Page 108 of Something Like Sunflowers

“What have you done to our mother?” I call out to the kitchen without breaking eye contact, hoping Dustin will hear and come save me. The last words I ever spoke to her ring loudly through the room. So loud, I squint at her in question.

Can’t you also hear how loud it is?

But she can’t, of course.

That’s how trauma makes you crazy.

“I’ll never understand how God could let someone like you be a mother, but take that away from someone like me.”

“That’s because even He knows you aren’t worthy.”

That’s what she’d said back then.

I lean away, examining the woman who looks like a different version of my mother. A cleaned up, polished version. One with thoughts of others. Kindness. The one who only let herself out in glimpses when we were children.

She seems different now.

“Sober,” she says, as if reading my mind. I shoot her a glare, and she just winks, patting the sofa for me.

But I don’t sit.

Until I do.

“Hey, I wasn’t expecting you, Dev.” Dustin walks in from the kitchen, out of breath and wiping what looks like flour from his hair and shirt. I eye him suspiciously, but he shakes his head at me, sending white powder peppering my dress.

“Mishap with the KitchenAid when I was training my new hire.” He finishes brushing off his shirt and wipes his fingers on the towel in the pocket of his apron. “What are you doing here, Devyn?”

I huff, turning to Mom, who is…still smiling in a genuine way that freaks me the fuck out, to be frank, but okay, I’ll allow it. I turn back to Dustin and crank my neck to the side, blocking the Alien-Abducted-and-Replaced-By-An-Imposter-Mom from my vision, because that’s too much to confront right now, and I direct my attention to my brother, who is acting equally weird today.

I need to get on with this. I don’t have time for weird family reunions where everyone smiles deceptively. I have a marriage to consummate.

I mean, well, we did that part. Can’t ignore the little markings that are barely noticeable to anyone but myself along the soft parts of my wrists and forearms from the rope last night. I realize I’m blushing physically and mentally, and snap myself back to the present.

“Did either of you know about Dad giving Hunter money after the crash and making him swear to push me away?”

Dustin’s eyes widen, as do my mother’s, and both their jaws drop as they look between one another. And that confirms it. Everyone was in on it.

“Okay, so that’s a yes, then.”

“Look, Dev. You were almost killed. And you were depressed. And Hunter was…Samuel and Hunter’s family were going through some times. We needed you in a safe place where you could heal. Not here where you’d spiral again.”

“Oh, so you guys decided without me? Just shipped me off with Dad to an all-girls school on the coattails of the crash, the death of my baby, and Mom and Dad’s divorce, and hoped it would be Princess Diaries and Happily Ever After? That I’d just go on winning pageants and making a new life for myself away from it all? Packing it into boxes and stacking them so high I’d never see through the bullshit?”

I stare at Dustin and Mom as their faces twist. Going from something of judgment to a place that suggests, dare I say it, sympathy. And damn it, I’m latching on while they seem to be listening for once.

“My baby had just died. Hunter’s and my child. A child we prayed over each night from the moment we realized what we’d gotten ourselves into, holding hands in a crying bathroom stall at the very high school you drive past each day. Your core memories of it might be from rodeo championships or class elections, maybe even just the boring bits like study hall or exams, but mine are from whispered rumors behind locker doors, too snug gym tops, and a pink plus sign on a plastic stick, in a dimly lit bathroom stall of the second-floor ladies’ room that Hunter was never meant to hold me in. He and I needed each other. And we always will. You understand that, right?”

“I do now.” Dustin tugs me into a big brother hug that feels snug and protective, just right.

“You smell like my brother,” I say, laughing.

“You don’t use that line on your husband, do you?” he teases, and I swat his shoulder and shove him away.

“Call him my husband one more time and I’ll vomit in a bag and mail it to you,” I tease back, raising an eyebrow. “I’m still waiting on that package, bro.”

Dustin laughs, offering up a coffee to Mom and me. We both decline in the same way, a soft toss of the air with our hand. It’s kind of a bitchy move now that I’m seeing it in action.

No wonder! I want to tell her she’s the reason I’m a bitch, but I think that might make me, also, a bitch. So, I’m evolving. I smile, keeping my newfound knowledge to myself and effectively breaking the cycle.

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