Page 27 of I Can't Even

I studied the best picture of my birth mother out of the three my father had left me. It was a profile shot of her sitting on the beach watching the waves. She had a determined chin and a slightly upturned nose that I recognized in the mirror as my own. I couldn’t tell what color her eyes were but I was betting they were a dark blue, like mine. Her smile looked generous and her hair, oh, her glorious hair. Just the sight of the wild dark curls being tossed on the breeze made my eyes burn and my throat get tight. What would it have been like to be loved by someone like her? By someone who gloried in my rebellious nature? By someone who resembled me, who understood me?

It hurt so damn much. I stuffed the pictures and the original birth certificate, honestly, what was I supposed to even do with that, and the letter from my father into its envelope and then slid the whole thing into a T-shirt. I loved Em, but she was a world class snoop and this, all of it, I wanted to be just mine for a while until I could think about being given up by my mother and raised by Babs and not feel like throwing up. I suspected it was going to take a while.

Thankfully, there was enough that needed to be done around here to keep me occupied, especially since the boy next door had made himself scarce and I didn’t even have random sightings of Liam to distract me. If that wasn’t enough of a pisser, any time I tried to get Em to confront the reality that was our mother’s bedroom, she freaked out. She didn’t want anything touched, moved, or donated to charity.

Soph and I were at a loss. Despite the will’s dictate that I stay through the summer, I wasn’t going to be in Gull’s Harbor forever and since Babs had been a shopper right up until the bitter end, her walk-in closet was crammed top to bottom with clothes, jewelry, cosmetics, you name it, if the shopping channel carried it, Babs bought it.

When I looked at her array of stuff, most of it still unused, I couldn’t help but think there were a lot of women’s shelters who could really use these goods. It killed me that Em was unwilling to part with any of it.

“This is going to take weeks, possibly months, to sort,” I said. We were standing in the main bedroom that had been our parents’ and then Babs’s on the first floor of the house.

“So?” Em asked.

“So, unless you want to be stuck with the burden of doing it by yourself, you need to let me at least start the process,” I said.

“No!” Em shouted. She sounded panicked. “Nothing is being given away. Nothing!”

Em was red in the face with her fists clenched at her sides like a three-year-old in the throes of a tantrum. Just like when we were little, this irritated me more than it made me want to jolly her out of her mood.

“Listen, Em,” I said. “I know this is hard—”

“Don’t!” Em cried. “You’ve been away for years. You don’t get to pretend that this,” she paused to gesture wildly around the room, “is the same for you as it is for me.”

I sighed. It shouldn’t have hurt because she spoke the truth and yet, it did. Now I understood why everything had been so toxic for me here, so not only did I feel like a neglectful sister, I also felt like an interloper, too. Good times.

“Listen, I get that you were closest to Ba...er...her.” There, I was trying to make an effort. “And I know you’re hurting, we all are, but we still need to deal with this stuff.”

I’m a pretty simple gal at heart and clutter of any sort makes me hyperventilate. Frankly, just looking at the closet made me woozy.

“I’m not ready,” Em said.

“Okay, how about we talk about it again in a week or two, maybe we could start with just the new items where there’s no sentiments attached.” I didn’t know what else to say. There was no getting around the fact that we had to start sometime and since I was here, now seemed the best option.

“We had a routine,” Em said. “I miss it.”

Uncertain of where this was going, I listened.

“We had breakfast together every day, then I went to work and Mom spent the day with her friends but in the evening, it was just the two of us.” Em brushed a tear from her cheek. “We’d fix dinner together, talk about our days, discuss my outfit for the next day and how I should wear my hair. I don’t know how to do these things without her to guide me.”

Alarm bells clanged in my head. Em looked like she was on the verge of another meltdown, and I was too stunned by the level of co-dependency that had developed between my baby sister and Babs to ward it off.

“So, you were like, what, a live dress up doll?” I asked.

Yes, I spoke without thinking, clearly, and the expression of frustrated hurt Em turned on me was almost scary in its intensity. It would have been more so if she wasn’t hugging one of Babs’s wide-brimmed sunhats to her chest at the time.

“No!” she snapped. “Yes. Maybe. Oh, god, I don’t know. I just...it was all so much easier when Mom was here. I don’t know what to do, how to dress, what to eat, where to go...”

The flow of words stopped as she dropped the hat and sobbed into her hands. My heart ripped right in two for her. It hit me then that she had lost so much more than just a mother, she’d lost her best friend.

“Oh, Em.” I pulled her into my arms and held her while she cried.

Soph entered the room and stopped when she saw us. I was more than willing to share the task of comforting the sobbing baby sister. Maybe Soph would know what to say because I sure didn’t.

“Hey, you okay, Em?” Soph joined our hug, making it a group thing.

“No,” Em said.

“What’s wrong?” Soph asked.

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