Page 136 of Always

“I haven’t even told my therapist.”

“I’m doubly honored.”

I draw in a deep breath. “She and my father stayed together, and he did get sober. He tried, but he wasn’t cut out for marriage, really. In his way, my father loved her.”

She nods.

“But she was never the same after the fire. She fell into depression.” I close my eyes. “We kept her going. Ben and I.”

“She loved you very much.”

“She did. And she loved Dad, for all his faults.”

“You love him, too, don’t you?”

“In my way. But I’ve never forgiven him for what he cost me.”

“Your mother?”

“Yes.”

I stay silent as time seems to suspend itself. Skye doesn’t push.

Time to come clean. Truly clean with the woman I love, the woman I want to make a life with.

“She got sick,” I finally say. “One of the burn wounds never healed properly, and it got infected. She developed a bad strep bacterial strain. The one they call the flesh-eating bacteria.”

“Oh my God. Streptococcus A.”

“That’s the one. I had just started high school, and Ben had juststarted middle school.”

“And you lost your mother.”

I nod, my eyes heavy-lidded. Still, no moisture pools in them. I don’t cry. I haven’t cried—I mean truly cried—since that day.

“Why is this so difficult for you to talk about?” she asks. “It’s not your fault.”

“It is.”

“Braden, it’s not. Blame your father if you want. I at least get that. But not yourself.”

“You don’t understand, Skye. That day… That day of the fire…”

“What? What happened the day of the fire?”

The memory hits me like a punch to the gut, sudden and unforgiving. I was just a kid—too young to understand what I was asking, too stupid to realize what could happen. The fire was everywhere, like something out of a nightmare.

“I didn’t want to leave my room,” I say, swallowing the lump in my throat. “I didn’t want to leave my precious comic books to get burned into ashes. She’s yelling at me to get out. She’s got Ben in her arms, and she doesn’t have an extra arm for me. So she finally leaves, gets Ben to safety, and then she comes back for me. She lifts me up, and I drop the handful of comic books. I yelled at her, Skye. I told her…”

“It’s all right. You told her what?”

“I told her I hated her for making me leave my comic books.”

“Oh God…” She gulps.

“That’s right. She got me to safety, and then she went back in to get the comic books. But they were already ablaze, and that’s what…” I shake my head.

“That’s what burned her,” she says monotonously. “The fire from your comic books.”

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