Chapter 25
TWENTY-FIVE
NORTH
Pacing usually helps me feel better, but today, it doesn’t. I’m restless in the corridor, waiting for my sister to appear. I haven’t seen Starr in a while, and when I talked to her last, she sounded exhausted.
Glancing to my left, I see Meadow on her phone. She’s been staying at a friend’s place, though I’ve offered her my spare room since Leo isn’t going to be using it, and it would be proper motivation for me to clean it out.
She told me no, and frankly, I can’t blame her. Her friend has stability that I don’t think she’s ever known, and I understand why she’s craving structure.
She looks up at me, rolls her eyes, then goes back to her texting.
Westin smacks her on the leg, but Meadow flips her off without looking up again, and I shrug at her.
“It’s fine.”
Westin sighs and leans into Henry. She has stitches in her forehead where the glass got her the worst, but the rest of the bruising has faded, and Henry’s lip is scabbed over and starting to scar.
For some reason, the dark parts of my mind want me to take responsibility for what happened, just like I did when my stepdad attacked him, and I’m so tired of letting that voice tell me I deserve all the bad things that have ever happened to me.
“Breathe,” Westin says.
I suck in air and let it out in a rush. “I just want this to be over with.”
We’re currently waiting on the results from her neurology appointment. The neurologist visited her a week ago, and Starr’s with her now while they talk about the results. My gut’s telling me it’s bad, but my gut has always been a little doom and gloom.
There’s a loud click, and the doors open, and Starr appears. She looks older, but that’s probably just me catastrophizing again. She’s in sweatpants and a ragged T-shirt, and she has her curls bunched up in a bun on the top of her head.
Her gaze rests on me first, and then she walks over and hugs Westin, then Henry, then kisses Meadow on her temple. Meadow doesn’t look up, but I can see she’s tense, and that tells me she’s listening.
“And you,” Starr says eventually. She hugs me so tight, it’s hard to breathe. “How did you do this for so many years?”
“It was hard, but I got by.” Taking a step back, I shove my hands into my pockets. “So?”
She rubs the tips of her fingers together, an old nervous habit I haven’t seen from her since she was a kid. “Okay, I might not have all this right, but it’s…” She puffs out a breath of air. “Substance-induced…persisting dementia.”
“Shit,” Westin blurts, the word shaky.
Starr doesn’t acknowledge her. “There’s other stuff too. The lesions on her brain have gotten bigger, which is causing her mood to get all wild. The doctors say medication can help with it, but they’re recommending a residential facility.”
“That sounds expensive,” I whisper.
Starr looks at me for a long moment. “Yeah. But you’re not going to pay for it. Mom’s coverage can take care of most of it, and I have some money saved up—”
“No,” I tell her quickly. “You’re just barely getting started as an adult. You’re not going to bankrupt yourself for her.”
“I can help,” Henry says, using his crutches to pull himself to his feet.
I spin around to face him. “You’ve been put through enough—”
Henry shakes his head, cutting me off. “I don’t think you realize what your sister means to me. And loving her makes all of you my family. I knew what I was getting into when she and I decided to make this a thing, so I know what I’m offering. I know what it means.”
It’s not worth it to argue. He’s a stubborn bastard and exactly who my sister needs.
Rubbing the back of my neck, I turn back to face Starr. “I’m going to sell my house.”
“Jesus, North. Don’t be such a fucking martyr all the goddamn time!” Starr says, sounding furious.
I hold up a hand. “I’m not. We can all work together to make sure she’s where she needs to be to stay safe, and I can get an apartment. My house is a piece of shit anyway, and I don’t have the time to do all the projects I need to make it livable.”
I’ve been thinking about this for a while. I’ll miss the crows and my neighbors, but things are changing. I don’t know where Leo’s going, but he’s probably going to be leaving soon now that he’s got his money from the insurance. I overheard him telling Easton he wasn’t going to rebuild.
So what’s the point of staying if I can sell and make things easier for the girls?
“Will she see any of us?” I ask.
Starr glances down at her feet. “No. She doesn’t want Meadow to freak out, and I don’t think she’s going to be able to look you in the face for a while,” she says to Westin.
My sister’s jaw tightens, but it’s obvious she’s not going to argue.
Starr’s gaze finds mine. “She doesn’t want to face you either. She’s cognizant right now, and it’s making her remember all the shitty things she’s said over the years.”
I swallow against a tight throat. Maybe that’s for the best. At least for the moment. “Okay.”
Starr grabs my hand and squeezes. “Now’s also a good time to quit your job.”
I nearly choke on my own tongue. “I’m sorry, what?”
“You hate your job.”
“Everyone hates their job,” I remind her with a scoff.
She lets me go to cross her arms over her chest. “Yeah, but no one hates their job the way you do. You resent it. That job exists because you had to drop everything you loved to take care of us. But we’re good now.
So maybe go home and have a nice long think about what you can do now that I’m taking over. ”
I’m too terrified to give that any consideration. It feels almost unfair. It feels the way Leo described saying I love you felt. Like it’s tempting the universe to rip it all away.
“I’m exhausted,” Starr says, cutting into my thoughts. “I think we should all go home and have a bed-rot day.”
I gather Starr into another hug, then pull in Westin and Henry, who hug me back just as tight. Meadow finally gets up to join our little party, though she looks annoyed as hell about it.
“Promise me that whatever happens, we keep this,” I tell them.
This time, it’s Meadow who speaks up. “You couldn’t get rid of us if you tried, dickhead.”
I hug her a little tighter just for that.
I feel a little sad about everything on the drive home, especially when I pull up and find Russell on the railing. He’s got a friend with him, who flits up to the roof, but Russell quickly flaps his way to my shoulder and begins to nibble at my ear.
“If I have to move, bud, you think you’ll be able to find me?”
He clicks his beak a few times, and I stroke over the top of his head before leaning against the railing. He hops off after a second, stares at me with his big, black eye, then takes off, heading for the line of trees at the edge of the neighborhood.
I don’t have the confidence that he’ll find me. Or that he’ll want to. He’s thriving now—a crow that wasn’t meant to make it but is living his best life. And at the very least, I know I can rest easy with the knowledge that I gave him the best start.
Maybe he’ll mate. Make a few eggs. Rear some chicks that they can send out into the world.
It comforts me as I step inside the house and kick my shoes off before making a beeline to the couch. My knees bend halfway before I freeze, and my gaze catches on something sitting on the table.
It’s Leo’s laptop. It’s worse for the wear—melted plastic along the sides, and I highly doubt it’s functional. We haven’t talked much about his writing career, but one night in the afterglow of making each other feel good, he told me about his book.
“It’s nothing special. Just a character journey that has a little bit of romance and a little bit of tragedy.”
It hurts me that he thinks his stories are nothing special, but it was obvious at the time he didn’t want to talk about it, so I didn’t press. He also didn’t seem overly concerned with getting his things from the house, so I’m surprised to find it there.
Especially because it wasn’t on the table when I left.
A moment later, I hear footsteps coming down the hallway, and my breath catches in my chest as Leo appears in the entryway.
He must have just gotten home because he looks a little windswept, his hair curlier than usual, which is probably from the rain earlier, and he’s smiling like he’s happy to see me, which is such a novelty.
“Hey.” He walks over, his limp a little more pronounced than usual, which I’m pretty sure has to do with us being a little…ah…athletic last night. His gaze flits down toward the laptop, and he lets out a small sigh. “Apparently, Easton tried to rescue that when he grabbed my fish.”
I settle on the edge of the cushion and pat the space next to me, but he doesn’t move yet. “Does it work?”
He snorts. “No. It’s pretty fucked.”
“How much did you lose?” I ask with a wince.
“A few chapters, but they were all complete shit.” He finally moves toward me and drops down, his thigh pressing against mine. “I’ve decided to take this as a sign that writing isn’t my thing.”
“Leo—”
“No. It was never my dream,” he says quietly. “I’ve always liked telling stories, but Liam got all fixated on me being an author because it meant he could keep me with him. He didn’t want me tied down to some office, and he knew how much I loved being an archivist.”
I’m not one to speak ill of the dead, but the more I learn about Liam, the more I think he’s kind of a fucking jackass. “Is that something you’d want to get back into?”
Leo glances up at me, a smile playing at his lips.
“No. I can barely read on my good days. There’s not a chance in hell I could do that job again.
” He rubs his palms over his jeans, then says, “I think I might want to write a history book one day. I also think I’d like to garden.
And maybe get into beekeeping…” He trails off for a second, then shrugs with a heavy sigh.
“I don’t know. I’ve decided I want to take some time to figure it out. ”
Pulling him close, he flips his legs over my thighs, and I take him by the chin, tugging him close for a kiss. “I think that sounds amazing.”
He laughs against my lips. “You think everything I do is amazing.”