I slammed my suitcaseclosed, desperate to make the week’s worth of clothes fit.
Overpacking had always been a bad habit. Traveling tended to make me anxious, which manifested in checking the details of my flight a dozen times, wondering if I’d accidentally packed a firearm I didn’t own, and confirming my license was in my pocket every few minutes.
I packed clothes and shoes for every scenario I could realistically—and unrealistically—encounter. I hoped my mom wouldn’t realize my suitcase looked bigger than necessary for what was supposed to be a two-day trip to Middlebury. I’dalready “betrayed” her by going to her ex-husband’s funeral last month. As always, her needs superseded everything, even death. She was complaining less this time only because she thought he might’ve left me money in his will. Not that she would see a dime of it.
If she found out I planned to detour to Chicago to visit my fiancé before coming back to California, she’d throw a fit. Especially if this trip ended my relationship with Jack. She liked him more than I did.
Here I was, twenty-four years old, still hiding things from my mother.
It wasn’t her disapproval that bothered me—I’d lived with that for as long as I could remember—but she could push me out of my half sister’s life. I couldn’t leave Molly alone to deal with our mother’s instability and manipulation. Forcing that on a seven-year-old was unfair.
At least growing up, I’d had the Sharpes next door—a normal family, for a time.
I finished squeezing the suitcase closed and zipped it before letting out a deep sigh. This trip would give me a break from my mother, but it wouldn’t be a vacation by any stretch of the imagination.
Two days,I reminded myself.I can survive two days.
The door burst open, and Molly trotted into the room, dragging her hockey stick behind her. “I don’t want you to go!” She flopped face down on my bed. Her Goldilocks-blond hair sprawled around her head, half-submerged in the mattress.
“Aw, Molls. It won’t be long. I’ll be back before you know it.”
She mumbled something into the blanket.
I sat down beside her and ran my fingers through her hair. “What was that?”
She pushed herself to a sitting position, her bottom lip jutted in a pout. “Why do you have to go?” She crossed her arms over the forest-green Palmer City Wolves lettering on her shirt.
Molly had lived in Middlebury, North Carolina, a small town near Palmer City, for the first half of her life. Though she was too young to remember most of it, she hadn’t forgotten going to hockey games, and her love for the Wolves had stuck. She watched every game she could.
Over the years, I’d put her in front of baseball games, but she always complained they wereboring. I tried not to let the comment sting.
“Molly, I told you,” I said, taking on as patient a tone as I could muster. Normally, I didn’t mind repeating myself, but this trip had me tied up in knots. Still, she didn’t deserve to bear the brunt of my anxiety. “Someone I used to know they left me something.”
When Gordon Sharpe died a month ago, I had the lovely experience of explaining death to her. Our mother was nowhere to be found.
“What is it?”
I shrugged, still as unsure as I was two weeks ago when I got the call telling me I was in Gordon’s will. “It’ll be a surprise, but I’ll call you as soon as I know. Okay?”
She nodded solemnly. “Can you get me a present too?”
I ruffled her hair. “You got it.”
When I looked up, my mom was in the doorway, watching us with narrowed eyes. Three months had passed since I moved in with Kathy and Molly, but it still took me a beat to adjust to this version of Kathy Quinn. Her unwashed hair and no trace of makeup were the opposite of how she’d composed herself for most of my life.
When I’d come for a visit, my little sister had been living off processed food, delivered to the house, for the better part ofa month. She’d arranged her own carpool to and from school. The house needed a thorough cleaning, but Molly had kept the sink clear to avoid bugs. The laundry situation was another story; it sat piled high in her closet, her trove of clean clothes diminishing each day.
I helped as much as I could, then packed up my life in Chicago and put my physical therapy education on hold to move in with them, to care for my little sister. To get my mom to agree, I pretended I was down on my luck and needed her. I ignored her every time she threw the lie in my face. Her comments continued, even after I took on two jobs to support them while she sat at home. Every time, I wondered how much longer I could stand living in her delusion.
“Did you tell Jack about this trip?” Kathy asked, one side of her lips quirked in a sneer.
The tenor of her first words signaled her demeanor each day. I appreciated the warning to mentally prepare myself. Coping with negative emotions and combative environments was never my strong suit. When someone was upset, even when it had nothing to do with me, I couldn’t ignore it. Ifeltit.
My mom never understood it.Stop being so sensitive,she’d say.
It took going to therapy while in college to realize this wasn’t a defect. I nearly sobbed in relief when I found out there was a name for the way I experienced life.HSP, Highly Sensitive Person.
My mother called it bullshit.
