Chapter 32
CONNOR
“It’s only a few days,” I say, brushing my sister’s hair away from her face as I shoot a hateful glare in the direction of the man standing in front of me, next to a small maroon sedan. “It’ll be like having a sleepover. Just a few days, and then I’m gonna come get you.”
“I don’t wanna go with him,” she cries.
Throwing herself at me, Irina buries her face into my chest as her arms wrap around my body, and I hold her as tightly as I possibly can.
Pressing a kiss to her cheek, I rock her side to side, and for a second, I toy with the idea of picking her up and seeing how fast and how far my legs can take the two of us.
“It’s time to go,” the piece of crap standing in front of us tells her. “I’m sorry.”
With another kiss to her cheek, I sandwich her small face in my hands and force her to hold my gaze.
“I’m coming to get you,” I promise her.
I don’t stand until she’s climbed into the back seat of the car and gotten her seat belt buckled.
Only then, do I close the door and stand tall in front of the caseworker standing before me.
I don’t like him. I don’t like his face or his crappy suit or the fact that he’s taking Irina away from the only home she’s ever known.
“You would think when a kid’s parents die, it would be a priority not to traumatize her more,” I bite. “You guys really screwed that one up, didn’t you?”
“Mr. Schepp, I understand that—”
“You don’t understand anything,” I bite at him. “I’ll be eighteen in three days. I’m her next of kin, and I’m bringing her home, where she belongs.”
With a pat to the roof of the car, I press two fingers to my lips, then to the window as I offer my sister a smile and a confident nod.
She’s already afraid; it won’t help if I show her that I am, too.
I watch as the caseworker climbs into his seat and kicks on the ignition, taking Irina with him no more than thirty seconds later and disappearing down the street that leads away from our house.
Stepping maybe too carefully back into the house, I move through the building to push open every window. A ripped piece of yellow tape is still stuck to the frame of my parents’ bedroom door, and I tear it off, tossing it onto the floor next to me before I step into the room.
It feels colder in here than in the rest of the house.
The bed in front of me is too pristine; like someone fixed it up after they carted our parents away. They never kept it this nice unless we were having company.
Maybe someone thought it would be a kind gesture; make it look like nothing ever happened here so the kids won’t have to look at it, but the neatness of the space screams at me that everything happened here.
Working quickly, I ball the duvet and the fitted and bottom sheets together around their pillows and head toward the window. It takes some effort, but I use the wadded-up fabric to push out the screen and throw the whole mess of it into the side yard.
A startled bird call comes from the tree a couple of yards from the window, followed by an incredibly empty silence.
My heart races.
My stomach churns.
And I drop onto the mattress, bracing my forearms against my knees.
If my dad would have just changed the batteries…
If I’d been home to wake them up…
I’ll dig through their closets and find them some clothes. I’ll find the cash to have them cremated. I’ll do my best until I get my sister back.
Present Day
“Mister?”
My eyes snap to the young woman standing behind the counter as I tap the cheap pack of cigarettes in my hand against the counter. She’s too young to be working here by herself; she can’t be any older than Irina was when she moved out of the house, and she was too young, too.
“It’s twenty-three seventy-two,” she tells me.
“Sorry.” I drop the cigarettes onto the counter and reach into my thigh bag for my wallet. Gesturing toward the shelf behind her, filled with rows and rows of various types of nicotine, I say, “Actually, let me grab some of those patches, too, if you don’t mind.”
After paying for all of my items and carefully securing the bag to my bike, I flip closed my visor and get back on the road, headed for home.
That’s where my mind should be; home.
But grief doesn’t work like that. It doesn’t care that my partner is at home, grappling with the mortality of a father he’s spent as long as I’ve known him swearing that he hates. Wishing him dead. Willing the swiftest and most thorough karma in his direction, however it may choose to deliver.
It doesn’t care that my focus should be on home.
It’s pulled me deep into my own loss and it wants me to settle in there.
The house is quiet when I step back inside. Tripp is seated on the couch, anxiously drumming his knuckles against his knee while Julia lovingly leans against him, her hand trailing up and down the length of his forearm.
She offers me a shake of her head – Brody hasn’t called him yet – and I nod in understanding before tossing the shopping bag onto Tripp’s lap.
Drumstick springs to life at the sound of the crinkling plastic, and as his favorite person stands to excuse himself for a cigarette, the cat follows as closely behind as he’s able to, letting out a disappointed yowl when the door slides shut between them as Tripp steps outside.
“I keep wondering how I would feel in his shoes,” Julia finally tells me to break the quiet. “I don’t think I hate my parents for what they’ve done, but I’m not sure if I love them, so…”
“You do.” Using my head to gesture toward the back yard, I add, “So does he. That’s why this is so hard.”
The two of us watch through the glass door as Tripp taps off the ash from the end of his cigarette, bringing it to his lips again for another drag. Julia’s hand slides into mine, her fingers locking with my own as she offers a squeeze.
“Are you thinking about when you got the call?”
“I’m the one who made the call,” I correct her with a shake of my head.
“I’m thinking about the things I said to them that night, because I didn’t want to drop my little sister off at her friend’s house before I went out with mine.
I’m thinking about the fact that I knew that, even though I was mad at them, I loved my parents.
And I’m worried that he won’t figure out that he does, too, until after his are gone. ”
“I’m worried about that, too,” she admits.
She’s quiet for a few breaths too long before saying, “Jefferson was nice to me a couple of times, early on. I think he was just glad that Tripp had brought home someone who was in the faith. Molly was always too sweet; it was like she was trying too hard. My parents loved me until they didn’t, but Tripp’s… ”
I pull her into my arms, pressing my lips to the top of her head as her emotion swells. It’s hard to know what to say or how to even try to put myself into either of their shoes right now.
I know loss. I know regret all too well. I don’t know what it feels like to have ever, even for a minute, doubted my parents’ love for me. From the first breath that I took to the final breath my parents took, I was loved. Irina was loved. There was never any question in that.
“I’m gonna cook something,” Julia says with a sniff as she pushes her body off of mine. “Food is good in times like this, isn’t it?”
I can’t help but to let out a laugh. “Do you even know how to cook?” I tease her.
“Edie sent me a recipe book and a bunch of bakeware after our wedding,” she tells me. “I can figure it out.”
As she makes her way into the kitchen, likely to dig through the cabinets to find out if she even still owns that book, I aim myself toward the back door.
Tripp is seated on the edge of the integrated planter, bouncing his phone against his knee with a look of frustration on his face.
“No news?”
He shakes his head.
“I’m trying to call my brother,” he tells me.
“What, he’s not answering?”
“It’s Nash, he never answers when I call him.” Pulling a fresh cigarette from the pack sitting next to him, he drops the filter between his lips with a shake of his head.
“Brody won’t try, because he thinks it’s useless – or maybe it just hurts too damn much.
Edie can’t stomach the rejection, and Graham…
we’re not supposed to talk to him about Nash.
‘It upsets him to hear about a brother he’s never met,’” he says, using his fingers to make quotation marks in the air.
“When he was little, the kid’d cry every time we said Nash’s name around him. ”
As he brings his lighter to the end of the cigarette, I heave a breath and settle in next to him. My hand runs high along the length of his inner thigh, and I press my lips to the side of his head, kissing the small piece of ink which sits at his temple.
He doesn’t pull from his cigarette. He lets it burn as it rests between his lips, until the ash at the end of it is long enough to force him to make the move to flick it away.
Pulling up his phone, he checks for a call at least six times in the span of three minutes, and I take the phone from him to slide it into my own pocket.
“He’s a bad person,” he tells me. “Straight up fucking evil. They both are.”
“I know they are.”
“He took my brother away from me.” I nod as he tosses his spent cigarette onto the ground in front of him to stomp out the ash with his toe.
“His son was dying and he wouldn’t let anyone help him to the fucking bathroom.
He turned my sister into such a Stepford wife, I can hardly even look at her, most of the time. ”
Turning to face me as I massage his thigh, he shakes his head. “I hate him. He deserves to fucking die. I’ve wished for it over and over and fucking over again. But—”
“You don’t want it to happen,” I say plainly.
His head drops, his chest rising with a long inhale before he blows the air out again through his lips.
“I thought I did.”
Climbing into the open space behind him, I settle with my chest against his back and wrap my arms tightly around his body. My cheek rests against the back of his shoulder as his body tenses, and I wait.