CHAPTER FIFTEEN #2
His body shudders and he fists his hands at his sides, the tendons flexing on his forearms with the force.
“She was in the car too. She overheard that we were goin’ into town, wanted to tag along.
She always wanted that, loved goin’ into town, meetin’ people, makin’ friends.
She was like our ma in that sense. Friendly, open, knew everyone, everyone knew her.
She was in the backseat, right behind me.
So when my window exploded, she got hit by it, too, the glass.
Lynnie was the first one I pulled out, before… everythin’.”
“Is she…” My voice is small and foreign, like that of someone who’s terrified for their life. Even though it’s not my life I’m scared for, it’s hers. His sister’s.
He focuses on me then, his eyes glassy. “She’s alive. She’s just…”
“What?” I whisper.
His chest moves with a breath again and he widens his stance. “She lost her eyes in the accident. She… she can’t see. Not anymore. The doctors, they tried, but…” He shakes his head, his Adam’s apple jerking up and down. “They couldn’t do nothin’. She won’t be able to see ever again, my Lynnie.”
Like last night, I only realize I’m crying when I open my mouth to take in a broken breath. My tears are thick and silent, drenching my cheeks, dripping down my chin and throat. My tears are useless, but they’re all I have right now.
He watches them flow as he tells me, “She won’t be able to see her roses grow again.
Won’t be able to paint or sketch, look at colors, notice all the things only she can.
And she was okay with that. She was fine.
Told me she’d find a way. A way to rebuild, somehow be able to still see again, in some way. ”
He clenches his jaw before continuing in an intense voice, “I wasn’t, though; wasn’t happy about that.
That she’d found a way to make peace with everythin’.
I fuckin’ hated her for it. I hated her for bein’ okay with everythin’.
I was angry at her. I was angry at everyone, every fuckin’ person that said things would be okay.
Doctors, nurses, fuckin’ speech therapists.
I was angry at Hank Turner. I wanted to kill him.
I wanted to burn him and his ranch, his fuckin’ family to the ground, take everythin’ from him.
He did it for the land, didn’t he. I wanted to burn his land to the ground.
Most of all, though, I was angry at myself, for not being able to save ’em.
Not being able to save my little sister.
I was fifteen; I was almost a man. I should’ve been able to do it.
I should’ve been… My parents lost their lives.
Lynnie lost her eyes, and I was still alive.
I was an ugly motherfucker who couldn’t talk but I was alive, wasn’t I?
I could see. I could feel. I could breathe. They couldn’t.
“Lynnie tried. She tried to make me… feel better. Said we should focus on what we had and not what we lost. We still had each other, but Jesus, every time she said that it only made me realize what we didn’t have.
We didn’t have our ma, our daddy. She didn’t have her eyes.
Every time I looked at her, it was a reminder I’d failed.
Every time I saw her struggle to reach for things, try to teach herself how to see again, I’d be so fuckin’ angry.
You’re right when you said I was angry. I am angry.
I’m angry at everythin’. I’m angry all the time, and…
“Anyhow, I wanted her to go away. Every day, I’d hope and pray and fuckin’ wish she’d just disappear.
Didn’t want her pretendin’ everythin’ was okay, that she trusted me still to take care of her.
Didn’t want to see her suffer. Never said a word about it, though; couldn’t even if I wanted to, but she knew.
She always knew. So she said she’d leave. She’d go away, and Christ…”
His clenches his hands at his sides. When that doesn’t help, he uncurls them and clenches them again.
When even that isn’t enough, he rakes his fingers through his hair and pulls at the strands before finally continuing, “I said yes. I agreed. She said she had a place in mind, said Mars helped her set it all up. A school up in the mountains. They had a program for the blind. She dressed it up as her being given the opportunity to learn, to live again. But I knew. She did it for me, to give me space. In return, she asked me to make a promise. Asked me to not go after Hank Turner; made me vow to never ever go after the man who took everythin’ from us. And that pissed me off so much that…”
He shakes his head again, and I know it means he hasn’t seen her since.
“Every time I thought about goin’ to see her or bring her home, I’d get so mad that she moved on so quickly. That she could just… forget what happened. I’d get so mad that she’d tied my hands, roped ’em with her bullshit promise, that I… I left her there. Left her to her new life.”
Before I can absorb the fact that he hasn’t seen his sister for more than sixteen years, his focus comes back to me again, and the look in his green eyes is one I’ve never seen before.
His green eyes seem haunted as he says, “Only a monster could do somethin’ like that.
Leave his own flesh and blood when they need him the most. Be so fuckin’ angry and violent that he can’t even stand to look at the only family he’s got left.
Only a monster would abandon his little sister. ”
I’m pulling at the sheets so hard, it’s a wonder I haven’t torn them into shreds yet.
There’s so much pain in my chest, a weight so heavy, it’s a wonder I haven’t started screaming yet.
It’s a wonder I’m not flying across the room and shaking him.
And making him listen to me. He’s not a monster; he’s grieving.
His sister is grieving, too, and they’re doing it far apart instead of together because grief is strange.
Grief is cruel. Grief does that to people.
Grief can make people seem so far apart that they can’t stand to be together.
If anything, though, this makes him more of a man, not a monster.
Because grief is probably the most human thing there is.
And love. Which is what he feels for his sister, but it’s all lost under a mountain of tragedy and pain.
Instead of doing all that, I swallow down the emotions choking me and ask, “Where is she now?”
My question, although simple, puts him on guard.
It changes the aura around him, and I’m once again terrified of what he’s going to tell me.
In fact, I think I already know as he replies, “It’s a convent, the place she went to and then decided to stay.
She’s a nun, teaches kids like her. But I don’t know… ”
“Don’t know what?”
“Where she is.”
“You—”
“Haven’t seen my little sister in over sixteen years,” he says, his shoulders straight and bursting out of his bloody shirt.
“Not outside of an occasional picture she sends over with her letters. But four weeks ago, I got a text from an unknown number. It was a video. Of my sister, of Lynnie, tied up and scared, held in a dark room. It came with a message: If I wanted my Lynnie back, safe and unharmed, I’d have to get somethin’ for them.
They called it cargo. Said I had to secure it and bring it to them at their time and place of choosin’. ”
“Me,” I whisper.
He dips his face. “You.”
“You didn’t… you didn’t take me for the land, did you? For your cousin’s r-revenge plan.”
I already know the answer to that. So maybe I should’ve saved my words, which are already hard to come by, for something more important.
But I want him to admit it. I want him to say it, say that he stole me for his own agenda.
All this time, he kept warning me. He kept saying he was a bigger threat to me than any of the Graysons and I believed him, yes.
But I didn’t fully comprehend what that meant.
I couldn’t possibly have fathomed something like this.
Where my heart would be breaking for the man who stole me not once but twice.
Where my heart would be bleeding for him.