Page 100 of Give Me a Shot

Her father stood up fast, his chair dragging back on the hardwood floor.

“Insolent,” he said. He grabbed his scotch, some splashing on his hand. “Always difficult.” He looked at Jess’s mom.

“I told you this was a bad idea,” he said. He stomped out of the dining room, his steps wavering more, and went up the stairs.

Jess took another small bite of pie. His barb would have stung if Jess weren’t inured to his bullshit after hearing the same criticism for years. She was astonished that he’d left the room without saying that academia was a waste of time, or that she should have taken her archery further—things he usually did each time they were in contact. She looked across the table at her mom, who had tears in her eyes. Jess reached across the table to take her hand.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” she said. “I know you tried today.”

“You couldn’t try a little harder?” her mom said. She glanced at the empty doorway. She almost seemed fearful. “He’s been struggling. You know it wasn’t our fault,” she whispered.

Jess snatched her hand back.

“I’m not struggling, too?” Jess asked. “You aren’t? Youknewwhat was going on. You told her to stay. And you turned a blind eye.”

“I tried to tell her that it wasn’t…that…”

“That it wasn’t that bad. You told her that sometimes marriage is hard and the best thing to do is to stick it out,” Jess said. Her mom looked astonished.

“Yeah,” Jess said, nodding. “She called me, too. But she didn’t tell me everything, probably didn’t want me to worry, being so far away. If I’d known how bad it was, I would have pushed her harder to ignore your advice, to leave him. If I’d known that he was abusive, I would—”

“He…he wasn’t abusive,” her mother said meekly, her eyes filling with tears.

“After she died,youtold me he used to drive erratically to scare her. And now look. She died. In a car accident while he was driving. That’s some coincidence.”

“It was anaccident,” she hissed, her eyes shifting back and forth across the table, followed by a quick glance at her father’s empty seat. “He didn’t set out to harm her.”

“Why are you making ex—”

Jess’s throat sealed up, the pounding of her heart deafening her. She stared at her mother, whose eyes were wide as they seemed to plead with Jess, full of the same worry that they’dshown when she’d glanced at her father during the meal. Jess’s initial impression hadn’t been wrong, ithadbeen stronger than her mother’s general worried nature. Suddenly, her mother’s excuses for Cassie’s husband, her minimization of what he did, her focus on the intentions she imagined that he had, made sense. If she truly recognized that Cassie had been in an abusive marriage, she’d begin to see that to a degree, her own wasn’t so different.

“You don’t understand,” her mother said, tears streaming down her face. “We did our best. It just wasn’t enough.”

Numb, Jess nodded. The realization about her mother, her parents’ marriage was far too large with implications much heavier than she could begin to approach at that moment. Jess felt like lead. Weighed down. Her anger was gone. All that was left was a grainy emptiness. One she knew would never be filled in that house. It was just a building with nowhere for her to land. It would never feel like home.

Jess stood. “I love you, Mom. Okay?”

“Um, I love you, too, Jess,” she said, looking confused.

Jess left the table, headed to the front door.

“Where are you going?” her mom called out.

“To see my sister,” Jess said. “I won’t be back.”

“Jess, wait!”

Jess grabbed her bag out of the hallway and went out to her car.

—

The groundskeeper pointed Jess in the right direction once she’d arrived at the cemetery. Her grandparents were buried there, but it had been many years since her last visit, so she would have ended up wandering without help. She’d turned her phone off once she’d gotten there, concerned that its near constant buzzing from her mother’s calls might disturb other mourners.

“Hey, Pepper,” Jess said, her voice breaking, once she’d found Cassie’s headstone. A thousand and one thoughts and words and colors and memories bubbled and swirled and clashed in Jess’s mind. She fought hard to find one, choose something, to expressa single idea to her sister, but one of them was all of them, and before she could be aware of anything else, she crumbled to her knees, her face against the grass, nails clawing into the earth. Some part of her, seemingly off in the distance, nudged the idea of decorum, of holding herself together in public, of having some degree of self-control. But it was obliterated by the great giant mass of anguish she had fought so hard against on the call with Steph and Alice. Jess let herself sob into the earth, pressing her mouth against the ground when she couldn’t hold back her screams.

After a time that Jess could not measure, the wave passed. She let herself slump onto her side, her cheek still against the grass. She blinked and wiped at her face until she could read her sister’s name.

“Hey, Pepper,” she tried again. Looking at Cassie’s name, she talked. Told her about everything that had been happening over the past few months, even though it felt a little silly because it seemed like Cassie had already been there for parts of it. She shared her frustrations, admitted that maybe Steph and even their mom was right, that Jess compartmentalized too much, and it wasn’t healthy. She told her about work, about Mo, about how much she missed her.

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