“I would have gone back and given her a ride if I’d known she was coming home,” Hunter says.
“Be careful, or she might realize you actuallyarea nice guy after all.”
“Iusedto be a nice guy, Lou. I’m not the person you knew before the accident.”
“Yes, you are, Hunter. The only person who can’t see that isyou.” There’s sadness in Lou’s voice.
It makes something in my own chest crack open. I wish I knew what he’d been through—who he was before and why he’s so different now.
I wait, but either she offended him so much he left, or they moved too far away for me to hear anything else.
As sleep finally claims me, Lou’s words run through my mind over and over again.Yes, you are, Hunter. The only person who can’t see that isyou.
We pull into Farmor’s driveway. The sunset has faded, the sky turning a deep blue, as dark as the bruises beneath my mom’s eyes. She puts the car in park but sits unmoving in the driver’s seat, her fingers clenched around the steering wheel. I am frozen next to her, my brothers’ soft snores and her uneven breathing the only sounds. Should I wait in the immobilized silence until she is ready? Or should I gently shake my brothers awake and start taking our luggage into our new home?
Before I have the chance to decide, the front door opens. Suddenly, Farmor is there, standing beside our car.
Dimly, I realize this is a dream, a memory I’m being forced to relive.
“Are we already here?” Cameron yawns from behind me, his hair sticking up on one side exactly as it did that day all those years ago.
“Welcome home! I made Swedish meatballs and mashed potatoes for dinner!” Farmor declares.
You didn’t. You can’t. You’re in a hospital. You’re dying. This isn’t real.
“This isn’t home!” Cameron shouts.
“It is now, buttface. Don’t make Mom feel bad,” Cory yells back.
But it’s too late. Mom is crying again, hunched over the wheel of the car, the individual knobs of her spine visible through her thin T-shirt.
I try to hug her, but my seat belt traps me, chaining me to my chair. I fumble with the release, but it won’t unlock. “Mom, it’s okay,” I say, over and over. A whisper that becomes a shout as her tears fall and fall until the car starts to fill with the unfathomable ocean of her grief that threatens to drown us all.
“Mom!” I scream as the sea of tears rises to our necks.
She jerks and looks at me, her blue eyes hollow, her voice empty of anything except her pain.
And suddenly, she’s gone, along with the car, my brothers, and the tears. Instead, I stand in the room where I lived after we moved in with Farmor.
“Ah,sötnos, what a heavy load you are carrying.” Farmor’s Swedish accent makes her words sound musical, especially her nickname for me:sweetheart. I love that about Farmor. And the way she always smells of brown sugar and butter from baking cookies and cinnamon rolls every day.
“It looks heavier than it is,” I say.
Farmor’s arm comes around my shoulder, pulling me gently but inexorably into her soft, sweet-smelling body. I stare up at the star stickers I put on the ceiling when I was eight. They used to glow, but now they are only off-colored shapes above me, drained of their former magic.
“I’m sorry,sötnos.”
And suddenly she’s gone, leaving me alone in a room that goes entirely black. A tight ball of pain forms in my chest, white-hot and suffocating.
Then in the corner—a hospital bed. But it’s not Farmor; it’s my dad lying in it. Gray-faced, lips bloodless, cheeks sunken.
Don’t leave me, Daddy. Don’t go!
I try to scream the words, but they’re trapped, cutting my throat like I’ve swallowed shards of glass.
I bolt up in bed, the half-gasped scream from my nightmare caught somewhere between my heaving lungs and racing heart, leaving me sweaty and shaken. I fumble for my phone.
2:34 a.m. And no notifications.
