Twenty-Nine
Lili
By the time I get home, I feel wrung out. I step listlessly up the front steps and into the house. I’ve cried harder in my life, much harder, but never from a place of shame.
Guilty tears burn far more bitterly than grieving ones.
I did this to myself. And worse, I did it to someone else too. Somewhere on this island I’d so desperately wanted to come back to, there is a girl crying because of hurt I knowingly inflicted upon her.
Because I did know. With every step I took toward Wren in that back room, I knew I was walking closer to something that wasn’t mine, no matter how much I wanted it to be.
I can’t be sure if he’d been fighting within himself during those final few seconds of our almost kiss. Maybe he would fully have let me go in another heartbeat, all on his own. Maybe he would have realized that he didn’t want to throw away years with Eryn for a fleeting moment with me. Maybe the feelings for me he thought he was struggling with paled in comparison to what he has with her.
And maybe he would have let me down gently, apologized for leading me on because of his temporarily confused thoughts.
Maybe I’d have been the one to run off while he and Eryn went on to happily ever after.
Or maybe I’m just a worse person than I thought, because I’m fantasizing about a reality where I can escape my guilt and become the victim, when the truth is I’m anything but.
I close the door behind me with a bang and I’m thankful that the house remains quiet. Goldie must still be at Mrs. Mayhew’s and Mom must be in her room. All I want right now is to crawl back into my bed and hide from the mess I made at the museum and the twisted thoughts in my own mind.
But I don’t make it halfway up the stairs before Mom steps into view at the top and I freeze because I’d swear, based on the look on her face, that she knows exactly what happened today.
“Mom?”
She studies me for a second without any of her usual warmth, then turns her back to me, saying, “Come into my room, Lili. Now.”
There’s no way she knows. How could she? But my heart isn’t listening to logic, and it hammers like a cannon in my chest with every step I take after her.
She’s staring out the window in her bedroom, so small that it fits only a twin bed and a tiny reading chair. I linger half in, half out of the doorway until she gestures to me to sit on the bed. The frame squeaks when I sit, and dread begins to inch up my legs, like quicksand I can’t escape. Somehow, she knows.
“What you did today was hurtful in more ways than you know.”
The tears that I thought I’d used up on my bike ride home replenish in an instant. “I know.”
“Do you?” She finally turns to face me. “Because I just spent thelast hour comforting a girl who doesn’t understand why you keep choosing everyone else over her.”
My thoughts are so tear soaked and bitter that I don’t understand her at first, and I almost ask her why Eryn came here before realizing she’s talking about my sister.
“Goldie?” I’m so relieved that she doesn’t know about the actual horrible thing I did that day that I flop back on the bed. “I went with her to Mrs. Mayhew’s like I promised, but something came up and I couldn’t stay as long as she wanted. I told her I’d make it up to her, and I will. I do want to see everything.” But while my brain is pulled in another direction, for once, Kezia Gardner is going to have to wait.
“Hey!” Mom’s uncharacteristically sharp voice has me sitting back up in a second. “To you it may seem like no big deal, but she is ten years old and you are her world, and the fact that you keep showing her how unimportant she is in yours is crushing her.” Mom spins away, pushing her hair from her face before turning back to me again. “I had these conversations for years with your dad about you, and I can’t believe I have to do this again with you because you’re now the one who refuses to see that there is a little person who just wants to be with you.”
I am struck silent by the mention of Dad.
“All summer you were the only thing she’s talked about. ‘Wait till Lili and I do this’ or ‘Wait till I show Lili that.’ Only you were never here.” She exhales audibly before adding, “If you only knew how little she wanted, how small a thing from you could have made her happy.” She shakes her head. “She was so sure she’d found something that you couldn’t say no to, and more than that, that there was finally something she could do with you.”
I say nothing. I can’t find my voice, knowing that I’ve hurt yet another person I care about and I didn’t even notice.
Mom doesn’t know how low I am in that moment and continues to lay into me.
“I’ve let you run off to that museum since the day we got off the ferry because I trusted you to find a balance.” She sits beside me and lifts her hand to push my slightly sweat-damp bangs back to better see my face. “Lili. You are so much like your dad that sometimes it scares me. Oh, there’s a lot of good you got from him,” she adds when I close my eyes. “You’ve got his passion, his determination, and his resilience.” She brushes my hair back again, the soft gesture tempering the sting to come. “But you’ve also got his single-mindedness, which can make you neglectful and even selfish at times.”
My chin quivers.
“Honey, I am not saying any of this to make you cry, but I need you to understand that this situation with Goldie is important and could have lasting effects on your relationship with her. So.” She lightly slaps her hands to her knees. “Here’s how things are going to go, starting tomorrow. You may only volunteer at the museum three days a week; the other four you spend with me and Goldie. I’m fine if you want to go out with Wren or your other friends a couple of nights a week too. But maybe invite Goldie sometimes too?” She nudges my shoulder when I don’t so much as lift my head. “Lili?”
I can’t help it. I start to cry, big, body-racking sobs. And the whole thing just pours out of me, the early clash between me and Wren, the totally uninvited attraction that grew into something more, something that I thought was only dangerous to me becauseit was obviously one-sided, until maybe it wasn’t, and then the horrible, awful almost kiss when Eryn walked in.
