It takes a handful of breaths before my sister says, “Right, right. I know that. It’s fine.” I can just picture her standing there with her arms crossed and leaning casually against the wall. I hate that I have to tell her this way. Forgive me. Lord, forgive me.
“I cleaned up the evidence.” My throat is tight and I find myself gripping the pay phone handset harder, both hands clinging to it as I stare at my car. I can’t see her, but I know my mother lays in the back seat. When I parked, she was silently crying.
“Of what?” My sister’s swallow is more audible than her question.
“I’ll explain it all to you after. But when you get home, we won’t be there. You’re going to call the cops and the last you heard from me were the texts we had earlier.”
“Is it Mom?” my sister practically cries and I hush her, reminding her that she’s talking to a patient.
“They’re gone. They just left,” my sister says in a breathy voice on the other end of the line, and it takes me a moment to realize she’s referring to whoever was in the room with her. She heaves in a shuddering breath as if she’s strangling on her words. “Did Mom kill herself?”
“What?” I ask and my heart races.
“I confronted her.”
With a pounding in my pulse, I watch as a cop car rolls up to the red light outside the convenience store. I’m quick to turn my back so he can’t see me. But that also means turning away from my car and my mother. Who’s obviously in shock among every other reeling emotion that’s taken her over.
“You confronted her about what?”
My sister begins to answer but I cut her off, not having the time. “Mom’s okay.” Dad isn’t… The words are right there waiting to be spoken aloud but they don’t come.
“And Dad?” she blurts out and I can’t answer. “No, no …” My sister’s tone is wretched. “I should’ve kept my mouth shut,” she says weakly. Even over the phone I can feel her breaking down.
“When you get home … I need you to tell them I was supposed to be there with Mom and that we’re missing. I’m going to try to clean it up.”
“Dad?” my sister cries, and the back of my eyes prick. “They were fighting. I heard them.”
“No!” I’m quick to shut her down and breathe out slowly. “No, you didn’t. You didn’t confront Mom about anything. Dad was supposed to be at a conference and we were having a girls’ weekend. That is all you know,” I say and I’m firm with her.
“You need to act normal but I wanted you to be prepared. I’m going to protect her. I promise,” I tell my sister although the pieces of how exactly I’m going to do just that still haven’t come together in my mind. The sound of traffic moving along allows me to peek over my shoulder, finding the cop car gone and my own sitting there, waiting for me. “I’m going to protect her from this.”
“She killed him, didn’t she?” My sister guesses the truth and all I can tell her is that I love her and to take care of what I asked her to do.
It’s a sickening feeling as I get back to my car. Like the world is crumbling around me and there’s nothing I can do to hold it up.
Delilah
“You’re my baby girl,” my father tells me in that singsong way that lets me know he’s in a good mood. “No one’s ever going to hurt you.”
“I’ll protect you too, Daddy,” I’m happy to tell him back. “That’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to protect people.”
“Oh yeah?”
“I’m going to grow up and be just like you.”
“You think so?” he asks me and I nod my head in response to his raised brow.
“That’s what we decided last night.”
“We?” he asks. As we walk down Main Street to the post office, I hold his hand and he swings it to and fro. When we get to the block before the post office, I skip over all the dark lines of the cracked pavement.
“Cady is going to be like Mom and I’m going to be like you.”
Don’t step on a crack or you’ll break your mother’s back. The children’s rhyme plays in my head.
“All right then. That sounds like your mother and I are doing a good job then, huh?” Daddy’s