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That’s a lot.
And I want to know every detail of those exciting times. Later. Because I feel like there’s more to the story.
“But did you let the world see you?”
She looks away. “I don’t know.”
“Bullshit.”
She looks back, eyes flashing. “It’s not,” she snaps.
I just lift my brows.
A long, tense silence before she exhales. “Fine. You’re smart enough to get that I didn’t. I lived big and did exciting things, but I spent most of the time thinking about what was next instead of enjoying where I was. I want to do better. I want to be different. Especially because I left, was gone for so long that my sister became…” She trails off, eyes skating away.
I cup her jaw, force her to meet my gaze. “You arenotresponsible for the person your sister has become.”
Nova stills. “Why do you sound like you have personal experience with that?”
I inhale, know this is put up or shut up time.
Know that if I pull back now, I might as well keep doing it. Because this woman has cracked open a door into her heart and mind and if I don’t push through, she’ll shut it, lock it tight.
And she might never open it again.
“My mom is…difficult,” I say.
Nova shifts a little closer, rests her palm on my thigh. “How so?”
“She had a…mental break—or that’s how they described it to me when I got old enough to ask why she is the way she is,” I say. “She was excited about being pregnant, but the reality of it, of labor and delivery and all the things that came after.” I shake my head, bite back a sigh. “She didn’t take it well, was hospitalized for a while, and she’s always been…fragile and prone to hysterics and she’s so focused on herself and her problems that she forgets she’s a mom sometimes.”
Most of the time.
Allof the time.
She’s a mess.
A complication that brings too much drama into my life.
And, worse, she’s an emotional vampire because unless I engage with her bullshit, talk her down from the edge, she spirals.
And then I’m left picking up the pieces.
“That must be really hard.”
“She does her best,” I hedge.
“I wasn’t insinuating she doesn’t, but”—Nova squeezes my thigh—“it still must be hard for you.”
I think of the yelling. The throwing things. The accusations of me never seeing her.
I think of the way she tore my room apart looking for the girl I was supposedly hiding there when I was in high school.
I think of the broken plates and my dad getting fed up, working longer hours, staying away as much as possible.
Because he couldn’t handle it.
Leaving it formeto deal with because I wasn’t going to leave it to my siblings—who, smartly, moved out at their first opportunity and cut contact to almost nil.
