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There’s knowing your dad, high, pointed a gun to your sister’s head and might have killed her.
There’s knowing your mom didn’t try to save her and didn’t go to her afterward.
There’s knowing that, and there’s pain so huge from knowing it that the pain doesn’t have anyplace to go. It just ricochets around inside you, howling.
“I did the wrong thing,” she sobs.
“No.”
“I should’ve called the police. I didn’t think. I tried to think what you would say to do, but I couldn’t, and you weren’t there, West.”
I wasn’t there. I can’t change it. I tried, I fucking tried to be there for her, but I couldn’t.
“You did great,” I say. “You did everything perfect.”
It’s stupid, unhelpful, but Jesus, what’s helpful? I can’t make it right.
I rock her, wipe her face dry, murmur nonsense until she starts to calm.
We sit in her dark room. The snow’s falling outside. In the hush, the quiet, I remember all the worst times.
The time my dad hit my new kitten with his car, studied the limp body by my side, and booted it underneath the trailer next door.
The time I stood up to him and he knocked me down with a lazy fist and kicked me in the stomach so hard, I shit blood for days.
The night I got arrested out of the bakery after I found out my mom had taken him back.
The day I left Caroline at the airport in Des Moines.
The dead zone of time after the funeral when I tried to burn my life down around me so I wouldn’t have to feel anything anymore, because I’d had enough. I was fucking done.
Frankie’s worst time is worse than any of mine, and I can’t fix it.
All I can do is this.
“It’s not your fault.” I whisper it into her hair, behind her ear. Her head is smooth and sleek under my hand, her body small, a curve against my stomach that reminds me of that kitten on my lap, soft and warm and innocent for those few hours I had it. “You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s them, Franks. It’s them.”
She presses her nose into my chest, clutching my shirt. “I don’t want to live at Bo’s.”
“You don’t have to. You can stay with me.”
“Mom says you want to be alone with Caroline.”
“I want you with me. You’re my girl. Okay?”
She’s quiet.
“I love you, Franks. I’ve loved you all your life, and I’m always gonna love you. And the fact that I love Caroline, too, doesn’t take anything away from you. It just means I want her with me and you with me, both. It’ll always be like that. You understand?”
I can feel her nod against my chest.
“I’ve been thinking since Christmas that you wanted to go back to Silt and I was gonna have to talk you out of it. I don’t want to fight Mom for you, but if she tries to make you go back, then I’ll fucking fight for you, because it’s better here. It’s not perfect, I know, but I think we can get it close if we work at it. If you’re miserable, though, you have to tell me so I can try to fix it. You have to tell me everything. I can’t read minds.”
“Sometimes it seems like you can.”
“That’s because we Leavitts are fucking sharp as tacks.”
She turns her head to rest her temple against my shoulder. “It’s different here,” she says.
