Leaning past her to snatch a tissue, he dried her tears, but they kept coming.
“Dee and I talk—talked—” The sob bucked her body against his, and he tentatively touched her shoulder. When she moved closer, he drew her into his arms. “We talked every week, and last winter, a few months after our father died, I knew something was wrong. Sometimes she was…off. Slurred and giggly one week, dull the next. Not herself.”
The subtext was becoming text, at long last.
Once too spindly and faded to discern, the words were now stark and bold and black on a bone-white page, and he didn’t want to read them. But he knew Candy was poring over them every day, flagellating herself as she read the same story, the same inevitable, tragic ending, again and again.
She deserved some company. Some respite. A new interpretation of the text.
She deserved—
That didn’t bear contemplating, not right now.
Candy’s fingers curled in the cotton of his button-down, and her eyes were huge and agonized. “I got worried, but she always had some reason for it. She had shoulder surgery the week after our father’s funeral, and things went wrong, and they had to go back in. While she was recovering, the pain meds they prescribed made her loopy. Then she said she was tired and punchy from long weeks at work, once she went back. Then she’d tell me she’d just come home from getting drinks with her friends, even though my sister didn’t drink. Not ever, Griff, not after what happened to our mom.”
Candy hadn’t touched the wine at the faculty holiday party. He remembered that now.
Her laugh was sharp. Bitter. “Then she said I was imagining things. Eventually, she blew up at me for mentioning yet again how odd she sounded. She told me to stop h-harping on her and treat her like an adult.”
The pain of that conversation lingered in the waver of her voice, but there was no soothing her now. Uglier revelations were appearing on the horizon, looming in the distance as they rocketed closer, word by word.
“You know what I did, Griff?” She didn’t wait for a response. “I threatened her. Told her I’d fly to Oregon and kick her ass if she didn’t sound more like herself soon. I said I’d put a hit out on her if she didn’t stop worrying me. Becausethatwas clearly going to fix the fucking problem.Thatwas going to get her to talk to me.”
Her hands were fisted now, her knuckles digging into his chest. “I hired a cleaning service to help her around the house while she recovered. I had food delivered. I researched the best post-operative physical therapists in her area.”
Service. Love’s austere and lonely offices.
But she couldn’t see that. Not yet.
“You know what Ididn’tdo?” She was sneering at herself now, face twisted in grief and self-loathing. “I didn’t realize she’d become addicted to her pain meds, and I didn’t tell her I loved her. M-my—”
Her words were garbled now by her sobbing, but he was paying attention as hard as he could. Holding her. Offering whatever mute comfort she’d accept.
She spat out each syllable like dirt in her mouth. “Mybaby sisterdied of an accidental opioid overdose alone in her apartment on July fucking fourteenth, and in our last conversation, I didn’t once sayI love you. I didn’t tell her, Griff. Ididn’t tell her.”
When she bowed her head for a moment, he kissed her crown. Rested his lips there. “Candy. Sweetheart—”
Her ragged, tear-soaked words were audible. Even now, she was keeping her promise, raising her head slightly from his chest and angling it toward his left ear so he could hear.
“She said not to come. She always said not to come, but that doesn’t matter.” Candy was trembling against him, and he ran his hands up and down her arms. Again. Again. “I should have showed up when I knew for sure something was wrong. And even if I couldn’t get off my ass long enough to be a decent sister in person, I should haveasked. I should have said, in plain, unmistakable words,I love you. I’m worried about you. What’s wrong? Please tell me.”
He hitched her closer as she shook, silently supporting her in the only way he currently could.
Her lip curled in disgust at herself. “But I didn’t. Dee died without getting what she needed from me, the one person she counted on in the entire world. Her big sister. And the least I can do now is take a hard fucking look at myself and try to beb-better.”
When she stopped talking and began crying in earnest, he held her. As long as she needed him, he wasn’t budging. Not one inch.
It all made a horrible sort of sense now.
Knowing how she thought, how she tended to make sense of her world, he could see how she’d interpreted the loss of her sister that way. He could even see a few glimmerings of real insight in the story.
Sometimes people need to hear the actual words, love, Marianne’s voice whispered sweetly to him.‘I’m scared. I’m angry. I’m sad. I love you.’
The rest of Candy’s conclusions, though? Complete bullshit.
Once she’d calmed, he tenderly laid his left cheek against hers. “You’re trying to be better…how? In the ways you communicate?”
Her small nod rubbed her smooth skin against his beard. “I’ve always known the way I express myself is different. But I thought that was okay. I thought the people who mattered understood me, but…” She sniffled, hard. “That’s not true, Griff. I need to change. Completely.”
