Total pages in book: 134
Estimated words: 125936 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 630(@200wpm)___ 504(@250wpm)___ 420(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 125936 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 630(@200wpm)___ 504(@250wpm)___ 420(@300wpm)
Loneliness.
She shoved that one aside because she couldn’t process it. She needed to do what her mother had taught her. Put one foot in front of the other. Keep moving. Keep going because stillness meant death.
Was that any way to live?
“Brina, can you honestly say you’re different? I’m not trying to be difficult. I’m trying to understand.” If there was one thing she did know, it was that she loved her sister. Since they were young, she’d watched out for Sabrina, protected her as best she could. She hated the idea that Sabrina would think she was fucked up. Even when she knew she was fucked up.
Sabrina sighed and sat down across from her. “I’m trying to be. I’m seeing someone. Not like dating. Like helping.”
“You’re seeing a therapist?” It would explain this whole emotional rigamarole she was going through. “Why do you think you need a therapist?”
Sabrina laughed, an oddly unamused sound. “Oh, let’s see. Cold, ambitious mother who moved us around from base to base with no regard to what we needed. A father who walked out and never once looked back. Childhood trauma I don’t like to talk about. Adult trauma I don’t like to talk about. Watching Mom die. Being so afraid I was going to have to do the same with you.” There were tears in her sister’s eyes. “I’m going through some things. I wish you would understand you are, too.”
“You think I don’t?” The words came out far too harsh. She hadn’t meant them that way. It was habit that brought out her brusqueness in the face of her sister’s pain. Her sister had been through a lot, and she’d faced it all with grace and kindness.
“I think your marriage and your career are over and you recently had to face your own mortality.” Sabrina’s words didn’t waver. “And you haven’t cried about any of it. I’m worried you’re going to break because you never once learned how to bend, and what I’ve realized is I can’t face a world without you in it.”
A deep weariness swept over her. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“And that’s the problem. I’m worried if I don’t push you, you’ll stay here in this house and never get out in the world.”
Her sister was forgetting a few truths of her life. “I’ve been in the military since I was eighteen years old. I’ve seen the world.”
Sabrina’s head shook. “No, you’ve seen the military, and mostly you’ve seen what Mom taught you to see which was duty and responsibility and not a second of real love. You married a man because he was there and you thought it was time. You didn’t love him. You thought he made logical sense.”
“He did make sense.” They’d had the same goals and complementary careers. He’d seemed reasonable, like a man she could build a life with, and three years into the marriage he’d found someone he liked having sex with more and left her.
“I don’t think life always makes sense,” she said quietly. “I don’t think we can logic our way through a lot of things. I think we’re still paying for the mistakes Mom made. Instead of dealing with them and forgiving herself, she passed them on to us, and if we’re not careful, we’ll pass them on to our kids, too.”
“I’m not having kids,” Elisa said with a sigh. “All I would pass on to them is a gene that’s a time bomb in their bodies. I don’t have anything for a kid. Mom shouldn’t have had kids.”
“But you always wanted a kid.” Sabrina put a hand on the envelope she’d carried in. “It’s why you got married. You wanted a kid more than you wanted a marriage.”
That had likely been part of the problem. Dennis had wanted more than he could get from her. He’d thought once they were married she would warm up, but she hadn’t because she’d always been waiting for him to leave.
Now that she looked at it, she’d walked right into her mother’s life, tried to recreate it.
Wasn’t that fucked up?
“Well, I’ve realized between our mom and dad we didn’t have any actual parenting, so I have no idea what it means to love a child because I never felt it myself.” That was what she told herself. It made it easier to walk away from that particular dream.
“And that is where you’re wrong.”
“Wrong?” She wasn’t sure where her sister was coming from. “Like I don’t know my own personal history?”
She nodded. “You don’t. Mom lied. When you did the genetic testing on your cancer, I did mine, too.”
“I am well aware.” They’d wanted to know if Sabrina had the BRCA gene that Elisa had, the one that led to that tiny lump that caused so much chaos in her life.
“Well, I talked pretty extensively to the genetic counselor, and she called you my half-sister,” Sabrina said.