Page 21 of No Second Chances

C: You want my babies. You won’t do shit.

Mom completely ignores the fact that I’ve gone silent during my conversation with Casper, and I look up to see her staring out the window almost longingly.

“Cassie should be here.” Those words hurt her. Her shoulders are slumped when she glances at me with tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry, Kennedy. I shouldn’t have said that.”

A ball of moisture appears in my mouth out of nowhere, and I know there isn’t any way to get out of the conversation we are long overdue for. Not the one about Linc and the tick on my ass. Or Casper and the twins. Or the fact that Parker and Remy finally pulled their heads out of their asses and have their own chance at happily ever after. No. We need to talk about me.

“You know,” I swallow down the immediate rush of bile that fills my chest and threatens to spew out. “Cassie saved my life.”

The scar on my wrist itches, like it does whenever I think about my little sister or the night I tried to kill myself.

More tears fill Mom’s eyes, and I immediately regret saying anything. But instead of turning away from me, she turns off the stove and wipes her hands again before taking a seat at the bar attached to the side of the counter, staring at me expectantly.

“My senior year in high school, I was raped.”

Mom’s gasp fills the otherwise silent kitchen, and I have to look away so that I don’t get caught up in the tears that I know are falling down her cheeks. But she doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t break the moment, and she doesn’t try to minimize what I’m going through.

“Cassie and Casper spent months trying to figure out why I’d try to kill myself out of nowhere. They started this entire murder board of reasons, and they couldn’t.” I start to mentally count the grooves in the wood floor of our kitchen in an attempt to keep my heart from bursting out of my chest with how hard it is beating. “I wasn’t depressed. You know that. Even after everything that happened, I wasn’t depressed. I just… I couldn’t control anything in my life except that, and I was bound and determined to get it done.”

The scar on my wrist starts burning, searing through my skin as I remember the night I tried to take control of my fate.

“I couldn’t tell you… or Dad. Dad would never look at me the same again.” Rambling is the only thing I can do, because the thought of Mom being disappointed in my choices is just too frightening. “I didn’t want to sit at the kitchen table across from you every night, wondering if you were thinking about me being hurt. I just couldn’t do it.” Emotion clogs my throat, and I clear it before continuing. “Cassie found out what happened, and she brought me back to myself when I couldn’t see through the darkness. She reminded me that I have all the control, that he didn’t take that from me. That it’s up to me to move forward and put it behind me. To live. She was such a smart-ass for a little sister. But she was there, and she saved me.”

Mistakenly, I look at my mother and see all the pain and heartache I’m putting her through written on her face and in the short jerking movement her fingers make as she fidgets.

“I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“You’re right.”

Mom’s words are a slap in the face, a dash of cold water that I don’t know if I can ever recover from.

I look up to see her taking one hesitant step after another until she crosses the kitchen to stand directly in front of me. Her trembling fingers clasp around my hands.

“You should have said something to me when it happened, Kennedy. I’m your mother. I love you, and I would do literally anything for you. Murder someone, help you hide a body, or even keep a secret from the rest of the world. Being a mother doesn’t just mean being there for the good, my sweet girl.” She pulls me into her arms, and the choked sob that breaks free from my throat takes both of us by surprise.

“I love you, Kennedy Marie Townsend,” Mom whispers against my hair. “No matter what happened, or what happens in the future, nothing is going to change that. You should never worry about how your father or I will ever look at you. You are perfect. Every one of our children are. No matter what. Looking at you doesn’t do anything to me except make me happier than fuck that you’re still here. Losing Cassie destroyed a piece of all of us. But you’re here. You’re here, my sweet girl. And you’re loved.”

I cry, tears that I hadn’t shed after the rape. Tears that never fell when I tried to kill myself and take control of the only thing left. Tears stream down cheeks that stayed dry when Cassie died in a car accident. Tears that I’d held in for years burst through the dam of emotion that I’ve kept built up, and my mom is there to catch every single one of them.

“Who did it, Kennedy?” Her question, asked with a hoarse voice and halting words, brings back all of the memories from that night. “Can you tell me? It’s not too late to make him pay.”

“He already paid his price.” I sniff, trying not to burst into tears again. “He died that summer when he overdosed.”

Mom stays silent, and I can practically see her rewinding the clock, back through time, as she tries to think of who died that summer. Who she can hate. Who she can try to curse. Who she can dig up and kill again for hurting her child. She’d already gone to see the man responsible for killing Cassie.

“I’d kill him again,” she admits quietly a few moments later. “I’d bring him back to life, and I’d stab him in the chest just so I could watch the life drain from his eyes.”

I chortle against her chest. “Yeah. And then you’d go to prison for the rest of your life.”

“Only if they found the body,” she practically snarls in reply.

Before either of us can say anything else, or I can ask her to keep it a secret from Dad, the back door flies open with a crash and slams against the wall.

“The party’s here!” Nox screeches when he steps inside with a flourish. “What’s for dinner, Grammy?”

Mom lets me go and wipes her eyes with the back of her hand before turning to see the new additions.

Nox, standing there in an actual superhero costume and his hands on his hips, eyed the two of us suspiciously. He can’t say anything, though, because his mom pushes him out of the way with her arms full of grocery bags.

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