A Time for Us - By Amy Knupp Page 0,13
“I kind of got stuck on the fact that Mom is getting all recreational. Golf? Really?”
“It’s a good sport.”
“The mom I remember doesn’t play sports. She doesn’t play at all. It’s like living with an alien.”
He laughed as he finished the carrot and went back to the fridge.
“You think I’m kidding,” Rachel said, twisting forty-five degrees so her legs dangled off the counter. “It’s like she’s a different person, Sawyer. Makes me wonder if she’s got a brain tumor or something. Has she had a checkup lately?”
“A little med school and a lot of imagination are a bad combo.” He shook his head as if she was crazy. “Mom is healthy. How can you look at her and think otherwise?”
“It’s not so much the way she looks. She’s leaving the office early. Playing golf on her days off. Golf, Sawyer. That’s not just a fifteen-minute pastime between patients. It’s a game where people actually age significantly between the first and last holes.”
Sawyer laughed again. “Glad to see you haven’t lost your sense of drama.”
“I’m not the dramatic one—” She froze and the silence in the kitchen practically buzzed with the truth her statement pointed to.
Rachel had never been the drama queen. That was Noelle.
Before too many uncomfortable seconds ticked by, Rachel hopped down from the counter and rinsed her plate off in the sink. “It’s not just the golf and the leaving-the-office-early things. She’s cooking, too. Real food. Gourmet omelets. Three-course meals.”
Sawyer narrowed his eyes at her for a second, just long enough to let her know he’d noticed her panicked change of subject. “What’s wrong with cooking? From what I’ve seen, she’s gotten pretty damn good. Almost good enough to make me want to move home again.”
“You can’t. Your bed is taken.”
“I figured. What’s the big deal about Mom, Rach? She’s doing okay.”
“It’s just that she’s...not Mom anymore.” She put her plate in the dishwasher, closed it and busied herself running her finger over the ancient paint stain on the countertop. “It’s all been since Noelle...” Again, she broke off, shaking her head. “It messed her up.”
“It messed all of us up. How could it not?” Sawyer said, his voice going gravelly with sadness. “But Mom’s doing okay, Rachel. Really. She’s...learning how to live, I think she called it. Finally. It’s a relief to see, believe me. She was bad enough before, working killer hours. After Noelle died, Mom was putting in so many hours at the hospital and her office she didn’t even sleep in her own bed half the time.”
“That’s the mom I know, though. That’s who she is...or always was. She loved her career.”
“She buried herself in her career to avoid thinking about things. Facing them.” Sawyer peeled back the top of a container of yogurt. “Kind of like someone else I know,” he said gently.
“Hello, brand-new career here.” Rachel started her spiel practically on automatic pilot.
“I don’t just mean now. But it is harder to avoid the big ugly truth of what happened when you’re here on the island. Damn hard to avoid it living in this house.”
Amen to that. She wanted nothing more than to block out thoughts of losing her twin sister, her best friend, her other half. But every day when Rachel got out of bed from the relative safeness of the Yoda haven, she was accosted the second she exited her brother’s bedroom—by the door. The closed door of the bedroom she and Noelle had shared. The room where Noelle had been living on that night...
“I’m not trying to avoid anything,” she fibbed, knowing he spoke of much more than a stupid six-panel wooden door. “I’m just...trying to cope the best way I know how.”
Sawyer tugged affectionately at several strands of hair near her shoulder, something he’d done to both her and Noelle since they’d been toddlers. “You and Mom are alike in so many ways. Always have been.”
“Yeah, well, she lost me with golf.”
“Who knows. Maybe in six months, you’ll be teeing up, too.”
“I’ll trust you to commit me to a nice, white padded room if so.”
Sawyer didn’t bother to grin at her admittedly lame attempt at humor. Instead, he went all serious on her. “I can’t begin to imagine what it’s like for you, being her twin. It was hard enough as the big brother who couldn’t protect her.” He paused, swallowed hard, and Rachel could see his pain, there in his eyes. “But I do know this. You’re a strong person, just like Mom. You’ll get through this