Warning Signs (Broken Promises #2) (7 page)

“You’re acting so surprised. What am I missing?”

When he finally explained it to me, I only freaked out a little bit.

“Oh god! No, not with you. Not like that. Jesus! What has our generation come to? I want to watch Netflix and chill, not get busy with a movie going on! What’s
wrong
with you?”

Splinter was busting up laughing. “I didn’t come up with it, Bea. It became popular through social media, which you have condemned.”

“For good reason.”

We paused to think about the reason I quit social media, and then we went up to my room in our lounging clothes, put on Netflix, and had a lazy day. It was fun and we didn’t even have to hook up. I was so exhausted, I laid my head on Splinter’s shoulder so I could rest my eyes…that’s when he wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me closer. Soon enough we were scooting father down into the bed, our heads getting closer to pillows than the headboard. He eventually put the computer away and held me in his arms as I dozed off. I might have snored, though he wouldn’t tell me when I asked. He told me, “You deserve some sweet sleep. It’s a thing, y’know. Sweet sleep.”

I didn’t know what he meant by that, but it didn’t bother me enough to make me kick him out. Instead, I turned over and allowed him to cuddle me while I napped.

“This better not lead to your hand on my ass, Splinty-kins.”

“No worries. I know better than to make a move on you.”

“So you wouldn’t even try?” I asked, my eyes opening up with surprise.

“Unless you initiated, probably not.”

“So what are you saying?”

“Are you looking for a particular answer?”

“Never mind.” I let my eyes close, and I fell asleep. When I woke up a few hours later and realized he too had fallen asleep while still holding on to me, I decided not to bother him. Because even though he didn’t properly explain, I knew sweet sleep when he was near. I felt safe, secure and at peace.

When we finally woke, it was because Roscoe had managed to sneak in and dig a spot between the two of us for him to lay down and sleep.

“Roscoe!” I shouted with a whiny voice. I didn’t want to break up the cuddling session that had been going so nicely.

“Are you claiming your territory, buddy? I guess I should go.”

Splinter patted Roscoe’s back and left the room. There wasn’t enough pride left me in to tell him, “Please, stay.” It had been depleted with everything I had gone through. I couldn’t use the resourceful amounts of compassion or affection to lure him back, because that would mean I had succumbed to thoughts and feelings I wasn’t so sure I was ready to be truthful about. Heck, I wasn’t even sure if it was real or made up.

Splinter and I were just friends. Friends can cuddle. It didn’t have to be based off of a mutual attraction, because Splinter didn’t find me attractive. He wouldn’t make a move on me unless provoked. I was out of his league and—shit. I wanted to be in his league. I wanted him, and that was scarier than what had happened on Halloween. I was a magnet for tragedy, and Splinter wouldn’t be immune to fate’s cruel jokes. Everyone I’d ever become emotionally invested in had died horribly. Mackynsie, Everett; their deaths were because of me and I had loved them so much that they decided to love me back. Innocently or not, they died when it should’ve been me.

God, it should’ve been me. Was it too late to add Survivor’s Guilt to my list of issues?

CHAPTER SEVEN

Thanksgiving was one of the most horrible holidays on the American calendar. It wasn’t only the history behind it (let’s pretend what happened didn’t really happen, and teach it in our schools), but also the fact that no matter who you were, Thanksgiving seemed to be a cursed holiday. Families fought, fell apart, and never seem to want to be together on a holiday that, despite the horrible history, was meant to be for giving thanks. So far my brother was missing, and Lydia and I were trying to keep the peace between Rian, Grayson, and a nearly eleven-year-old girl, which obviously is nothing short of difficult.

“
Please
give me the remote, Olivia.” Olivia was the dreaded eleven-year-old, Grayson and Lydia’s daughter.

“No!” she shouted, continuing to watch her favorite show. I took it from her, and she knew not to argue with me despite not knowing me very well. Maybe it was the ugly grimace I wore on my face. Either way, she was too scared to mess with me. For once, I was glad for that. Because of her fear, I was able to get an appetizer on the table and feed the hungry people in the house.

Hours had passed since I had last seen Ben, but we collectively decided to eat without him. After all the fake smiles and cheers to us and love and everlasting friendship I became angry; he hadn’t come home at all. I had tried calling one too many times before I gave up. My anger swelled up too fast and too much for me to keep up with him.

Splinter didn’t bother stopping me from packing my things, nor did he stop me from getting in my car to drive back to Hartford.

When I was finally safe within the confines of my apartment, I found a bottle of wine I had been gifted from the manager at the bar I worked. I drank the wine straight from the bottle, wondering what was happening to my life. I learned that living in your head could be the loneliest and most dangerous thing, but when you’re not really living all you’ve got are the thoughts in your head. I think that made things far worse for me, because I wasn’t living…I was a shell of the person I used to be, pretending to exist as I once was. I was a glorified zombie.

After I had gotten sick from quickly ingesting too much wine, I found myself trying to imagine what would have happened if I really died that night with Crosley…if his gunshot had been more fatal than he thought it was or if the bullet had transcended a little deeper into my brain.

I thought of my funeral and how Ben would probably fuck it all up and still know that it wasn’t good enough. I had never planned my own funeral, so he would have had to do it himself. I imagined him being the one lonely, afraid, and drinking. I imagined him alone with Mother, and while I had been caught up in imagining the could’ves and would’ves of my life, I heard a rapping on my door. I wasn’t sure it was real until I heard it again, which forced me to sober up and attempt to dry my tears.

I stood up and used the sleeves of my sweater to wipe my eyes. When I opened the door, Splinter was standing there. He didn’t look well. In fact, he looked like he was ready to vomit. Paler by comparison to me and to his usual skin tone, I could see how nervous he was. I had never seen him sweat so much before; even drumming for Eden Sank
didn’t make him sweat that much. It was like he had a colossal case of stage fright.

“What’s the matter?” I asked warily.

“I need you to come with me. Something has happened to your mother. It isn’t good.”

I swallowed a lump in my throat and shook my head. I kept myself hidden behind the door, and my discouraged attitude shined brightly.

“What happened this time?”

“Are you dressed?”

“Yes I am.”

He pushed open the door, grabbed me, and slammed the door shut behind us, dragging me out to his car.

“Ben needs you. Your mother has made the biggest mistake to date. I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

“Did Ben tell you this?”

“He told me something terrible happened and that the doctors can’t save her. He just said to bring you over even if I had to drag you by your hair.”

“What the hell happened, Splinter?”

“I can’t…I can’t tell you.” He seemed more in shock than I did.

I slapped him, hoping it would bring him out of it. “What. Happened?”

“She cut herself, Bea. She tried to kill herself. So much blood…
so much blood.”

Everything froze in time. I took the keys from him and made him sit in the passenger side while I drove back to Hanover and to the hospital where Mother had been admitted for her psychiatric care. When I got there, I was praying to anyone who was willing to listen as I searched for any sign of Ben. Splinter stayed in the car. He had never seen someone so near death. He had never seen someone try to take their life. He had never seen the amount of blood one shed when they’re trying to die. I decided he could sit out. I had seen blood shed. I had seen lives end like a burning flame that was snuffed out by a light breeze. I had seen death. I had been dead; this was nothing new to me.

“Ben?” I called out. He was waving his hand from one of the first rows of chairs in the waiting room. When I approached him I saw all the bloodstains on his shirt. He was there when she did this. I had nothing to say about how he had practically ruined our first Thanksgiving together in eight years. I grabbed a tissue and wiped the blood off his cheek.

Before I could ask any questions, the doctors came in. I grabbed Ben’s hand and squeezed it tightly. He needed it. Out of all the times he had squeezed my hand to give me strength, it was my turn to be his strength for tonight, because for whatever reason, he needed it more than I did.

“Mr. Morrison, we…”

“Please, just tell me.”

“Mr. Morrison, I’m afraid to say we did the best we could, but it was not enough to save your mother’s life. She is gone.” Suddenly the air had been taken from my lungs. I can’t tell you how many times I had wished my mother dead, and now that she was, I felt so horrible. Horrible, ha. That word doesn’t even
come
close
to what I feel. She’s gone, just like that. I hadn’t once visited her while she sought treatment here. I didn’t even ask the doctor how she was able to slice her arms open and take her own life. I wrapped my arms around my brother and let him cry today. I did this because he never really cried, and today I was his strength.

***

A few weeks had passed until we were able to have our mother laid to rest. It was odd being in a cemetery with a headstone that had my father’s name on it with one right next to it that had my mother’s. Both of my parents were dead and now all I had left was Ben. He had been pretty angry lately, so I moved back into his house to take care of him. I put aside all of my feelings to make sure he could have his. Because he had sacrificed so much for me, I could sacrifice a few things for him in return. We were silent through the entire mass, and we gathered with the few people left who cared about our family and watched as our mother was lowered into the ground.

As they piled dirt over her coffin, I walked back to the cars with my brother. Paparazzi were watching us like hawks. It was hard enough to grieve in private when we lived in an age of over-sharing and the Internet, but when you’re in the public eye it’s almost impossible to grieve. You had to be brave and unbreakable. You had to be strong and filled with compassion. Not loud, but not quite silent.

No one wanted to hear about our problems until we decided we didn’t want to share them. Every person who owned a camera was snapping our picture as we left the cemetery and headed back to New Hampshire the same day. We wanted to live our lives as normally as possible, but they were never normal. I didn’t think it’s possible for our lives to be normal ever again.

Ben went straight upstairs to his room where he stayed the rest of the day while I unpacked, cleaned up the house, and threw out the condolence cards and flowers. Ben had made it clear he didn’t want them. There was nothing that could ease our pain. Our mother’s death was the end of our pain, and also the beginning. She died a long time ago in spirit, yet physically she lived on. Now that her physical body was gone, we were left with the notion that our pain of watching our zombie mother harming herself along with everyone around her was gone, and that she was finally at peace. Now we had to be able to find peace with that. I was beginning to doubt the peace I felt when I saw envelopes addressed to Ben and me on the counter in a Ziploc bag with my mother’s rosary and her prayer cards. I opened the bag with care and took only what was mine. It was a letter from my mother, and the things inside I never wanted to remember. I didn’t want her to remember them either. But somehow, she did. The last line of the letter read:

Brenna, I will always love you. But I cannot forgive myself for how I have hurt you more than I have hurt myself, or Ben. I am sorry, and I’m afraid an apology isn’t enough. I hope with my passing, you’ll learn to forgive me. Please, forgive me.

Love,

Mom

When I was done reading through the letter, I noticed that tears had begun to splotch the pages I had read, and it caused the ink to bleed. I tore up the letter, and without thinking I began to scream. Screaming was what I did best. Screaming made the pain go away, but it wasn’t enough. I screamed as I tore up her rosary and prayer cards. I screamed as I broke picture frames with happy faces that no longer existed. I screamed as I threw plates on the ground and I screamed as I fell to the broken pieces on the cold, cluttered floor. Ben didn’t come down. No one came for me this time.

“I hate you! I hate you, you fucking bitch!” I screamed.

I was hoping my mother would hear it, because it was meant for her. I repeatedly screamed this until my lungs gave out and Ben came downstairs to see the chaos I sat in and which I had created. He sat with me and pulled me into his chest as I screamed.

“I know,” he said. “I know.”

I wished I could believe his words. In that moment, I chose to believe that he really knew. Because somewhere in his past, I’m sure he knew how horrible our mother could be. He never knew all the things she had done to me. At the same time, I never knew all of what she had done to my brother. So allowing him to console me was the best thing I could get in that moment, because in that moment I had never felt so alone and broken. Maybe he knew that, and maybe that’s why he was consoling me despite his own brokenness. We were broken together, and for once we lived on the same page.

***

Sitting in the new therapist’s office, I was missing the fake Monet painting that my last therapist had. It was only a distraction, and in this office there were self-help books and canvases with inspirational quotes. For the record, none of it was inspirational. It pissed me off.

“How do you feel now about your mother’s death? On top of everything else you’re going through?” my therapist asked.

It was a new therapist, and this was only the second time I had seen her. The first time I saw her was the worst. I had to tell her everything in under an hour. I cried, hiccupped, and ranted through the whole thing. Now she was following up, and I was unsure of what to tell her.

“Honestly, I want to move past it.”

“How do you move past something you haven’t dealt with?”

“I don’t know how to deal with my mother’s death. She’s been dead to me for a long time.”

“But now it’s real. Now she’s somewhere rotting in the ground, and you’ll never see her again. How does that make you feel?”

“Fucking great, actually.” I laughed until I began to cry.

“How do you really feel about your mother?”

“I hate her so much. She says she loved me in that damn letter but never
once
did she say that to my face.”

“Does that make you angry?”

“Yeah, wouldn’t it make you angry? What if you’ve spent your entire life trying to make it out alive with this mother who is barely alive herself, who never once bats an eye at you and half the time doesn’t even know who you are? When she does, she hates your guts. She makes it clear she doesn’t love you. Suddenly, she’s all in the clear now. She says she loves you and offs herself. How would that make you feel?”

A timer beeped, and with a sigh my therapist said, “Time is up. I’ll see you Thursday.”

***

When I got home to Ben’s, I tried to hide in the safety of my room. But nothing was safe. I could hear him crying, and I couldn’t let him cry alone. I went to him, and I sat down next to him. I placed a comforting hand on his back and tried my best to console him the way he had so often consoled me.

“What am I going to do?” he asked out of nowhere.

“About what?”

“About all this shit I’ve created. I don’t know whether or not it’s a mistake or—”

“Don’t think it’s a mistake. If it was a mistake, you would be crawling back to everyone and everyone would be crawling back to you.” He looked up to me as if he was surprised by my words.