Page 17 of Letters to Lily

“Payin’? Payin’ what? Bills? You’re too young and pretty for bills, sweet girl.” It still hurt me deeply to use that endearment with my little sister. It was one that had been reserved for Sasha for so many years. Considering she had moved on without me so easily, I was attempting to desensitize myself to all things Sasha before going back home. It wasn’t really working, but I kept trying, because I couldn’t get her off my mind.

Lucky for me, my antics sent Taylor into giggle fits. It had become our shtick ever since the first time I made fun of the way Tay dropped the L and the G in the word playing.

“Have you given some consideration to what I talked to you about last time, Son?” My dad spoke up, ignoring the fact that this was playtime for me and my sister.

I gave an exasperated sigh and then stood to my full six-foot, four-inch height and looked down my nose at my dad, who was about three inches shorter. “This is my Taylor time. Stop interrupting,” I chastised him.

“Damn it, Kaden! You need to grow up! Your sister isn’t important right now.” A surprised gasp clued him in to the fact that his new wife had just walked into the room and heard his blatant disregard of his youngest kid. “Damn it. That’s not what I meant, and you know it, Angie. My son needs to pull his head out of his ass and start thinking of his future.” He ground the bone in his jaw a bit, a little tic that showed his frustration. “You can’t keep dropping your life to babysit your mom when she goes off on her crazy little tears. You need a respectable job, and I’m offering that to you.”

The truly fucked up thing in this situation was that my father had no clue what I wanted for my future. I was going to school, when I wasn’t trapped by his drama, for business and art. I had plans to open my own tattoo studio, hopefully a chain of them across the country one day. I had no need to tell him this though. The bullshit he wanted me to get involved with was most likely some big scam anyway. “Respectable job, huh?”

“That’s right,” my dad countered as if I hadn’t grown up with all of the scams he tried to pull on people.

“Listen, mom’s being released soon, and that means one thing and one thing only. I’m going back to North Carolina, where I can finish up school, get my degree, and go earn my place in a real, respectable job. I’m gonna miss the hell out of my Tay-Tay, but that’s about it as far as the things holding me to Vegas. It’s not you, certainly not some phantom, supposedly respectable job. Hell, if mom throws another fit and blows her release again, it won’t even be my mom holding me here. I already talked to the dean, and I can start classes up again in August when the fall semester starts. I plan to be there for that. I’m already a semester behind now thanks to this whole debacle, which you helped instigate.”

“I don’t know what in the fuck you want to go back to that hell-hole town for,” my dad started in again. “Jesus, Kaden, it’s not like you have anyone to go back for now.” That was a low blow. He’d heard me talking on the phone to Jason one day last week asking if he’d seen Sasha at all since everything went down. Jason swore he hadn’t seen her at all which was just odd, because they had a class together over the spring, before I left. I wasn’t sure what she was doing for the summer sessions, but he would have to see her on campus at some point.

My father tried using that against me, saying that if I hadn’t been able to get in contact with my girl in all this time, she wasn’t really my concern anymore anyway. He didn’t get it. I honestly doubted the man had the capacity to love another human being, but I just felt so damn lost without her. So unbelievably fucking lost without her, that I was determined to do whatever it took when I got back to find Sasha.

I know I would have a hard time getting past things if she truly had hooked up with some other guy, but damn it, she still owed me an explanation at the very least. Hell, I probably owed her one as well. I just wasn’t sure if she was sitting around waiting on one from me the way I was from her.

I had to go back and try to find her, and figure out if our friendship, at the very least, was still salvageable.

“Tay-Tay, come on girl, let’s go play before I have to leave.”

“Why you go? Kade stays wit Tay-Tay!” It seemed really simple when kids said things. A part of me wished I could stay just to be able to hang out with her some more, because Taylor was a really cool little kid, but I couldn’t put the rest of my life on hold for someone else’s child – even a sibling. I needed to finish the things I started. That was one thing I had always prided myself on, well except the occasions where I chickened out on things I wanted to do with Sasha before I knew how she felt.

I just knew that I didn’t want to be like my dad, flitting through life relying on some crazy, lucky horseshoe stuck up my ass or something. I didn’t want to search the world for the next best thing. I wanted to find my thing, and work at it to keep making it better with time. I couldn’t do that here as my mom’s babysitter, my sister’s new playmate, or someone my dad could use for his next shady business venture.

The next couple of weeks passed in much the same way. My father tried to recruit me to some new venture of his while I was trying to spend time with my little sister. My mom was working through her issues, and we finally had a release date for her, as well as travel plans. She had wanted to fly back, but for some odd reason I had grown attached to the junker of a Jeep I had picked up when I first realized I’d be stuck in Vegas for a while. So, I made plans for my mom to make the leisurely trek back to North Carolina in my Jeep with me.

I also had Mick, our lawyer, checking into smaller homes that we might be able to either rent or purchase upon arrival. He had been sending me photos, and finally I saw one I thought my mom would fall in love with. I asked him to check it out and verify it looked well kept, and if it did to put an offer on it.

My mom had sold a rather stately five-bedroom place before coming here. It was the house I had basically grown up in. I was never really comfortable with her living in that giant house all on her own anyway. It was time my mom felt what it was like to live a cozy, simple life. The house Mick was working on for me was a simple two-bedroom, cottage-style house with an old world feel while being also boasting completely modern upgrades to appliances and cabinetry. It was, in a word, cute. Unfortunately, I was going to be stuck taking up the spare bedroom for a while until I figured my own shit out and made sure mom was settled and no longer looking to take the easy way out. Her doctors may believe she has a new lease on life, but sometimes, I looked into her eyes when I visited, and they were sort of vacant. It worried me.

July 28

We finally made it. Northbrook never looked so welcoming before. I actually breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the ‘Welcome to Northbrook’ sign on the side of the road. My mom chuckled, “I guess that means you missed this place, huh?”

“Are you kidding? Of course, I missed it. I hate Vegas. The only bright spot there was getting to know Tay.” My mom cringed openly at the mention of my little sister. “I know the situation sucks for you, but she’s my sister. I can’t ignore her, pretend she doesn’t exist, or filter all talk of her around you just to spare your feelings. This is part of dealing.”

“I know, Kaden. It’s just going to take some getting used to. I imagine it won’t be easy when Sandra finally gets you in touch with that brother of yours either.”

“His name is Brad, and we already have a set time to meet up in a couple of days.”

“I guess you’re not wasting any time, huh?”

I looked at her for a moment before focusing back on the road. “I’m thinking enough time has already been wasted where he and I are concerned.” I saw her flinch at my words, but as discussed with her doctor, I couldn’t hold back on things like that. She needed healthy doses of reality. Some people need to be babied when they’re not exactly mentally stable. My mom has the opposite problem. She’s spent so much time living in the land of denial and whitewashed truths that she doesn’t know how to function when faced with real situations that she can’t control.

While I never realized I was doing it, I had been enabling her behavior by always downplaying the things my dad put her through and making them seem less than they were. I didn’t do it to spare my dad or make him seem more appealing to her. I had done it to spare her feelings, and now I was seeing how my good intentions backfired on me.

“I’m not sure what the furniture situation is going to be when we get there. I’ve been paying my half of the bills at my old place with Jason while we’ve been in Vegas so that I would still have stuff to come home to, but it will take me a bit to get any of it to the new house.” I was rambling. I had already asked Mick to make certain there was at least the bare minimum of functional furniture in the house.

“I’m sure Mick took care of everything. He probably employed his wife to make it look beautiful too. She’s a genius with interior design, even if she won’t make a career out of it.”

“Good to know. Maybe you’ll love the house then,” I offered. I knew she was a little on edge about coming home to a new place she’d never even seen before, but it honestly couldn’t be helped. Our old house had been sold and was occupied by its new residents. There wasn’t anything familiar for her to come back to.

“Are you going to try to go over and see Sasha right away? You haven’t said anything about her in so long, I wasn’t sure if it was because I was sick, or…” her voice trailed off and she looked sad for a moment. “Did something happen because you were gone too long?”

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