New With Tags - Buying Underwear on eBay by Suzanne Jenkins

Author:Suzanne Jenkins [Jenkins, Suzanne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-12-07T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 4

Sunday passed without me answering calls or texts. Flynn tried many times, and I avoided him. It was okay, I rationalized. I didn’t owe him anything.

I called the hospital and left a message for the doctor who had seen me in the ER the night of the accident. She’d be in Monday, and I was assured she’d return my call. I planned on getting my letter and returning to work Monday night.

No one from the family, Margo and Rocko included, tried to contact me after the tree trimming ceremony, which was best to avoid. My mother posted pictures on Facebook, and I lurked on her posts. The caption—the first tree in six years. The family, including my aunts, holding up wine goblets and toasting the tree. It made me sick.

Comments from friends and family abounded: Lucy would have loved it. My heart is with you. Hugs and kisses coming your way. Beautiful family.

After reading several, I blocked my mother. Why did she feel the need to share something so intimate with a bunch of strangers? No one seemed to notice my absence in the pictures, and that made me laugh. I’d achieved my goal of disappearing.

At dusk, I got into my car to take a ride around town. I went past the car wash and, typical for a Sunday evening, it was empty. Workers were gathered around a half-barrel planter with a fake pine tree in it, smoking and drinking Coke. One man recognized my car and waved, shouting, “Yo, Bella!”

I waved back, smiling. This was my milieu. Not the famous plastic surgeon with the wealthy family.

As soon as the thought came to me, I knew it was wrong. Flynn and I had clicked right away. He made me so comfortable. I was looking for excuses to not see him.

After getting a coffee at a drive-through, I pulled into a parking lot that overlooked the Detroit River. A favorite childhood pastime of ours had been watching the ships coming into port. I sat there at dusk, sipping coffee, thinking of Lucy. She was always in my head, but usually not in a good way.

I needed to tell someone. After I’d avoided him all day, Flynn came to mind, and I keyed in his number.

“You’re alive!”

“I am. I’m sorry. I just needed time to regroup.”

“I completely understand. I was worried that you were getting cold feet.”

“Can you talk for a minute? I mean, can you listen? I need to unload.”

“I’m here for you, Bella. Unload away.”

I had kept a secret from my family. In a rare moment of honesty, or maybe drug-induced truthfulness, Lucy had told me she was tired of living. The pressure put on her to excel had taken a toll on her. Going to school was a blessing and curse; she got out of the house, away from Lillian, but in school she was constantly badgered about her God-given talents.

“You’re not taking full advantage of your capabilities,” they’d tell her. “You could do so much better. You should be in college full-time now, Lucy.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.