The Broken Pieces Left Behind

Chapter 26

Dinner was simmering on the stove and I sat at the counter going through some of the homework that I had neglected over the past few days with Ed Sheeran softly crooning in the back ground. I was making a one pot pasta and tomato dish that I stumbled on online,  that not even I could have messed up.

My teeth nibbled at the top of my pen, my thoughts drifting to Jack. I had wanted to stay with him but James wanted me to go home. He was concerned that my mom would be worried. I scoffed at that. My mother - or was it sister now? I wasn't sure - wouldn't have noticed if I were there.

It was like my thoughts had conjured her up and she glided out of her bedroom giving me one of her bright smiles. Sara had given up on her tantrum and had resume speaking to me, but everything around us was still tense. It was like walking on eggshells.

She opened a bottle of wine and poured a glass before sitting aceoss from me. She took a sip and announced, "I invited Ari for dinner tomorrow night. I want you there."

"I don't want to be there," I answered not looking at her. I was done pretending that the things that she'd done didn't bother me anymore. O was too tired to keep pretending; that I believed took more energy than actually caring.

She was scowling at me and I could tell even without looking that her face was a dark cloud of anger "Don't be difficult, " she started.

"I'm not," I countered raising my eyes to meet hers, the rich colour sparking in anger. "You can still have your dinner just don't expect me to be here."

Her lips pursed in displeasure and I knew that what ever reconciliation that we were on on way toward had just sped past us.

"Why are you like this?" She seemed genuinely perplexed at my reaction.  "I have been trying to find love again since your father died, but you never seem to want to try and get along with any of them. You just don't want me to be happy do you? Maybe you're the reason that none of them stay. You've never known how to love someone, not the way I loved your father; you're just a selfish little girl."

There was enough venom, enough accusation in her voice that it left me stunned and I said nothing as she stormed away. She was actually trying to make me seem at fault here. She is the one that chose men that weren't worth anything and now somehow it was my fault that none of them stayed.

What exactly was she trying to do relpace dad with a cheaper version?

Replace dad. The words slapped against my mind like a physical blow and I audibly gasped.

I stood and started pacing. That is what she was trying to do. She was looking for love, in a way, she was looking for a love that would fill the void that was left in her when dad died. I studied her as she dissappeared into her room.

My mind once again shifted to Jack. To his accident. To the way I felt. And then I imagined the things that my mother must have felt. Sympathy rose within me but it was quickly doused away by my own raging fear.

Jack.

He could have died and if he had. What would I have done? I stared at her door for a long time before the realization of the sithation assulted me with alarming clarity that my knees buckled and I collapsed unto a stool.

My hands clenched, my fingernails biting into my palm. I suddenly couldn't get enough air into my lungs and I breathed in and out deeply the quiet echoing loudly around me.

Everything had shifted in that moment. Things in the world was confusing but at the same time in made a sort of twisted sense that my body physically ached. The reality of what I had to do making tears fall uncontrollably.