Page 99 of Chaos

Silas says nothing, but he reeks of disapproval and it bites at me, pokes the raw, defensive spot I have for my mother that no one else shares. No one else understands.

“I think…” I stop, swallow, start again, my voice a harsh slice through the thick air. “I think she was like me. I think she drank a lot, I think that’s how she coped, it’s why she was the way she was. I don’t think my siblings know that.”

“Why do you know?”

Stop. Shut up. Shut up, shut up, shut up.

“Because I lied,” I mouth slowly, the admission foreign and heavy on my tongue. “Just then. I did see her. I picked her up from this, uh, place that she said was a spa, but I’m pretty sure it was rehab. She’d found me on social media a few months before and messaged me a bunch and I never replied, but then… well, I was seeing this guy. Fucked him,” I throw out the vulgar word and hope Silas will react, tell me to stop, give me a reason to shut my fucking mouth except he doesn’t, and I don’t stop. “He told everyone. In pretty graphic detail. And this girl on my track team was his ex and she found out. Started calling me a slut, a homewrecker, all that lovely stuff. And she made up some rumors about me, and everyone believed them.”

I can’t stop. I’m a leaky faucet. A runaway train. A trainwreck.

“So I dropped out of track and I stopped going to school and I started hanging out with the most insufferable people, peopleI had to be drunk to be around. And at some point, when I was really low, I just decided I wanted my mom. I called the number she sent me and at first I just yelled at her until I had nothing left to say, and then she started talking. And she told me that she regretted leaving. That she wanted to come back but my grandparents wouldn't let her, and then after we cut contact with them, my brother and my sister kept us away from her too. Which I knew wasn’t true, but I just… I wanted it to be. I wanted there to be an actual reason so bad.”

A reason that wasn’t about me. That I wasn’t to blame for.

“She told me that she needed my help. So I went and then she told me that she wanted me. That she was gonna come get me. And then she died. The only person who wanted me just… died.”

Finally, I run out of words. I breathe, my lungs struggling with the aftereffects of what was little more than a single run-on sentence. I fucking fear, I don’t want to look up, I don’t want to see however Silas is looking at me.

A mug slides into my line of sight. Clinks against mine. “Congratulations, Lottie. You just completed your first Ponderosa Falls Alcoholics Anonymous Meeting.”

Jackson believes me when I tell him I only ducked into the dineraftermy meeting in search of a decent cup of coffee. So does Eliza, who’s in the backseat for some reason, who steals the to-go cup I luckily had the foresight to ask for and scoffs at the mere notion of the contents being considereddecent.

Lux, unsurprisingly, does not. Sat in the passenger seat beside our brother, she eyes me warily in the rear-view mirror, but she doesn’t say anything, and God, I wish I could tell her how grateful I am for that without really giving myself up. I wishI knew how to tell her, how to do it right and sincerely and not sharp and grunted and begrudging.

I wish I could tell her about Mom. I wish she would want to hear it. I wish it wouldn’t hurt her, hurt all of them, make them angry or guilty or sad.

But it would. So I don’t. I keep my mouth shut. Keep this one thing to myself—shoulder this one burden alone because surely, they deserve at least that from me.

“What’re you doing here?” I ask as I flick Eliza on the forehead and snatch back the coffee I hope she hasn’t noticed is barely lukewarm. “Is the mare okay?”

Answering the latter question with a grimace and a ‘so-so’ bob of her head, Lux says, “We’re going to dinner. Just the four of us.”

“Five,” Eliza corrects, brandishing her phone. “Grace is video-calling after training.”

“Why?”

A trio of loaded looks ping-pong around the truck. And with a nod from Lux, Eliza launches between the front seats, snagging the rectangular box I didn’t notice sitting on the dashboard.

Like they fucking rehearsed this or something, Lux and Jackson turn to watch as Eliza flicks open the box and thrusts it in my face, making sure I get a real good look at the sheet cake iced with yellow letters that readhappy two months sober.

“We know you probably didn’t wanna make a big deal of it,” Jackson starts, flashing a small, nervous smile.

“But tough shit,” Lux finishes for him. “We’re proud of you and we want you to know that.”

A hot rush of emotion assaults me. I swallow hard. More than once. Three times before I feel like I can open my mouth and actually force words out. As it is, they’re barely a croak. “Thank you.”

“Are you crying?”

“No.” Not now, at least. Maybe later, when I finally crawl into bed and let this long, harrowing day catch up with me. I think I’ll sob, actually.

But at least I’ll have cake.

And the wordproudringing in my ears.

24

He told himself it would be better this way.

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