Page 87 of Finding Him
My mother sighs, gripping the wheel tighter. She doesn’t push. She knows better.
We drive home in silence.
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“WELL,THAT'S CERTAINLYan interesting story,” Dad says. I can tell by his amused tone Mom must have already relayed the story to him, and that his reaction was second-hand.
“Ha-ha,” I say sarcastically, flopping onto my bed and staring at the ceiling. “It’s so funny, Dad. Can’t you two just be normal, jerky parents and ground me instead of forcing me into a cross-family dinner?”
“Now why would I do that when I love torturing you?”
“You’re the worst.”
He laughs, the sound making me irrecoverably homesick for my father. He worked a lot when we lived at home, but at least we still lived in the same country.
“So,” he continues, his voice still in a playful, probing tone. “This boy, Niall. He’s one of your teammates, right? The captain?”
“Yeah, he’s Claire’s brother, I told you about her,” I say, trying to make my tethering to Niall sound as casual as possible. “It’s nothing, Dad. We kissed once, it’s not a big deal.”
“Once?” Dad repeats. “Just once, Molly?”
I cave. “Okay, fine, maybe three times. But we only got caught once. And he’s not my boyfriend.”
“I never said he was.”
“Yeah, right, but I’m sure you’re thinking it,” I say. “And I don’t doubt Mother implied as much.”
“Maybe she did, maybe she didn’t,” he says.
I ask about Nona and how work is going, and he finally lets the endless teasing go and tells me about home. He says he’s considering getting cats and naming them after us, because that’s his idea of a joke.
Once we hang up, I’m ready to go to bed. I’m about to go say goodnight to Lorraine, when a tentative knock sounds on the door.
“Come in,” I call, thinking it’s my little sister.
But it’s not Lorraine. It’s Jamie.
“Hey,” she says softly, stepping further into the room without asking. I expect anger to fizzle up in my chest, to explode at her like I had the other day, but nothing comes.
She looks smaller than she ever has. When I was ten, Jamie was a giant. She was the coolest person in the world—the big sister who taught me how to braid my hair and fake a stomach ache so I wouldn’t have to do chores. Then she was just... gone.
She’s still gone. This young woman has her face, but my old sister is long gone. And for some reason, right now I’m realizing I’m never getting her back.
“Molly,” she starts, sitting at the chair by my desk. “I can’t keep doing this. I can’t live in this house with you hating me when you don’t even know why I left. I just want to explain everything to you, okay, and maybe you’d understand. I’m not asking you to forgive me, I just want you to know. Mom thinks I should tell you.”
“I know why you left,” I snap. “You and Mom fought every single day. You hated it there. You hated her. So you ditched us. You ditchedme.”
Jamie looks down at her hands, picking at her cuticles. “I didn’t hate her, Mols. We didn’t fight because of her, we fought because of me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I... I was using,” she says slowly. “Drugs. It started with pills and then it was anything I could get my hands on. Mom knew about it, and that’s why we were always fighting. She... I left because she was going to send me to rehab. I didn’t think I was an addict, Molly. I didn’t see it as a problem, and by the time I did I was already too dependent on it.”
The room felt too small, like it was tilting sideways and I was being tossed against the ceiling, my mind replaying every fight Jamie and Mom had when I was younger. I had blamed Mom. I’d thought she was overbearing, cruel, a warden. I blamed her for Jamie leaving.
“I spent four years in a total blur,” she continues. “Living in cars, staying with bad people who only made things worse. Two years ago, when I was in Seattle, I hit rock bottom. I thought I was going to die. And she was the only person I could think of calling.”
I could feel a coldness spreading through my chest, lungs filling with phantom water. “Mom?”
