HELEN
Ever since losing my mother, it felt like my heart was on fire and there was ash in my throat. I couldn’t find peace. I couldn’t rest. I just wanted her dead!
“Ugh!” I screamed, throwing my phone into the mirror in my room. When it shattered, I stared at the broken reflection of myself, feeling the tears pool in my eyes.
Knock. Knock.
“What?” I snapped, quickly brushing away my tears.
The door opened, and upon seeing Nari’s face, my shoulders dropped. I didn’t need whatever shit she had to offer right now. Her dark eyes looked over the broken glass on the floor.
“Yes?” I asked, annoyed, adjusting my shirt and turning back to face her. “Did you need something, Nari?”
She looked away from the glass back to me. “You all right?”
“Do you really care?”
“We are family,” she replied, closing the door behind her and leaning on the door, dressed in an all-white pantsuit. “Or are you still looking down at me?”
“I never looked down—”
“Yes, you did,” she cut in coldly. “That day, when Calliope shot me, and you sat in the car and told me to ‘know my place.’ How does it feel when you are put in yours?”
“So, you don’t care; you just came to…do what exactly? Gloat? Rub my face in the dirt?”
“No. To do what you failed to do when my face was in the dirt. Remind you we are family. Help you.”
“Help me?” I repeated. “With?”
“Calliope,” she said, and her eyes felt as cold and dead as mine. “What happened—”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. And I do not need help with anything.”
She moved from the door and walked closer to me. I stood straighter, my head held high, waiting.
“We are Callahans,” she said to me. “We might not have been born with that last name, but we were raised Callahan, and no one should ever insult us or harm us and not pay the price for it. No one.”
Over the last year, the relationship between Calliope and Nari had gotten worse. Nari wanted to divorce her husband, but Ethan and Calliope were against it. Nari filed anyway, and now her husband had gotten full custody of her daughter. She blamed Calliope; after all, when had a Callahan not been able to bribe a judge?
“Helen, I have a plan to—”
“I don’t want to hear it,” I cut her off quickly. “I don’t want any part of anything you are in.”
“Helen, together—”
“No.”
She stared at me as if I were crazy. “Don’t you hate her? Why the fuck wouldn’t you?”
“I said—”
“I heard what you said! I don’t understand!”
“Because you are weaker than me!” I snapped in her face. “If you can’t even get your own fucking daughter back, can’t even win against your own damn husband, how the fuck do you expect to have my back? You lose too fucking often! I do not want to be saddled with a loser.”
“Didn’t you lose too?”
Glaring, I spoke out, “Once again, I. Do. Not. Know. What. You. Are. Talking. About! I broke my mirror because I am stressed and upset about my dad. I do not know what happened to Calliope. But I hope she recovers and we find the assholes who hurt her. She is the leader of this family, and I respect her. I don’t know why you blame her for your daughter. You were the one who simply expected things to go your way based on your last name.”