Very Wicked Things

“I’m so sorry, Sarah,” I said, grabbing her some tissues. I sat down next to her on the chair. “I can’t imagine what that must have felt like, to relive his death.”

A few minutes passed until she finally looked up, her green eyes red and swollen.

She asked, “Where have you been? You shouldn’t be out this late.”

I sighed. “I went to see Alexander. He says you borrowed money. Is it true?”

She blinked and averted her eyes. “I needed money to repair the wood floor in the studio and we didn’t have it. Or if we did, I didn’t realize it. Your dance and school supplies for the year were overdue and then we bought you a car. My doctor bills and the medication. It all came at once, and I couldn’t seem to keep track of it all. I kept losing bills and forgetting if I’d paid them already.” She chewed on her lips. “We had the building for sale, and I assumed it would have sold by now, and I could pay him back. But, he sent his men today.”

I nodded, feeling defeated and frustrated all at the same time.

“They hit you,” I said.

Her brow wrinkled. “I know he’s not a good person, but he is your father. I don’t understand why he’d send those thugs to see me. He should help us when we’re in trouble.”

I sucked in a sharp breath. Ah, this was her disease talking. Because never in a million years would a fully functioning Sarah have thought Alexander Barinsky gave a rat’s ass about me. Her mind was going, and I was failing her. Obviously. I mean, she’d gone to Alexander.

How had I missed it?

Worry gnawed at me, and I stood and walked to the window, needing some distance from the woman who’d raised me. It was awful and terrible, but part of me, fueled by a sense of impotence and doom, was angry with her because she’d put us in serious danger. And I hated that part of me, but it was real and it was there. I pushed it away—empathically. Because in the end, it wasn’t her fault she was wasting away mentally and eventually physically too.

I had no one to blame but myself for not watching her better.

She tugged at the sleeves on her dress, fidgeting like a child in trouble. “Is Alexander mad at me?”

Tears sprang to my eyes, and I told her the only thing I could think of. “No. It’ll be fine. He agreed to let us sell the house first. There’s nothing to worry about.”

She let out a big sigh. “Good. I knew he’d come through.”

I hid my disgust for him by changing the topic. “We need to talk about getting a nurse or a sitter to come stay with you.”

She bit her lip and clutched the tissue, and I took her hand and squeezed it tight. “Talk to me. Tell me what you’re thinking. What do you want?”

She took a deep breath and started talking, telling me things I think she’d held back for months. She told me how she felt like she was trudging slowly through quicksand just to get through the day, how each little conversation took all her concentration, how she couldn’t remember the ingredients to her famous hummingbird cake, and how she’d forgotten the steps to her favorite dance movements. “I feel like I’m being erased by a giant pencil, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. Soon, I’m going to watch you dance and not know who you are.”

Her words had me in tears, slamming home the truth of her impending death. She’d taken care of me for the past eight years. Now, it was my turn to take care of her.

Somehow, someway, we were going to pull through this.

If that meant selling coke, I’d do it.

“Well, damn. I wasn’t expecting that.”

–Cuba

I DROVE HOME thinking about Dovey. I made a mental plan to dig deeper about the Barinsky thing as soon as I saw her at school tomorrow. Maybe she’d let me help her.

But wasn’t getting close to her a bad idea? Hell, I didn’t know anymore.

A lot had changed today.

I pulled into the winding drive that led up to my house. A chateau-style monstrosity designed by a French architect, it had been built with stones from an old castle in Provence. Dad had had it built for my mother a few months after Cara’s death, hoping to cheer her up.

But it hadn’t worked.

Because you can’t bring back the dead.

Mother’s first two attempts at suicide were feeble efforts and she’d given glaring clues.

I knew why she did it. I mean, she’d always taken meds for her depression issues, but Cara’s death had sealed the deal. She blamed me for Cara the most, then my father for one thing or another, and then herself for leaving her with me that day.

The first time, I found her unresponsive from prescription pills. I’d been fourteen and had just come home from a school. She’d texted me earlier to make sure I was on schedule, and I should have known then that something was wrong, but you never want to believe that your parent wants to die.

I’d hated myself for what I’d made her do.

The second time, I’d just come home from football. I found her upstairs, this time in the tub, her wrists slit with an old razor blade of Dad’s. She’d cut herself the wrong way, horizontally instead of vertically. I watched the paramedics take care of her, taping up her bleeding arms, loading her in the ambulance.

My self-loathing grew.

Dad brought in more doctors and therapists for her. She even stayed in a treatment facility for a few days. She came out, claiming she was better, but her face was still hopeless, her shoulders still sunken. He flew her home to Brazil to see her parents. He tried everything, but nothing brought her back to the way she’d been before Cara. So he and I settled into a routine of watching her constantly. We even hired a sitter to be with her during the day. And when Dad was out of town, I picked up the slack. Trying to make up for not being vigilant when Cara had died.