Chapter 3
AVA
“Ava,” my sister says from the front seat. “Are you sure this is okay?”
Her voice is soft, worry thick in the way that makes my heart clench. The tear streaks on her cheeks are more evident under the orange glow of the rising sun peeking through the clouds.
It started snowing sometime between when I got the call from her and when I was leaving Anderson’s to pick her up from my mom’s house. I’m tired and emotionally drained, and I have to open the coffee shop in less than two hours.
But sleep is not in the cards for me right now.
I glance at my rearview mirror, reaching up to adjust it slightly.
Again.
I don’t know how many times I’ve moved it a fraction of an inch down and then back up again—tilting it a tiny bit to the left and then to the right.
I can’t get it just straight.
“Ava?” Georgie says a little louder.
I bring my hand back to the steering wheel, realizing I still haven’t answered her.
We haven’t exchanged many words since I told her to pack a bag and get in the car.
But what else do you say after getting a frantic phone call from your thirteen-year-old sister saying Mom won’t wake up?
The shattering sadness I expected to feel when I finally got this call was nowhere to be found. However, I experienced the most intense anger I’ve ever had in my entire life.
My mom promised she would be better for Georgie—better than she was for me, Phoebe, and Jasmine. She promised she would be the mother for Georgie that she never was for me and my two other sisters—the mother I had to be for all of us.
But instead, she was going to leave this earth, traumatizing Georgie for the rest of her life, leaving her to find her own mother’s dead body.
Luckily, when I got there, I was able to tell my sister that her mom wasn’t dead.
She was just so wasted that she passed out on the couch.
Up until tonight, my mom was sober for thirteen months.
And before that, almost thirteen years.
“It’s fine, kiddo. You’re just going to stay with me for a bit while Mom figures her shit out.” I manage to keep my voice even, not allowing myself to sound as angry as I feel. “Stuff, I mean.” I quickly add, correcting myself.
Georgie snorts. “I’ve heard swear words before, Ava.”
A small smile tugs at my lips. Hearing that sass in her voice, the way I know she’s rolling her eyes at me even though I can’t see her, has me forgetting for just a second why we’re in the car together.
We sit in silence for a moment, both of us just watching the road before she asks, “How long?”
“A few days,” I answer, not knowing how to give her something more concrete. I don’t know how long it’ll take my mom to be ready to be a mom again.
While Georgie packed up everything she needed, I tidied up the house, throwing away the empty bottles and half-eaten to-go containers of food on the coffee table.
I plugged in my mom’s dead cell phone and covered her with a blanket before leaving a note to let her know I took Georgie and for her to call me when she’s in her right mind.
And I can say—with one hundred percent certainty—I don’t know how long it’ll be before I get that call.
My mom has battled mental health issues my entire life, but her medicine came in a clear bottle—not the orange one, like the kind we got at the doctor when I had a sore throat.
She could down a bottle of vodka before I got on the bus to go to school in the morning and still somehow be able to help me with my homework when I got home that same afternoon.
Even as a child, I knew that wasn't what normal parents did—she was the perfect example of a functioning alcoholic.
Capable and present, yet always, unmistakably, an alcoholic.
The drinking got better when she met Phoebe’s dad, so much so that she didn’t even take a sip of alcohol when she was pregnant—something I went my whole life never seeing her do until then.
Then Phoebe’s dad left a few weeks after she was born—having lasted longer than mine—and the drinking started again.
Until she met Jasmine’s dad, and the cycle repeated.
All of a sudden, I was ten years old, taking care of my two younger sisters and somehow managing it well enough that no one noticed anything was wrong.
Then, five years later, she met Georgie’s dad.
But instead of the cycle repeating, it was like my mother finally found what she was looking for. Georgie’s dad was nothing like the other men she pursued.
And when she got pregnant, he stayed.
They got married; he bought a house big enough for all of us, and became the one and only father figure any of us ever had.
And things were good—for years.
I went to college and moved out, not having to worry about my sisters because my mom and Steven had everything taken care of. Then Phoebe got into her nursing program, and Jasmine moved in with her boyfriend, and everything was good.
After so many years of gathering the broken, jagged pieces and doing my best to fit them back together, I finally realized that I didn’t have to be the one holding everything in place anymore.
Until the accident.
Steven was on his way home from work, in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The car crash took him quickly—didn’t even give him a chance.
And it’s my fault for thinking that Georgie was enough.
Enough for my mom to stay sober; enough for my mom to stay strong for her daughter, despite what she was going through herself.
Georgie stays silent, not saying anything since I told her she would be staying with me for a few days. She sniffles, trying to hold back tears, quickly wiping at her eyes with the sleeve of her sweatshirt every few seconds.
My eyes shift to my rearview mirror, which is still not straight enough.
I squeeze the leather of my steering wheel so hard my hand starts to cramp, and it takes so much effort to ignore the compulsion and focus on getting Georgie home.
I exhale, trying to keep my voice light. “Everything’s going to be okay,” I try to assure her—and myself.
But of course it isn’t.
Her mother is an alcoholic, and her oldest half-sister can barely focus on the road because the goddamn rearview mirror is angled too far to the right.
The same older sister who took her from her home, the only one she’s known all her life, at three in the morning, hours before she’s supposed to be at school.
And I have no idea what the fuck I’m going to do.
I don’t even know the rules or procedures for something like this.
Georgie just turned thirteen.
She has school tomorrow—no, today—for fuck’s sake.
Do I call her out? Tell them she has a doctor's appointment?
Do I drop her off and hope the normalcy and routine make her feel better?
Is taking her considered kidnapping?
Am I going to go to jail?
Was it supposed to snow today?
When’s the last time I got my tires changed?
Will they be okay with the snow building up on the road?
What if we start sliding?
What if I lose control of the car?
Shaking my head as if to rid myself of all the thoughts before I go into a full-blown spiral, I try to focus on my surroundings—the warm air blowing from the car vents, the quiet music coming from the speakers, the snowflakes gently falling onto the windshield.
My skin prickles with the need for order, wishing I could do something other than hold the steering wheel with my hands right now.
My mind drifts to my sisters. I need to call Phoebe and Jasmine and fill them in about Mom, but I want to get Georgie back to my apartment first. She doesn’t need to hear the three of us discuss what happened—what needs to happen moving forward.
While she’s our mom too, the three of us each had very different versions of her growing up, which has led us all to have our own complicated relationships with her—while I kept the lines of communication open with my mom, more for Georgie’s sake than my own, Phoebe and Jasmine both left home and never really looked back.
I also need to call Emerson.
My current roommate is one of my best friends, and I know she would support me in my decision to get Georgie out of that house, but she deserves a heads-up before I bring my little sister to our two-bedroom apartment.
Fuck, I wish I knew how bad it had gotten with my mom.
I would’ve been there the second she started drinking again. I’m only twenty minutes away, for fuck’s sake.
I should have been there.
“What about school?” Georgie asks, and I’m thankful for the small reprieve it gives me from my thoughts—even though her question just sends me down another black hole of anxiety.
“Do you want to go?” I ask, struggling to find an answer to her question.
“Yes,” she responds. “It’s Friday,” she explains. “We’re doing a Valentine exchange in my reading class at the end of the day. Mom was supposed to get me valentines to give out.”
Well, I’m sure she didn’t do that, I think to myself.
I glance at the time on my dash—ninety minutes before I need to be at Hey Honey’s to get the opening duties done before we open at six.
“Tomorrow’s not Valentine’s Day.” I don’t know why I say it, not that I care when the stupid holiday is anyway—it really could be tomorrow for all I know. Honestly, I wasn’t even aware it’s Friday.
“It’s on Sunday,” Georgie replies with an attitude, as if it’s beneath her to be explaining this to me. “We don’t have school on Sundays, in case you didn’t know, so Ms. Mullins planned it for Friday.”
“And you don’t want to miss it?” I ask carefully, surprised.
“Not really,” Georgie fires back. She’s only functioning on adrenaline and whatever else keeps thirteen-year-olds awake these days—probably all the angst—so I don’t take her response personally.
I may not understand why this Valentine’s Day exchange thing in her reading class is important, but if it’s a priority for Georgie, then it’s one for me, too.
She’s had little to no say about what’s happening to her since my mom decided to pick up the bottle of vodka again, and I don’t know how much of a say she’ll have moving forward—once I figure out what the hell I’m going to do about all of this.
So, if she wants to go to school, she’ll go to school.
“I’ll figure it out,” I tell her, because what else am I supposed to say?
And I will figure it out—I always have; I always do.