Chapter Ten #2
It was horrifying and she couldn’t stop. It seemed to her as if there was some kind of concrete block inside of her and tonight it had decided to make its way out. No matter what it took with it or how much it hurt in the process.
She didn’t want to move, but she also didn’t want her sisters to notice, because she never cried. She wasn’t a crier. It wasn’t acceptable in any circumstance she could think of, and anyway, it wasn’t as if it solved anything.
The tears kept coming. They kept pouring down her face and she was terribly afraid she had to sniffle, and they would certainly hear that.
So she tried to sneak a hand up to wipe at her cheeks and then the next thing she knew, both of her sisters were pressing in closer.
Grabbing her in one, big, sisterly hug, and murmuring things she didn’t even really understand.
For the first time in her life, or at least in as long as she could remember, Kitty sobbed her eyes out.
It went on and on, and she had no choice but to let it.
Eventually, the tears stopped, or at least lessened. Flannery stood up momentarily, but only to grab some tissues, then sat back down. And just as close.
Then both of them waited there, without saying a word, as Kitty tried to think of how on earth she could explain this to them.
But no matter how she tried to come at it, she couldn’t seem to think of a single way to explain what was happening.
Except, that was, the ugly truth.
“My marriage is just pretend,” she said, baldly.
She heard both of her sisters gasp a little, but she didn’t look to either her right or left.
That was too much to ask. “I ran into Izzy one morning and she said she thought there was no point actually letting us buy the land unless we were married. She was convinced husbands would take us away from here and leave the restaurant sitting empty.” She shook her head.
“So I… literally asked the first man I ran into to marry me, and he did.”
“Oh, Kitty,” Indy said softly. “You idiot.”
That was helpful, actually, as Kitty did not like being called an idiot. And she greatly preferred that spark of indignation to bawling her eyes out.
“It was an excellent plan,” she said. Maybe a little sternly. “It would have solved all of our problems. All he had to do was stay married for a year, then divorce me and go about his business.”
Flannery glared in the general direction of the attic, which, from her position on the couch, meant she was glaring at the ceiling. “Is he trying to back out? After barely a month?”
“Worse,” Kitty said darkly. “He was supposed to leave town. Now he says he’s not going to do that. And he said he doesn’t think he’s going to want a divorce, either.”
For a moment, her sisters were silent. Then Kitty watched as they both leaned forward, just slightly, so they could look at each other like she wasn’t between them.
Only then did they turn to look at her.
And their matching expressions of astonishment, tinged with something like exasperation, made Kitty hunch a little bit against the couch.
“Oh no,” Indy said, in that tone of fake indignation that she generally only used when she was teasing Kitty. “Are you saying that your husband actually likes you, Kitty?”
“Not only likes you but likes you enough to stay married to you, when you went to so much trouble to make the marriage as bloodless as possible?” Flannery shook her head. “What a nightmare.”
“I don’t know how you will survive such a betrayal,” Indy continued, rolling her eyes. “How dare the man actually have a feeling!”
“You’re missing the point,” Kitty argued, crossly. “We agreed—”
“Kitty. Hear me on this,” Indy said, with a certain urgency. “I’m pretty sure that you’re the one who is missing the point.”
On her other side, Flannery was nodding. A lot. And then she actually twisted around sideways on the couch cushion so she could glare directly into Kitty’s face.
“He doesn’t just like you,” Flannery said, very brusquely, to Kitty’s ear.
“Have you looked at him? I mean really looked at him. He’s head over heels for you.
That’s why I assumed you two had been sneaking around for a while even though I couldn’t imagine when or how you did it.
This obviously makes more sense, but you have to be top-tier delusional to think that a man like that would have married you for any other reason than the fact that he wanted to.
That no matter what nonsense you came up with, he really just wanted to. ”
“He doesn’t believe in marriage. Neither do I.” Kitty tried to say that matter-of-factly, but her voice betrayed her and cracked all the way through.
“We are nothing like Mom and Dad,” Indy said fiercely. “You know we’re not.”
Kitty pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes, that now felt red and scraped dry. “It has nothing to do with being like them. You know as well as I do how toxic marriage is. Why would I want to repeat that? I don’t. I won’t. It’s supposed to be pretend.”
“Kitty,” Flannery said from beside her, though her voice sounded different now. Softer, Kitty thought, and that made her eyes water again. “A marriage is only as toxic as the people in it.”
On the other side, Indy leaned in closer.
“I know that the two of you think that I’m too young to remember for some reason,” she said fiercely.
“But I’m not. I wasn’t. The only difference between me and the two of you is that you didn’t have two older sisters to tell you that it wasn’t your fault.
To make sure that you knew, every step of the way, that the things that went on in that house affected us, but weren’t about us. ”
She leaned in closer and took hold of Kitty’s arm. She curled her hands over like a hook, as if she was trying to tell Kitty what she wanted to say through the heat of her hands. “Has anyone ever said those things to you?” she asked. “Was there anyone to say those things?”
Kitty felt her heart beating entirely too hard in her chest. “This isn’t about that. I don’t need to be told anything. I just don’t like it when anyone backs out on plans that I thought were iron tight.”
“You don’t like it because that’s what Mom and Dad always did,” Flannery said quietly, then.
“Every single morning we would wake up and they would change reality right there in front of our faces. Whatever happened the night before, especially if we thought we’d gotten somewhere with them, they would just pretend it hadn’t happened.
They lied to us, to each other, and probably to everyone else.
Everything they did, they did on a whim and in the heat of the moment, and they never had the slightest regard for the promises they made to us.
They liked it that way.” She blew out a breath.
“So yes. You like a plan. And I think maybe you found a way to tell yourself that if anyone deviates from that plan, we might as well all be kids again. Stuck in that house, waiting for the sky to fall every night. But we’re not, Kitty, because you got us the hell out of there. ”
“Because no one said it, I will,” Indy said then, and gripped Kitty’s arm a little tighter, her gaze unwavering on her sister’s face.
“None of what they did was your fault. I know they like to tell you that it was. They’re probably sitting in that same house, right now, arguing over whose fault it is that their disaster of a life is the way it is.
I bet that’s the only time they miss us. ”
Kitty took a sharp breath, because that landed a little too hard.
“I just think—” she began, valiantly, but it was no use.
“You went to the other extreme,” Flannery interrupted her, calmly.
Her gaze was locked on Kitty and it was hard to look back at her. This was all so much harder than it should have been, but Kitty made herself do it.
Flannery nodded. “You decided that we were going to be supportive of each other, educated, and responsible. You make sure that we saw just about every inch of this country. You’ve always made certain that we all get a vote on the things that we do.
You made sure that we are nothing like them.
Meanwhile, all you do is work. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen you drink more than a single glass of wine in one sitting.
” She hesitated, as if she wasn’t sure she wanted to say the next thing, but then she did.
In a rush. “And if you weren’t absolutely virginal before Finn Patrick, I’d be very surprised. ”
Kitty thought that she could hide her reaction to that, but both of her sisters let out a little breath while they watched her face, and she could see that she’d somehow told them the truth anyway. That they were absolutely right.
“You made sure that nothing about you is messy or chaotic,” Indy chimed in.
“You’ve taken more time away from the restaurant in the past month than in the previous seven years.
And all of this would be absolutely fine and not even worthy of comment if you did it simply because you were happier that way.
” Indy squeezed her arm again. “Are you happier, Kitty?”
But she couldn’t answer that. She felt as if she was trapped under the weight of some kind of giant boulder, and it was flattening her where she sat. Like there was that terrible concrete inside her and another boulder on top of her and she could hardly breathe.
“Maybe,” Flannery suggested quietly, gently, “it’s time to ask yourself why you find it so terrifying that Finn might actually just like you.”
Kitty wanted to scream. She thought she might have cried again if she’d had any tears left in her body. She wanted to turn this around and say horribly targeted things to her sisters, so that they could feel this way too. And so they could fight instead of… whatever this was.
But instead she closed her eyes. She took a breath. And she tipped her head back until she felt as if she could simply… throw herself out into some kind of trust fall.
No matter how scary it was.