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HER VOICE WAS COLD. Utterly cold. I had never heard her like that before. Like she wanted to reach out and shake me.
She stalked towards me, practically tossing the two cups she had been carrying on to the table as she went, and ripped the pictures down from the walls.
“I told you to stay away from these,” she told me. “What are you doing putting them up?”
“I thought it would be nice,” I replied, feeling stupid all of a sudden. “Having some family photos up—”
“Why didn’t you listen to me?” she demanded as she shoved the pictures back into the box. Did she have tears in her eyes? She looked devastated. I didn’t know what the hell was going on but I knew I had fucked up, in a big way.
“I thought you would change your mind when you saw them up,” I offered her. She glared at me.
“So, you thought you knew better than me on all of this?” she shot back. “You don’t know what you’re doing here, Nate. You need to forget you ever saw these.”
“Who’s the other girl in those pictures?” I asked, keen to find out what was going on. “You never mentioned her before.”
“She’s...she’s none of your business,” she muttered. She grabbed the box and stormed off towards the stairs, her eyes blazing as she fixed them forward.
“You can’t just tell me?” I wondered aloud. “I don’t want to overstep, but—”
“Bad news, you already did,” she practically snarled at me.
“Is she your sister?”
She stopped when I said that word—as though it held something, some charm she didn’t want to admit to. She turned to me, slowly, holding the box to her chest almost protectively.
“Yes, she’s my sister.”
“Why did you and Celeste never mention her before this?” I asked, confused. “Why didn’t she come back to help with your mom, too?”
“It’s none of your business,” she replied through gritted teeth. I was surprised she hadn’t thrown the box at me, given how pissed she seemed right now. What was wrong? Why was she acting like this? Maybe I had overstepped a little, but I didn’t realize bringing up her family would cause such endless problems.
I followed her up the stairs, as she headed to the attic to put the box back there. I shook my head.
“It’s not fair for you to have to deal with all of this if there’s family out there who could help you,” I pointed out. “You’ve given up so much to be here with your mom, and if—”
“You have no idea about Samantha,” she cut me off, her eyes blazing. She was covering up her sadness with anger, and it was all aimed at me. Maybe I deserved it, for the way I had acted. I didn’t want her to think I was some monster, doing what I could to hurt her. I had really thought she’d be glad to see those pictures up on the wall, some memories of her childhood. But it seemed as though I had pressed on an open wound.
“Then tell me about her,” I asked. She stared at me for a long moment, and I watched as the tiredness enveloped her face.
“Nate, I think it’s a good idea for you to leave right now,” she told me, her voice dropping slightly.
“Leave?”
“Yeah, leave.”
She pulled down the ladder to the attic once more and tried to heave the box up there. I reached out and took it for her, not wanting her to do herself any damage as she tried to sort this out.
“There’s still so much we have left to do today—”
“It can wait,” she replied. Her voice was stony, leaving no room for any argument. Whatever I might have thought I was doing, I had just made it a million times worse. I had really been trying to help her, help her mom, but it seemed as though I had jammed my foot into my mouth in the worst way possible.
“I’ll come back some other time,” I told her. “But let me take that box up for you. You’re going to hurt yourself if you try to do it.”
She paused, clearly annoyed she had to rely on me for anything, then reluctantly handed the box over to me. I took it and climbed up the ladder, the box tucked under my arm as I went. The last thing we needed was for her to have a fall just like her mother and wind up hurt.
I placed the box back in the attic, near the entrance so we could get it again if we wanted to. I was sure she would change her mind on all of this and realize she was over-reacting. I didn’t want her to feel like an idiot, but I was sure she would figure out how nice it would be to have pictures of the whole family downstairs, even if she was having a hard time seeing them.
When I came back down the ladder, she was standing there at the bottom, her arms crossed and her face set into an expression of total sureness. If I had thought I might be able to convince her to give me a chance, I had lost it in the few seconds I had been away from her.
“Thank you,” she told me, her voice almost robotic. “You should go now, Nate.”
“Can I at least stay for the coffee?”
She glared at me again.
“I said, you should go.”
I knew there would be no arguing with her. She had already made her mind up about all of this and I didn’t want to be the asshole who ignored her. I had managed to piss her off pretty well already, and I was annoyed with myself for allowing my ego to get the better of me. I had thought I’d known better, but I could see now I had been crazy for thinking I knew what I was doing.
She walked me to the door, not saying a word. As though she didn’t have anything to say to me. When I glanced over at her, I could see she was lost in thought—about Samantha? Maybe. I had clearly stirred up some memories, some family secrets she wanted to forget.
“See you later,” I replied, phrasing it more like a question than a statement. I wasn’t sure if she would even let me back into the house after what had just happened. I had stepped on her toes in a serious way, and I felt guilty as hell for thinking I had a right to do what I had done. I had been so sure I would just show her how good it would look to have these photos up in her mom’s house, but I had uncovered something she didn’t want anything to do with.
“Bye,” she replied, and she pushed open the door and gestured for me to leave. She couldn’t have been making it any more obvious she wanted me gone. I paused, giving her one last chance to change her mind if she wanted to, but she didn’t. She held the door open, waiting for me to leave, her eyes distant, as though her head was full of another memory altogether. Maybe a memory I had brought to the forefront without meaning to.
“Sorry,” I muttered, and with that, I headed out of the door and climbed back into my car once more.
I had no idea what I had done, but whatever camaraderie we had been building, it had vanished. In the blink of an eye. Gone, just like that.
I pulled the car out of the driveway and hit the road, furious with myself. What the hell had I been thinking? She had made herself clear to me, and I had ignored her to do what I thought was right. No wonder she had freaked out the way she had. I was lucky she hadn’t thrown those damn pictures at me and told me she never wanted to see me again.
I knew as well as anyone how deep family secrets could run. What they could mean, how far they could go, how much some people wanted to keep them under wraps. Whatever had happened with Samantha, it was obvious she wasn’t part of the family today, but why? I wished I could have asked her, but I knew she would have just told me to forget it. She didn’t want to talk about the other girl in those pictures, whatever had happened to her. Whatever had led to her having no presence at all in that house apart from being hidden away in the attic, in boxes stuffed far from the line of sight of anyone who might have wanted to see them.
A sister. A sister Celeste and Ellie had never mentioned to me. I wracked my brains, trying to remember if I had seen some mention of her on Celeste’s intake form, but I couldn’t recall. If she had been noted down somewhere, I had missed it, because I was sure I would have remembered—I would have tried to reach out to her as well as Ellie about taking care of Celeste if I had known about her existence.
If she was still here at all, of course.
I was so pissed with myself. So pissed I had managed to ruin whatever Ellie and I had been making together. We had gone from barely knowing each other to being friends to...well, I was hoping something more at some point down the line, but I doubted she would even look at me again after what I had just done to her. She was so, so angry, angrier than I had ever seen her, and I hated how I had been the one to bring it out in her.
There was still so much left that needed doing in Celeste’s house, but would she ever let me set foot in it again after the way I had acted? It was clear the house held some secrets, some history she didn’t want to share—maybe the same secrets which had driven her out of there in the first place. Maybe I was closer to an explanation for her leaving than I thought.
And now, I had lost it. Lost everything. The flicker of light in the life I had down here in Maple Valley had been snatched away, and I only had myself to blame for it. I hated this.
I pulled the car to a halt outside my house. I could still see the look on her face, the anger in her eyes, as though it had burned its way into my brain. I had hurt her—I had really, really hurt her, and I was furious with myself for throwing away the start of something which could have been good if I hadn’t allowed my ego to get in the way of it.
I had hurt her, and I didn’t know how or why—but I needed to make it right. I needed to fix this. I didn’t know what it would take, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to sit back and wait for her to cool down. I had to show her how sorry I was.
And ensure I hadn’t lost her for good.
THE END
