focused on calming herself down, counting slow, measured breaths. “I...have you...beat,” she eventually managed to say.
Her mom squeezed her harder. “Shh. It’s okay, sweetie. It’s okay.”
Rachel shook her head, keeping her face buried. “It’s not okay. It’s my fault.”
Jackie loosened her grip and tried to make Rachel meet her eyes. “What’s your fault, Rachel?”
It was time. She’d told Cale, but her mom deserved to know the truth about how Noelle had died. Why she’d died.
Shit, shit, shit.
“Th-that night,” she said, still breathing unevenly and fighting to get it under control. “Our f-fight.”
“I know you and Noelle had a fight, sweetie. You told me that.” Her mom rubbed her hand back and forth over Rachel’s knee.
“Not what it was about. It was about...Cale.”
At her mom’s silence, Rachel dared to look at her. When she didn’t see the shock she expected in her mom’s eyes, she recited to her the main points of what had happened to send Noelle out of the house. And then she waited as her mother took it all in. Waited for an outburst, for the anger she deserved. Anticipated the blame.
Her mom bit her lower lip again and held out her arms to Rachel. “Come here.”
“What?” Rachel started shaking uncontrollably, stunned and relieved and horrified and overcome with guilt all at once.
Jackie pulled her into a protective, loving mom-hug.
“Why are you hugging me?” Rachel asked.
“Ooh, sweetie.” Her mom hugged her intensely, squeezing the air out of her. Nodding. “I knew. Or suspected.”
Rachel’s eyes popped open. “Suspected what?”
“You and Noelle were so opposite in so many ways, but you always liked the same boys.”
“Not always,” Rachel said defensively.
“A lot.”
“How would you even know that?”
“I’m your mom.”
“So?”
“A mother knows things about her daughters. I knew that boy Noelle went to senior prom with was someone you had a crush on. And Jimmy Vargas. You both had a thing for him and we know how that ended.”
Noelle had dated him the whole summer after their senior year.
“Noelle never meant you any harm,” her mom continued. “I don’t think she was aware of it most of the time.”
Rachel shook her head in agreement.
“And you’ve spent all this time feeling guilty for finally letting her know.”
Understatement of the century.
“It killed her, Mom.”
“No.” The fierceness of her mother’s reply startled her. It wasn’t just insistent; it was angry. “I don’t ever want to hear you say that again, Rachel. What killed your sister was her own damn carelessness. Her self-centeredness. She was forced to pull her head out of everything Noelle, to face up to the way she’d inadvertently hurt you, and she couldn’t handle it.” Her mom stood, as if propelled by her outrage. “She ran away, Rachel. She left the house without the things that could have saved her life. She acted rashly, irresponsibly...”
“Stupidly. Selfishly,” Rachel said, her mother’s rage catching. She jumped up from the floor, too, gritted her teeth, raised her fist in front of her as if she wanted to settle the score. Fire ignited within her and her control blew. “If she’d just stopped and picked up her purse, she’d probably be here with us today!”
Her purse, which they’d later found, had contained both her inhaler and her cell phone. But Noelle had plucked only her keys off the table from where they’d sat right next to her purse.
“It was just like her to waltz out of the house so carelessly,” Rachel said, venturing into angry-rant land. “I loved my sister with all my heart, but, God, why didn’t she use her head for one damn night?”
Her mom stood staring at nothing, her arms crossed defiantly in front of her, the fingers of one hand pressed over her eyelids.
“You’d think she could have grabbed her purse so she’d at least have her beloved lipstick! And her phone...God forbid she was ever isolated from all her friends. How could she leave without it the one night she absolutely needed it?” Rachel wandered over to the last family picture they’d had taken some seven years ago, a large, portait-size print on the wall, and stared up at Noelle. “Gaaah! I swear if you were here right now, I’d strangle you!” she screamed.
She knew on some level she’d lost her damn mind, but she didn’t care. She wanted to rant and yell and let it be known that she was furious.
She continued to pace the room and yell whatever came to mind for a couple more minutes before her mom came up behind her and wrapped her arms around her