Page 99 of Sincerely, Your Enemy

She puts her book down and sits cross-legged on her bed. “Then talk. Let’s get it over with.”

Just like that, she’s back at it.

Being this closed-off, less-than-pleasant teenager.

“I’m sorry, that was bitchy.”

My, my, could this ordeal have given my sister some perspective about the way she talks to me?

“What did you mean? When you said I protect you too much?”

She swallows hard, doubt smeared all over her face.

“Sierra, I want this to work. I want to be good at this, but I need your help.”

That seems to help my case because she exhales a sigh.

“You said it yourself, you’ve been trying to be Dad. You got so caught up in trying to be this perfect parent that you just… stopped being our big sister.” She scoots closer to me on the bed. “You and I, we used to tell each other everything. We were so close. You were the one person I could tell all of my secrets to. Things Dad never knew about.”

She’s right.

We used to be partners in crime.

High school Lacey used to talk boys with her and tell her all about the wild things she’d done behind her parents’ backs. We had a very different dynamic back then.

“I feel like I can’t talk to you anymore. Especially not about Dad. You never bring him up. For God’s sake, you barely cried after he died. It’s like you never even grieved him.”

Her words hit me like a truck.

Because she’s right.

Ididn’tgrieve him. Not completely anyway. I still haven’t accepted that he’s gone. I convinced myself I needed to be strong for my siblings, but maybe that was just an excuse so that I wouldn’t have to deal with his death.

My heart caves in on itself.

She thinks I don’t care.

She couldn’t be more wrong.

“Do you remember when I used to pick you and Oli up from summer camp? Before we moved?”

She furrows her brow. “Yeah?”

It was right after our dad’s accident. Back when we still lived in Silver Springs, our hometown. Before I left for college and moved us out here. Sierra had landed a job as a lifeguard at a summer camp, and Oli was a camper there. It was easier for me as I could drop them off at the same place in the morning.

“You used to get mad at me because I would always pick you up ten minutes late, remember?”

She nods.

“I would always get there early and park down the block so you wouldn’t see me. Then, I would just set a timer and cry for those ten minutes. It was my ritual. Every day for months, I’d have a ten-minute breakdown, and then when the timer went off, I’d put on a happy face, wipe my tears, and go pick you up.”

She’s speechless.

Understandably so.

She assumed because she didn’t see my suffering that it never existed.

“It’s not that I didn’t cry. It’s that I didn’t let you see it. Dad always seemed so strong. Even when Patricia broke his heart and left him, he never let it show.”

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