Gran tightened her arms around Kenzie, and her voice became gentle. “That’s all right, darling. You don’t need to be. We’ll stay right here until everyone leaves.”
Kenzie forced herself back from the memory, tears trickling down her cheeks. God, she missed Gran’s hold—the warm embrace that told her everything was going to be okay. That no matter what happened, she had Gran’s love. Kenzie had craved that hold more than once in her life.
Noise came from downstairs in the bookstore, and Kenzie curled up on the couch, staring out at the dreary day. Even the sky was fighting against its tears. All day it seemed like it was going to rain, but it hadn’t. Not through the church ceremony of her mother’s funeral, and not when they got back to the bookstore to hold the lunch that Kenzie never understood. If Kenzie died, she didn’t want the people she loved to busy themselves with making stupid sandwiches for people she was only an acquaintance with. She hoped they’d just spent time together.
Staring at the gray sky, she couldn’t cry anymore. In fact, she found herself able to cry only on the day she saw her mother lying dead in her bed. No more tears, Kenzie told herself. She couldn’t possibly fall apart anymore. Her soul felt frozen, almost stuck in time, shocked by the events that had unfolded in the last year.
Kenzie heard the door creak open, and she shifted her head against the couch, seeing Gran entering the apartment. Wearing a long black dress, Gran examined Kenzie in the way she did with her soft features, then she moved to her. She grabbed the blanket off the back of the couch and placed it over Kenzie before sitting down and shifting Kenzie’s legs onto her lap.
Gran said nothing, so Kenzie stared out the window again, wishing the sky would cry. Almost as if it could show her how to do it. A few minutes passed before Gran said, “I know you don’t want to talk about what you’re feeling. I’m never going to make you, but I want you to hear me and never forget what I’m going to tell you now, okay?”
Kenzie nodded against her leg, continuing to look out the window.
“Don’t let what your mother has done lead your life,” Gran said with thick sadness in her voice. “What she has done was her choice. It was selfish. It was heartless. Don’t let your legacy be what your mother has left.”
“I’ll never be like her,” Kenzie all but spat. There might be no room for sadness, but it appeared there was plenty of room for anger.
Gran squeezed Kenzie’s leg and sighed. “I know that, my love, but don’t let darkness guide you, either. You’re too special. A light in this beautiful world, and it would be a shame for that light to go out. Feel what you have to feel now. But don’t stay long in this anger, Kenzie, and don’t let it destroy you.”
Drawn back from that moment, Kenzie grasped the grass below her as her chest heaved with her deep breaths. She remembered those words that Gran had said as if it were yesterday. Kenzie also knew a truth in her soul—when Gran had lived, Kenzie had stayed that girl for Gran—hid the anger and the hurt—but when Gran died, that restraint had left Kenzie. All that filled her was red-hot anger, as it did now.
She scowled down into the dark water, and her body quaked from the inside out. “Why did you have to die?” she heard herself saying. “Why did everything have to change?” Things were so normal before Joslyn’s death, what childhood should be.
Happy.
Innocent.
She recalled the moment when her mother said Kenzie should’ve died, not Joslyn, and tears leaked from her eyes as her voice rose, her anger pouring from her body. “It shouldn’t have been me.” The wind breezed by her, feeling like icy fingertips brushing across her flesh. “It shouldn’t have been anyone.”
A rock lay in front of her and she picked it up and threw it into the water, not sensing sadness welling inside her but more and more fury. Not at her life now. At the life that had been handed to a little girl who should’ve been riding bikes and laughing with friends, not being known as the girl whose sister died and whose mother killed herself.
Her chest constricted as she jumped to her feet, grabbing another rock and throwing it with all her might. “How could you do this to me?” she screamed, without knowing who she was screaming at. Her mother; her sister; Gran, for leaving her when she was the only one that Kenzie had left. “If you never left me, I would never have had to face life knowing that I had nothing.”
Her screams were loud, but she didn’t care who heard her. She didn’t care about anything right now, except for the rage vibrating through her. “I needed all of you. I didn’t deserve this. I shouldn’t have been left here. Alone. Without any of you.” She dropped to her knees, feeling everything inside of her breaking open, tears raining down her cheeks.
She wanted to scream to the heavens above, fight against anything she could to somehow regain what had been lost to her. To somehow right all the wrongs. To find the innocence of her childhood. To remember the time when she came to this camp and was just a kid. To experience moments of happiness that weren’t stolen away by tragedy. To believe that life didn’t end in despair. To trust that happiness could last forever.
“I hate you!” she shouted, knowing there were so many people she was saying that to. “I hate death. I hate suicide. I hate that you all broke my heart. I hate that you gave me this life, one where I don’t trust. One where I don’t believe I deserve to be happy. One where I doubt everyone around me. One where I can’t be open to love without the fear that it will break me.” Her voice hitched and she dropped her head, sobbing loudly now and placing her hands on the grass below, the only thing grounding her to reality. “I don’t want to be that person anymore.”
On her knees, she wept, holding nothing back. Not anymore. Her tears fell onto the grass below with her hard sobs. She allowed herself to cry in a way she just hadn’t in so long, not since the night she saw her mother lying in her bed covered in blood.
All the anger, all the pain, all the hurt flowed like a river washing out of her body, and she could do nothing to stop it. Porter had made her confront things that she didn’t know she needed to face, reminding her of the girl she once was.
Sweet.
Playful.
Adventurous.
He saw only that girl.
She wanted to only see the same.
Chapter Sixteen
Porter squealed his tires outside of Kenzie’s bookstore and slammed the car into park. He stormed out, making it into the bookstore in under three seconds. Concern fueled his steps, causing his gait to be tight and his actions to be rougher than usual. When he entered the store, the door shook on its hinges as he slammed it shut behind him.
He discovered Sawyer sitting in the chair by the bay window. Porter heard the fury in his voice. “Where is she?”