Unstable by Alexandra Ivy

Author:Alexandra Ivy [Ivy, Alexandra]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Zebra Books
Published: 2022-02-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

DeeDee hissed out a painful breath. “Don’t.”

Rachel knew she was hurting her mother. Any mention of her younger brother who’d died when he was just four caused the older woman intense agony. As if Benny’s death was still fresh and raw. And for eighteen years, the family had tiptoed around the tragedy.

They never discussed what had happened, or how much they missed the bubbly little boy who’d torn through the house with glorious abandon. They didn’t visit his grave in Wausau where he was buried next to Rachel’s grandparents, or pull out old photo albums to talk about what he might have been like if he’d lived.

The house had been purged of all visible memories, but the emotional ones remained, causing a deepening rot that was destroying the family from the inside out. Unless it was purged, they would eventually shatter beneath the strain.

Dramatic, but true.

“I’m not going to stop,” Rachel warned. “Not this time.”

DeeDee glanced away, lifting a trembling hand to place it over her heart. “You enjoy hurting me.”

“Of course not. That’s the last thing I would ever want,” Rachel insisted. “You’ve been hurt enough. We all have.”

“Then just let the past be.”

The words were depressingly familiar. Her mother had said them a thousand times since the morning they’d awakened to discover that Benny had climbed out of his window in the middle of the night and disappeared.

No one knew exactly why he’d gone into the near blizzard that had swept through Pike. He’d never done anything like it before. Rachel suspected he’d seen a stray dog, or perhaps another animal, and decided to try and rescue it from the cold. That certainly would have been something the kindhearted little boy would have done. Whatever the reason, when they’d awoken the next morning, it was to find an open window and an empty bed.

The entire town had turned out for the search, but by the time they’d found Benny curled up in the corner of the next-door neighbor’s garage, it’d been too late. He was gone.

Rachel had felt as if her heart had been ripped out of her chest.

“Allowing the past to be, doesn’t mean forgetting the past,” she said in a low, husky voice. The tears she’d only been allowed to shed in private filled her eyes.

“No one is forgetting anything.”

“Then why have you taken away the memories of my brother?”

DeeDee gasped, her head jerking back so she could glare at Rachel. “I haven’t.”

“Where are his pictures?” Rachel waved a hand to indicate the recently refurbished living room. “Or the drawings that used to hang on the fridge? Or the baseball mitt that was tossed next to the back door.”

DeeDee’s jaw clenched, as if she was struggling to keep herself from screaming. Rachel wished she would release a primal cry. Anything to vent the emotions she kept suppressed deep inside.

“I’ve kept everything that ever belonged to my beautiful boy,” she said, each word spit out like a curse.

“Yes.” Rachel refused to back down. This confrontation was long overdue.

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