Hadley away—out into a storm she had no business driving in. Belatedly, her wet hair and soaked clothes hit me. And she’d been barefoot. What the fuck?
Wrong.
All wrong.
I jogged to my bedroom, tagged my keys, wallet, and cell, debating the merits of calling her.
No. The storm was too bad, all of her attention needed to be on the road.
I stalked through my living room, paused next to the table, and scanned the pictures of Nicole. Some were of her as a baby, some had my parents in them, some me and her. My eyes hit the one I wanted and I grabbed it off the table and stared at the old, faded image. My beautiful baby sister smiling bright and happy. I was standing next to her, her head tipped back looking at me and I was smiling back. Her last happy birthday. The one before my piece of shit father killed her. The last happy one she had. She’d only lived to see nine of them—nine birthdays, but only eight happy ones.
And happy was relative.
When your parents were deadbeats there wasn’t a lot of happiness. But from the time I was old enough to do it, I always tried to make her birthday special. Even if I had to steal ten dollars out of my dad’s wallet after he passed out drunk and court getting an ass-whoopin’ if he caught me in the act—which he only did once—it was worth the risk to see Nicole smile. It wasn’t like our parents were going to buy her anything, give her a party, bake her a cake, invite her friends over for a celebration.
No, not in the Hewitt house. Birthdays were just another day. Same with Christmas. My father would bitch about how holidays were made up by greeting card companies and toy manufacturers as a way to get rich. He’d drunkenly complain about how stupid birthdays were and how ridiculous it was to buy something for someone who’d done nothing.
His foul words never fell far from my mind. His anger. His twisted, pissed-off face when I was ten and asked if I could have a bike for my birthday.
“You think because your mother pushed you out of her twat you get a present? Are you dumb, boy?”
That was the first and last time I’d ever asked for anything.
But Nicole? I always got her something. She, too, knew never to ask for anything.
The only reason I had the picture in my hands was because our next-door neighbor, Mrs. Burk, had taken it. Hell, most of the pictures I had of my sister was because of Mrs. Burk. She knew how my parents were. She was a mom, one that gave a shit. She was good to her kids, so she knew just by looking at me and my sister, our parents were assholes.
But she also knew there wasn’t anything she could do about it. They didn’t hit us, they kept a roof over our heads and food on the table. But nothing more. Not a hug. Not a kind word. Not a present. And certainly not love. They didn’t even like each other. To this day I couldn’t figure out why they’d had children. The best I could figure out was it was my mother’s way of keeping my father.
Not that he didn’t go out and carouse. He did and often. Then he’d come home, stumble through the door, my mother would be blitzed, and the fighting would commence. It would be loud, it would be ugly, and they’d hurl nasty insults back and forth. But it always ended the same. My mother would shout that my father smelled like another woman, my father would shout back he had to get laid somewhere, then doors would slam.
Sometimes the fights would wake up Nicole and she’d come into my room and crawl into bed next to me. When we were young, she’d curl her little-girl body next to me and we’d lie there in silence. When we got older, she’d lie beside me and hold my hand and we’d talk. Every conversation the same—making plans to escape the dysfunction of our parents. Vowing never to be like them. And at some point during our late-night talks, while our fucked-up parents shouted down the house, Nicole would always ask why they didn’t love us.
I never had an answer.
Twenty fucking years later, and I still didn’t.
All I had was a stupid fucking birthday present my sister never got to open because my piece of