I would not wake her up. No way. I’d go and get coffee and leave her until she was ready to wake up.
Sneaking out of the bed with as much finesse as a rhino, I managed to get up without her stirring. She didn’t even twitch, her breathing didn’t change, so she was still asleep. The carpet prevented any wayward floorboards creaking beneath my feet as I headed for the doorway in my boxers.
One last check over my shoulder confirmed she was still asleep, and I couldn’t look away. So, I didn’t. I leaned against the doorframe and stared at her for the longest moment.
One of her long, tanned legs had escaped the confines of my white sheets, and her foot hung over the edge of the bed. Her other foot peeked out of the end of the bed, her scarlet painted toenails a stark contrast to the sterility of my room. Her hair spread across her pillow and the sheets like a dark sea, but it was her face that had me mesmerized.
The duvet was tucked beneath her chin, almost as though she were hugging it to her. Her face was devoid of makeup, yet her eyelashes were just as thick and dark as always as they fanned across her skin.
Other than the tiniest purse of her lips, the peace that radiated off her as she slept was palpable.
If my cock weren’t so fucking hard, I’d be climbing back in here and holding her to me in the hope she’d pass some of it off to me.
Because although I’d slept well and I felt lighter from our talk, the ache was still there.
But, it was different.
I pulled the door so it was almost closed and headed for the stairs.
The ache wasn’t so painful anymore. It was dull, an acceptance of what had happened. A realization that I needed to move forward.
That Dahlia was right.
No matter what I’d done, I wasn’t to blame. I was a child, a teenager, a young adult. Parenting wasn’t my job—keeping my family happy wasn’t my job all those years ago. I was simply along for the ride, and in the end, the only people responsible for what happened where my parents and my sister.
Nobody made Penny do what she did.
Nobody made my mom do what she did, either.
They both made those choices.
My parents made the choice to treat us the way they did.
Nothing would change that. Nothing could change that. And more than that, no longer could I blame Penny for our mother’s suicide.
She didn’t make her do it.
She didn’t make her tie that bathrobe belt around her neck and hang herself.
That was a choice made by one person.
Just like nobody forced Penny to take all those drugs.
One choice. It was remarkable how one choice, made in a split second, could destroy so many others for so long.
Downstairs was silent. There was still no movement from Dahlia, either, so I skipped the coffee for the utility room. My running stuff was hanging on the rack, so I pulled it off, along with my sneakers, and quickly changed into it.
I scribbled a rough note for Dahlia, just in case she woke up, and with my keys jingling in my hand, left the house. It was too far to walk to the cemetery right now, so I hopped into my car to drive the majority of the distance. There was a parking lot not far from there—I could jog lightly from the car to their graves in mere minutes.
I took the drive in silence.
Soul-crushing fucking silence.
It sucked the life out of me. I drove slower and slower until I rolled the car’s wheels into the parking lot at something that couldn’t even be described as a crawl. It took no effort at all to put the car into park and get out of it.
That was a fucking lie. Getting out of the car was achingly painful. Every part of me screamed at me as I forced myself from its confines and into the already-hot morning air.
Still, I fought it. I made one foot move in front of the other until I’d padded down the dusty road to the cemetery. It seemed quieter today. Almost as if the demons that usually surrounded me had given up for the day.
Had I finally made peace with what had happened? Was it really as simple as speaking about it and letting go of all the anger I’d kept cooped up for years?
Maybe it was.
It was working, after all.
The gate screeched through the silent, morning air as I pushed it open. The overgrown weeds that stretched up against the low, old brick walls were dry and gnarly. Familiar, too. I’d seen them so many times.
The damn things never died.
One crunched beneath my foot as I headed for where Mom and Penny’s graves were. For once, the silence of the air around me was welcome, because as I stopped in front of the two stones that marked their final resting places, the thought was able to hit me with perfect clarity.