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The fucking prick! He had no faith I’d get Belle back and already took steps to ensure my compliance. Like he didn’t already have it. I’ve been fucking the boring pussy for years under his direction.
“Get her back in therapy. I’ll handle the billing.”
“I can’t —”
“I said get it done!” I shout into the phone. “Don’t make me come down there!”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Martha says before hanging up on me.
Fucking bitch. All of them.
Belle is going to pay for this.
five
KAI
“Ezra! Is that you?”
I sigh, scrubbing my hands over my face and prepare myself. “No, mom. Ezra’s gone,” I say as gently as possible.
“Oh. Right. How are you, Malikai?” My mom is sitting on her worn black leather couch, drink in hand. She has on an oversized blue t-shirt I recognize as Ezra’s. When she finally turns her head to look at me, I see how glassy her eyes are, pupils the size of pinholes. Great. It’s fucking nine in the morning and she’s already halfway to blacking out.
“Already?” I mutter under my breath. She hears me though.
“Fuck off. I lost my son and my husband. I can do whatever the fuck I want.” She turns her angry gaze away from me and stares out the window instead.
I take the moment to look around my childhood home. I don’t even recognize it. The once vibrant turquoise walls are faded and scratched. The wood floors are scuffed. My mom removed my dad from all the family pictures but left the restof the torn photos in their frames. It’s like even the house is suffering. I hate it here. I hate coming here.
“I’m still here, you know. You still have me,” I say, trying to keep the emotions in my voice level.
My mother just scoffs and continues staring, but not really looking.
Not enough not enough not enough. The phrase rears its ugly head like it does every time I visit her. It attacks me and breaks me down like the monster that it is. I can’t push it away when it’s so obviously what she wants to say to me.
“Mrs. Henry will check on you while I’m gone. We fly out in the morning, and I just wanted to come and say goodbye before I leave.” I don’t know why I fucking bother. I hate coming here just as much as she hates me coming. My face is the same as her lost son’s and she can’t stand to even look at me. It’s why she’s still staring out the window. It’s only out of some twisted sense of obligation that I’m here, and we both know it. Ezra would want me to check on her,so here I fucking am.
She wasn’t always like this, my mother. Yeah, she could be strict and had a no-nonsense attitude, but she was also loving and fun. Ezra and I were lucky to have grown up in the home she created for us. But that person, the loving mother of my childhood, she died with Ezra.
“I’m not a fucking child, Malikai! I don’t need a sitter!” She yells without looking at me.
“Go to rehab like I keep asking you to, and I won’t hire one anymore.” We’ve had this discussion a million times. And I’ll have it a million more if there’s even a small chance she’ll go.
“Fuck off.”
“I’ll see you when I get home. Love you, Mom,” I whisper, emotion clogging my throat. She waves me off, still keeping her gaze locked on the window.
I leave my mother’s house, slamming the door behind me, and go to the place I always go before leaving town.
The rock I’m sitting on is making my ass numb. February in Maine is brutal, but I need to come here. I need to sit in the last place my brother had been. When he was declared dead, my parents had a headstone placed in the town cemetery for him. Going there seems wrong. He’s not there. He’s not here either, but at least he was.
“I don’t know what to do about Mom, Ez,” I tell the river rushing in front of me. “She can’t even look at me anymore. I—” I have to stop as I choke up. A single hot tear traces a path down my icy cheek. “I leave for six weeks in the morning. The band is shit without you.”I’mshit without you.
“Do you remember when we were little, and Dad would take us to this river to go fishing? He got the line caught in the tree almost every time he went to cast and touching the worms made him gag.” I laugh at the memory. “He had no idea what he was doing but wanted to do something with his sons. I’ll never know why he picked fishing.”
My smile drops. “Dad still hasn’t come back. So I guess I really will never know.”
The wind picks up and I shiver, tucking myself deeper into my wool jacket.
