Page 116 of Unsteady

She shrugs. “She started having these, like, manic episodes. She would decide in the morning to go on a trip—it didn’t matter if I had a skating competition or practice or school, she would just… leave. Like gone—sometimes for weeks, sometimes for a day or two. Every now and then, she’d take me or Oliver with her.

“And then one day, Dad came home and Oliver was in his crib alone. He panicked, called the school and found out I hadn’t been for three days.”

My brow furrows and I resist the urge to reach for her. “Why did it take him so long to realize?”

“He played hockey back then. Nothing like your dad, but he played in a minor league and he was traveling for away games.”

“And… Oliver?” I don’t want to voice the implication.

She does. “He’d been alone, unfed in his crib for days.” A few tears escape her eyes, though they don’t move from staring a hole in the sheets between us. “I don’t know how he’s alive.”

“But then, my dad made her go to therapy. Me too, for a while. And things were okay for a month? I don’t remember. I just remember waking up one day and my dad was crying, holding Oliver on the couch and he told me she wasn’t coming home.”

I shudder a breath, because I canfeelthat this isn’t getting better, only worse. And I can bet this isn’t the worst of the memories trapped in her beautiful mind, tormenting her.

I wonder if she’s ever spoken all of this out loud. Can she feel the way she trembled through some of the words so hard the bed shakes?

“Then, when I was twelve, I think? She came home. It was… the best day ever. She picked me up from school in this shiny, red convertible and took me to the mall to try on Halloween costumes. She wanted us to match and have a party just the two of us. We got a cake, balloons—everything.

“And when we got home, she sent the nanny home, got Oliver in his costume and told me to go upstairs to get ready, she was going to grab some candles for my cake.”

A sob wells in her throat, but I watch her strangle it down before she lifts her burning, smoky eyes to me and finishes, “I sat outside on the curb with a three-year-old Oliver until my neighbors called my dad.”

“Gray,” I choke out, wishing desperately I could hold her. Hell, my arms raise, like I might try, but she flinches.

I think if she hit me, it would hurt less.

“When my mom left Oliver, I knew she wasn’t coming back.”

She says it matter-of-factly, as if it hadn’t altered her world.

“She didn’t just leave Ollie, Gray,” I whisper, gentle but imploring all the same. “She left you, too.”

But she shakes her head. “She left me when I was much younger. She came back to have Oliver, then left him.”

She’d been abandoned by her mom twice.Twice.

“And your dad?”

“He started drinking, more than he already was. Showed up to a game or two drunk and eventually, they fired him. But that’s about when my coach started helping, opening a scholarship program for me to keep skating. Oliver started hockey because the ice rink was my safe haven, so it became his too.”

I don’t want to ask it, but I have to.

“Liam?”

“Um,” she huffs out a breath and bites her lip. “Yeah. I don’t know much. But I came downstairs one morning for school and there was a baby on the floor, next to my passed out dad.”

I swallow. “How old were you?”

“Sixteen. It was… scary, for a while. But, I started working around then and my mom started paying her court-ordered child support. So, my dad was at least sober enough to get something done.” She laughs at this, but there’s no humor in it.

I picture her, as a sixteen-year-old girl, less angry and caring for children, budgeting, cleaning up her father even when he didn’t deserve it. To protect her brothers. To keep them close, because there wasn’t one adult in her life she could trust.

And no one was taking care of her.

Just like it had been for years. This was her normal.

My chest squeezes tight again.

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