“Do you think he’s okay?” Crystal asked softly.
Beks replied, “I think he’s about as okay as you are.”
Crystal pressed her lips together to stem her tears.
“What should I do?” she whispered.
Beks blew out a breath. “I think that you should finish that food and that tea. Then you should go take a bath, put on some fresh clothes, maybe go outside to get some air.”
Crystal looked down at herself. Whenhadshe last bathed?
“And while you’re outside, you should ask yourself two things. One being: do you love him? And the other: can you live without him? Don’t think about your sister, don’t think about home. Think about you. And him.”
Crystal’s breath hitched and she looked up at Beks in surprise.
“And if the answer to the first question is yes and the answer to the second question is no…then I think you know what to do.”
Beks stood from the cushions surrounding the fire pit and Crystal stared up at her, momentarily stunned.
“Love is simple,” Beks murmured. “It’susthat makes it so complicated. Now suck it up, girlie. You have an important decision to make.”
After eating,after a bath and a fresh change of clothes, Crystal went outside for fresh air. She felt the cool wind on her cheeks and she closed her eyes as it fluttered through her freshly washed hair.
And, with her eyes closed, she silently asked herself the two questions that Beks suggested.
Do I love him?
The answer was surprisingly easy.
“Yes,” she whispered, a tear leaking from behind her closed lids, despite her thinking she was done with the tears. Her love for him surprised her. It had come on quickly, like a violent storm.
Can I live without him?
Her breath hitched.
If this was what it was like living without him, then she had her answer. It was destroying her, emotionally and physically.
“No.”
Her shoulders slumped and she opened her eyes. In that moment, she had brief clarity. An answer so simple and yet so very not simple at the same time.
Because life was never simple. It was ugly, but wonderful.
Then Crystal remembered something.
The night their father left, Crystal’s mother had come into the room that she’d shared with Lauren.
Lauren was four years older at the ripe old age of twelve and looking back, Crystal knew that she’d understood what was happening far more than Crystal had. Lauren had been quiet that night, abnormally so.
Their mother had come in. She’d seemed tired, sad.
Crystal had asked her what was wrong and she’d replied with, “I just missed you two.”
“You just saw us at dinner,” Crystal had pointed out.
“And I can’t miss you between dinner and now?”
“I suppose you can,” Crystal had replied after thinking about it. “Can you tell us a story before we go to bed?”
