“Thanks.”
We sat there in silence—Dad hyperfocused on his coffee, and me on the lack of activity in the house. It was quiet, too quiet. Even Bailey was penned up in his crate, his nose pressed against the door.
“Can I let him out?” I asked, wondering what he’d done to earn time in jail.
Dad shrugged. “Sure, but he’s only going to pace a circle in Ella’s room and whine. It gets irritating after a while.”
I unclicked the latch and tapped my hand against the side of my leg. Bailey edged his way out, his eyes on Dad as if he was waiting to be scolded or locked back up. When Dad stayed silent, Bailey came to me and lay down on my feet.
“Where’s Mom?” I asked. She was the one I was used to seeing when I came home from school.
“Upstairs reading.”
I didn’t ask what she was reading. I didn’t need to. The way his voice dropped off to nothing more than a pained whisper was answer enough. She was reading our journals, the ones I saw in her room the other day, the ones Maddy and I kept as kids.
“She seems different now, sadder than before. It’s been nearly a month since…” I trailed off, unwilling to say the actual words. “Why does she seem more upset now?”
“Because you returned to school.”
Confused as to why that mattered, I said, “But I’ve always gone to school. Me going back—that was always the plan.”
“The entire time you were in the hospital, she was there, talking to the doctors and keeping you company. Then when you were home, she had you to take care of. Doctor’s appointments, prescriptions, watching you, making sure you were comfortable. Now that you’re back at school, she has nothing but her own thoughts to occupy her mind. And right now, well, those thoughts aren’t good.”
I was only home for a little over a week, but Mom spent every one of them hovering over me, asking me what I wanted to eat, kicking Alex out so I could rest, and talking to the teachers about the work I’d missed. It had bothered me back then. I figured her constant prodding was to keep me from losing it, from slipping into the darkness of my own mind. Little did I know, she was doing it to keep herself sane.
“I could stay home tonight if you want.”
Dad shook his head and stood up, poured his full cup of coffee into the sink. “No. Go and be with your friends. Go out with Alex. Don’t worry, I’ll be here. I’ll get her through this.”
I didn’t want to go, not when I was the one who had put her here, in a hell she couldn’t seem to escape. A dark pit of my own making.
“Do you think we will be okay?”
Dad tensed, his hands braced on the edges of the sink. I heard every tick of the clock on the wall, felt every beat of my heart hammering in my head as I waited for him to turn around and answer. When he finally did, I could see the worry etched on his face, the confident, it-will-all-be-okay attitude I’d come to depend on stripped away, replaced with an uncertainty that had me terrified.
“I will make sure you are okay, Maddy. I promise you that.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
I watched as he weighed his next words, his mouth opening on a sigh before he finally spoke. “I don’t know, Maddy. She’s hurting, and there is nothing I can do to fix it. Nothing any of us can do.”
I got up to leave the kitchen, his last words thundering around my mind. Mom was in so much pain—pain I had caused and couldn’t fix. And seeing Dad sitting there, worrying about everyone and everything, made things worse, made the guilt I was carrying around that much heavier.
“Maddy?” Dad whispered after me. I stopped, but didn’t turn around. “I meant what I said the other day. I never once imagined what it would be like if your sister had lived instead of you. I loved … love you both more than my own life. Your mother does, too.”