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Chapter 12 - Grayson: The Truth Is Out
The room went eerily silent. Ethan was staring at his sister, and she was staring right back at him with a look of betrayal. I knew this was bound to happen. Everyone in this room knew how Monica had died except for her daughter. There was no way she wasn’t going to find out today.
Ethan stepped forward to try to embrace his sister, but she took two steps back and kept them separated.
“When?” Her voice was barely above a whisper.
Ethan looked away for a moment, probably trying to gather himself. His worst possible fear had just come true.
“A year ago, two years after she got clean.”
From what Ethan had told me, Jade hadn’t shed a single tear. She had kept it all in, but now I felt all those emotions she had suppressed seeping through from behind the door she had locked them in.
“She was clean?” Jade said in complete disbelief. “When did she get clean?”
“A year after you left. Look, Jade, I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you. I didn’t know how to tell you. I thought, if you knew, you would either not come back at all or you would feel horrible about the whole thing.”
“And how do you think I feel now, Ethan? I deserved to know something like that, don’t you think?”
“I was only trying to protect you, Jade.”
“Lying isn’t protecting someone, Ethan. It’s delaying the inevitable. I would much rather have heard it from you, my brother, not the girl who tormented me my whole life.”
I cast my eyes to Astrid who stood behind Jade with a small smirk playing on her lips. The girl was a real class act. Of all places, she decided to start something at Jade’s mother’s wake.
“How was I supposed to know the little witch didn’t know her mother was sick?” Astrid flipped her blonde hair over her shoulder. “Sorry about that.”
She didn’t sound sorry at all, and Jade didn’t even seem to register she had spoken. Her eyes were locked on Ethan.
“How could you do this to me, E?”
“Are you kidding me right now, Jade? You left. You left this place years ago, and you never turned back. You left me here to deal with our clinically depressed mother who was addicted to hardcore drugs. I begged you to stay. I begged you to not leave us. I told you I was struggling back home, and you said you needed to think of yourself for once.
Everyone kept telling me how you deserved to know, but quite frankly you didn’t deserve to know anything.”
The man who I always knew to be easy, calm, and collected just reared left and exploded out of nowhere at the one person he held with gentle hands.
“For years, I had put this family first, Ethan.” Jade stepped forward. “My whole teenage life was dedicated to taking care of our mother while you had mentally checked out. I was left to handle everything all on my own.”
Ethan scoffed. “Are we remembering the past a little differently here, sister? I was there. You just kept pushing me away. The only person you let in was the man you spread your legs for once he showed a little bit of interest in you.”
“Ethan.” I stepped forward and looked around. He was stepping over the line now. He didn’t need to bring up things like that, especially here.
I heard audible gasps all around, as we all looked at Ethan. Shocked. I didn’t know what had gotten into him but, if he kept going, this could get very ugly, very quickly.
“Come now, Gray, you know my sister had been obsessed with you from the moment she laid eyes on you but, unfortunately, you had to suffer like the rest of us. She bolted from you, too.”
“Ethan.” Jade’s voice rose. “Leave what happened between me and Grayson out of this. If you want to talk, we can go and talk somewhere private.”
Ethan let out a humorless laugh. “Now, you want to talk? Now, you want to talk, Jade Elizabeth? When Mom came to visit you in New York, what did you do?”
She was silent.
“You slammed the door in her face, and you told her to go and fuck herself. Our mother, the brave warrior who fought her way back to sobriety only to be told she had months to live. She fought like a damn warrior, and she went to try to make amends with her daughter, but you pushed her away. Do you know what happened after that trip?”
More silence from her. The whole room was watching.
“She gave up, Jade. She lost all her fight. She stopped responding to the medication, and she just started deteriorating. I had to watch our mother wither away while you got to enjoy the sweet life in New York.”
