Page 40 of Ice Darling
She was fine. Was she not fine? Should I have seen something? A sign? Did I trigger it? Was it Mom leaving the house?
“Honey”—I swallow hard—“Grandma only went to the car. She’s coming back.”
Gordie doesn’t answer. She just stares unseeingly at her feet.
I reach out to her, hoping beyond hope that she’ll let me comfort her. But as usual, Gordie shivers, wraps her hands around her knees, and pulls them up to her chest protectively.
What is she protecting herself from? From me?
“This isn’t personal,”the psychologist said.“What she needs is time and space to process.”
My fingers curl into fists.
I bite down on my bottom lip as my nostrils flare.
My sneakers feel like lead as I take a step backward.
Distance.
Space.
Enough space to rip my heart out of my chest.
Gordie doesn’t notice. She tucks her chin against her chest and stays huddled under the table.
It hurts so much to see her that way.
Helplessness burns through my chest. Turning, I stomp outside and see Mom bounding up the porch steps, a smile on her face. That smile withers away when she sees my expression.
“Is she…” Mom points inside.
I look away.
Mom barrels into the house. I hear her voice trembling a moment later. “Oh no. Oh, sweetheart.”
The pain swells and pulses.
I blink rapidly to keep the tears at bay.
The sky is too blue. The street too quiet. There’s a storm lashing and thrashing in my chest, and it makes no sense that the rest of the world looks so normal.
Walking to the edge of the porch, I add a new note to my phone with the date and time. The episodes don’t have a warning or any sort of pattern, so I’m creating a spreadsheet, along with a detailed explanation of what we were talking about and who we were with when it happened.
I haven’t asked the psychologist’s opinion on my task. She’ll tell me I’m wasting my time and that there’s no way to predict the withdrawals. But I don’t care. I have todosomething.
Just then, I hear the roar of a powerful engine. A Harley speeds into view and parks in front of my lawn. The woman sitting atop the menacing machine alights daintily and pulls her helmet off.
Cordelia.
I keep my eyes trained on her and my phone in the air, frozen.
“What are you doing here?” I growl when she gets closer to the porch.
“Where’s your mom?” she snaps back, without so much as a hello.
“I asked you first.”
She stomps up the porch. “My business is not with you, so just pretend I’m not here.”
