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“How didn’t they know?”
“Rose-tinted glasses? Who the fuck knows? They blamed the smell of pot on me and the missing alcohol on Perrie. At least, Dad did. Mom ignored it entirely. She didn’t want to rock the boat with any of us. In her eyes, we’d been through enough shit, and she pretty much stopped parenting us. I was in my early twenties at this time, so I guess it was easier to blame me for the pot.”
“Did you ever tell them otherwise?”
“No. They couldn’t punish me. I was over twenty-one and only lived at home because it was easier at the time. Plus, I didn’t want to leave Perrie.” I sighed and rested my head on my hand.
I was numb. All the emotion I’d felt earlier had disappeared. I was just cold and numb and unfeeling.
Dahlia blinked at me with her wide eyes, waiting for me to carry on. I didn’t know if I could get the words out. They were fucking stuck, swirling around in the emotionless void that was my mind in that moment.
Why the fuck couldn’t I say it? I’d put it off long enough. I just needed to say the words. Four words. Four fucking words that would open the floodgates to the rest of the story.
My sister committed suicide.
Why were they so hard to say? It was a fact. She did. Knowingly and selfishly, despite my parents’ alternative beliefs.
Dahlia slid across the sofa, coming closer to me. She adjusted herself, swinging her legs over my lap and wrapping her arm around my body. The warmth of her as she laid her head against my chest was the comfort I needed.
My heart thumped a little louder against my ribs.
“My sister committed suicide.” Finally, I said them. Flatly, coldly, uncaringly. “She was found in a motel close to the highway surrounded by drug paraphernalia by the motel manager after she hadn’t checked out. She was dead and cold by the time she was found.”
Dahlia said nothing. She only squeezed me a little tighter.
I closed my eyes for a moment, breathing in the sweet, apple scent of her shampoo. “The autopsy ruled it an intentional overdose. My parents fought the ruling tooth and nail—they insisted she didn’t do drugs, that somebody had tricked her and either administered all of them to her, or it was accidental. They were insistent enough that the police reluctantly opened an investigation, although that might have been more to do with the fact my father threatened to out the chief’s extracurricular activities to his wife than the LVPD actually wanting to investigate it.”
“Your father blackmailed the chief?”
“Blackmail is a strong word,” I said slowly. “It was more of a…casual mention.”
She laughed silently.
“Anyway, it worked. They held off on a final verdict, initially, until they’d done more investigation, although the coroner was adamant nobody would accidentally ingest that amount of hardcore drugs. I think they investigated for about a week before security tapes confirmed that Penny was one hundred percent okay when she checked into the motel under an alias. She was alone, sober, and never left her room once she’d entered it. Nobody went in, either.” I ran my fingers through Dahlia’s dark hair. The softness of it had the strands slipping through my fingers like silk. “It was finally ruled suicide. I think they arrested the person who’d sold her the drugs, but it wasn’t good enough. My parents refused to believe she’d killed herself.”
“What about now?”
“My father refuses, still. Perrie and I found a diary in Penny’s room that expressed the stresses she felt at having to be constantly perfect. She was seventeen, maintained a four-point-oh GPA, captain of the swim team, head cheerleader…But in the rest of her life, she acted out. She didn’t care about anything, and she hated me and Perrie because we weren’t pressured the way she was.”
“Did you ever show your parents?”
I shook my head. “They had enough guilt. We felt it was better they never found out, and we burned it in the bathtub one night when we were both home alone. It was for the best. We’d all failed each other as siblings—we hated her for being perfect, and she hated us because we didn’t have to be. All she wanted was to be us.”
“That’s so sad.” Dahlia’s voice was soft. “I bet you blame yourself, don’t you?”
“It’s hard not to. I was her brother—I was supposed to be there for her, but there was always a line between us. I think back now to how we all were growing up, and if only me and Perrie had been able to put aside our jealousy, she’d probably still be alive now. It was always us and then her.”
There it was.
The guilt.
It ate me alive, snaking through my entire body like the disease it was. And it fucking hurt. What if I’d noticed? What if I’d not been so jealous? I was older than her by years. I should have been able to be there for her, but I wasn’t. I was too caught up in being petty and jealous that I’d never thought for a second about how she felt.
