Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 121210 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 606(@200wpm)___ 485(@250wpm)___ 404(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121210 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 606(@200wpm)___ 485(@250wpm)___ 404(@300wpm)
I suck my lips into my mouth and shove back into the couch, pulling my knees to my chest. I startle when Clay appears at the end of the hall, a measuring tape in one hand and a pencil in the other.
“What are you doing?” I ask, no tact or care or greeting at all.
I regret it immediately—I regret a lot of things about the way I’ve been treating him since Grandma died—but if he takes offense, he doesn’t show it.
“One of the hinges on the bathroom cabinet is loose. I was just measuring to drill some new holes.”
He’s not renovating to get me out of here, which I’m ashamed to admit was my first assumption. He’s fixing. Upkeeping. Helping. Goodness, I don’t deserve him.
“I’m sorry about before,” I apologize, my voice just barely over a whisper. “I feel a little bit better now that I slept.”
He nods, his eyes softening as he drops the tape measure and pencil on the counter and comes straight to me. He wraps me up in a hug full of warmth and love.
“Don’t worry about it, baby. I understand completely.”
I lick my lips and pull away from his embrace slowly, crossing my arms at the rush of cool air that envelops me now that he’s gone.
I hate it, and at the same time, I crave it. It’s a self-serving, completely destructive punishment of some sort, I’m pretty sure, but I don’t have the capacity I would need to figure out why. “You’re right about the doctor, I think. I should make an appointment to see if they can at least give me something to help me sleep.”
His eyes are rich with compassion. “Do you want me to call for you?”
I shake my head. “I can do it.”
“I want to be what and where you need me to be, Josie,” he says, his voice tender as he grips my hand for a brief moment. “I love you, and I know you love me too. Let me know when you’re ready to let me help you.”
He’s doing everything he can to be there for me, and all I do is push him away.
I have to stop pushing him away.
Right then, I make a promise to myself and to Clay and to Grandma Rose, too. I’m not ready, but she’d want me to do it anyway.
“I’m going to try to let you now. I want to let you help me now.”
Clay pulls me into a hug, and I let myself savor the bittersweet of how good he feels. Things will never be the same, but they’re not supposed to be.
A world without someone you love will always be a little dimmer. The only way to survive is to hang out as close as you can to the light.
And for me, the light is Clay.
31
Josie
Friday, November 11th
The ground is even cooler than the air, but I lie on it anyway. It clings to the cold of overnight, and I cling to the memory of my sister Jezebelle.
Today marks another anniversary of the day she passed, and I clutch at the J necklace of hers I’ve worn around my neck ever since and try to reconcile my emotions.
It’s been so long and yet feels like no time at all since she passed, and the events of Grandma Rose’s funeral only emphasize the contradiction.
Jezzy died because of my mother’s negligence before she reached her third birthday.
The guilt in my heart for that tragic day is still there, lining my veins with a parasitic plaque. I know I was just a kid myself, but I still wish I could go back in time and change it all.
I wish I could’ve been wise enough to know that my mother sending me out on an errand to Earl’s while she “entertained” Ralph Rigo—an old friend of my father’s and a rich businessman from two towns over—would mean that she wouldn’t have been paying attention to Jezzy at all.
My mother was always trying to climb the social ladder. She was always trying to find a way to live a life that revolved around money and greed, even if that meant having an affair while my father was out of town.
I don’t know all of the details of what went down that day, but I know when I walked back to the house, Norah was outside playing in the yard. “We not allowed inside, Josie. Mom said we has to play outside,” she’d said.
But I went inside anyway.
The door to our parents’ bedroom was locked—my mother and Hank inside.
And I found Jezzy facedown in the bathtub.
At the time, Sheriff Pete was only a deputy and Mitchell Moreland was the Sheriff. When I tried to tell Sheriff Moreland what happened, tried to speak the truth about how Jezzy was left alone and my mother was locked in her bedroom with a man who wasn’t my father, Eleanor Ellis made me the villain. The problem child. The liar.