AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“It’s been a while since I’ve done anything like this.” Emotion riots, burning my throat the longer I fight to contain it. Wetting my lips, I take a sip of the drink, let the full-bodied blast of autumn sweep me up. “Do you…” I let myself breathe for a moment. “Do you ever miss something that you can’t quite name until something else reminds you of it?”
She bites into a leaf and lets her attention drift off me. “Pirating movies with my brother.”
I blink. “What?”
“It’s what I remember when I think of things that I can remember but never experience again. We grew up poor. Really poor. Theaters were out of the question. Renting was a holiday luxury, and often the difference between being able to afford meals for the week or not. Sometimes, my brother would find garbage quality movies on all these terrible, sketchy sites. You could tell they were recorded on a phone in the back of a theater. Muffled audio. Out of frame.” She laughs. “They were really awful.”
“You…you have a brother?”
Her gaze finds mine, moves away. Lifting her drink, she leans back against the counter and focuses on the oven. “Had. He’s dead to me.” Her grip tightens around the glass. “Or…well…that’s what I say, so it hurts less. He’s kind of dead to everyone.” She tilts her head toward the ceiling and closes her eyes. “Suicide.”
A pit opens in my gut. “I’m so sorry.”
Shaking her head, Marcella draws her glass to her lips, letting it rest there. “If you think I’m negative, he was something else. He could never quite see past each evening. Tomorrow simply wasn’t a place that existed to him. We were so similar. But I figured out how to blend in when I needed to. I learned how to embrace who I was and ignore those who couldn’t. I could turn my feelings off. He couldn’t. He cared what everyone thought. All the time. And he lost his identity in trying to please everyone…in trying to be someone else…all the time. One day, he fell into the wrong group, took up the wrong persona…and…that was it.”
All I can do is repeat a feeble, “I am so sorry.”
She lifts a shoulder. “He was three years older. It happened while he was at college. And, like I said, I know how to turn my feelings off.” She tosses a crooked smile back at me. “Mom was sobbing when she sat me down and told me what happened. I was so shocked, I immediately shut off. All I said was that’s a bummer.” Biting her lip, she swears. Her eyes glass, but a cracking laugh leaves her. “No—” She swears again. “—wonder Mom thought I was a sociopath.”
Abandoning my spot at the island counter, I circle the marble slab and wrap Marcella in a hug.
She tenses until I drag her tighter in against my chest.
After a moment, her face presses to my shirt. “What do you think you’re doing?”
My voice breaks. “Nothing.”
“There’s a suspicious amount of something in this nothing, Marshi.” She fumbles to set her glass down, but doesn’t push me away when her hands slip up against my stomach. “Are you crying?” she mutters. “If you blow your nose in that hankie, I’m never touching it again.”
“Thank you for the warning. I’ll refrain from doing that then.”
“I’m fine. Promise. You’re the one who started this depressing topic. Which means I really should get you to a hospital…” Her hands close into fists against me, crammed hard between us, and it occurs to me that maybe she can’t push away.
Because I’m crushing her.
I’m crushing her.
Loosening my grip, I gently run my fingers through her hair. She shudders and shoves, shaking me off with a grimace. “Don’t ever do that again.” Her attention rolls back to her drink while I recover from the loss. “So—” She sips the spiced concoction. “—your turn to trauma dump. What did all this bring to mind for you?”
My mouth opens, but I can’t wrap my mind around the words. If I dare say them aloud, they’ll be too real. I’m not ready to admit I’m losing my mother. I’m not ready to admit…I’ve already lost most of her. I doubt I’ll ever be ready.
“It has to do with your father, right?” Marcella prompts when the silence stretches. She swirls the liquid in her glass. “It’s okay. You don’t have to go into detail. A few years ago, I almost lost my dad to cancer. I don’t even like to think about what could have happened.” She huffs, glaring down at the cloudy, tan color in her glass. “The loan I took out to cover his surgery is why I’m in so much debt, but I’d do it again in a heartbeat because it saved him.” Sneering into her cup, she mutters, “Just so you know, I’m still in debt to that dang loan company even though I have all the money. Can you believe it? Their office is on the other side of the city, so I went there on the first of the month with Bridge and my bill. Closed. Make an appointment. I spent over an hour on hold, but I was finally able to coordinate a date and time around the end of the month. I can’t believe they’re making it so difficult for me to give them thousands of dollars.”
I can.
My brow furrows. “Who did you say you got the loan from?”
“I didn’t.”
“JustBorrow?” I ask.
Blood trickles from her face as her eyes widen. I don’t need to explain a thing.
She curses.
“Yep,” I mutter, crossing my arms.
“Is it a complete and utter scam?”
