it.”
“About what?”
“The developer offer,” I said. “That’s why you asked me to come back here—isn’t it?” I saw my sister stiffen.
“I’m taking care of it.”
“Okay. How can I help?”
Clarke sighed. “Do you even want to help, Olly?”
“What kind of question is that?” I asked. “Of course I want to help. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.” Half-truth.
“Really? Because the only times I’ve heard from you this week are when I reach out to you. It took you over a week to even bring this up.”
“I didn’t know I was being tested.” My voice volume rose slightly. “I was taking my cues from you. I thought you’d bring it up to Mom and Dad at dinner last week.”
“This is the problem,” Clarke said. “You expect me to do everything for you—to push all of the obstacles out of the way, so your walk is nice and easy.” I didn’t know what button of Clarke’s I’d pushed, but apparently it was a bad one.
“I do the work, and then you swoop in and pretend that it was a team effort.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Clarke shook her head. “I don’t know how to make you care about this—about the fact that our parents could sell their livelihood and my dream.”
“I do care.” I cared a lot. I wanted Toades to exist forever—even if I wasn’t always in Sweetwater Peak to see it.
“Why are you so mad at me?” I didn’t get this blowup.
All I did was ask a question. If she’d wanted to talk about it earlier, she should have talked about it earlier.
I barely knew anything about the situation.
“I’m not mad at you,” Clarke said, even though she was very clearly mad.
“Could’ve fooled me,” I muttered. That set her off.
“I’m just sick of it, Olly,” Clarke yelled, stunning me.
“I’m sick of being the one who has to hold everything together.
I’m sick of being here on my own, and I’m sick of you floating around without a care in the world or any regard for how it affects the rest of us. We were worried sick last Sunday—”
“Oh my god. Let it go already!”
“—I’ve never minded taking care of you or looking out for you, but you never even said thank you! Then I drop you off at Brady’s, and I don’t hear anything about how you’re doing until I reach out to you. I swear, if I didn’t text you first, I’d never hear from you again.”
“That’s not true!” I protested.
“Yes it is!” Clarke whipped her apron over her head. “And it hurts. It wasn’t always this way. I don’t know what changed. It makes me feel like I’m not important to you. And I know something is going on—I know you’re hurting, and you won’t talk to me about it. You won’t talk to me about anything.”
“I am fine, ” I spat. Both of us knew that wasn’t true, and Clarke’s digs had met their mark. Everything she said was true. Things were different— I was different. I didn’t want to be.
“Well, I’m not,” Clarke said. “And you’re too wrapped up in your own world to even care about it.
I thought you’d come home, and we’d have a chance to lean on each other—that we could close this weird space that’s appeared between us and that I could help you through whatever’s got you so…
defeated, and you could support me with Mom and Dad, but you’ve barely given me the time of day. ”
I should’ve apologized then—told Clarke I was sorry for being so absent.
Not just this week, but for the past year.
I should’ve told her that the voices were quiet and that I missed them.
I should’ve told her I needed her help, and that I wanted to help her—that my heart would shatter into a million pieces if anything happened to Toades. I should’ve asked her what was wrong.
I didn’t do any of that.
Instead, I looked at my sister, took off my apron, and told her to clean up the mess herself.
The echo of me slamming the front door stayed with me even after I walked away.