“I don’t see that.” He never has. Even when he grew up from that ten-year-old boy who first saw her outside her grandmother’s house and started hearing the rumors about her family, he never looked at her any differently. To him, she’d always be the girl with the empty eyes whose face lit up every time she saw him. The girl who lived through hell every night and still showed up the next day and laughed with him. The girl who made every awkward part of him feel right somehow.
“I don’t know how he can let this happen,” the girl says, her gaze lost outside the window. “He has to see how he’s ruining all our lives, and still, he keeps doing it.” Her hands are trembling in her lap. The boy doesn’t remember the last time she spoke this frankly about her father. “When I have kids, I’ll do whatever I have to, to keep them away from this bullshit. And if it follows us, then I’ll rip this entire town apart before I let them get hurt.”
“And I’ll be right there beside you, holding the match.”
She turns to him, the green of her irises still taking his breath away after all these years.
She doesn’t know he’s in love with her. He’s not being coy about it, but he’s also never made a move. He’s not ready to risk what they have. A friendship that’s so much more than that. He’s not ready to mess it up. Not yet.
So even if he wants to lean over and kiss her, take her in his arms and protect her from the mess that’s all around them, he only takes her hurt hand in his and says, “But first, let me take care of this. Okay?”
She looks at him for a long time. Long enough that he wonders if maybe, just maybe, she feels the same.
“Okay.”
Chapter 12
When Keira walks in for our planned triaging session three days later, she just says, “Hey,” then settles in front of the boxes I assembled in Ruth’s living room and gets to work, not saying another word.
I usually don’t mind silence. Every day in the hospital, I’m forced to write notes while someone is shouting at the top of their lungs in the next room and ten different alarms are blaring next to my head, so when I get back home, I take whatever peace I can find. However, today, I’d take whatever noise I could get. Non-stop cuckoo clocks. A marching band. Anything to get the silence that weighs a thousand bricks between me and my sister out of the way. It’s making my skin itch, and I’ve cracked my fingers so much in the past thirty minutes, my joints are hurting. I’d swear I can hear each of our pulses in the room. It’s stifling. And yet, I won’t speak first. She’s hurt me, and I don’t feel like being her punching bag any longer.
The only silver lining is the amount of things in here to focus on. Figuring out what is worth selling versus what can be thrown away is one hell of a task. Ruth wasn’t a hoarder per se, but she did love to keep memorabilia from different periods of her life. There’s noway she ever thought she’d use a ten-person porcelain tea set, but if I’d ever told her that, she’d have swatted me away and said, “When you host your ten-person tea party, you’ll be happy I was smart enough to keep this.” The more days that pass, the less headway I feel I’ve made. The entire main floor is covered in piles I started making before getting sidetracked into another category of stuff. To give. To throw away. Could benefit the local cat shelter? The costume shop might buy?
I bring a full box outside, and when I come back, Keira averts her eyes. I’d say it feels like we’re fifteen, but even when we were teens, our relationship was never this tense. We would fight all the time, but two minutes after she’d call me a bitch and I’d slam our bedroom door in her face, she’d come get me and ask if I wanted to go to the movies with her. Apart from Eli, she was my best friend.
I let out a long breath, then start on a new box. I write on it,Tupperware-meeting ready.
A huff of a laugh comes from my right. When I look up, Keira looks away like I’ve caught her stealing candy from a child.
I load my box of containers with and without their lids. Why didn’t I think of turning music on before so it wouldn’t be this goddamn quiet?
“I’m sorry.”
I glance up warily like I hallucinated the noise.
“It wasn’t fair of me to bring up Ruth,” she says, and this time, I can see her lips moving.
I don’t remember the last time I heard Keira apologize. The more our parents forced her to, the less she did it. My father couldtell her to apologize for her tone, or she’d be grounded for a month, and she’d rather miss all the parties in the world than give in to him.
But here she is. Taking that first step.
“Thank you.” I tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. She took that vulnerable leap. I can, too. “And I’m sorry I wasn’t there to help with Ruth. Or with Mom,” I add as an afterthought. “And that I wasn’t there for you. The way I left… It wasn’t right. I know it wasn’t. It was never about you, but I’m sorry I made it that way.”
Keira’s face is still made of that impenetrable rock, every thought locked away so tight you could never dream of catching a glimpse at them. But still, she nods.
That’s as close to an agreement as we’ve gotten since she came here that first morning.
We spend the next hour packing more boxes and emptying cupboards and closets, and while we’re not chatty, she asks me to help her lift the heavy coat rack, and I make her a tuna sandwich while preparing my own lunch.
“So, did you have an idea for an organization you’d like to donate to?” I ask around a bite. Maybe she and Ruth did talk about it at some point.
She shrugs. “I still don’t know why she chose to do that. I don’t have any close to heart. Do you?”
I shake my head.
“I guess it would make sense to donate to a heart failure organization.”
“That’s a good idea.” I don’t have anything better to suggest that would be related to Ruth in some way, and I wouldn’t want to give her money away to a cause she wouldn’t have particularly valued, even if she gave us permission to.
