“You think you’re protecting me, but you’re not!” Leah cried. “All you do is make me feel like I’m some stupid child, like I can’t understand anything that’s happening, and if you lie about it, I’ll just pretend nothing is wrong. But everything is wrong! Everything ! You can’t protect me from that! Leslie’s gone and Daddy’s dead, and—and—you drink too much, and now you have a gun! And you’re scaring me! You scare me! And you don’t care about me at all!”

“Leah, that’s not true!” her mother said. She was on her feet now too. She looked hurt, like Leah had reached out and slapped her. Leah didn’t care.

“Yes, it is!” she argued as all the pent-up emotion came boiling out of her like hot lava. “All you care about is what happened to Leslie, and how terrible life is without Leslie, and now you have Daddy’s gun, and you’re going to kill yourself like Daddy killed himself, and what’s supposed to happen to me? What about me?!”

With that, the last dam burst and all the grief came in a flood of tears. Everything she’d been holding inside her for all this time came crashing like waves dashing themselves on jagged rocks. She fell on the sofa and buried her face in a pillow, sobbing like she might die of it.

She cried for the little sister she had been when Leslie went missing. She cried for the little girl she had been when Daddy had died. She cried for who she was now—a lost, frightened, angry young woman who felt like the only thread holding together what was left of her family was fraying down to nothing.

She would be left alone, with no one. She would be the one punished for what Leslie had done that day when she was supposed to have been grounded and she went to the softball game anyway. She would be punished because she hadn’t called Mom to rat her sister out. She would be punished because she had watched Leslie go and hoped she would get in trouble.

“Leah.”

She heard her mother’s voice. She felt her mother’s hands on her shoulders.

“Baby, I’m so sorry,” her mother whispered. “I’m so sorry. I won’t leave you, sweetheart. I promise I won’t ever leave you. I love you so much. I’m so, so sorry.”

Leah turned and buried her face against her mother’s shoulder, sobbing. They held each other, both of them crying, both of them miserable.

Leah wanted to feel comforted, but she didn’t. She wanted to feel safe, but she didn’t. And she still felt alone, and that scared her most of all.

Chapter 32

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