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.“Then I guess we have to let them move them.” It wasn’t as if either of us ever went back and visited.“I can’t see that it makes any difference.”“But what if they d-decide, as long as they’re dug up, to do an au…an autopsy or something?” Frannie’s voice shook so badly she could scarcely get the words out.“I don’t think they can do an autopsy on a body that’s been buried twenty-two years,” I said.“And why would they want to?”“Somebody new could be at the police department, going through old cases, getting suspicious.”“You’ve been watching too many detective shows on television,” I said.Frannie had always been prone to mild paranoia, but this new anxiety worried me.“Just give your permission to move the graves and that will be the end of it.”Except it wouldn’t, really.How could either of us entirely shake the guilt over what we’d done?“Come home and you can tell them,” Frannie said.“I can’t come home right now,” I said.“Alice is in the hospital.Her cancer’s back.”“If she’s in the hospital there’s nothing you can do for her there.I need you here.”“I’ll call the cemetery from here.”“No.You have to come home.” She sounded hysterical.I took a deep breath.I resisted the temptation to give in and tried to calm her, but I couldn’t back down now.I had to push on with the decision I’d made.“I’m not coming home again,” I said.“Not to stay.I can’t.”“What do you mean you’re not coming home?”“Just that.I can’t live there with you anymore.I need to get out on my own and make a new life.One that doesn’t revolve around guilt and secrets.”Her sharply indrawn breath left a ringing silence in my ears.I waited, giving her time to process this news.After a while I wondered if she’d hung up the phone.“Frannie? Are you still there?”“What are you going to do?” she asked, her voice brittle.“Now that you’ve started sharing all our secrets with Alice, are you going to tell everything? Do you think that will absolve you from all guilt? Or do you just want to see me punished?”“I think we’ve both been punished enough,” I said.“But we can’t keep pretending what we did never happened.We have to acknowledge that what we did was wrong.”“It wasn’t wrong!” The words hit me like a slap.“He deserved to die.”“You poisoned him, Frannie,” I said.“And I let you.That was wrong.”“I did it to protect you.” She spoke through tears.Frannie, who never cried.“Don’t you even appreciate that?” It frightened me a little that I wasn’t more moved, as if I really had become immune to her manipulation.“You made sure I did,” I said.“I’ve spent my whole life feeling as if I owe you.But now I can see that living with the guilt has hurt me worse than he ever could have.”“You’re wrong! When he died we were set free.We were able to make a new life.”“A different life.Not a better one.”“How can you say that?”How could she be so blind? “Look at us!” I demanded.“You’re practically a recluse and I’ve wasted too many years, too afraid to have the family I’ve always wanted.”“I’m your family.”“But it’s not enough.Not anymore.” I swallowed the tears that finally threatened.“I want a chance to meet a man and have children and…and to have a real life.”Her wet sobs and choking breaths filled my ear.“What are you going to do?” she asked.“Are you going to the police?”I’d wrestled with this question for days and arrived at the only answer I thought I could live with.“I don’t see what good that would do now,” I said.“It won’t bring our father back, and it won’t give either of us back all the years we’ve wasted.”“Then what are you going to do?” she asked again.I took a deep breath.Here was the hardest part, the part that would take all the courage and strength I could muster—maybe more than I actually had.“I’m going to start over.I’m going to stop being afraid of other people, of other relationships.And I’m going to try to help other people not screw up the way you and I did.”“All I ever wanted was for you to be safe and happy, and now you hate me.”I sighed, drained by the battle I’d been fighting.“I don’t hate you, Frannie.I just think it would be better if we tried to live our own lives.Both of us.”“You won’t admit it, but you need me.You always have.I can see it, even if you can’t.” Some of her old forcefulness was back, but she failed to sway me.“Goodbye, Frannie.I’ll talk to you soon
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Tematy
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Clair Delaney [Coral 01] Coral (epub)
Christine Cody [Bloodlands 01 Bloodlands (epub)
Christina Ross [Unleash Me, A Unleash Me, Vol 3 (epub)
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