“Yes. I’m scared of you.”
“You should be,” said Olivia, and Merritt barked out a humorless laugh. When she opened the door, though, the look on Olivia’s face was deadly serious.
The two of them stood there, backs against either side of the narrow hall. Olivia shut her eyes, resting her hands on her stomach.
“Were you…were you using protection?”
“Of course we were,” said Merritt indignantly. Even as she said it, though, her mind drifted to the few exceptions.
Her lifelong search to find birth control that agreed with her was still inconclusive; everything hormonal she’d tried had messed with her mood too much, and her brief fling with a copper IUD had made her periods excruciating. He’d never finished inside her without a condom, and never complained about wearing one—understandably, given his own history—but once they’d gotten their test results back, they hadn’t been 100 percent careful 100 percent of the time.
Her guilt and trepidation must have been clearly visible on her face, because Olivia’s darkened. “Are you really still that fucking irresponsible?”
Merritt threw her hands up. “What, you’ve never gotten caught up in the moment?”
“Actually, no, I haven’t.”
“Well, congratulations on being perfect.”
“Thanks; congratulations on being thirty-five and still a huge fuckup,” Olivia snarled.
Merritt blanched, absorbing the impact like it was a physical blow.
Olivia had never, ever talked to her like that, but it was like she’d finally tapped into the current running underneath their relationship for years, shocking them both to the bone.
“When are you going to grow up?” Olivia continued, her voice rising, her face scarlet again. “We get it, you didn’t get to be a real teenager, so now we all have to suffer through your permanent fucking adolescence. I hope youarepregnant; maybe then you’ll have to finally think about someone other than yourself.”
Merritt opened and closed her mouth, trying to form a response, but she was underwater, gasping for air. She blinked fast, wiping furiously at the corners of her eyes, doing everything she could to stop the tears from falling. “I’m trying—”
“Are you?Areyou trying? Getting knocked up from your little summer fling, the two of you running around for months without a care in the fucking world. You still don’t live in reality. Your actions have consequences, you know.”
“It wasn’t just a fling,” Merritt said, finally shouting back. “I was in love with him, and I’m fucking heartbroken. Are you happy?”
“No, I’m not happy, are you even listening to me?” Olivia was crying now, too, not bothering to wipe her tears away. “Our whole lives, everything has been about you. You, you, you. All the attention when you were doing well, all the sympathy when you were doing badly. You can’t even let me have this. You have to upstage me yet another fucking time.”
Merritt scoffed, a harsh, guttural noise in the back of her throat. “You think I did this toupstageyou? Trust me, I wasn’t even thinking about you.”
“I know you weren’t, that’s the fucking point! You never are! You never fucking have!” Olivia’s voice was shrill, echoing through the tiny hallway. She clapped her hand over her mouth and shut her eyes tightly, tears streaming down her face, breathing slowly, trying to calm herself.
Even after everything she’d said, all Merritt wanted to do waswrap her arms around her sister until she stopped crying. But instead, she just watched, lost for words, as Olivia sank down to the floor, her back against the wall, head dropping back, expression blank, eyes closing. When she spoke again, it was in a soft rasp. “Do you have any idea what it was like, getting that call?”
Merritt’s heart plunged into her stomach.
They’d never talked about that night. Not really.
Merritt had woken up with Olivia curled next to her in that tiny hospital bed, arms wrapped around each other like they were back in the womb again. But as time passed, everyone had tiptoed around her before moving on, and she’d apologized to Olivia over and over about this or that meaningless scratch without ever addressing the gaping, unhealed wound at the core of their relationship.
Olivia, betrayed, terrified, exhausted from the years she’d already spent prematurely grieving her sister, wondering if they’d ever even known each other at all.
Merritt, too trapped inside herself to realize that when she hurt herself, she was hurting Olivia, too.
That specific flavor of guilt that she’d gotten so good at pushing down—the understanding of how close she’d come to letting her sister walk around incomplete for the rest of her life—surged through her, so overpowering she felt bile rise to her throat.
Olivia’s arms wrapped protectively around her stomach, seemingly involuntarily, and in that moment, Merritt understood the vast, existential fear Olivia must feel for her children. Everything that was coming that she couldn’t protect them from. The world. Each other. Themselves.
“I’m sorry,” Merritt said quietly, even though she knew that couldn’t begin to cover the depth of it. “I didn’t know you still thought about it.” Which was a stupid thing to say, and she deserved the incredulous look Olivia shot her in return.
“Of course I do.” All the anger had drained out of her, leaving her looking exhausted, slumped against the wall, her words sluggish. “I have nightmares about it all the time.” She met Merritt’s eyes. “I did even before it happened. Not that, specifically. But that you were…” She swallowed, glancing away again. “It didn’t seem like you wanted help, or wanted to get better. It felt like I was watching this slow-motion crash, and I was just standing there, paralyzed. I was always on edge, waiting for the other shoe to drop. I wished it would all just…stop. And then, when I found out what happened…it almost felt like I caused it.”
