Taryn used her key to get into h
er parents’ house early Saturday evening, repeating her motions from the night before when she’d stopped by and found both her parents asleep in the living room. Her father had awoken at the noise of her heels on the wood floors and had told her to leave her mother be, that he’d take care of getting her to bed, and to stop by for dinner tomorrow instead to visit.
Like usual, he hadn’t asked if Taryn had other plans. Like usual, she hadn’t had any plans besides work. She’d spent the day compiling her stats and polishing a presentation. Now she was starved and hoping it would be a low-key evening with her parents.
She made her way into the kitchen, following the scent of Cajun spices. “Smells like dinner.”
“Hey, cher, I didn’t hear you come in.” Her father was at his spot in front of the mini deep fryer, his fingertips covered in batter and his thinning blond hair held back from his face with his cooking bandanna. “You’re early. Got all your work squared away?”
She smiled at her father’s familiar endearment. Though he’d lived in Texas for decades now, he’d never quite lost his Cajun accent from the small town in South Louisiana where he’d grown up. His cher came out like sha, and it sounded like home to her ear. She set her purse down and gave her father a hug as he lifted his messy hands out to his sides so as not to batter her like the fish. “I’m almost done, but my brain went on strike, demanding I feed it.”
“Ah, that happens,” he said, stepping back from the hug. “It just needs a heaping plate of fried catfish. Lucky for you, that’s just what we got on the menu.”
Taryn stepped over to the counter where the little fryer was bubbling away and took a whiff. “Awesome. Momma’s not going to fuss at you for making the kitchen smell like fish?”
Her father’s smile faltered a little bit. “I’m not sure she’s going to join us for dinner tonight. She’s had a rough day and said she’d probably go to bed early.”
Taryn’s skin prickled, the words setting off her sensors. How many times had she heard him say something to that effect over the years? Her military father could make everything sound small and manageable. A panic attack was bad nerves. Depression was feeling a little blue. Wars were skirmishes or conflicts. He thought if a person didn’t make a big deal out of things, they wouldn’t be. “A rough day? How rough?”
He rinsed his hands and then used tongs to poke at the fish. “It was about that film you were in last year.”
“What about it?” Taryn sat at the table, the muscles in her neck tightening. Last year, she, her friends, and some of the other survivors of the shooting had taken part in a documentary, one that would raise money for charity. It had been one of the hardest things Taryn had ever done, but she didn’t regret it because it’d brought her friends Liv, Kincaid, and Rebecca back into her life. But she had no idea what that had to do with her mother.
Her dad looked back over his shoulder, deep lines in his suntanned forehead. “Your mom was interviewed for it, too.”
“What?” Taryn’s fists curled. “Daddy, you know she’s not in a place to do that kind of thing. There are so many triggers…”
“She didn’t want me to tell you because she knew you’d say that, but she told me she thought it would help with closure,” he explained. “I went with her, and she actually did pretty well. She didn’t want to be on camera, but she shared our story. She cried, of course. Who wouldn’t?”
Taryn hadn’t. She’d had to do that interview with steel running through her veins. She’d seen what letting all that grief and emotion in could do to a person. She saw it take down her previously tough, brilliant mother and eat away at her like a cancer. But Taryn’s interview had also been brief since she’d told them she had few memories from that night. “But what does that have to do with today? That stopped filming a long time ago.”
He turned back to the fryer and pulled out a piece of golden fried fish bubbling with oil to lay it on a paper-towel-lined dish. “They sent her an early copy today. She watched some of it before I got home. I found her in Nia’s room.”
“Oh no. Was she—”
He turned to her. “No, it was okay. She was sitting with one of Nia’s sweaters in her hands. She fussed at me for checking on her. Told me she has the right to a bad day.”
Relief moved through her. “That’s good. If she got annoyed with you.”
“Right.”
If her mom had gotten mad, that meant she was probably all right. The bad times were when her anxiety and grief got so intense that the past and present blurred for her, flooding her with all the horrible memories or worse, putting her in a state of reality-altering denial. In the year after the shooting, her mom would go in Nia’s room and fix it up like her little sister would be coming home later.
She hadn’t had one of those episodes in a long time. Her medications seemed to be working, but thoughts of those episodes still sent dread cramping Taryn’s stomach. She could deal with her mother’s extreme protectiveness and her anxiety. But she’d been terrified seeing her strong, smart mother disappear into a confused mess.
Before the shooting, her mom had been the breadwinner of the family, a journalism professor and writer. She’d spent her early years before kids traveling the world as a reporter. That was how she’d met Taryn’s father. He’d been deployed to a location she was covering. She’d seen war-torn countries and countless tragedies and had faced down intimidating and difficult people without faltering. But losing her youngest daughter had been her unraveling. The once never-let-them-see-you-sweat journalist had dissolved into grief, losing more pieces of herself with each passing day.
Taryn had watched it all like a slow-motion horror movie. Her sister gone. Her friends killed. Her family falling apart around her. Taryn had been dissolving, too, but when she’d gotten hysterical at Nia’s funeral, her father had hugged her and pulled her aside. She’d never seen her dad look so old and desperate. You have to be strong, cher. Your mom needs you. I need you. You’re all we have now. We can’t lose you, too. We need to keep each other together.
At the time, she hadn’t known all he’d seen with her mother in those first few days after the shooting, but she’d felt his terror. In that moment, a new chilling fear had filled her, one that had changed her from little girl to woman in an instant. Her daddy, the strong military man who had told her all her life that he would protect her, was lost and terrified. He couldn’t help her. He couldn’t protect her from any of this. They were all hanging on the edge of the cliff, and he’d asked her to find some rope.
Her father handed her a plate. “Why don’t you bring her some dinner? I’m sure seeing you would cheer her up.”
“Sure.” Taryn took the plate of fish, hearing the message loud and clear. Go check on her. I’m worried. She grabbed a can of soda from the fridge and headed toward the stairs. When she turned the corner, the light from Nia’s room shone on the polished wood floor of the hallway.
Taryn took a deep breath, steeling herself for whatever awaited, and headed to the room, passing all the family photos that lined the walls—photos of a Before family that didn’t exist anymore. She peeked inside. Even though she’d seen the room a thousand times, the sight of the perfectly preserved museum that was her sister’s teenage bedroom still hit Taryn like a swift kick to the chest. Photos pinned haphazardly to a bulletin board along with flyers advertising the different theater productions Nia had been in. Mr. Jingle Pants, the stuffed gingerbread man her sister had slept with since she was four, was propped against the bright-purple throw pillows on the bed. And her prized collection of makeup was organized neatly on her vanity table, hot-pink polish dried into the sides of the bottle, last used on prom night.
Taryn’s throat felt swollen shut. She swallowed hard and glanced to the left where she’d found what she’d seen so many times before—her mother sitting in a chair and looking out the window. Her hands were folded in her lap, and there was a distant look on her face,