Page 29 of The Way the Heart Breaks: Jade’s Story

He’s not the same anymore. I know he never will be. None of us will. But he’s here. He’s trying. He’s the strongest man I know.

On top of missing my brothers in a way I cannot seem to find the words to fully describe. I am a reminder to all my brothers — Alex and Ryan can’t look at me without looking sad or angry — I am now Snow Mower Janet’s daughter. That’s what my classmates snicker when I walk down the hallway in the seventh-grade wing. I’m sure it’s not just them, but the entire town is also whispering that my brothers died because my mother’s a drunk. I pretend not to hear it.

Leaving my house and going anywhere feels like walking through a courtroom where everyone has already decided the verdict. I guess I should be happy they think she’s a drunk, but the reality feels worse.

I should be happy that Ryan is a vault and they’re not calling me a druggy based on the fact that I have actually been intoxicated to the point of blacking out at the ripe old age of 13. But I’m not happy. I’m not sure I ever will be.

Dad didn’t ask me to come home after school, but I did because I knew he went back to work today, and she obviously can’t be alone.

She came to my room, promised me she was going to be better this time, said it just like she did last time, but it was even emptier, her bright blue eyes are now dead and unfeeling.

Yet still, I want her to be better. I want my mom back. Not this version, the one who is fooling Dad but not me, or maybe she’s not. Maybe he just doesn’t want to see that she’s gone. Right now, I don’t know if she’ll ever come back. I pray she does.

The real Janet Ross wouldn’t have missed my period; she’d have made it special. She would have helped me navigate this grief. This loss, the greatest I’ve… we’ve ever experienced. We should have been grieving together, and not just us, the entire family.

I slap the tears from my cheeks, knowing to my soul none of us will ever be the same, but God, how they deserve us to remember them in a way that’s so far from this… utter hell we’re living now.

“Look for the good, seek it. Imagine it if you have to, but find it not just for you, but for them.” Aunt Maggie had said one night.

Aunt Maggie, Tessa, and Molly, who brought me home today, so I didn’t have to ride that bus. They have been my angels. Aunt Josie, too, but she hasn’t stopped beating herself up about the dog comment; I can see it. Jasper and Jason wouldn’t want that; they’d want her happy. They’d want us all to seek it wherever we could find it, as Aunt Maggie said. Just not in a bottle or pipe.

Yesterday I was called down to the guidance office. I was sure it was about missing assignments until I saw Aunt Maggie, and I swear my heart stopped. I thought Mom was gone, gone.

Thankfully, it wasn’t. It was the assignments. Aunt Maggie told my counselor that I would make up everything, “Because if not, how could I double up in high school so Alex, Ryan, Tessa, Becca and I could graduate together?”

I didn’t understand what she was saying, but they explained that it was possible, and it became something to strive for.

I wake and lift my face from the book I passed out reading, to Dad yelling. I am up and running before I understand why.

The back door slams against the house behind me as I sprint toward the woods, barefoot, toward the treehouse, which is on fire. Flames so big they tear through the wood like its paper. The ladder’s already burning.

Smoke pours into the sky. And Mom— Mom’s inside. For one horrible second, I freeze.

She’s standing near the opening, swaying slightly, one hand against the frame like she’s too tired to hold herself up anymore.

“Mom!” I scream.

Dad moves past me with a ladder from his work truck.

The treehouse cracks loudly, sparks exploding against the setting sun.

Mom starts crying, not quiet crying, not the shaking silent sobs of the past eight months.

“I just wanted it to stop!” she screams as Dad runs up the ladder and grabs her just before part of the roof caves in.

I stand frozen in the grass, watching Dad carry Mom as flames swallow it all up.

That treehouse holds our whole childhood. Jason jumping from the railing because he swore he could land superhero-style, and he did. Jasper throwing water balloons out the window at us in the summer. Ryan carving all our initials into the wood with his pocketknife. Alex setting up a corner to create a deer stand, promising it would only be used in season. Tessa and I taking turns swinging on the tire swing and pushing each other. Ry pushing me when she wasn’t here and the boys wouldn’t.

It burned until it was gone, the fire lighting up the woods so bright it almost looked like daytime.

It burned until after midnight, the boys’ birthday…

Song: When the Children Cry- White Lion

May 1989

I’d like to report that that one night was the one that snapped everything back into place. That another near-death experience worked as some reset button and unscrewed her head. It was not.