Page 34 of All the Beautiful Things
“Your dad’s cancer is slow growing and beatable. It’s not like Melissa’s from what he said,” she said, somehow able to read my mind. “You should listen to what he has to say.”
“I can’t.” I shook my head. My gaze bounced over the pictures, some of us as children, Melissa with her sorority sisters at Iowa. They had bright yellow Hawkeye stickers on their cheeks, waving black and gold pompoms. We’d always done everything together, including go to the same college.
Shoving my hands to my hips to keep from ripping away more of my sister’s memories and life, I swallowed.
“In the end, when she couldn’t leave the room, she said she wanted to spend the days with everyone she ever loved.”
“You made this for her.”
I sneered at all of them. Hundreds of them still stuck to the lime green painted wall. Pictures of our mom, family, foster kids of all ages and colors and sizes and genders with Melissa’s arms wrapped around all of them like she’d loved every single person she ever met.
I searched until I found the one I was looking for. The one that set all of this in motion. “You’re there.” I shoved a finger toward one upper corner and glanced at her out of the corner of my eye.
God, she was beautiful. Even as her face paled when she caught sight of what I pointed to.
“What?”
She pressed her hand to her chest. How could she be so surprised given what she now knew? I’d been tortured with that innocent smile and those shining eyes from a photograph years before we met. She was young in the photo, her brother’s arm draped over her shoulders. Melissa had searched for hours online to find a picture of her and Josh together. Something that wasn’t her initial mugshot.
“Signing day.” Her voice shook as she talked to herself more than me. “My parents were there, media, photographers. Everyone wanted to know where the great Joshua Huntington the Third, would go to college for football.”
She grinned at me. That wobbly, uncertain grin of hers I loved almost as much as her innocent one. “Did you cut my parents out of the picture or did Melissa? Because I know they were in this one.”
“Melissa did. Right after she drew devil horns on your father.”
Lilly chuckled and shook her head. She turned back to the pictures.
“You said she made this so she could see all the people she loved.”
“I did.”
“And I made it. Why?” Her voice trembled again, and I hated I gritted my teeth against that emotion.
“Because she loved you.”
“How? She didn’t know me.”
“Loving people was all she knew how to do.”
My eyes burned with tears. My chest ignited right after. Fucking emotions. I hated them. Hated them more when others could notice and see the destruction stamped on my face and running down my cheeks.
Slowly, Lilly reached out, and with gentle movements full of grace like she was scared of terrifying a rabid dog, she placed her hand at my back and pressed the side of her body to mine. “He’ll beat this.”
It’d be smart to get rid of her, before I lost her, too. It’d be smart to do it now before either of us were hurt further.
Instead, instinct had me curling my arm over her shoulders and then turning so she was facing me. I pressed my other hand to her cheek, lifting her chin up until our eyes met.
And then I took the biggest risk I’d taken with Lilly since the night I stepped into Judith’s, but I needed this. Her.
“I need you. Please. Stay with me tonight? Just one night.”
She turned, kissed my palm and gave me the saddest smile I’d ever seen. “One night.”
12
Lilly
Imanaged to eventually get Hudson out of Melissa’s room, emotions swirling in my own gut.
