Chapter Seventeen
Rain patters melodically against the windowpane beside me.
My knees are pressed to my chest, arms draped around my aching limbs as I study each droplet. They tumble and roll over each other, eagerly chasing the ones before them.
The orange and pink sunset I had let myself sit among after finding out about my mother’s passing had long gone, darkness had fallen into its place.
“Laikey, I made you a sandwich, sweetie,” Nan’s soft voice stretches. Turning over my shoulder, I find my grandmother’s red-rimmed eyes. She places a brown paper bag on top of the plastic table beside her. Her knobby knuckles shake as her pale fingers make work tearing it down the center.
The spongy homemade white bread that she knows is my favorite, is cut into four squares, a thick layer of Nutella smeared between both slices.
I curl my arms tighter around my legs when my stomach rolls, resting my wet chin to the top of my knees, staring at the wall in front of me.
“I’m not v-very h-hungry,” I manage.
“Oh,” my nan’s voice wobbles, and I turn to look at her, placing my cheek to where my chin had just departed.
She wipes her hands on a napkin. “That’s okay, I’ll…” She pauses, reaching for the food, tucking it away. “We can try again later.”
She bends over, searching for something in the overnight bag beside her. “How about some apple juice?” she asks when she straightens.
I keep my cheek where it is, tears shaking at the rims of my burning eyes because Nan’s apple juice had been Jade’s favorite.
I smooth my lips together, watch realization pass through her eyes, then I press my own closed. I see her bright wide smile, her canine tooth peeking at the corner, her excitement for life. A tear brushes across the length of my right cheek.
“Why her, Nan?” Clenching my fists around the blanket, I drag it to my chin.
I hadn’t spoken to her about Jade yet, hadn’t told her a word about what happened to us. After I’d found out about my mother, I’d crashed out.
Too much loss.
Too much pain.
“W-why wasn’t it me?” I bite my bottom lip, taste blood. It wobbles harder. “How am I supposed to live knowing…” I’m shaking my head, more tears falling. “Knowing that I’m still here and she isn’t?” I finish in a whisper, my teeth banging down on themselves.
“Because that’s exactly what she would want.” A voice comes, and my head snaps toward the low and raspy, dead sound.
At the edge of the hospital room, Chase leans against the small door frame.
His dark, haunted eyes are locked to mine.
He walks into the room, and Nan is quick to grab his hands, even quicker to gasp at the crimson mess drying across the exposed stark white bone of his knuckles.
She is talking to him, but he isn’t talking back.
My eyes shiver with tears, my breath a whimper at my lips.
I drop my chin to where my hands rest at my knees, and feel guilt slam and crumble in my chest. And when I flick my gaze back to Chase, finding that his never left, I tell him with my eyes what I hope he can see, what I need him to hear.
It should have been me.