Page 85 of Bittersweet Legacy

“I - What?” he frowned at the sudden change of attitude, the unwarranted urgency in my tone. He stood too. “Are you okay?”

“No, no I’m not.”Freaking far from it, I was emotionally destroyed. “Stomach ache, girl stuff” I added rapidly and left the kitchen and ran up the stairs before I had a chance to rethink what I was about to do.

I locked myself in the bathroom and looked at the flip phone in my hand. I’d worked so hard to find a way out, I was almost out and now I couldn't go through with it. I couldn’t do to my brother what our mother attempted to do, I had already started to doubt my actions after I broke into in his bedroom and saw his own struggles, but tonight he’d really opened up to me.

I sighed, closing my eyes and dialling Luke’s number.

“Hey is everything OK?” He asked in a breath. “I’m finishing packing. I've already picked up a place around Chicago and-”

“We’ve got to call it off.” These words were hard to get out.

“What? Why? Esme, don’t worry, Jerry’s a pro, he’s been doing extractions for years. He already has the hundred grand for you, you’ll give him a ring and we can disappear.”

I knew Luke missed me, I was his daughter, no matter what the DNA said.

“I can’t leave him, Luke, I just can’t,” I admitted the voice breaking.

“Who? Archibald”? He sighed. “You said it yourself, the boy hates you.”

I shook my head. I didn’t have time to explain everything. Jerry would pick me up from school tomorrow, I couldn’t let him come for something I was not ready to give. “It doesn’t matter if he hates me or not, he is my brother, my twin. No matter what he did, I love him, I do, and he deserves better than me leaving without a goodbye. He deserved better than a mother escaping in the dead of night, leaving her five-year-old son in the hands of a controlling sociopath.”

“You know it wasn’t her intention.”

I knew that, of course I did, I’d read most of her journal. “It doesn’t matter, this is how it feels to him and I wouldn’t be able to look at myself if I abandoned him too. He doesn’t deserve people walking away. He deserves to have somebody who loves him enough to fight, to endure, to be here.”

“You’ll end up married to that cruel boy, repeating a past your mother died to avoid.”

I winced, using my mother’s death was a cheap shot and maybe my life with Caleb wouldn’t be that terrible. He had been tender and gentle in bed with me, and I could love Ferris Wheel Cal, I was sure it was a piece of him. Plus, I’d given him an out now, he was going to repudiate this engagement. I might even manage to get married to Antoine – it would sure solve all of my problems.

“If it’s the way it has to be, then so be it. I won’t leave Archie.”

Luke sighed. “You’re making a mistake, Esme, if I call it off now, there’ll be no turning back. It’s not something we can just start whenever we want.”

“I know that, I understand what I’m doing”.

“I miss you,” he finally stated with defeat.

“I know,” I closed my eyes at the wounds these words caused. “I miss you too, so much, but he needs me.”

“I understand.”

“You do?”

He growled. “Yes, I do. There wasn’t much I wouldn’t have done for my sister.”

“Thank you. But I’ll find a way to see you soon, I promise. you’ll always be my dad.”

“And you’ll always be my little girl.”

I stayed in the bathroom for a few minutes after that, trying to regain my composure and praying to whatever God there was that I hadn’t made the wrong choice by picking Archie over my freedom.

I prayed I hadn’t made a mistake, that it wasn’t a fluke with Archie because of Theo’s funeral. I was betting a lot on something I had little warranty on.

“You’re a giant idiot,” I told myself in the mirror.

I went back downstairs to find the kitchen cleaned up and empty. “Archie?” I called, my voice resonating in the oversized corridor.

“Archie?” I called again looking in the rooms downstairs. I glanced out the window, and his car was gone again.

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