“If you start that again, I’m leaving.” Maybe she hadn’t merged into one Beth, after all. Maybe the serene Beth who was unfailingly comforting was gone for good. “I had plans today that…meant something to me.” She couldn’t think about that without hurting more than she could afford right now. “No, it doesn’t matter what they were. If you’d been injured, or had a real dilemma, I wouldn’t have minded canceling. But I had to come running over to convince you again that you didn’t do anything wrong. It was mean of me to ever suggest you did. That’s what you think, isn’t it?”
The stricken, blotchy face looked tragic and very young. Beth stomped hard on the pang she felt. Her sister was twenty-five now, an adult.
“Since we found Mom’s body, I’ve been discovering how her disappearance impacted us all. I know how close you and Mom were, how devastated you were to think she’d left you. I was fifteen years old. A kid, too, and I was driven to take over for Mom. I never thought, Dad can’t cope, we’ll end up in foster homes if I don’t do anything, but my instinct was powerful. Matt—he was already angry, and he got angrier. I think that now, thanks to Ashley, he’s starting to deal with some of his feelings. I haven’t, and you haven’t. I’ve been enabling you because somewhere inside I’m still that fifteen-year-old girl, who did her best but didn’t really know how to be a parent. I thought making everyone happy was the way to go. I was wrong.”
Emily’s shock continued. She didn’t say a word.
Beth wanted, so much, to scoot over and pull her sister into her arms, but found the strength to hold on to her determination. “Now I’m going to be the parent I should have been a long time ago. I’m not sure you ever grew emotionally from the twelve-year-old girl you were. That’s not your fault. It’s not even mine because I did do my best. If it helps, you can blame Dad, or Mom.”
Fury flashed over Emily’s face. “Someone murdered Mom. How can anything be her fault?”
Beth repeated what she’d recently understood to be the truth. “She was a married woman sneaking around to have an affair with a man who was probably also married.” Some of her anger leaked through, but how could it not? “She posed naked for him to draw that awful picture. She lied to Dad and to all of us. She didn’t deserve to be murdered, but she broke our family and left us damaged.”
“That’s…that’s a horrible thing to say.”
“Do you think she was entitled to have an affair? Lie?”
“If she wasn’t happy—”
“She should have talked to Dad. Insisted on counseling. If nothing else, she should have left him before she started sleeping with another man.”
Okay, she’d apparently stunned her sister into silence. How often did that happen?
“I’ve been enabling Dad, too. I won’t stop altogether. For the most part, I think he did his best. He supported us, he chauffeured us when we needed it, he put us through college.” Oops—shouldn’t have said that. The fact that Emily had dropped out after two quarters was a sore point. Too bad. “I’ll keep doing some of what I have been for him, but not all of it. I think he’s more capable than I’ve always believed.”
“And me? You’re pushing me out of the nest? Bye-bye, sis?”
“Of course not.” Now Beth let herself speak gently. “What I’m going to do is get recommendations for the best counselor in town, and I’ll help you pay for visits.”
Emily flounced to her feet. “What if I don’t want to go?”
“That’s your choice. But I won’t be rushing over here every time you work yourself into a fit either. I especially won’t be if you refuse to help yourself.”
Emily cried.
It took every bit of willpower Beth had, but she kept her distance. She repeated, “I love you,” and “I’ll always be here when you really need me.”
And then she left, heartsick, exhausted, wishing for numbness.
Not until she was halfway home did she realize she hadn’t paid any attention to her surroundings when she walked out of the apartment complex. She hadn’t even locked the car doors after getting in. And if someone was following her, it was too late for her to pick out any particular vehicle.