“Nothing! Oh my god!” Tears streamed down her face. “Why can’t you just admit that I ruined your life?”
I recoiled, feeling like she’d ripped my heart out of my chest and thrown it across the street. “What?”
“I’m sick of you pretending I didn’t. Pretending everything is fine.” She gulped in a breath and wiped at her eyes. “Shawn left because of me. You were gonna get married. You were happy. And then suddenly you had to take me in and he left.”
“Bee—”
“Don’t, okay? I need you to stop being, like, ‘No, it’s okay! Everything’s okay!’ Because it’s not. It hasn’t been since Dad died. Since that lady asked if you would take custody of me or if I’d go to Aunt Cindy’s and you didn’t evenhesitate. You didn’t think about what it would do to your life. Sometimes I wish you’d just give up and send me to Aunt Cindy so we could at least be us again. Now, all I do is make everything harder and worse. Just hate me out loud.”
“Phoebe,no.” I moved forward, taking her face in my hands so she couldn’t break eye contact. My vision swam, but she looked up at me with something like hope sparking there. “You are the only reason I’m still standing. You are my reason to wake up in the morning.”
“But Shawn—”
“Fuck Shawn.”
“You were going to marry him!”
“And it would’ve been the biggest mistake of my life. Don’t think about him. He’s not worth it.”
“Okay, yeah, he sucks,” she agreed, voice trembling. I wiped her tears with my thumbs. “But I still ruined your life.”
“Nope.”
“You’re too young to be stuck with me! You should be out partying!”
“I don’t want to party. Sounds like a nightmare.”
“I’mthe nightmare. I’ve treated you like shit for a year.”
“So?”
She blinked up at me, her expression blank. “What do you mean, ‘So’?”
“You think I shouldn’t love you because you treat me like shit sometimes? I shouldn’t want you around?” I tilted my head, gazing at my sister, filled with so much frustration, so much sadness, so muchlove. I should’ve told her every single day howmuch she meant to me. I would from here on out. I was still learning how to do this, would probably never fully get the hang of being Phoebe’s guardian. But I was her sister, always. “Phoebe, you are the most important person in my life. I love you so much.Somuch. No matter what.”
She sniffled, more tears falling. “But it shouldn’t be like this.”
“I know. It shouldn’t. But it is.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. “I’m sorry I’m such a bitch.”
I moved in, hugging her so tightly, I probably cut off her circulation. She held me just as hard. “You’re fourteen and your life kinda sucks right now,” I said, planting a kiss on her head. “It’s justified.”
She crumbled completely, sobbing into my T-shirt. “I miss him so much,” she cried. I let my cheek rest on the crown of her head, running my hand up and down her back like our dad used to do when we were sad.
“I know. I do, too.”
“I’m so sorry, Vi.”
“I’m sorry, too, Bee. I’m so, so sorry.” I kissed her head again, squeezing her tighter. “We’re always us. I know things got messed up for a while, but we’re still us, I promise.”
She nodded and I felt her shoulders relax as she melted into me, as if for the first time in a year, I’d finally managed to take some of the weight she’d been carrying.
We stayed for a few more minutes before Phoebe playfully shoved me and said we’d embarrassed ourselves enough. On the walk to the motel, we stopped in Mama Sheridan’s and she told us the Italian bakery was on adifferentMain Street and people made the same mistake all the time—an annoying end to the mission, but Phoebe seemed content with the box of baked goods Mama Sheridan sent us away with for free because she could tell we’d been crying. Over the course of the trip, I’dwatched my sister’s growth in real time, but as she bounced down the sidewalk—pieces of pink hair spilling out of her nubby ponytail, her face clear and open and calm—I knew a corner had finally been turned.
She’d spent the last year convinced I resented her. I’d spent the last year convinced she resented me. It built a wall between us, and I regretted chickening out at every opportunity to knock it down. I should’ve forced that talk a long time ago. I should’ve done a lot of things. But I was beginning to understand the grace everyone told me to award myself: Grief is fickle, overwhelming, rude, uncomfortable, and, frankly, impossible. We both lost our dad, we both lost the lives we’d grown comfortable in, and we had to start fresh. With a fourteen-year-old to take care of, I’d done my best. But now that Phoebe and I had spilled our guts, the world felt easier to navigate. Phoebe didn’t want to be anywhere else. She didn’t resent me. She didn’t need me to be perfect, she just needed me to be open and honest. I’d tried so hard to hide my pain, convinced it was a weakness. But Phoebe breaking down on the sidewalk was a showcase of bravery. If she could pluck up the courage to tell me the truth, so could I. I’d do better.
When we got back to the motel, Dex was sitting on the edge of his pristinely made bed, his hair damp from a shower, elbows on his knees as he typed something into his phone. He glanced up, immediately clocking the signs of our breakdown.
