Page 14 of That Birthday in Barbados
She doesn’t think there’s anything capable of extinguishing her own self-loathing though. It’s something she’ll live with for the rest of her life. Sometimes, she wonders what it was inside her that set her on self-destruct? Was it because she herself had never married? Had she been jealous of Catherine?
It’s an easy answer. But not atruthful one. Sure, she and Catherine had gone through spurts of typical sibling rivalry. There had been that time when she’d been in seventh grade and Catherine was in the eighth, and they’d liked the same boy. Mark Sanders. He’d been in Nicole’s grade, and she’d had a crush on him the entire school year.
He’d ended up liking Catherine, and yeah, that hurt. No one wants to lose out to her big sister. But she had. Catherine and Mark hadn’t lasted past Christmas break that year, and by then, Nicole no longer wanted him either.
As for Connor?
That onecaught her by complete surprise.
She’d stopped by their apartment in Manhattan one night to drop off a sample for Catherine who had still been at work. Connor answered the door dressed in a T-shirt and shorts and all but dripping sweat from a run on their treadmill. She intendedto leave the sample without coming in, but he’d offered to make her a drink, and the thought of returning home to her much smaller, andlonely, apartment was tempting enough to sway her. It was just a drink after all.
Buta journey starts with a single step, and that night opened a door to wanting something that was not hers.
She’d discovered they were both lonely.
Connor’s hours as an attorney paled comparedto the late hours Catherine worked in her own business. Connor didn’t complain though. He understood that it was her dream and fully endorsed her going after it.
It was as if before that night, neither of them had ever looked at the other with anything beyond platonic friendship. She wasn’t sure they’d really even liked one another.
And yet. . .
She’s reached the end of the boardwalk by now. She leans against the railing and stares out at the blue water of the intercoastal waterway. The sun sends a glint of diamonds dancing across its surface.
West Palm Beach is without doubt a beautiful place to live. But for Nicole, it doesn’t really matter where she lives. Emptiness fills her, the weight of her own terrible decision-making a concrete block on her chest. She is the prodigal daughter. Only she can’t return home, can’t repent. Doing so would mean having to tell her parents about her role in Catherine and Connor’s divorce.
She would have to admit that Catherine isn’t coming home anymore because of her.
Maybe it is time for that. Time to own the consequences of what she had done.
Her stomach lifts, then dips.
Is she ready to see that look of disappointment on her mother’s face? Ready to hear that note of pain in her father’s voice?
It is selfish, but no, she isn’t.
All her life, she’s been the one to disappoint their parents. The one who had to write two hundred sentences in detention after school for talking back to the teacher. The one who failed out of college and took a pity job from her sister with her then fledgling business.
Face it, she tells herself. Failure isthe only word that applies. She iis thirty-eight years old, soon to be thirty-nine, working as a waitress, no man in her life, no children.
Maybe it is wrong to even try to get Catherine to forgive her. Maybe she is nothing but a rock around her sister’s neck, always trying to pull her down to her level.
Is it true?
Had she spent her life afraid to even try to compete with Catherine? Had it been easier to ride on her coattails, take what wasn’t hers?
The questions stab at her heart with a knife point of something undeniable.
She pushes away from the railing,running back the way she had come. She picks up her pace, her feet pounding the concrete until her breathing is harsh in her chest. One thing she knows. She will never run fast enough to leave behind the reality of who she has become.
Chapter Six
“It’s easier to bleed than sweat, Mr. Motes.”
?Flannery O’Connor
Anders
SHE SNAGS MY attention as soon as she walks in the room.
