“Told her what?” Mom asked.
“About my twin sister,” I said flatly.
“Oh,” Mom said softly.
Dad cleared his throat. “Why don’t you take a shower and—”
“Why didn’t you tell me about her?” I asked.
“Oh, sweetheart,” Mom whispered.
“Don’t change the subject,” I spat as tears lined my voice, “I deserve these answers. After everything that’s happened, I deserve to know the truth.”
“We don’t even know what happened, honey,” Mom said.
I shot to my feet and ripped a towel from the rack over my left shoulder. I haphazardly threw it around my body, a useless form of protection before I flung the fucking door open.
“You don’t know what happened?” I asked.
“Brielle,” Dad said, placing his hand on my shoulder, “why don’t you take a second and—”
“You don’t know what happened!?” I exclaimed as I stepped through the threshold of the bathroom door. “What happened, Mom, is that my twin sister that you abandoned in the hospital for having health issues grew up to become a psychopath, needed my organs for a fucking transplant, and decided she’d seek me out! That’s what fucking happened!”
Dad stepped in front of Mom as she gawked at me. “Now, you watch your tone of voice with her. We’ve been worried sick about you, trying to figure out what happened after that cryptic phone call a couple of weeks ago.”
I stared him down as I ground my teeth together. “All my life, you heard me talk about how I felt empty inside. Throughout the entirety of my teenage years, you wondered why I locked myself away. Why I threw myself so hard into my studies. Why I’d dedicate my time to helping lost little kids when I had, what did you call it, Dad? So much potential?”
“Princess,” he whispered as he reached out for me.
I took a step back. “All that time, you watched me cry. Listened to my anger as I tried to describe why it felt like nothing filled the hole I carried around in my heart. You knew I had a twin. You knew I had other family out there. Family that I should’ve stuck by. And instead, you kept it from me.”
Mom’s lower lip quivered, and she lowered her head. “We weren’t perfect parents.”
“And I’m not a perfect daughter,” I said flatly, “but I know better than that.”
Before they could say anything, I grabbed the bathroom door and inched it closed. I didn’t want to talk with them any longer. I didn’t want to speak with them. They had done enough. They had contributed enough. And now, it was on me to navigate what the hell had to come next. I couldn’t rely on them to give me sustainable information. They’d always advise what they felt was best for them, not for me. Their omission of my second half was proof positive of that.
“Shower,” I whispered and dropped the towel, “I need a shower.”
Mom sobbed softly out in the hallway, but it only made me turn the water on as hot as I could. The steam seemed to mute the world around me, and as I slowly inhaled, I stepped into the shower. I pulled the curtain and allowed the water to drench my aching body and wash away my tears. Was everyone that I ever loved destined to hurt me? Destined to abandon me at my very moment of need? I let the tears fall. Silently and bravely, I stood there as my body grieved. I grieved the hole in my heart that would never go away. A hole that could have been filled by my beautiful, vibrant sister had she not been left behind. I grieved my guys, and a life I had imagined for myself while in their clutches. I grieved for my sister, and the life she must have lived. The pain she must have endured. The suffering she must have witnessed, to have turned out to be a bringer of that same suffering.
Vengeance was a nasty thing, and I knew I couldn’t hold my anger against my parents for long.
But goddamn it, I needed some time to be pissed.
31
BRIELLE
I wasn’t sure how long I stayed in that shower. All I know is that the water turned lukewarm before I had enough sense to wash the conditioner out of my hair. The steam evaporated, leaving me exposed to the world beyond the shower curtain as I turned off the water and stepped out. I scooped the towel up from the floor and gravitated to the mirror. I wrapped the towel around me, allowing the microfiber to soak up the trails of water that I left behind. And as I reached out to the mirror, wiping the fog off the glass, I saw heavy bags hanging beneath my eyes.
“You look like shit, girl,” I said to my reflection.
The house was eerily quiet, and I took my shot. I opened the door and scampered through the frigid air draping the hallway before traipsing into my bedroom. I swung the door shut and sighed. With my hair dripping down my back and the oversized towel double-wrapped around my body, I walked over to the bed waiting for me in the corner and perched on its edge. I glanced around my room, a place that hadn’t changed ever since I moved for college. My high school posters were still on the walls. My vision cork board still stared at me with pictures of friends I hadn’t talked to since graduation. My desk was still decked out with sparkly hearts I made in art class and doodles in note-taking journals I had crafted in the middle of my math courses.
God, math had been a pain.
“Why did you guys leave me?” I whispered to myself.
