* * *

If it is at all possible, the house is smaller than Shirley and Dale’s. It’s a shotgun house, meaning it shoots straight back. The living room is first, the next room is typically the bedroom, followed by a makeshift bathroom and kitchen.

On an uneven sidewalk, I assess the house with my thumbs hitched in my pocket. Behind a bedraggled lace curtain, a dim light shines and the flashing of a blue screen indicates a television. The crumbling front stoop shelves an old mason jar full of cigarette butts and a small green ceramic frog. Mom liked frogs.

The metal screen door rattles as I knock. The floor creaks on the other side. There’s hesitation for what I assume is a glance through the peephole, and the door swings open.

Mom’s eyes are wide and color touches her cheeks. She’s dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. The same big hoop earrings move when she tucks her short dark hair behind her ears. “Isaiah. Come on in.”

Her living room consists of a couch, end tables, a recliner and a television. She’s been out for two years so she’s had time to collect. “Can you come out?”

“Sure.” She steps into the cool night with bare feet, leaving the wooden door open. From the living room, the final round of Jeopardy begins.

Mom retrieves the pack of Marlboro Lights and a lighter from behind the glass jar. “Do you mind?”

I shake my head, and Mom sits on the step of the stoop. She pulls out a cigarette and flicks the flint of the lighter three times, curses and jiggles the lighter before trying again. Growing impatient, I yank my lighter out of my pocket and light the cigarette for her.

“Thanks,” she mumbles. After a long draw and even longer exhale she says, “I don’t have money to give you. I live on a tight budget, but I’ll have something next week.”

Jesus Christ. The weight of what I’ve done forces me to sit next to her. “I’m not interested in your money.” Not anymore.

She taps the ashes to the ground. “I named you after a person in the Bible. Isaiah—a prophet of God. Did you know that?”

“No.”

“Your grandpa, my dad, was a reverend.” She inhales a long draw from the cigarette, leaving a path of red ashes. “He died three years ago.” Mom dangles the cigarette. “Lung cancer. My mom died a few months later. Probably from a broken heart.”

“Sorry,” I say. It feels weird to hear I had family. “They didn’t want me.”

“I told them not to take you.”

I raise an eyebrow. “They agreed.”

“Yeah,” she says. “They did, but it killed them. Me, Momma and Daddy were prideful to the point it hurt.” She sucks away the rest of the cigarette and smashes it against the concrete. “Why are you here?”

“You had something you needed to say, and I think I’m ready for you to say it.”

She slides the broken lighter in her hands. “Funny. I seemed hell-bent on saying it until now.” Mom has a soft Southern accent. Not normal for someone raised in Florida.

“Did you grow up in Florida?” I ask.

She tilts her head as she looks at me and almost smiles. “You remember?”

I shrug and lie. “I remember the beach.”

“I was raised a few counties south of here in a town with one stoplight. When I was sixteen Daddy took a new job in Florida and I ran away to be with the guy I loved.”

“My dad?” I ask before I can stop myself.

She stares at her painted toenails. “Sorry. No. Good thing, too. Turned out the bastard was married to a crack whore.”

Taking another cigarette out, she gestures for my lighter. I refuse to give it to her, but I do light the cigarette for her again.

“You’re real protective of that,” she says.

“I had a good home once.” I return the lighter to my pocket. “The guy gave it and a compass to me before he and his family moved to California.” The same guy who called me a dragon. The compass was for me to find my way. Both tattoos are for him.

She sighs. “For ten years, I thought about how I would explain this to you. I made up lie after lie, and when I got out, I couldn’t face you. So I spent two more years trying to think of something else to tell you, and now that you’re here I realize it’s still not good enough.”

“Try the truth.”

She laughs. “I’m not sure I know what it is anymore.” Ashes drift into the breeze. “I slept with a couple guys, Isaiah. Not knowing for sure who your dad was, I decided to raise you myself. Me and you did okay for a while. I had a job, but then I lost it.”

The smoke from her mouth billows into a ball. “I went home and asked for help. Daddy wanted me to repent in front of his congregation—to tell them how I was a sinner. I thought that made you look like a sin, so I refused. I ripped you out of that house so fast that I had burn marks on my hands. I said I was protecting you. Daddy said I was stubborn.

“We came back here. We needed food. Money. So...” She shrugs. “Do you remember?”

I do. “I liked the houses that had cable.” Mom broke into houses during the day with me by her side. Images of walking up long driveways and heading into backyards fills my mind. The sound of a window being slid open and the feel of the cool central air hitting my face as she pushed me in.

My heart would hammer as I walked through the silent house to open the back door for my mother. As she rummaged through the house, she’d let me watch TV and eat whatever cookies she found in the kitchen. I thought it was great...until she got caught.

Mom stares at the night sky, searching for something. “I often wondered what would have happened if I stayed and did as Daddy asked or if I had agreed to let them take you or if I let that one couple adopt you when you were ten.”

My head jerks to glare at her. “They wanted me?”

“Yeah.” She draws on the cigarette again. “They wanted you, but I didn’t know how to let you go. Plus, I was worried if I made the wrong choice, again, you’d end up in a bad home. I thought the state would protect you.” Mom rubs her eyes. “I thought I was protecting you.”

Faint memories emerge of my then social worker asking me if I’d like to stay with that family. At the time, I hadn’t known she meant for good. “I told the state I wanted to stay with them.”

“I know,” she says. “He told me. Maybe they could have taken you without my consent. I don’t know, but that guy wanted my blessing. How could I be sure you were making the right choice?”

“I knew what I wanted.” I wanted to be with that family. With the man who called me a dragon. A man who believed I was more life than destruction. My mother ruined my shot at happiness because she couldn’t let go. Because she had to control everything, even from prison.

Just like my need to control.

As if a lightning bolt ripped out of the sky and struck me, I jump off the stoop. Mom stands, anxious over my sudden movement. “Are you okay?”

I tear my cell phone out of my pocket and text Rachel: don’t do the speech.

Seconds go by, maybe minutes. Nothing in return. “I’ve gotta go.”

Chapter 68

Rachel

OUR ENTIRE FAMILY SITS AT a large round table. The waiters remove the remains of dinner and replace it with beautifully decorated pieces of cheesecake. Everyone claps as the last eloquent speaker, a doctor who specializes in leukemia, finishes his speech. Mom flashes me a smile as she slides out of her chair so she can introduce me.

I draw in air and release it, a continual action. I try not to obsess over how this is the longest speech I’ve ever given in public or how this is the largest crowd I’ve ever spoken to or how people will stare or how they’ll laugh when they hear my trembling voice.

I try not to think about Isaiah stealing cars or Eric appearing on my doorstep tomorrow morning or how Gavin is antsy and how the news of his gambling addiction will affect our mother. I try to ignore the heat crawling up my neck and the way my stomach cramps. I try not to think about vomiting in public.

My hands ball in my lap and from under the table, Ethan grabs them. “Don’t do it.”

My eyes hold his. “What?”

“This is wrong. You can’t do this to yourself, and I shouldn’t let you.”

“We’re doing this for Mom,” I whisper, as Mom starts to introduce me by explaining who Colleen was, because let’s face it, my entire life is defined by her oldest daughter.

“But who’s looking out for you?” he asks.

“...my youngest daughter, Rachel Young.”

People applaud at my name. I stand, and Ethan still clutches my hand. We stare at each other as he also straightens. He wraps his arms around me and I allow the embrace.

“I forgot I was supposed to be your best friend,” he says.

I hug him tightly. “So did I.”

The applause continues and I leave my twin for the podium. Typically this time of year, Mom’s so low, she can barely get out of bed, but this year, it’s different. Her eyes shine as she kisses my cheek and the pride and love radiating from her creates a blanket of guilt over my skin. Who does that pride and love even belong to? It can’t be for me.

On the podium, the speech Mom prepared is laid out—typed and double-spaced. I brush the hair from my face and ignore my shaking hand as I lower the microphone. Silence spreads across the room. Occasionally someone coughs or there is a clink of a fork against china.

I concentrate on the words on the paper, not on the eyes on me. “Colleen was barely a teenager when she discovered she had leukemia...”

My stomach aches and I shift my footing. I sip water and a man clears his throat. The crowd grows uncomfortable. I refocus on the speech and freeze on the next words...my sister.

Somewhere deep inside of me, this horrible emptiness folds in like a black hole.

My sister. I search the crowd...looking for Ethan. I have a brother—a twin—and I have older brothers, but I’ve never known a sister.

People begin to whisper, and Ethan stands. He thinks I’m on the verge of an attack. West joins him. I take a deep breath, and for the first time in my life in front of a crowd, I’m able to breathe. “I never met Colleen.”

I cover the speech with my hands and focus instead on my two lifelines: Ethan and West. “I have brothers. Lots of them.” And people laugh, and that makes me almost smile.

“But I don’t know what it’s like to have a sister. For weeks, I’ve talked about how great Colleen was and about her beauty and strength, and the entire time I talk all I can think is how I sort of hate her because I can never be as awesome as her.”

I swallow as my throat tightens. “If she didn’t die then maybe she could have taught me all those things that I lack that she possessed—like grace and compassion and how to be an extrovert. Maybe if she didn’t die, then my parents and my oldest brothers wouldn’t have spent so much of their lives living in the past. I used to think I hated Colleen, but I don’t. I do hate cancer.” I stop as my lips quiver. I hate cancer. So much.

“I hate how it took someone wonderful and destroyed her. I hate how cancer ripped apart a family. I hate...I hate...that I would have never been born without her death. Cancer wasn’t fair to Colleen. It wasn’t fair to Mom and Dad. It wasn’t fair to Gavin and Jack.”