Page 115 of Broken

“I wasn’t taking chances,” Mom snapped. She ran a hand back through her hair in her stress, and then a dawning realization struck her face. “Oh.”

The one word spoke volumes that I couldn’t place as Mom’s expression shifted quickly to fear. “What?”

“I don’t think the medicine’s what set her off.”

“What then?”

“Ummm…”

“Mom.” My eyes narrowed in suspicion. She was hiding something, but why? I was about to press her again when something caught my eye, and my stomach dropped. “Oh, no.”

“What?” Jet looked around, trying to see what I had.

“Behind you. By the window.”

Mom grimaced as Jet bent down to pick up the broken picture frame, a scratch from the glass cutting straight through Tucker and Izzy’s faces. This was so much worse than seeing the dresser torn apart.

“Can we panic now?” I snapped, and Mom gave me a confused look. My hands flew to my hips. “Really? You don’t get it? Youdon’t get what that photo represents or what it meant to her? Whathemeans to her.” I pointed to the picture.

Mom’s face slowly began to pale. “I’m calling Chuck. Jet–”

“Calling my dad,” he interrupted, his phone already at his ear.

I pulled out mine, too. I wasn’t going to stand aside anymore while Tucker broke what was left of my sister’s heart.He needs to see what he’s done.

TUCKER

I laid across my bed, face down on the comforter in my favorite pair of sweatpants. The ones Izzy loved to ogle me in. My back was getting a lot better at this point, but it was still a little bruised, and my ribs definitely weren’t healed.

I’d heard my family come in earlier, sometime after midnight I assumed, and Mom had popped her head in my room to say goodnight. I’d held back the scoff that threatened to escape at the concept ofgoodnight. That didn’t exist anymore.

Sleep, when I got it, was anything but restful. All I ever saw when I closed my eyes now was Izzy lying at the bottom of those stairs, bleeding. Her pale, broken body lying bandaged in the hospital. The wild agonized expression on her face while she thrashed about on the bed, calling for our baby. The withdrawn, hollow shell that used to be the girl I loved. I’d ruined her. Ruined us.

And if it wasn’t that it was my daughter. Izzy had never gotten the chance to see her, and for that, I was grateful. The one timeI’d held our baby girl had nearly broken me. Maybe it actually had.

She looked like us. Her tiny, broken body resting in my hands.

Any one of those images would jolt me back awake if they hadn’t kept me from sleeping in the first place. Putting my little girl in the ground had been hard enough, even with my parents’ help and advice, but I couldn’t stand to see Izzy so broken. Too ashamed to look into her eyes, afraid of what I might see.

It was best if I stayed away, even if I was dying to be with her. I’d put her through enough. She didn’t need to see my pain, the pain I’d inflicted on both of us.

It was all I could feel now, but I didn’t fight it. I knew I deserved every piercing stab to my heart. When I was lucky enough to avoid the horrific, torturing images, there was never relief. The open space in my mind just allowed room for thoughts of our lost child to surface.

How cruel was fate to let me fall in love with my child just in time for her to be taken away? The fact that she’d never been given the chance to live past more than a few minutes made it even crueler. She’d deserved her chance at life. But it honestly didn’t matter. In reality, she was gone, her mother destroyed.

I laid there in the dark, everything rolling through my thoughts, when my phone lit up. I almost ignored it but second guessed it when I thought about the time. Stretching an arm out, I grabbed my cell from the nightstand.

Annie?“Hello?”

“You need to get over to my house now!”

My expression dropped, not in the mood. “It’s past two in the morning. I’m not going over there.”Your sister doesn’t want to see me anyway.

“I’m not playing, Tucker! Get over here!

“Why?!”

“I’m not getting into it over the phone! Just come over!”

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