Page 147 of The Keeper

He chuckled, studying the photo.

“This is you, yes?” He pointed to the girl on the left.

“How did you know?”

The warmth of his hand on my leg calmed me in a way I didn’t expect. “Your smile. It lights up your whole face. Your sister’s smile is just as lovely but yours,” he paused, “yours is radiant. I’d know it anywhere.”

I pushed out a ragged sigh. Overwhelming sadness threatened to suffocate this tender moment we shared.

“Hey.” He pressed a gentle kiss to my cheek. “Are you alright?”

“I will be.”

He took the photo from me and laid it on the pillow. “Do want to continue?”

I looked at him, feeling the weight of the last nineteen years pushing down on me.

“Green,” I answered with a small smile.

He embraced me with more affection than I was prepared to accept. But I let him. I melted into his arms and let him hold me, let him care for me. All of a sudden, I wanted to tell him all of it. Every dark moment I’ve dragged with me since I was sixteen.

“I promised her I wouldn’t leave her side,” I blurted. “The night of the bonfire. I promised her we’d be within shouting distance the whole time. But I went off with some tattooed rugby player and ended up making out with him most of the night.”

I swallowed hard. Xavier didn’t say anything. He just pulled me closer.

“When I finally found her, she was upset. At first I thought she was pissed at me but then I saw her hair was all mussed up and her dress was dirty. I knew someone did something to her. I could feel it. All I could see was white hot rage. I asked her what happened. I asked her who she was with. She wouldn’t tell me anything. She was never the same after that night.”

I took a deep breath and continued.

“The following spring we were on school vacation. It was a Wednesday morning. Dad was at work. Mom planned to take us out for lunch in the city. I was downstairs and mom ran up to see if Charlotte was awake yet. I heard her scream. It was like a howl. I’d never heard someone scream like that before.”

I shivered, reliving the panic and fear.

“You know how people talk about twins being connected? I couldn’t feel her anymore. My mother ran into the kitchen and called 911. I went upstairs and…Charlotte was still in bed. It looked like she was asleep but she was so still. I saw the empty pill bottle on the floor. I knew…I knew she was gone. The rest is a blur. Sirens, paramedics, my dad coming home, police.”

For several long moments I stayed quiet. The only movement was Xavier wiping the tears from my cheeks.

“My mother blamed me,” I finally said, my tone flat. “She blamed me for taking Charlotte to the party. She blamed me for what happened at the party. She blamed me for not doing anything to stop it. She blamed me for tearing the family apart. She hasn’t stopped blaming me.”

“This goes without saying,” Xavier said, tilting my chin up, “but none of it was your fault. None of it. I am so sorry you’ve carried this with you for so long.”

Having him comfort me felt good. My parents and I splintered into our own worlds of pain after Charlotte died. It often felt like there had been no one to just listen. Not even Killian. As much as I loved him for being there from the beginning, he always tried to fix it.

Telling Xavier was different, like it mattered how I felt about it. How I still feel about it.

“I think, on some level, even if my mother never said those things to me, I’d still blame myself. If I’d done one thing different that night, if I hadn’t gone off, maybe she wouldn’t have been alone with whoever hurt her or maybe—“

“Don’t do that,” he interrupted. “Please don’t play the maybe game. Maybes and what ifs won’t change anything. You’ll just keep punishing yourself for something you could never control.”

I picked up the photo of my sister and I from our final birthday together. Even though I still felt the sadness stretching through me, I also felt a sense of peace. Revealing the worst part of myself to him hadn’t been as terrible as I’d built it up to be.

Beautiful but broken.

I turned to face Xavier and kissed him. “Thank you,” I whispered on his lips.

“Anything for you, love.”

I glanced around at the pieces of my sister’s life strewn all over the storage bay.

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