| |
I tossed and turned in bed, feeling sick to my stomach.
The images of Sam and me hanging on that wall were burned into my memory. I had done my best to act normal when Mom had come back home, telling her everything had gone well over the course of the day, sitting down to dinner with her and then helping her to bed—but as soon as I was back in my room, all by myself, the sadness overwhelmed me, and I felt the tears starting to pour from my eyes.
I had been able to put it to the back of my mind since I had been back here, at least, for now. Yes, of course, it was painful, being in the house where it had happened, but the decade or so between me and what had gone down was enough.
Until I had seen those photos, and it had all come flooding back to me, hard and fast and utterly impossible to control. I thought I had been able to handle it when I had seen the pictures up in the attic, but when I had laid eyes on them on the wall, all of that had changed. How could it not? It felt like my heart was being ripped out of my chest, reliving that hideous day all over again.
I could still remember it, though only in small snatches, my brain doing its best to keep me from having to endure the reality of it. Standing at the top of the stairs. Seeing Sam sprawled at the bottom. The cold grip of terror as I made my way down to her, calling her name, seeing her not moving, her eyes open and unseeing. The way her neck was twisted, her body crumpled, so small and so helpless there below me...
I couldn’t believe it. I still couldn’t believe it. Even now, the memories burned inside my head, the sheer weight of them more than I could take, more than anyone should have had to take. I should never—no child should ever have had to see that. No child. No person.
The days that had followed her death were still a blur in my mind, but I could remember my mother—her eyes, drawn and hollow, as though something had been cleaned out from inside of her, never to return. She went through the motions, promising me it wasn’t my fault.
But I knew it was. I was Sam’s big sister, and I should have been there for her, I should have been able to protect her, but it wasn’t enough. I still couldn’t remember what had happened that day, but I knew I would have done everything I could to take care of her. I knew I would have protected her with everything I had.
But it hadn’t been enough. I had still lost her. And it had been under my watch. Mom had been out, grabbing some groceries, leaving little me at home with my sister because she trusted me. And when she had come back...
She had already lost so much. My father, her husband. It seemed unbearably cruel to have her daughter snatched from her, too, though she had always put on the bravest of brave faces. She had held herself so strong in her sureness she could keep going and had poured everything into making sure both of us made it out in one piece.
And I had. I had left. I had run. Too much was held in this house for me to keep living here, or anywhere close to it. That was why I had left when I had, because I knew there was no way I could continue living here. Every time I walked down the street, I saw people looking at me, and I could tell they were judging me for what had happened. Whether they blamed me or not, it didn’t really matter; I still blamed myself, and I couldn’t stand to be somewhere I knew people were aware of what I had done.
I had left as much as I could behind and promised myself not to drag Samantha’s memory with me. Not the memory of her death, anyway. I wanted to remember her alive, joyful, with so much potential, ready to trust in her big sister for everything.
She should have been able to trust in me, but I had failed her in more ways than I could count. Mom told me once that she knew Sam would never have wanted me to blame myself for what had happened, but I couldn’t let it go. My heart was shattered. Anything I did to try and repair it felt like a Band-Aid on a bullet wound, no chance of truly stringing the pieces together again the way I wanted to. I would never be the same without her. I couldn’t be. I didn’t want to be.
And now Nate knew about her. If he hadn’t already. Surely, he wouldn’t have put those photos out if he knew what had happened. I was surprised somebody hadn’t told him, but I supposed it was long enough ago now that most people had probably forgotten about it. It wasn’t the first thing that came to their mind when they thought of me or my mom, but it would always be for me. I would never forget. I could spend the rest of my life trying to put it all behind me, and I knew it would never be enough. The memory of her would always be there, always present, ready to remind me of everything I had missed since I had lost her.
I climbed out of bed as quietly as I could and headed downstairs to the living room. There was nothing but a couple of hooks in the walls to remind me of where those photos had been, and I was glad I had pulled them down before Mom had seen them, but guilt still nagged at the back of my mind. Was it fair to Samantha for me to put them away so easily? Shouldn’t I have wanted to preserve her memory in all the ways I could?
I knew there was no way I could handle coming downstairs every day and seeing her on the wall. It would hurt too much. I didn’t want to forget her, but I didn’t want to be reminded of what had happened every day of my life, either. It was too much. Too painful. It still felt like a raw wound inside of me, aching and bleeding and painful.
Would that ever change? Maybe if I faced up to it, but there was no way I was going to spend time doing that now. I didn’t want to. I had too much to think about, too much to focus on, and I refused to consider how much it would have taken to handle the horror of what had happened on the day I had lost her.
There was one picture that stung above all else. The two of us, spending time at our grandparents. I had been four, and she had been a baby, and I had been allowed to hold her for the length of the picture; she was lying in my arms, her head resting against my shoulder, and I was beaming at the camera as though I was holding solid gold.
It was how I had felt then, honestly. Like I had been gifted the most amazing thing in the world. How could I not? She was perfect; a tiny baby, a beautiful little girl who would be my best friend for the rest of my life. My mother had always been careful about her when I was young, guiding me how to take care of her and making sure she didn’t leave us alone together for too long, so I wouldn’t screw anything up.
But I had earned her trust over the years. And look where it had gotten us.
I touched the spot on the wall where the picture had been and prayed Mom wouldn’t ask about what had been there. I didn’t have it in me to tell her what I had pulled down. Maybe she would have wanted the photos up—hell, perhaps they had been up somewhere in the house before she had heard I would be coming back, and she had rushed around to rip them off the walls so I wouldn’t have to face them.
We hadn’t talked about it since I had gotten home, and I wasn’t sure I would have had the words to even if I wanted. I knew I needed to get it out in the open, but I had no clue how to make sense of it. I had been running from it for so long, there was no way in hell I was going to be able to deal with it now. I was so used to just shutting down any thoughts of that nature when they came into my head, it would take some serious training to think about facing them now I was back here.
I needed to find the words to tell her how sorry I was, even now, for what I had done. What I had failed to do. She had always told me she didn’t blame me, but she couldn’t have really believed it. No mother could. She knew I had been the one there with her when it had happened, and I hadn’t been enough to stop it. I blamed myself, right down to my bones, and I always would. I was sure she did, too.
I made my way back to the stairs and lingered outside the door to her new bedroom for a moment. Maybe I could go in right now and tell her all of it. It was all so close to the surface, threatening to burst out of me at any point, and maybe it would have been safer for me to just look her in the eye and come clean before I blurted it out when I wasn’t ready.
But I could hear her slow, steady breathing as she slept, and I didn’t want to wake her. She needed her rest. And she needed her peace from what had happened. She had lived here ever since, and there was no way she didn’t spend at least some part of every day thinking of it.
I needed to grieve, too, but I didn’t even know where to start. Perhaps Nate had been trying to nudge me in that direction, but I didn’t have it in me to talk to him about what had happened, let alone start to work through the reality of the feelings I was dealing with now that I was back.
I had been harsh on him, but I couldn’t let him dictate how all of this worked. I had to do it at my own pace, and I’m sure even he, a doctor, would have agreed.
He hadn’t known what he was doing when he had put up those pictures. Hadn’t known the dark memories they stirred up inside of me. He would never have done it if he had. He wasn’t the kind of man who would go out of his way to hurt me, even in a tough-love sense. He was too kind for that.
So it was on me to work out what happened next. Where I went now. My entire system was tensed and trying its best to push down the memories rising inside of me, but maybe I needed to accept them, to embrace them, no matter how hard they were, no matter what pain they held for me. I had struggled enough. I had hidden enough.
It was time to face up to what I had been running from. No matter how hard it might have been, no matter how painful it was to even consider it.
I headed back to my bed and lay down on top of the covers, staring at the ceiling. Sadness came in waves, but I tried to hold it there instead of shoving it away. Maybe it was for the best. Maybe I needed to feel it, if just for a little while, even though it hurt like hell. Even though I wanted nothing more than to just be able to hide from it.
I rolled over and grabbed my phone, needing just a little distraction. I wrote up a text and stared at it for a long moment. I didn’t know if now was the time to send it, but I didn’t want to let this all get the better of me. No matter how tempting it might have been to hold on to my anger and discomfort at everything which had happened between Nate and me, I knew the smart thing to do would be to drop it. Finally. Let it go and focus on what came next instead.
I fired off the text and closed my eyes. And as soon as I heard the little ping that told me it had been delivered, I finally felt sleep catch up with me, and I let myself sink into well-needed rest.
