Page 24 of I Can't Even

“That.” Em waved her hand, making a circle in the air. “All of that.”

“I have no idea. Honestly, I don’t know who I am more furious with right now, Babs or Dad. All I know is my entire life was a lie.”

“Not all of it, we’re still sisters,” Soph said as she came into the room bearing a tray with a coffee press, three matching mugs, milk, and sugar.

“Sisters, yes,” I said. “But apparently only half sisters, at least I’m only a half.”

We were silent while Soph fussed with the coffee. It was weird to feel as if I was suddenly less a part of the three siblings we had always been. I didn’t know how to feel about it.

“Bullshit,” Soph said. The word boomed in the quiet room and both Em and I started. “You survived growing up here with her, there’s nothing half about you.”

That helped. The three of us nodded in understanding as only siblings who have shared their life journey with each other and know what a long, strange trip it’s been can. Growing up with Babs made for an unbreakable bond. There was a survivorship in navigating a relationship with a volatile woman who viewed her children as reflections of herself instead of people in their own right and we had each developed our own coping skills.

Soph went to college and got involved with Stan Timmons, a medical student at the same university, and by the end of freshman year, she was pregnant and getting married. It was a rather dramatic way to put some distance between herself and Babs, and ironically, since Babs bought Soph and Stan their first house, not coincidentally in Gull’s Harbor, they had settled nearby, meaning Soph never managed to go too far.

I had bailed by going to school as far away as humanly possible without leaving the country, and Em, well, she had done the opposite of Soph and me. She had stayed with Babs and become her primary companion, her best friend, her caretaker.

I’d never understood why Em didn’t fly the coop when she was eighteen and ready for college, but she didn’t. She commuted to school in San Diego, got a degree in communications, and now worked for an insurance company. Despite the bombshell sitting in my lap, of the three of us, I was most worried about Em and how she would deal with the loss of our...her...mother.

Soph pushed down on the top of the press filling the carafe with hot coffee while moving the grounds to the bottom. She then poured three cups and passed one to each of us before she sat down.

“I imagine Mr. Loren will be in touch and tell us what Mom meant exactly about us living together,” Soph said. “Probably, she just meant we needed to stay together until the estate is settled.”

I sipped my coffee and arched my brow in her direction. “This is Babs we’re talking about. That will sounded pretty tight to me.”

“Please stop calling her that,” Em said.

Both Soph and I glanced at our baby sister. Em’s long hair was loose, a beautiful wave of honey that cascaded over her shoulders to ripple halfway down her back. She had two bright spots of pink on her cheeks and her brown eyes looked sad.

“I’m sorry, what?” I asked.

Em didn’t meet my gaze but stared resolutely down at her coffee.

“Stop calling her ‘Babs,’” Em said. Her voice held a note of panic. “Even if she wasn’t your birth mother, she still raised you and you should call her ‘Mom.’”

“Other than when talking directly to her, I haven’t referred to her as ‘Mom’ since I left home,” I snapped. “And I’m not going to start now—especially now.”

I tried to keep the emotion that was boiling just below the surface from showing. I could see that Em was upset and I didn’t want to make her more so but I was the one who’d just found out that I wasn’t who I thought I was and that my parents had hidden it from me for twenty-seven years.

“I just think if you tried to see things from Mom’s perspective—” Em stammered.

“It wouldn’t matter. My relationship with Babs was always doomed,” I said. “Don’t you get it? She hated me. Hated. Me. Because of course she did. I was walking talking proof that her husband had strayed. It must have eaten at her every single day.”

“We don’t know that—” Em took a deep breath and tried again. “I mean just because it looks that way—”

I didn’t want to shatter Em’s fuzzy ideal about our family, but the reality was that while Babs and I shared a few quasi-tender moments at the end I wasn’t going to remember her in soft focus for the rest of my life. We weren’t even blood. Too much damage had been done for me to remember Babs as anything less than the vindictive angry woman who’d never forgiven a baby for where she came from.

“I’m sorry, but no,” I said. “I can’t forgive her or Dad for keeping this from me. They had no right.”

“Fine. Cling to your righteous anger. I hope it makes you feel better.” Em pushed back her chair and stomped from the room, leaving her coffee behind.

I pulled the partially melted peas off my head and dropped them onto the coffee tray. I glanced at Soph and said, “If she didn’t want coffee, she could have just said no.”

Soph’s gaze was full of sympathy as if she understood that I was suddenly in the unfortunate spot of being the one Em was going to direct her anger about Babs’s death upon. Oh, lucky me.

“She didn’t mean it,” Soph said.

“Yeah, she did.” Then I met her gaze. “But I’m okay with it. Em had a different relationship with Babs than I did. I imagine it’s hard for her to understand why I am so angry and I am. God, Soph, I am so pissed.”

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