Raine (Gods of the Fifth Floor #2) - M.V. Ellis Page 0,93
you as a person. If anything, I’d say you were the opposite—too nosey, always all up in my grill about one thing or another. Do you realize you’ve said some shit to me and seen some shit in me that even my closest friends and relatives haven’t?”
“Really?”
“Are you serious right now? Damned straight, really. I’m not saying I’ve necessarily enjoyed it, but the fact is, nobody in their right mind would accuse you of not paying attention to the people around you. You’re like a fucking ninja hawk. You miss nothing.”
“Still, there must have been signs. People don’t just end their lives with no build up, no lead up, nothing.”
“Except I’ve heard that some people do exactly that. They’re depressed, but they go to great lengths to keep it together and hide it from the people around them, because they don’t want to bother them, or worry them, or whatever.”
“I know this rationally, but part of me still feels like as their sister, I should have been able to tell. I mean, with Lono, maybe not so much—he was on the base, and obviously our contact with him was diminished, but with Kai I should have known what to look for.” Jesus. She’d been so quick to tell me that I was too hard on myself, but clearly couldn’t see that she was doing the same to herself.
“I’d spoken to him that night. We’d hung up the phone at eight thirty, and by eleven he was gone. What I will never understand is why he didn’t say something then. I would have dropped everything, gotten on the next plane, and gone to him. I would have called anyone he’d asked for and sent someone to be with him.” She wrung her hands together in her lap, but didn’t falter as she spoke. Fuck, she was strong. Way stronger than I’d initially given her credit for.
“You know the worst thing about losing a loved one to suicide?”
“No, what?”
“It’s the whys. The questions that still plague me, and, even if I live to be one hundred, always will. Why didn’t I realize? Why didn’t they say something? And the biggest one, why did they do it? Neither had a history of depression that anyone knows of. They were well loved by friends and family. They were successful, popular young guys with their whole lives ahead of them.” She was right, it was hard to wrap my head around. I could only imagine what it was like for her.
“I know losing our father when we did would have hit them hard—they were older than me, so they actually had memories of him that I never had—but even that doesn’t explain why they felt that suicide was the only way out. But neither of them wrote a note, so the rest of us are left with nothing but questions. Whys that have no answers, and never will have.” I had no idea what I was feeling, but I knew I wanted it to stop. I wanted to help her stop hurting.
“And in many ways, dealing with that fact dominates the grieving process. It should be about the person—who they were and how they lived—but in the end, the facts of the way that they died take over. Forever. We’re dealing with the trauma of the act, as well as the loss of the person. It’s always there, but in reality, we can’t actually deal with it, because we don’t understand it, which leads to anger, then guilt at being angry, and it’s a vicious cycle that’s so hard to break.” Christ. I felt like a selfish fuck knuckle. All the time she’d been patiently listening to my shit, she’d had all this going on with her, and never said a fucking word. Worse still, it never occurred to me to think that there was someone out there who was dealing with shit as bad as mine, or worse, even.
“My best guess about Kai is that he died of a broken heart. They were so close, he and Lono. They were only eleven months apart and were constantly mistaken for twins, even as grown men. Kai looked up to Lono so much, idolized him, really. I knew that a big part of him died when Lono did, but I guess I didn’t know the full extent of what he was going through.” She swiped at her cheeks, and took a deep breath.
“They were my older brothers, for God’s sakes. They were permanent features in my