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I look over the plate of penne noodles, topped with sausages, peppers and tomatoes while Elijah gets two cups of juice.
“Cold juice is the best I can do for your cold before hot rule.” Elijah jokes.
I sigh dramatically. “It will have to do.”
“I’ll be better prepared next time.”
"Is your grandma responsible for you knowing how to cook?" I ask while forking up some noodles and taking a bite. "Mmm. And cooking so good?"
I wiggle in my seat at how good it tastes.
"Oh, I got the first bite wiggle? What a compliment.” He grins. “And yes, my grandma is responsible. Had me cooking every Tuesday and Thursday since I was twelve."
"I like her more and more. Especially if she taught you to cook like this."
He begins eating too. "I gotta say I like her too."
"I feel it's more like you adore her."
“I do. She's one tough lady, but always comforting with me. Except when I needed a good kick in the ass. She doesn't let anyone mess with her or the people she loves, says what's on her mind in a way that there is no mistaking what she's thinking, but will tell someone off right before offering them a cupcake. And yes, I've seen her do that at many school bake sales before. Cut someone down while handing them a cupcake. Hilarious."
"She sounds like the very opposite of my parents. Their words, their actions are always so calculated, so measured. What will people think, what will people say. They always put on a perfect front for everyone, at work, any school functions they came to when we were growing up. That all shattered when Callie killed herself. Sometimes it felt like they were more worried about what people would think about her death than her actual death." My fork stops moving in my food. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to bring that up while I'm eating the meal you just made me."
Elijah's hand reaches over and covers mine. "Never be sorry for talking about her. I know how it feels to not be able to. I would never want you to apologize for that, Jolie."
I nod and he gives my hand a squeeze before going back to eating his food. "Were they in denial about it too, at first?" he asks.
I shake my head. "There was no way they could be, between the note she left and the...pill bottle that was still in her hand when I found her."
His head snaps up. "You found her?"
"The night before she'd been crying, and I went in to hold her. At some point, she just...stopped. Stopped crying, stopped shaking in my arms, seemed like she stopped breathing really. I'd never seen her become so stoic. I mean, she'd had episodes where she barely spoke or seemed to be in some type of daze. But that was different. By the time we woke up, she seemed okay, or at least she seemed to be a way that I took as her normal sometimes, so when she said she was staying home from classes that day because she had a headache, I didn't think anything of it.”
An aching, shuddering breath leaves me as the memory forms in my mind of when I walked into the house. "I could tell something was wrong as soon as I walked into the house. It felt too still, too cold, too silent. That's kind of the way it always feels now really. I walked down the hallway, and the moment I could see into Callie's room, I just broke down. She was laying on the bed, pill bottle in her hand, pale and eyes glazed over. I tried to stand, but my legs were too shaky, so I crawled over to her, and that’s when I saw the note on the nightstand. I was crying so hard, I couldn't even focus to read it for a few minutes. I even checked her pulse, trying to convince myself she was somehow still alive. But all she was, was cold. So cold."
I shiver at recalling the feeling of my fingers against her skin, how I snatched my hand away when I realized I was touching my dead sister.
"I read the note and just sat there crying until I finally realized I had to call someone to tell them. The cops just made it seem like it was a waste of their time really, to come when someone was already dead. The coroner arrived at the same time my parents did. My mother screamed, and my father just stared at my sister while my mother cried into his chest. Then my mother asked him, 'What will we say?' What would they say Elijah, like that mattered at all in that moment. My sister was dead, and they were worried about what they would say. I still can't get that question out of my mind."
"What did the note say?" he asks quietly.
“An officer came to our house to give it back to me,” I say as I take my wallet out. “Once they’d officially declared it a suicide.” I take the folded up note out. It hardly weighs anything at all, but each time I hold it, it seems heavier than the time before. “I never let it be far from me. It doesn’t feel right to.”
Sliding it over to him, he slowly takes it from me. Silence fills the kitchen as he reads the note, and I read his face. His eyes show his sadness over the words, brows and eyelids lowering, a sorrow entering his gaze. But his mouth shows his anger, lips getting tight. I can tell his teeth are clenched. He finishes reading and slides it back over to me. I carefully refold it and am putting it back in my wallet when he begins speaking again.
"So she meant for you to be the one to find her?"
I nod. "Although, I often ask myself why. Why she would want me to see her like that. Why she would want my last memory to be seeing her that way. But I also know, my parents wouldn't, and don't, even understand anything in that note, so I get it. Only I knew what she went through so only I would get why she did what she did."
"And do you? Get why she did it?" There's a croak in his voice that tells me he's wondered why about Ben as many times as I have about Callie.
"I do and I don't. I get that she was in a pain. I saw her suffer. But I don't get why she gave up, why she left me, why she decided that day, that it was all too much. What was it that finally made her do what she'd told me she wanted to so many times before but never actually followed through with?"
"I always wonder the same. Why that night, of all the nights he'd sent me the same text did he actually do it? What was he feeling that was so much worse than any other time he'd been so low? I keep asking myself what I could have done differently so the outcome would have been different."
I give a small smile, suddenly struck by a thought. "If only we talked like this at group."
He chuckles, and he can't even know how good it feels to go from one emotion to the next with him. Not like the family therapy my parents made me go to, where there was only either screaming or crying. Not like group, where it's always just...somber and really, more depressing. With him, I can smile one second, be ready to break apart the next, and then hear him chuckle and feel okay.
