Page 12 of Stained Hearts
“What? None.”
She sighed and reached out, poking me in the ribs. “Okay, try again. How much weight have you lost?”
I closed my eyes, unable to look at her. “Forty pounds.”
She gasped. “Okay, you’re not leaving this house until tomorrow at the earliest, so don’t argue with me.” She stepped around and clutched my shoulders. I opened my eyes and found her glaring at me. “You’ve been hiding away long enough. It’s time to get out there and see what changes have gone on.”
“I don’t know that I’m ready.”
She gave me an indulgent smile. “You’ll never find out by locking yourself away in the house.” She brushed a hand over my forehead. “When’s the last time you saw the sun?”
I did my best to give her a grin. “That big thing in the sky, made of fire and stuff? It’s bad for you.”
She didn’t even crack a smile. “I’m serious. I’m worried about you.” She cocked her head and peered at me intently. “You haven’t been to dinner in months. We don’t talk unless I call you. Even Robert says he hasn’t heard from you lately. I’m not trying to make you feel bad, but I don’t want you avoiding your friends and family either.” She regarded me with curiosity. “Tell you what. Let me ask you a question, and if you can honestly answer me, then I’ll let it go. Okay?”
Never bet against Mom. She always had something up her sleeve. “No, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Tough. Indulge me.” She narrowed her gaze. “Can you tell me you’re happy?”
What kind of stupid question was that? Of course I wasn’t happy. “No, Mom. I’m not happy. I wake up every morning to an empty house, go through my day without talking to anyone, and then at night I sleep on the couch because I can’t stand being in the bedroom.”
“Then are you really doing what Brian wanted?”
And if that wasn’t a hammer between the eyes, I didn’t know what was.
“Go upstairs; get some sleep.”
I got up and trudged up the stairs to the guest room. She was right. I was tired to my heart. Had been for years. Watching Brian grow more and more frail, seeing the body I’d loved wither from a disease I couldn’t fight. I’d tried so hard to be strong for Brian that I didn’t have any idea if I could stop fighting it now.
I got to the room and lay on top of the comforter. I closed my eyes and waited for sleep to come, but like the last twelve months, it eluded me.
I got up and took a seat at the desk. The old computer sitting there wasn’t good for much. I’d told Mom and Dad I’d get them a new one, but they insisted there wasn’t anything wrong with something that was heavy enough to be repurposed into a boat anchor.
The thing creaked and whined as I powered it up. I fully expected that one day it would burst into flame, but hopefully not today. A few clicks brought up the browser, and a couple words in the search engine led me to the page I was looking for.
AN HOURlater, and two hundred dollars poorer for putting down a deposit on what I wanted, I closed the browser. There was no way to know what Aiden would say when he saw the order for a custom stained-glass window emblazoned with a phoenix bursting from the ground. I knew exactly where I’d put it too. We had a sunroom on the back of the house, and I could fit it in place of one of the panels. If I liked it, I could see getting other creations to swap out the rest. How cool would it be to sit in the room, awash in the colors from Aiden’s work?
I got up and stretched my back. I hadn’t told Mom, but I’d been seeing a grief therapist who had been saying pretty much the same things as everyone else: it’s good to grieve, but not to cut yourself off from the rest of the world. Every week she encouraged me to do one thing, just one, that would make me have to interact with someone else. I’d talked with Aiden and Noel at the diner, so surely that counted.
A knock on the door startled me. After it opened, Robert stepped in and closed it behind him. He looked around the room, then went and sat in the chair I’d been in.
“What are you doing here?”
“Mom called and said you were here. Since you haven’t been answering, I thought I’d stop over to see how you’re doing.”
“I’m fine.” I wasn’t. “But thank you for asking.”
He fixed me with a stare. “Okay, now that you’ve given me the bullshit answer, how are you really?”
The fact that he knew me so well could be really tiresome at times. “Miserable. I did something today, and it’s screwing with my head.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Have I got a choice? Where’s Galen?”
Robert shook his head. “Nice deflection. He’s downstairs with Mom and Dad. She’s teaching him how to make chili.”
“How’s Galen doing with his father being disgraced in the media and pretty much everywhere else?”
