“That’s a bit of an understatement, don’t you think?” I threw back at them, not able to keep the vicious spite out of my voice.
My mom bit down on her bottom lip and closed her eyes.
“What your mom is trying to say is we’ve been unfair to you. We haven’t been the parents that you needed us to be. It’s inexcusable and wrong. After Jayme died, we shut down, and in the process we lost not one but both of our daughters,” my dad said, leaning forward.
My eyes began to burn with unshed tears. How long had I thought about them with only resentment and bitterness at emotionally abandoning me when I needed them most?
“You hurt me, badly,” I whispered, staring down at my hands.
I startled at my mother’s hand touching mine. “We know. We were in so much pain, and it was easier to blame you than to accept our own culpability in what happened to Jayme.” I felt the first tears escape down my cheek, and I hurriedly wiped them away.
“But you weren’t wrong. I should have told you what was going on with Jayme. I should have done more to save her.” My voice was broken, and I could barely hear myself over the thudding of my heart.
My dad came to sit beside me, and my mother gripped my hand tightly between hers.
“That’s where we failed you, Aubrey. Because you were a child, too. We should never have put that sort of responsibility on you,” my father said firmly.
“But—” I began, but my mother cut me off.
“No! We were the parents. Not you.Weshould have seen what was going on with our daughter. That wasourresponsibility. And it was our guilt and shame that made it impossible for us to see how we were treating the only child we had left. I’m sorry, Aubrey.”
I let out a choked sob and couldn’t hold back the tears any longer.
“Why now? Where did this sudden realization come from?” I demanded, feeling my tears mix with years of anger.
“We were in the kitchen drinking our coffee one Saturday morning and made the decision to go through Jayme’s things. Neither one of us had been able to do it in all the years since she had been gone. But something clicked that Saturday, and we grabbed a few bags and went up to her room,” my dad stated.
“Going through her things brought up the hurt and pain all over again. And as we cried and laughed with each new discovery of who our daughter had been, we realized that we weren’t just missing Jayme, we were missing you, too,” my dad finished softly.
“Then we heard from your school about your suspension from the counseling program, and we knew that all of it was our fault. That we hadn’t been the parents we should have been. That we allowed you to go off to school only months after losing your sister, alone in your grief. We should have helped you, but we didn’t, and we will never be able to forgive ourselves.” My mom’s words were punctuated with her muffled sobs, and we cried together. My mother and me. And our mutual tears began to heal the brokenness inside of me.
Tentatively, my mother wrapped her arm around me, and I let her hug me, unable to hold on to the anger I had felt for so long. I needed this. I needed to feel the love that only my parents had ever been able to give me.
I had been defined by my grief and regret for years. They had weighed me down and pulled me under. It was time to let some of that go.
My dad’s arms came up to encircle both my mother and me, and I felt warm from the inside out.
They held me for a long time, my mother and me continuing to cry and my dad holding us both.
chapter
twenty-nine
aubrey
ifelt right.
Perfect, even.
I had made peace with my parents. It was only the first step, but it was an important one. We still had a lot of baggage, but I felt we were finally putting the painful past behind us.
My mother wanted to know about my apartment and my friends. My dad asked about my classes and what the food was like at the commons. I was a junior in college and it was the first time my parents had asked about any of this. But at least they were asking now.
But then they wanted to know about the details of my suspension.
“The letter didn’t go into specifics. Only that you were found guilty of an ethical violation,” my mother stated, her brows furrowed in confusion.
“What does that even mean?” my father asked.
