| |
––––––––
I HURRIED DOWNSTAIRS, annoyed with myself that I had allowed the day to get away from me. I didn’t want to mess up and miss this call. I needed to talk with them. And I needed to put as much space between myself and those pictures as possible.
I knew he was just trying to help, but I wished I could tell him how much it hurt to even see those pictures again. I was doing everything I could to forget what I had been through, what we had lost, but there was no hiding from it.
I thought Mom would have gotten rid of those pictures, but I supposed she was never going to dispose of them entirely. They were the last connections we had back to her, back to Samantha, and she didn’t want to throw them out.
But the sight of her, my little sister, smiling up at me from the pictures, made my heart ache in a way I didn’t know was possible.
Guilt, grief, all of it wrapped up together and on top of one another until I couldn’t make sense of anything anymore. I wanted this to be over, but I didn’t know how to end it. I needed to stay focused on the call for work and hope it was enough to get my mind off of everything.
I was on a call with Angela this afternoon, and the New York office, just to touch base with everything and work out where we were going to go from here. There was so much I had to work through, so much I had to handle, and I didn’t have a single clue how I was going to pull it all together. They expected so much from me, but I was lost—up to my eyeballs in confusion and doubt, and now with the extra sprinkle of sadness from seeing Sam’s picture like that.
I sat down at the kitchen table, pulled out my phone, and set it up so the call wouldn’t drop at any moment. Angela and the New York office had already started the call, and I jumped in to join them.
“...so we’ll see how it goes with the sculpture pieces,” Angela finished up.
“Hello, everyone, sorry I’m late,” I told them, hoping they wouldn’t be too mad at me.
“Hello, Ellie,” Angela replied.
“Hi, Ellie,” Nina, the New York office head, added in. I felt myself start to relax. See, when it came to work, I could handle just about anything they put in front of me. I knew where I was with work, even if, with everything else, I felt like I was losing my mind a little.
“Good to hear from you both,” I replied, straightening up. “So, is this just a chance to touch base?”
“Exactly,” Angela agreed. “To get an idea of your plans.”
“And timeframe,” Nina cut in. I winced. I didn’t want to have to tell her I had no intention of coming back anytime soon, but what else was I meant to say?
“I think it’s going to be quite a while,” I told her, as gently as I could. “My mother is going to need a lot of support now she’s back home.”
“But you don’t want to stay there too long, do you?” Nina asked, sounding incredulous. “I mean, Maple Valley, it’s the middle of nowhere. You can’t do anything.”
“I’m not looking to do anything,” I replied, through gritted teeth. Hadn’t Angela spoken to her about all of this? She seemed to understand why I needed the time away. Perhaps she was getting Nina to apply the pressure so she didn’t have to.
“There’s plenty to do around my mother’s house,” I told her. “And I think I’m going to be away for a while. I need to stay here while she gets back on her feet.”
“Yeah, of course,” Nina replied, but she didn’t sound like she got it. “But you just tell me when I should start planning the party for when you’re back, huh?”
I rubbed my fingers over my temples. I knew she was trying to keep things positive, but it kind of pissed me off—it felt as though she wasn’t listening to what I was saying at all, projecting what she wanted my answers to be instead of listening to what I actually had to say.
“I’m taking a long leave,” I told her. “And I don’t know how long it will be before I come back. I don’t want you planning anything around me when I have no idea when I’m going to return.”
I had put it as plainly as possible, but I was sure Nina would find a way to read something else into it. I didn’t want her to put too much weight on my return, because I had to be here for a while.
“You must be so bored out there,” she sighed. “I don’t know how you manage it.”
“It’s really not so bad,” I replied. I didn’t know why I felt so defensive over this place, but hearing her talk about it as though it was nothing more than a stop on the road annoyed me. She didn’t have the first idea of what it was like here. She didn’t know how much life there really was. She sounded a little like Nate had when the two of us had first met, when he had talked about this place as though it was a one-stop town.
“Well, I’m sure you’ll be looking forward to getting back either way,” Angela remarked. Her, too? She really thought life was so awful out here? I bristled.
“Yeah, sure,” I replied. “But I need to focus on taking care of my mom for now. Is there anything else you needed to talk about?”
I managed to shift the conversation on to the project they had actually contacted me about, hoping I would be able to keep them focused on it. I didn’t want to sit around gossiping about how much I hated this place. I didn’t want to be negative.
By the time the call ended, I was exhausted. They had spent the whole time trying to get an answer out of me one way or another about when I was going to be coming back, and I didn’t know what to tell them. How much longer could I balance the two sides of my life without one of them having to give way? I had worked so hard to get where I was in my career, and the thought of watching it all go down the drain made my heart hurt.
But I couldn’t leave this place. Not until it was all done. I refused to be the person who fucked up and gave up on my job just because something domestic had called to me, and I didn’t want to let down my mother, either, if I could help it. Balancing the two was going to be nigh-on impossible.
But I would have to find a way. I tucked my phone away, and went to grab something to eat. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until that moment, but my body was crying out for some food after spending so long rooting through the attic with Nate.
I had heard him moving around a little when I had been on the call, but I hadn’t thought much of it. In fact, I had been so distracted, it hadn’t crossed my mind as to why he was out of the attic, given that he seemed to have found so much in there that interested him.
I nibbled on my toast as I glanced around the kitchen, and I found myself wondering how much better it would look with a little more light. Maybe we could put in new windows? Something to allow the sunshine to pick the place up every morning? It wouldn’t be easy—or quick—but it would look gorgeous, I was sure of it.
I smiled to myself as I realized how long-term I was thinking. I wasn’t sure what exactly had shifted inside of me to change my mind on all of this, but it all seemed to make a little more sense now I was here. Maybe it was Nate, maybe it was Mom, maybe some combination of both, but I wasn’t counting down the minutes until I could get out of here and make a break for it like I used to. I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want to get out the first chance I had. I wanted to stay, a little longer, and maybe a little longer after that, too.
I could hear Nate in the living room, and I decided to make us both a coffee to perk us up. After all the dust we had inhaled up there in the attic, we needed something to clear our pipes.
There was something peaceful about hearing him in the next room, as though he belonged there—as though it was where he was meant to be. I liked having him around, liked having him help me through all of this, even when it seemed hard. Even when it seemed downright impossible sometimes, actually.
I hummed to myself as I made the coffee, feeling a lot lighter than I had when I had come in here. The images of Samantha were still fresh in my mind, but they didn’t gouge away inside of me the way they had when I had first seen them. Besides, they were up in the attic now, where they belonged, and I was sure they would stay there.
Making my way through to the living room, holding both cups of coffee carefully, I grinned as I saw Nate, facing away from me, inspecting something on the wall.
But when he stepped back, and I saw what he was looking at, I nearly dropped the cups. He was standing in front of three pictures from the box I had told him never to look at again. They were framed and up on the wall in front of me, Samantha beaming out from each and every one of them.
I swallowed heavily, trying to calm myself down. I didn’t want to freak out at him, even though I knew I had every right to. I clutched the cups to my chest and narrowed my eyes at him. I did my best to put it as nicely as possible, but there wasn’t a whole lot of room left for niceness in me by that point.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
