Chapter 34
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
My truck parked, I sat in the driveway, counting the seconds. I looked in the mirror, reapplied chapstick for the fiftieth time, looked out over the dash. Home. How long could I sit here before they noticed the car in the driveway?
The house was just the same. The grass was dying in a few spots.
A blue Buick, roof faded from the sun, sagged in its spot in front of the house where it hadn’t been moved in years.
Dad hadn’t worked on it in ages. They’d both be home.
It had been months since Mom had shown up to her job at the real estate firm.
Just like at school, here were so many reminders of things I didn’t want to remember.
After Aaron died, my mother slapped me hard across the face for talking back in that very same Buick.
Days later, she flew off the handle over something I didn’t even remember.
When I told her what a fucked-up childhood I’d had, she told me every family had its problems.
But there was love here, too. It had just … faded over the years, like the tips of the grasses, like the sunny yellow paint on the door, now a dull cream.
I got out of the truck and walked past the house, out into the yard.
Our five acres were overgrown, like most of the properties out here.
Sure, it might be worth something if people actually wanted to live in Marble County, but they didn’t.
Our horse, Willow, had liked it enough. My parents had sold her not long after Aaron died.
I stopped below the oak tree where we buried him. There was a path that had been made in the grass, trudged by someone walking there several times a day. Mama or Daddy? Did they come out here and talk to him when they couldn’t sleep? Did they ask him why?
I hadn’t been back here since it happened.
Couldn’t walk in our house, couldn’t face it or him, couldn’t face every single way I’d failed.
Failed my brother, failed my family, failed everyone.
I had been so busy, focused on publications, and research, and mastering Magic, and studying studying studying that I didn’t notice that my brother was so sad he didn’t want to live anymore.
I stood staring at his grave. A small stone marker, the plainest, cheapest one they had. Next to it, they’d placed the hiking stick that he’d used to walk in the hills, the knob at the top carved into the face of an old man. It was starting to warp from the rain and wind.
If I’d noticed more, I would have seen the bags under his eyes and known he wasn’t sleeping. He had a few friends at S&B. Did they have any clue? I asked them after it happened.
No, they’d said. Aaron was so quiet. He didn’t tell a soul.
Of course. No one looked at a kid like Aaron.
My own brother, and I missed it.
Missed it even more because he’d been trying to reach out to me for help, and did I even look up from studying? Did I even look up from my stupid fucking obsession with Magic?
“I’m so fucking sorry,” I whispered.
I barely registered the soft footsteps in the grass. Mom came up behind me, wrapping her cardigan around herself to guard from the night’s chill. “Saw the truck. Thought that might be you.”
I wiped my eyes with my sleeve. “It was my fault. I missed it.”
“Oh, honey, no.” The knit of her sweater brushed against my chin. She smelled the same, like those incense sticks she bought from the corner store. She looked the same too, only her hair was whiter, the roundness of her cheeks thinned. “You’ve got to let go of that. None of this was your fault.”
It hit me how much older she was getting.
I’d been gone, but here everything felt like it was moving at warp speed.
“I’m so sorry, Mama. That I’ve been gone.
That I didn’t come back. That I left in the first place.
” My breath came short and fast, the tears hot on my cheeks.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d cried. “I’m so sorry about all of it.”
“Shh, shh,” she said, and my mother held me and kissed my cheek.
After I’d settled, she hummed a song she used to sing on the radio and offered me a cigarette. We looked out at the old tire swing, still on the ground from the time Aaron and I tried to swing at the same time and snapped the rope, at the fence that was falling over.
“We all blame ourselves. Lord knows, I struggle with it every day.” She paused and looked toward the sky. “But the last thing he would’ve wanted was you throwing your life away over this. Go back to school, honey.”
She walked back down the grass path to the house, leaving me alone with my thoughts.