“That’s a stupid-looking castle,” the kid says. He studies it a moment, then draws his leg back and kicks one of the towers like he’s kicking a soccer ball.
Lorna gasps. “Stop!” she screams, and runs forward, pushing the boy as hard as she can. He hardly moves. The other boys laugh hysterically. The boy pushes Lorna, hard, and she flies backward, her head bouncing off the sand, the skin on her back feeling like it has ripped open. She watches helplessly as he draws his leg back again, meaning to kick the next one.
“Get away from her!” Kristen suddenly flies into their midst, launching herself at the boy. She slams into his chest. “Get out of here!” She is swaying on her feet, flailing her arms. The boys are laughing at her now. “Are you drunk?” one of them cries, and they howl.
Kristen flies at that one, but he knocks her off him as if she were nothing more than a bothersome cat. The third boy is backing away. “Let’s get out of here,” he says. “Come on, guys.” The boys go, kicking sand as they walk, still laughing.
Lorna remains on her back, blinking away tears. She doesn’t know how much time has passed before Kristen gets up and comes over to where she is. She stands with her legs braced apart, scrutinizing Lorna. “You look okay. Come on, let’s go.”
“I’m not finished building my sandcastle.”
“You can build another one tomorrow. Let’s go.” The fight has gone out of Kristen. Her eyes look red and like glass.
They gather their things and trudge back to the beach house.Kristen leads Lorna straight to the bathroom. She takes out the enormous bottle of aloe vera Mommy brought and begins to slather thick globs of it on Lorna’s burned skin. She has finished Lorna’s shoulders when Mommy comes to the bathroom door and stares at the two of them. Her face turns dark. “What in the hell?” she demands. “Kristen? You smell like a brewery. What have you been doing?”
“Nothing,” Kristen says defensively.
Mommy’s eyes go wide. She backs out of the bathroom. “Dave? Dave, come here. Kristen’s beendrinking.”
Kristen sighs. She continues rubbing aloe gel on Lorna until her father thunders in. He catches Kristen by the arm and yanks her out of the bathroom, forcing her down the hall, yelling at her. Mommy follows them, shouting at Kristen.
Her parents don’t notice Lorna’s burned skin. Or how much pain she is in. Lorna slinks to her and Kristen’s bedroom and peels off the bathing suit, whimpering as she does. The fabric brushing against her skin is so painful.
She falls asleep to the fighting.
Chapter 6Lorna Now
With all those happy figurines staring at her, lorna had lost her appetite. Did she want to change? Well, yes, Micah, she did. She hated what she had become. Who would want to be this sad, lonely woman? At what point had she decided this small life of hers was enough? How had she settled for using Precious Moments figurines as a substitute for living? Did she really think she could make up what she’d lost in life with porcelain?
She threw away her half-eaten frozen dinner, then went to her bedroom to change. Agnes followed, finding her bed and circling four or five times before settling in. She let out a loud sigh.
“Oh, sure,” Lorna said, reaching down to pet her. “All that rolling over for attention and belly rubs must have really worn you out, huh? I feel like I don’t even know you. You could have at least told me you knew how to roll over.” She sniffed with indignation and stood.
Agnes yawned and rolled onto her side.
Lorna changed into pajama shorts and an old Red Hot Chili Peppers T-shirt. She’d gone to see the band many years ago. With Mike, her boyfriend of several months until he told her he couldn’t deal with the constant Kristen drama. He’d bought her the T-shirt, so at least she had that. That was fifteen years ago,when she used to date. Never very successfully, but enough that she couldn’t be considered a total spinster.
She could hardly recall Mike now. He had shaggy hair and was a chemist at a large manufacturing firm. Nice guy, but... but Lorna didn’t remember much specifically, other than it had ended because of Kristen. Like everything else, it was so hard to recall who she’d been before she closed and locked the door to her internal bomb shelter.
She piled her hair on top of her head, then walked over to her small dresser and opened the bottom drawer, where she kept her important documents. In the back of the drawer, behind many papers, was a file. She pulled it out. Labeled simplyMom, it was all the paperwork that had been necessary to record her mother’s death and settle her estate.
Lorna took the file to the living room, settled into her favorite chair (a happy yellow, with flowers and butterflies woven into the upholstery), and put the file on her lap. She wasn’t sure what she intended to do, but inside this file, among many other things, was the paperwork from her mother’s trust. Lorna hadn’t looked at it since she’d shoved it into that drawer more than four years ago, right after she’d met with the estate attorney who told her that her mother had made her the sole beneficiary of her estate, and anything left after paying creditors belonged to her... on the condition she addressed her anger.
“You’re kidding,” Lorna had said.
“Nope. Not kidding,” Tyrone, the estate attorney, confirmed. “She left a list of things she wanted you to address.” He’d looked at the list. “Interesting.” He’d shown her the list then, and Lorna recognized the items instantly—they were all the things she accused Kristen and her mother of ruining for her. All the things she angrily spelled out to her mother one terrible night shortly before she died.
She had turned away, not wanting to read more.
Tyrone was a no-nonsense type and unemotional as he folded the list and put it with the trust paperwork. Usually Lorna very much appreciated that in a person, but in this instance, she could have used a littleThis is outrageousattitude on her behalf. Of course, Tyrone had no way of knowing that her mother had dedicated the last few years of her life to Al-Anon and the tenants of the program. That she saw herself as a leader in the work of forgiving addicts and learning to set boundaries. And that she had this annoying idea that if Lorna took stock of her personal inventory of grievances and made a list of the people she’d hurt and why, and then made amends or apologized or did whatever she needed to do to stop obsessing about the past, then maybe she could forgive herself, stop being angry, and get on with the business of living a long and happy life.
“Forgive myself for what?” Lorna had demanded when her mother first presented this wonky idea.
Her mother averted her gaze. “For not having saved your sister. For not being the sister you think Kristen needs.”
Lorna was taken aback. “Excuse me? I’m not the sisterKristenneeds? What about the sister I need, Mom? I don’t need to forgive myself; I need to figure out if I can ever forgive Kristen, because I’ve tried, and I can’t.”
That conversation, like many that would follow, had gone from bad to worse. It had constantly amazed Lorna that Kristen could break every promise she ever made, and her mother would still seek ways to forgive her. There had to be an end point, didn’t there?
