Across Time by O'Roark Elizabeth & O'Roark Elle

Author:O'Roark, Elizabeth & O'Roark, Elle [O'Roark, Elizabeth & O'Roark, Elle]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance, Fantasy, Paranormal, Historical, Adult
Amazon: B082NXZWKY
Goodreads: 60797395
Published: 2021-08-01T07:00:00+00:00

18

Kit hits the water with an unimpressively small splash.

It’s our favorite game these days, swinging on the rope to see who will land farther. I hold my breath, waiting for her golden head to emerge, and when it finally does she is laughing. Her little arms paddle furiously, propelling her back to where the water is shallow enough to stand.

When she's finally near me she flips onto her back and floats, pulling her hair up so it is flat along the water's surface. "Look at my hair," she says. "Do I look like a mermaid?"

Yes. No. There's a small bite of unhappiness inside me as I decide on an answer. Kit is adorable, everyone's favorite. I can't blame them for it, really—she’s my favorite too. But at the same time I can’t help the small sting of envy I feel toward her. Why couldn’t any of it be shared, all the love and attention that gets sent her way?

"Yes," I reply, swallowing down my envy.

She dives under water and heads for the shore again while I paddle listlessly, sulking over thoughts Kit will never understand. She grabs the rope again and begins to swing, pushing herself off the tree again and again, trying to gain momentum.

It isn’t her fault. I could be the only child and I still wouldn’t be the favorite. But sometimes it feels as if she’s stolen what she has from me. If Kit and Steven didn’t exist, I might be able to convince myself the problem was my mother. But they do, which leaves no doubt that the problem is me. I never saw it more clearly than when my mother stayed with Kit at the hospital as summer began. Such a small thing, but even now the sadness I felt wells in my throat, clogs it.

Kit continues to swing, going higher and higher, but her joy suddenly makes me mad.

"If you go too far, I'm not coming after you!" I shout and she sticks her tongue out at me, knowing good and well that I'll come for her if she can't swim back on her own.

I cleaned the house top-to-bottom on the day they came home from the hospital. I had visions of my mother smiling, looking pleased, or maybe proud of me, for once, but even an hour after they arrived, she still hadn’t noticed. She didn’t even seem to notice me.

I picked up, I finally whispered, and that’s when she looked at me with her flat eyes and her mouth a thin, bitter line.

“You know what would be more helpful?” she asked. “If just once you would not stand there looking like a beaten dog.”

Maybe she was right to be irritated. It’s not as if I’d cleaned the house out of an honest desire to help. I did it merely hoping for a single crumb of the attention she showered on Kit.

Now, watching Kit swing on the rope, I wonder why I bothered. Why did I try to make her happy when nothing I do ever makes her happy? I shouldn’t have.

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