Just for the Summer(105)

I got in and started the car. There was no point in arguing with her. She wouldn’t budge and I wouldn’t be the one to text him. Six months of no contact and my first message to him was “hi, your sister got her period”？ No.

I’d just explain it to him when I got there. And then I’d search every inch of his face looking for any sign that he didn’t hate me.

I got Sarah her supplies. Then I took her to Culver’s for burgers. I walked her through how to use everything while we ate in the parking lot in the front seat.

“Take this.” I handed her two Motrin. “Take one to two every six hours starting the minute you get your period. You have to stay ahead of the pain, okay? It’s harder to make the cramps stop once they start.”

She took the pills with her Sprite.

“Hot baths help. You can also use a heating pad. And tell Justin he needs to wash anything with blood on cold, okay?”

“Justin doesn’t do my laundry anymore. I do it,” she said.

I looked at her, surprised. “Really? Since when?”

She shrugged. “A while. He taught me and Alex how to do it. We do a lot of stuff now.”

The corners of my lips twitched up. “Like what?”

“I cook.”

“You cook?”

“Yeah. With Justin.”

“What else?” I asked.

She bit the tip off a fry. “We have a chore chart. Oh, and Alex drives. He’s got the van.” She wrinkled her nose.

I laughed a little. “And you? How have you been?”

She shrugged. “Pretty good. I won my dance competition. I painted my room. Taught Brad to roll over and shake.”

“He never changed the name, huh?”

“Nope.”

No, he wouldn’t. And Human Brad probably still sent him every Toilet King thing he could get his hands on.

She went on about all the changes since I left. New traditions on holidays and funny stories about the other kids and plans they’d made for spring break.

I smiled softly.

I was so proud of them. They were okay—not that I thought they wouldn’t be. But I think they really were okay.

They’d figured it out. Come together as a family, found normalcy and joy in the aftermath of everything they went through and everything, and everyone, that they’d lost. And Sarah had a maturity about her now that she didn’t have before. And not the kind that comes from growing up too fast in the midst of trauma. The kind that comes from healthy parenting and coming of age. It made me happy.

It made me feel like I’d done the right thing leaving when I did. Because I would have done nothing but undo any progress they made when I would have inevitably left.

“Me and Justin made Mom’s cookies,” she said. “They came out good. He said you would have really liked them.”

The sudden mention of him mentioning me made my heart flip.

I’d missed so much. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, his birthday, the kids’ birthdays. They had to hate me. How could they not?

“We miss you, you know,” she said.

The words caught me by surprise and I looked over at her.

“You do?”

She talked to the burger in her lap. “Everybody was like, really sad when you left.”

I swallowed. “They were?”

“Yeah. Like, I know you’re not, but it kind of felt like you were my big sister or something. You were our family.” She looked at me.

I studied her. “I felt like that too. I didn’t want to have to leave,” I said.

“Then why did you?” she asked.

I turned away from her.

“Sometimes you leave because it’s better to deal with your problems on your own.”

“Did you?”

I came back to her. “Yeah. I did. And I’m really sorry if my leaving hurt you. The last thing I wanted was for you to feel abandoned. I know what that’s like.”

“I didn’t feel abandoned,” she said, looking me in the eye. “’Cause I knew if I ever called you, you’d come.”

She said it so matter-of-factly. And it was funny, because the second she said it, I realized she was right. I would have.

Anytime over the last six months, I would have been there if she’d reached out.

I wasn’t like Amber.

Even small, I was better than she was.

And then she did call and I did come.

I’d passed a test I didn’t even know I’d been taking.

“When we get home, you should come inside,” she said. “I bet he’d want to see you.”

I had to muscle the lump down in my throat.

“Okay,” I whispered. “I’ll do that.”

I just hoped she was right.

CHAPTER 46

JUSTIN

I missed her. It was an ache in my chest that never went away. After six months, I’d accepted that it never would.

The first few weeks after she left were the worst. I was depressed. There was no skirting around it, it was depression.

The kids kept getting sick from going back to school. It felt like I had someone home with a cold every day for two solid weeks. Then I got sick and had to take care of everyone else on top of it.

The house was always messy. Cleaning it was like shoveling in a snowstorm. Everyone needed me, all the time. Chelsea’s separation anxiety from Mom and Emma hit a crescendo and she hung off me like a monkey when she was home and cried every time I dropped her off at school. I was touched out and overwhelmed and missing Emma so badly it was hard to breathe.