Page 30 of The Way the Heart Breaks: Jade’s Story

Mom left today. Not officially. Not with a goodbye or a packed suitcase by the door. I came home from school, and half her closet was empty, the bathroom smelling like cigarette smoke and burnt chemicals.

I’m numb to this now, and unlike the Pink Floyd song, it is not comfortably numb. It is a dull ache, one that has become my constant companion in this grief that has gone on so long that it's now part of me.

Dad came up when he got home and sat on my bed. “I owe you so many apologies; I don’t know where to begin.”

“I don’t want any. I just want a promise that you aren’t going to leave me too.” I broke that night into a million pieces, and my dad, well, he held me together.

I fell asleep to him telling me, “We’ll get through this, too, baby girl.”

I wake to muffled conversation in the hallway. Pissed that she’s back, I throw myself out of bed, sneak to the door, and listen closer… harder, quickly realizing it isn’t Mom he was talking to.

Dad said the name Carl White like it was something rotting in his mouth. I’ve gotten all of my information about what is really going on through little recon missions like this. Either on my own or from Tessa. Carl is my mom's ex-boyfriend, the one before Dad.

“A real piece of shit,” Aunt Josie mutters.

Dad doesn’t disagree.

Tessa told me her mom said sometimes people leave rehab and go backward because going forward is harder. She whispered it like she wasn’t sure she should repeat adult conversations.

Honestly, neither of us understands it. Why would someone go back?

What I do understand is that Mom left two days before Mother's Day.

The real Janet Ross would’ve never done that. I’m now grieving again, but it’s the angry kind because now I know she died in the accident with my brothers.

Once there were five, and now we are two.

Song: The Living Years by Mike + The Mechanics

June 89

Dad is trying so hard to be here for me, but he’s working so much, and I pretend I don’t know why, but I do. He even works weekends. I pretend not to care. I wish I actually didn’t. I know from overhearing that he has thousands of dollars in bills from Mom’s “hospital stays,” and somebody has to pay them. He feels responsible for her. I don’t understand that since she doesn’t seem to feel responsible for any of us anymore.

I don’t complain, but I won’t say I’m not angry, because I am.

I clean. I cook. I try to make our house feel like a home again, so Dad doesn’t end up leaving too. I’m so afraid he will. I have only told one person that, Ryan. He told me that would never happen, and if it did, and if for some reason Maggie and Jack didn’t have room, there was always room at the Brooks house.

Sundays, Dad still makes it a point to show up at Uncle John and Aunt Maggie’s to shoot with the guys. Tessa and I are shooting bows. She’s good at it. Me? Not so much.

When school lets out, I start going back into the woods. The treehouse is gone, but the tree still stands. Changed forever. Burned black up one side, but still here. The woodpecker hole survived somehow. I don’t know how, but it gives me one thing that still feels normal.

So, I make my first mixed tape since the accident. And I make everyone give me their favorite songs again.

Mine is Close My Eyes Forever. Tessa’s is Miss You Like Crazy, which I also love. Ryan’s is Patience, and so is Alex’s. Aunt Maggie and Aunt Josie match with Through the Storm. For Jasper and Jason, I pick Coming Home, I really wish they could.

And yes, I even pick a song for the real Janet Ross. Not the woman Dad keeps paying hospital bills for. Not the woman who burned my childhood memories and the treehouse. The real one. Before.

Her song is Forever Your Girl, and I picture her dancing barefoot in the kitchen and us singing it… as she would have… before.

August

Ryan practically lives at Tessa’s and Alex’s this summer.

Honestly, all of us do. When we aren’t there, we’re at the pond.

That’s where we spend most days now after the boys’ work. Towels spread over itchy grass. Bug spray nobody remembers to reapply. One of the boys was always dragging a radio down there with a stack of tapes beside it.

Dad is still working constantly now, not because he wants to, but because he has to.