AllFreeNovel
Share Us
A sob lodges in my throat, cutting off my air supply as I gape at her, sure I’m digging open my wounds for her to see and not caring if I bleed out in front of her in this instance. “You didn’t think I’d care that you ditched me right after my father’s suicide? That being left without a penny to my name in a house that felt more like a fucking prison for the majority of my life—you didn’t think leaving me there torotwould matter?”
My chest feels tight and tears sting behind my eyes, a cold front shifting to the front of my brain, pushing everything else out of the way. Creating a spiraling vortex of complication and sorrow, of shame and the defeat of never feeling good enough. It culminates at the foot of my soul, trying to find a way inside, but I ignore it.
She squints, confusion coloring her painted face. “What do you mean I left you? Your sister took you in, took care of you just like I knew she would. I didn’t leave a defenseless child alone in the woods; if you were unprepared for the sudden thrust of adulthood, maybe you should’ve spent less time starring in X-rated films and more time finishing your degree.”
“I needed you.” The sob escapes, cuts itself through my vocal cords and rips from my mouth before I have a chance to stop it. Tears blur my vision, making her a watercolor blob against a smoky, springtime backdrop, and I drag my wrist over my eyes to clear it. She looks startled, eyes wide, arms tucked at her sides. Distant, as if she can’t stand the emotion she’s seeing right now.
Every piece of emotion from a lifetime of not being able to rely on my parents tobeparents culminates at that moment, frustration with the sadness in my life spewing like a volcano and pouring out of me.
“I didn’t want Caroline to have to take me in, or to go intrude on her new life. Didn’t want to be left alone to navigate troubled waters on my own. I needed amother,and you fucking left. It would have been nice if, for once, you’d thought about me instead of yourself. My whole life, that’s all I wanted from you, and you couldn’t even stick around after Dad’s suicide to see if I was okay. Do you know what that does to someone?”
“Juliet, I—”
“Do you know how it feels to become an orphan as an adult? To lose the two people whose affection and approval you’ve been dying for your whole life, despite the fact that they never really deserved to give it in the first place?” I scrub furiously at my face, trying to get the tears to stop falling, but like a torrential downpour, like the words spewing from my mouth, they’re endless. “There is a hole in mysoulbecause of you, Mother. This emptiness I try to fill with distraction after distraction. A tumor that grows larger every single day, that makes me feel likeIdid something wrong.”
She shifts her weight from one leg to the other, lifting a shoulder. Tears would affect a normal person, but she just seems to stare right through me, uncaring in the slightest that her own flesh and blood is crumbling in front of her.
“I don’t know what you want me to say.”
Frustration fills me, clotting in my senses, and I throw my hands in the air in an offering to the gods. For her to fuckingget it, without me needing to spell it out for her. “It can’t be that difficult to figure out what I might want, Mother. When you took off with the nest egg Daddy left behind, before life insurance could touch it when he breaches his non-suicide clause, it was pretty easy to figure out whatyouwanted.”
And yet, shestilldoesn’t see me. Her eyes are vacant, unseeing except for the dollar signs reflecting in her blue irises. All she ever truly cared about. And here I am, deteriorating in her midst while she just watches. Maybe she even enjoys it.
It makes sense, I suppose. I broke in front of her the most, allowed myself to be the most vulnerable in her presence, and she never returned the gesture.She just left.
An ache spreads behind my breastbone, wrapping around to my spine and fitting itself in the ridges between the vertebrae, as if trying to fill me with its toxicity. Trying to cripple me as I stare into her eyes, silently pleading with her to give mesomething. After all this time, I have to beg for even a modicum of sympathy or understanding.
A slight acknowledgment to let me know that she feels even a fucking twinge of remorse for destroying me. For destroying us.
But she doesn’t speak, doesn’t give me anything. No bones are thrown, no life preservers tossed. I’m going to drown in my grief while she watches, the look of satisfaction etched into her brow something I’ll never be able to forget.
Turning on my heel, I start around her, done with the attempt at conversation if she’s not going to reciprocate. As I walk past her, she reaches out and grabs ahold of my bicep, pulling me in close; she may look weak, but the grip on my skin has me wincing in pain as I try to wrangle out of her grasp. My skin welts beneath her fingers and I whimper, considering the best place on her body to land some kind of hit. Something that’d allow me to get away.
“You said your father committed suicide,” she says, an edge to her voice I don’t quite understand. What the fuck does she have to be angry about? “What do you mean by that?”
I blink, shoving her away from me. Her hands fall to her sides, fingers pulling at the fabric of her pants. “There isn’t more than one definition of suicide.”
“Oh, Jesus. You think hekilledhimself?”
My jaw clenches, my heart speeding up as it tries to prepare for whatever bombshell she’s about to deliver. Deep down, I think there’s always been a part of me that found the timing of his death rather suspect—and Elia being who he is, having the connection to Caroline that he does, it’s crossed my mind once or twice that maybe he had something to do with it.
Men like him have warped ideas of what safety might encumber, and maybe getting rid of my father was his only way to ensure he’d never hurt my sister again. Still, I’d figured at this point maybe one of them would’ve hinted to it or let me in on their dirty little secret, considering the downward spiral his death sent me down that they claim to be aware of.
Kieran.
As my mother’s lips part around his name, implicating my lover, I realize maybe every inch of awareness they’ve claimed to have when it comes to me was fabricated, a tool of manipulation to make me do whatever they wanted.
Nausea bubbles up in my stomach, launching into my throat as I stare at my mother, absorbing her words into my skin and hating what the truth does to me. Hating how it sends a wave of warmth through me, how the name that falls from her mouth makes my blood sing.
Because even if Caroline and Elia don’t get me, even if they never really did, Kieran always has.
And when my mother spits his name like he’s the dirt beneath her feet, I know I need to go find him. Sort out the kaleidoscope of emotion inside.
Yanking myself from the toxic bubble my mother exists in, getting mental whiplash, I jog back to where Benito stands at the gates; he walks backward, keeping an eye on my mother, and beats me to the car, pulling the door open for me and getting in behind the wheel.
Peeling out of the cemetery parking lot, I watch out the back window until my mother’s still, dazed form becomes little more than a blip on the horizon. I dial Caroline when we’ve turned onto a different road, and she answers on the second ring.
“Mom’s in town,” I breathe in lieu of a greeting.
