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“Fine, you want details? Yes, Kate Murray is living next door to me. Yes, she looks just as good as she did ten years ago, but she’s still as much the bitch as she was back then, so nothing has changed.”
Those same five pairs of eyes avoid contact with mine as I shovel some more food into my mouth because I know if I don’t, I’ll say something I’ll regret.
“I wonder why she’s back in town,” Max wonders, his eyes staying on Addison, who eyes him silently, a shy smile tipping at the edges of her lips. “I mean, she left right after graduation and never looked back. No one even heard from her until she just showed back up last month.”
I don’t say anything because I have nothing to contribute. I don’t know her, and I don’t plan to.
“I heard she moved back because of her mom,” Addison pipes up and my eyes widen.
How the hell does she know that? I wonder, knowing Addison isn’t one to gossip.
“What?” She shrugs, smiling. “I can know things too. Cash isn’t the only one with all the intel.”
Cash gives her a wink as he picks up his plate and brings it into the kitchen and rinses it off in the sink that sits in the center of the island. Addison’s house used to be our mother’s, but when she died and left it to us kids, I decided that she should have it. I had a thriving security business that I started with Max after college and so I didn’t need the help, but more than that, I wanted Addison somewhere safe, and so having her living here was a win-win for everyone.
“I would be offended if it wasn’t true,” Cash jokes from the kitchen and I sit back in my chair.
“So, what’s up with her mom?” Mark asks, his eyes sparkling and as much as he makes fun of Cash for loving the gossip, I know he does too.
My body tenses as Addison leans forward as if this piece of information is even more interesting than anything she’s shared tonight.
“Her mom has cancer, apparently she doesn’t have a lot of time left, so she moved home to take care of her and say her goodbyes is my guess.”
That was not what I was expecting and honestly, it pisses me off. I don’t want to feel pity for the girl that made my life a living hell for four years. I don’t want to have this gut instinct to knock on her door and see if she’s okay when I know I’d probably only get an attitude in return. Yet, that helpless feeling I know so well must be consuming her and is causing me to rethink everything.
Is that the reason she was such a bitch to me today? I shake my head, not wanting to go down that road. I don’t need to feel pity for her. I don’t want to feel pity for her. Not now. Not ever.
Kate
There is dust everywhere.
I didn’t really think ahead when I planned to live in the same home I’m renovating, but alas, here I am sitting in the bay window in front of my house wondering how I got here. My eyes dart to Drew’s driveway noticing that his car isn’t there, and so I assume he’s at work and for a split second I wonder what he does, and why it keeps him out so late, but then I remember how much he despises me, and I shake the thoughts from my mind.
He has a perception of what I was ten years ago, and to be fair to him, he’s right. I was a bitch. I owned it and I even thrived on it for a time. It allowed me to build walls so high and thick that no one wanted to get close enough to see the cracks. But the cracks were there, and they ran deep. So deep, that at times I forgot who I used to be before Mom got sick and I focused solely on the persona I wanted others to see and hiding my sadness as best as I could.
Before my mother got sick the first time, I wanted to be a doctor, I wanted to save lives and bask in all the glory. But once I saw behind the curtain, saw all the pain, suffering, and carnage, I knew I wouldn’t be able to handle it. I could barely get through seeing my mother sitting in that chair, the port sticking out of her chest as it administered her meds. How could I walk through the halls of any other hospital and not think of her and the suffering she endured? Nope. Not for me.
So, what did I do instead? I became a web designer, it allowed me to work with numbers in a way I loved, and allowed me to work from anywhere, which has been both a convenience and a curse. Glancing to my left, I notice the stack of papers I’ve been putting off going through. Some are work related but there are a few that are from my mother’s lawyer which I’ve conveniently put at the bottom of the pile.
I lean my head against the glass and think back to the conversation I had with my mother this morning.
“You know, I always pictured you married with a couple of kids by now.” I roll my eyes as a smile peeks through my ever-present scowl. This is normal for my mother, always berating me on why I haven’t dated or why I haven’t married and given her grandchildren.
“Mom, can we not talk about this right now?” I ask, fighting back the tears that are threatening to spill over at the thought of doing any of that without her here. I never thought I’d have to experience firsts without her. Yet here we are on the brink of that happening.
“Just promise me something,” she whispers, her eyes flickering between open and closed, the medication overtaking her body faster than I expected.
“What’s that?”
She takes my hand, her fragile fingers grasping my shaking ones. I can feel her thinning skin as it slips over every bone in her hand; Just another reminder of what is happening to her.
“Promise me that you will fall in love.”
I fought the eye roll because this is typical for my mother. The closet romantic, wanting everyone to have their happy ending even if she never got hers.
“Mom, I can’t promise you that. I don’t have any control over someone else’s feelings.” Shaking my head, I wonder if the morphine has gone to her head. But she just gives me that knowing smile, the one that tells me I don’t know what I’m talking about.
“Of course, you have control of that. You just need to remember to let people in.”
