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Nell's face is wet with tears when I finally look at her again. She's been crying and shivering while I let out all my pain and laid it on her. It feels good to have finally released everything and shared it with her.
"I'm sorry." I scoot closer, but she shifts away.Fuck."Nell, what is it?"
Nell opens her mouth and then shakes her head and closes it. “I need to go.”
“I’m sorry-”
“No, don’t say you’re sorry. I appreciate it. I needed to hear it.” She stands up and brushes the dirt off her knees, never meeting my eyes. “I have to go.”
“Nell, go where? I’ll take you home.”
She shakes her head, waving me off. “No, I’m good.” Her phone lights up her face as she turns and walks away from me. Whoever she calls answers, and she tells them, “Can you come get me? I’m at the cemetery.”
I watch her from my knees in front of my son’s grave as she disappears to the entrance of the cemetery, and then fades away like everyone else in my life. I don’t know what I did wrong. I’m not sure what happened, but it hurts.
My first thought is to track her down, to grab her and make her tell me what’s going through her pretty little head so I can track down all the problems and fix them. I want to hold her and kiss her and figure out where everything that just occurred derailed us.
My second thought is that I’m alone for the first time in a long time, and cocaine is only a short drive away.
Chapter Twenty-three
Nell- one week later
Dad’s front door opens smoothly only thirty seconds after I knock. His face splits into a grin and he reaches out to grab my shoulders and pull me against his body in a hug. “Nell!” He grips my cheeks and turns me one way then the other. “How have you been? What are you doing here?”
WhatamI doing here? This man hurt me in so many ways I still haven’t even begun to figure out how to heal them. “Did Layla call you?”
Dad’s face falls. “What?”
“Seven years ago, my sister gave birth to a dead baby and she left Knox because she said she missed you. Did she call you then?”
“A baby? Nell, are you okay?”
“Did. Layla. call. you?” I don’t have the patience required to speak to my father. He probably doesn’t even remember Layla. He was so heartless and self-centered that I was surprised when he showed up at her funeral. He was always focused on appearances though, and that’s probably where Layla got her desire to hide any of the cracks in her relationship’s facade.
He shakes his head, eyes wide with confusion. “No, Layla didn’t call me until almost two years ago.”
My teeth tear at my bottom lip so harshly I think I’ll start bleeding. “And what did she say to you two years ago?”
Dad takes a backwards step. “Why don’t you come in and sit down?”
I scoff at him and take a step back myself, further from him. “No. I’m not here to keep you company. I’m not here to walk down memory lane with you. I want you to tell me specifically what Layla said when she called you?”
Dad sighs and shuts the door, with him behind it, and me on the other side, once again drawing the line between us. This one is physical, and it makes me shake with rage. I’ve been hunting down everything I could find since Knox revealed so many secrets at the cemetery. He’s not answering my calls, and I’m halfway convinced Maya is lying to me and he’s fallen off the wagon despite her constant promises that he’s as sober as the day I left.
He told me so many things I never even suspected had occurred and I’m trying my damndest to figure out how I missed it all. How shitty does a person have to be to miss so manyhugeevents in their sibling’s life? The answer is simple: as shitty as me.
My heart broke into big, painful pieces watching Knox bare his soul completely to me, just like I’d asked for, and I realized I wasn’t ready to be there with him, to do that with him or for him. I had to leave. I didn’t want to. I’ve spent the entire time hidden in a hotel room on the other side of town alternating between sobbing and researching.
Milo Alexander was born on March fifth 2014 at 3:42 in the afternoon to Knox and Layla. He would be turning seven this year if he had survived that. My sister hid her pregnancy, according to one of her friends that she’d told about it later, because it was high-risk the entire time and she had a “feeling” it wasn’t going to work out. That information frustrates me endlessly.
Layla also told her friend that she left Knox because she felt like Knox wasn’t hurting enough. It wasn’t fair that they had both lost a child and Layla was the only one upset. The further I dig, the more upset I get. My sister married a man she didn’t know well enough to recognize his avoidance strategies. The same man that is now avoiding me, even though I know exactly how to see through him.
“Fuck!” I wipe the tears from my eyes and pound my fist against the door until Dad swings it open again. “You can stand here in this doorway and tell me what Layla said to you, or I can start smashing things inside this house until you tell me. Which would you prefer?”
Dad grins. “You’re the good one, sweetheart. I’m not intimidated.”
“Yeah?” I grab the baseball bat from the back of the car I’ve been renting and swing it so close to my dad’s face he ducks. “You fucking should be. You have no idea what I’ve become. Spill the beans, old man, or I’ll swing for your knees.”
