Page 112 of Keeping Sarah

She shifted uncomfortably in her chair. “Since I’m the oldest, Mom always listened to me when it came to the two of you. I was the one who pressured her to do it.” She began to cry, as regret overcame her. “I’m so sorry, Sarah.”

I took her hand in mine, and she gasped in surprise, hope shimmering in her eyes. “I’m not angry with you for it. You did what you thought was right. You saw your sister holding a letter opener at her throat and freaked out, so believe me, I get it. You didn’t see the ghost there, forcing me to hold it at my throat, you didn’t know it wasn’t me—"

“I did.”

Elizabeth and I jerked our heads to Jenny.

Quietly, she said, “I saw him. That’s how I knew where to shove you to get you away from him.”

My heart stopped in shock, then started back again at double pace. “You…you can see ghosts?”

She pulled in a deep breath and nodded. “I can.”

I stared at her for a long moment, trying to make sense of this new revelation. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

She shifted in her chair. “I’m younger than both of you, and I saw how upset it made Mom and Elizabeth,” Jenny said, her voice small. “I thought if I just ignored what I could see, then I wouldn’t upset them like you had. And when you were sent away for a year after what had happened…it didn’t exactly encourage me to ever tell anyone.”

A part of me was crushed. Seeing the ghosts on Earth, I had always felt so isolated. Even my family hadn’t been there for me. They had locked me away instead.

Emotion gathered in my throat and tears filled my eyes, then spilled over. “But, if you had told me, then I wouldn’t have felt so fucking alone.”

Jenny cried, too, her expression reflecting her own devastation. “I’m so sorry, Sarah. I was too much of a coward, and I—"

“We worked together at the coffeeshop for years as adults, and you never breathed a word of it.” I choked on a sob. “How could you keep your mouth shut? Since when can you keep your mouth shut about anything?”

Jenny wrung her hands in her lap. “When you came back from the institution, you weren’t yourself. Like you were some shellshocked version of yourself. Always quiet. No light in your eyes anymore. You had stopped talking about the ghosts after you came back from the institute, so I thought they had been so horrible that you were afraid to talk about it again. I didn’t want to encourage it and make you go back there.”

She took a moment and chugged her water with herbs, then met my gaze again. “When you started talking about the ghosts again, I thought it would be for the best if I didn’t discuss it. In case someone tried to commit you again. I couldn’t…I couldn’t stand to be the reason you went back, Sarah.”

I sighed and wiped the moisture from my cheeks. “Itwashorrible there. I can understand why you were afraid—"

“I see them, too,” Elizabeth muttered.

“The fuck?” Jenny erupted.

All I could do was stare at Elizabeth. I lost every thought after she said those words.

She solemnly nodded, and when she spoke her words came out clipped and full of resentment. “I’m sorry. To both of you. I…I couldn’t tell anyone. I was the straight-A student, the one with all the scholarships, the one Mom counted on.” She lifted her chin willfully. “I worked two afterschool jobs, kept up with my extracurriculars, I was the model child. I couldn’t shake her faith in me. We could not afford for me to be different or unstable or unreliable. That was whatyou twogot to be. Whimsical. Fun.Frivolous. Weird. Jenny, with the flowers in her hair. Sarah, with her outcast friends. I was not allowed. I have never been allowed. I am sorry, Sarah. I hated myself for sending you away. I still do. But I thought if I sent you away, then Mom might have a chance to get her shit together and be the grown-up for once.”

After hearing all that, I gaped at my sister. “What are you talking about?”

“She was always worried about you. About yourvisions, as she called them.” Elizabeth waved a hand in the air, and continued in that frank, blunt way of hers. “She worked at your school, so she could keep an eye on you. After school,Ihad to keep an eye on you, so she could work at her other jobs. When I couldn’t do it anymore because of my extracurriculars and my after school jobs, she was beside herself. That’s why the neighbors always checked in on you. She was constantly afraid that you might hurt yourself during one of yourvisions…so when we found you with the letter opener at your throat, it was her worst nightmare come true.Thatwas why I wanted you in the institution. To give Mom a break.”

Her spite was like a tangible thing, tearing me apart inside. I could barely breathe as tears spilled down my face all over again. “You hated me that much?” I whispered.

“It wasn’t hate, Sarah. Never hate,” she said, her disgruntled tone softening a fraction. “I just needed Mom to have a chance to work on herself. You have no idea how scared she was for all those years. You were there at the institute for a month, before she realized she could do something other than be afraid all the time. That was when she started taking night classes and was able to work on her accounting degree. She even had a date.”

I tried to swallow, but my throat felt utterly raw, as did my heart. “I didn’t realize I was such a burden.”

“This is why I’ve never told you any of this,” she said. “I knew you would react this way. I’m not trying to make you feel like a burden. I’m just telling you how things were for the rest of us.”

“Mom had a date?” Jenny asked quietly.

Elizabeth shifted her gaze to our other sister. “Yes. One of the students in her class set her up and she felt awkward saying no, so she went. She said he was nothing compared to our father, so that was that.”

I sat in silence for a few minutes and tried to put everything together in my mind. It was difficult to hear that I had been so detrimental to my family’s well-being. I always wondered why Elizabeth had been so cold to me. And it wasn’t just me—it had been everyone in the family. As I came to that realization, so many things fell into place.

“You always felt like you had to be the responsible one, didn’t you, Liz? Like everything was on your shoulders.”

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