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Grief splintered inside me.
Sarah had a habit of hitting the nail on the head. If I didn’t love her, I’d probably hate her for her candor.
“He sees her when he looks at me,” I whispered miserably. “All the stunts she’s pulled and everything she’s done to hurt him… I-I remind him of all that. The affairs and the arguments and the harsh words. The spite and the laziness and the bitterness.” I bit my lip. “She’s hell to live with. I never blamed him for moving out.”
“I mean, I didn’t either, but it sucks that he ignores you like he does. It’s so irrational to pin her shit on you just because you inherited her DNA.”
I didn’t disagree, but Sarah had only heard about everything Mother had done secondhand. She hadn’t witnessed it for herself.
When I heard Mother’s stiletto heels clattering against the marble tiles, my heart sank. That noise came first as those spindly shoes clacked down the hall.
“Ah, shit. I hear her shoes. Fuck.” Sarah sighed noisily in my ear. “Maybe next time?”
I swallowed. “Maybe. I gotta go.”
“Call me later?”
“Will do.”
By the time I was shoving my phone in my pocket, she was there.
Mother was always dressed to impress even though I was the only one who saw her some days.
She kept herself too thin and encouraged me to be the same. Size 0 was too fat for her, but it was starting to weather badly. Her features were looking haggard, and the amount of wine she drank was beginning to creep up on her.
I’d tried to love her, but she wasn’t particularly lovable, so I’d stopped when I was five.
Something she reminded me of as she hissed, “You’re late!”
My brow furrowed. “Barely. Is it my fault the bus was five minutes behind schedule?”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “What happened? Why was it late?”
“Jeez, I don’t know. It just was. There was traffic.” I stared at her. “Is everything okay?” She was riled up, and I knew why. Not that she was going to share that with me.
When she hissed some bullshit at me about always being tardy, I knew I’d been wise to play innocent about the bikers in our front yard.
I didn’t know why it was a secret, just knew that it was.
She didn’t normally give a damn about what time I got home, but today was clearly different thanks to those bikers…
Two days later, when I checked the letters on the stand that Mary, our maid, had placed there when she collected the mail that morning, I saw a bubble-wrapped envelope with my name on it, and I got a ‘sort of’ answer and a ‘sort of’ confirmation about why she was worried.
Tucked around a cheap cell phone, there was a slip of paper with a note inscribed on it that read:
You don’t know me, but I know you, Mary Catherine.
I’m Padraig. Your half-brother. We’ve met before, but I doubt you remember.
Anyway, we both know she’s insane. You can reach me on the cell phone if you ever need me, but I hope for your sake you never do.
Good luck.
Sin (Padraig)
As much as his letter and his existence rocked my world, he’d never know that that phone would become my lifeline.
That it would be the light at the end of the tunnel...
