Don't Let Go(56)

Harley bounded down the stairs a half hour later, pausing when she saw me on the rug, as if not quite sure what to do with that. Lord, I’d forgotten about Harley once we got started. She must have decided she didn’t want to watch and bolted for Becca’s room.
She padded down the last few steps and wagged over to me, licking my face and probably wondering if all this floor activity was some new game. She sprawled on the floor for a belly rub, her legs splayed wide.
“Slut,” I said, my voice still thick with crying.
She didn’t care. I lay down next to her and rubbed her till her head lolled to the side and her eyes closed. I envied her that. The ability to shut it all down, whenever and wherever. I buried my face against her side and let myself float.
The front door opening was unplanned.
I jumped at the sound and movement and light streaming in, not to mention Harley’s full-flail awkward attempt at getting her feet back under her to get to Becca.
“Mom?”
Blinking my swollen and salt-logged eyes open, I saw a hazy Becca.
“Shit, I must have fallen asleep,” I mumbled.
“On the floor?” she said, kneeling beside me. “Are you sick?” She peered closer at me. “Are you drunk?”
“Oh, God, I wish,” I said, grabbing my head as the crying headache took root.
“What happened here?” she said, looking behind her. “Why are all the books on the floor?”
“Why are you home?” I asked, sitting up and suddenly realizing the near horrendous situation we’d have had if she’d walked in like that an hour earlier.
“Came to get different clothes,” she said, distracted. “Mom, what’s going on?” Leaning over, she picked up a photograph of Seth when he was around her age. “Who is this?”
I took a deep breath and scooted over to where the majority of the pictures lay in a pile.
“That’s— ” I began, my heart picking up speed. “Your brother.”



Chapter 14

“My what?”
Becca froze mid-lean, dropping the photograph like it stung her.
Yeah, this was going to be fun. I rubbed at my cry-swollen eyes and pointed at the floor.
“Pull up some rug, Bec, I have a story to tell you.” She looked at me like I’d lost my mind, still frozen in her awkward position. “Sit,” I said.
“I don’t have a brother,” she said. “I don’t have—” She shook her head and smirked at me. “Seriously?”
“Please, sit down,” I said again, needing a calm heart-to-heart and quickly realizing that opportunity had come and gone. My eyes filled with tears again—how that was possible, I didn’t know.
Becca scoffed and stared at me, bracing herself on the wall as if she needed proof of reality. “You’re serious.”
Her gaze dropped to the photos on the floor, and I watched a mixed look of horror and hurt cross her face as the family resemblance registered. I pushed to my feet, her shock pushing away the rest of my day. I needed to make this okay for her. I tucked an errant piece of longer hair behind her ear and smoothed the rest, my heart thumping loudly in my ears.
“Baby, we need to talk.”
“You think?” she said, tears thickening her voice. “You—did I miss something? Like you being pregnant, maybe? I mean—how do you have another kid my age?”
“He’s not your age,” I said. My tongue felt thick and heavy. “He’s twenty-six.”
Her gaze shot up to meet mine, and it broke my heart.
“Twenty-six,” she said, just above a whisper. “What’s his name?”
It felt odd to answer that question, it still being so new to me. “Seth,” I said, wrapping my brain around the sound of it.
She nodded and glanced back down. “And—I didn’t know I had a brother named Seth because—?”
I knelt to scoop everything up. “That’s what I want to talk to you about, Becca. Let’s go sit down—”
“No.”
I stood up, my arms full of photos I was itching to look through again myself.
“What?”
She blinked tears free and whisked them away as if embarrassed to let me see it. Like I’d never seen her cry before. A bitter laugh came out like a cough.
“Lizzy is waiting outside in the car, Mom. I just came in to change clothes. And find you asleep—on the floor with Harley—clearly on a crying hangover. And now I have a brother?” she said, her voice progressively louder. “What the f*ck, Mom?”
“Becca!” I exclaimed, stunned by the sound of that word coming from her.
“Really?” she said, tilting her head in a very Ruthie-like manner, gesturing in circles at the photos at her feet. “My language is what disturbs you most in all that?”
Hide your crazy.
The pounding in my skull stepped it up a couple of beats. “Go tell Lizzy to come back in an hour. I’m sorry this is dumped on you like this, but that’s the kind of day it’s been.”
She widened her eyes. “The kind of day? I just saw you at the library a couple of hours ago, Mom. Delivering books. Talking to some lady. How do you go from that to—this?” She pointed to the mess in my arms. “How is this okay?”
“Okay?” I asked. I looked at the floor and back at her. “Look at me. Do I look okay to you?”
“But why now?” she said, waving her arms. “How could you not tell me my whole life that I have—where is he, by the way?”
“I don’t know.”