My mother, for one reason or another, did love that shitty man that was her husband. She’s been hysterical since the funeral. She spends most of her day hidden in her room, crying.
Chay and Maren are less sad about him. They’re mourning the father they loved, but you can see they both look lighter, and happier. Free. I guess that’s what happens once you become actually free.
“Come in.” I pull myself into a sitting position.
Chay only stays here on the weekends, then goes back to her dorm during the week. Maren is staying home for her first semester of school and then she’ll be moving onto campus. She wants to stay home longer, but I convinced her to go out and live life.
I moved Mom into another house, smaller than then one she raised us in, but large enough for us all to stay here.
“You okay? You sounded like you couldn’t breath.” She peeks her face in, she’s in pajamas with her red hair tied up on the top of her head.
“Yeah.” I gestured for her to come in. She slides through the door, sitting on the edge of my bed. “I’m fine, Chay.”
“More nightmares?” she asks, a question I don’t give a verbal response to. I don’t want to admit that I’m still plagued by the nightmares. My family died nine months ago, I should get past it, but I can’t.
My family, who was close to killing me. That fact should help me with my grief, I think, but it doesn’t. No matter their sins, still at the end of the day I loved them.
Chay walks the halls of this house nervous. I think she’s waiting for it to burst into flames and take the rest of us down with it. I don’t blame her, I have the same fear.
“Yeah,” she whispers when I don’t answer her. “I have them too, ya know?” Chay has grown ten years in the nine months since they died. She’s turned into an adult, mourning her family and trying to keep from falling under.
She, like the rest of us, has learned that being an adult isn’t the glamorous thing it’s made out to be when you're a teenager and dying to get out. It’s hell, really. Living under the pressure of death.
“I’m sorry.” I whisper.
The last thing I want is to see my sister haunted with the same demons as me, but I guess I can’t blame her, she’s suffering the same loss.
We sit there in silence for a minute. “Are you…” she trails off. “Are you still with her? The Italian girl?”
I sit up straighter, surprised. “What are you talking about?”
“I heard them talking the day before. They said you were in Providence, with the Italian girl.” She frowns. “I always assumed that’s what this was about, ya know?”
I can’t believe that she’s known and hasn’t said anything this whole time. My heart is racing hearing Chay talk about her.
“It is,” I say back. “And no, I’m not with her.”
She gives me a serious look. “Why?”
“It’s…” I don’t know. I can’t think of how to describe my relationship with Gemma. “It’s complicated.”
“Do you know you say her name in your sleep?” Chay’s green eyes look over to me with a questioning gaze.
“No.” I didn’t know that. I can’t be too surprised, it is her that haunts my nightmares. That one warning message and then nothing at all.
I haven’t heard from Gemma DelGado in nine months. Not that I’ve made an attempt to reach out to her. I don’t know what to say since she left me in the hospital.
We should have never been together, it was always going to end this way, or worse. But I thought what we had was real, and I thought she felt it too. She did save me though, so she at least had some feelings for me.
“She left me.” I finally tell Chay.
“Why?” she asks, sounding like an insistent child, pestering me with the same question.
“We can’t be together,” I tell her. “Her family and ours just don’t mix well.”
Chay rolls her eyes. “Yeah, sure.” She huffs. “Or maybe you’re just scared. You scream her name every night, and not in a good way. You sound like you’re trying to save her from something. Or maybe you’re calling for her to save you. Whatever it is, you need to figure it out. And who gives a fuck what your last name or her last name is. If you love her, than fuck anyone else.”
Maybe my kid sister had a good point, fuck anyone else.