Page 13 of Serenity

ChapterSix

Dillon

Iheadedstraight to their house, walked inside, and shouted, “Mom! Dad! Whereareyou?”

It was barely six in the morning, and my dad ran down the stairs half-dressed for work in suit pants and a white T-shirt without any socks or a dress shirt. My mom came running towards us from the kitchen in a nightgownandrobe.

“Where the hell have you been?” my dad asked when he caught sight of me mid-way down the stairs. “When I told you that you were doing a good job and could leave on time, I didn’t mean that you could disappear for days on end with only a single text to tell us you’d gotten into an argument with Faith and needed us to check on her. You could’ve at least bothered to call your mother and let her know you werealive.”

My mom rushed towards me. “But now he’s standing right here, so stop yelling at him and let him tell us what’swrong.”

When she reached out to give me a hug, I took a step back and shook my head. “I have somequestions.”

My mom looked devastated that I wouldn’t let her hug me. She stood perfectly still, her hands still stretched towards me as her skin paled and tears filled her eyes. “About what,honey?”

“Declan.”

All it took was the mention of my dead twin’s name for the tears in my mom’s eyes to overflow and spill down her cheeks. He’d been gone for five years, and we hardly ever talked about him because the pain was so overwhelming. For all of us. But the time had finally come for me to get the answers that I should have demanded after theaccident.

My dad moved to my mom’s side. He wrapped his arm around her and led her over to the couch in the living room off the foyer. Mom patted the cushion next to her, and I sat down. When she grabbed my hand and squeezed it tightly, I could tell she was trying to gather herself. Dad dropped down on the opposite side of her and took hold of herotherhand.

“When I woke up after the crash, an entire month had passed.” I scrubbed my hands over my face. My eyes started to sting, and I pressed my fingers against them. “As devastated I was when you told me that Declan had died in the accident, I was so relieved that he hadn’t suffered. Even if it meant that I missed his burial and couldn’t visit his grave until after I’d fully recovered from my owninjuries.”

“We know, son.” My dad reached over and gripped my arm. “If we had known you were going to wake up when you did, we wouldn’t have buried him without you. It’s something we regretted, and we’re sosorry.”

His easy apology only made what I had to say next that much harder. “No, I understand why you did it that way. There was no way of knowing when I would wake up, and you couldn’t wait forever. But because everything was so fucked up, I never really asked anyquestions.”

“What kind of questions?” my dadasked.

“Ones I should have asked back then,” Imumbled.

“You were recovering,” my mom excused me. “You had just woken up from a coma and had your own serious injuries tocontendwith.”

“But he was my twin!” I railed. “And I didn’t even ask you any questions about his death. We never really talked about him once I got out of the hospital. It was like this huge piece of me was torn from the world and I just let it go without a second thought. I lethimgo.”

“You didn’t,” my mom argued. “Not really. You changed so much after the accident. Declan was always the serious one and you were such a jokester. He never put off for tomorrow what could be done today, and you always waited until the very last minute. Although you were identical twins, you each had such different personalities. Then he was gone, and you weren’t yourself anymore. It was more than just recovering from your own injuries, which were severe on their own. But the loss of Declan, itchangedyou.”

“Your mom is right,” Dad agreed. “I don’t know when the last time was that I heard you tellajoke.”

“And I never had to push you to get your homework done when you went back toschool.”

Dad nodded. “You even made sure all your college stuff was sent inearly.”

I realized they were right. When I woke up after the accident, I felt like I had to make up for Declan’s loss in some way. “Maybe in a way, I was trying to live both ourlives.”

“And as hard as it was for us to stand by and watch, we knew that you were using gambling as your outlet for when it got to betoomuch.”

“We understood because we were angry at the world too,” my mom added. “A parent should never have to live through the death of a child. The stages of grief are relentless and every day you feel like a piece of you ismissing.”

Rationally, I knew their loss was as big as mine. Maybe even bigger because even though Declan was my twin, he was their son. But knowing about their pain and understanding how in the hell Faith could’ve ended up with his kidney inside her a month after he was supposed to have died were two different things. “That’s why I’m struggling so much with this. He was my identical twin. We’d been together from the moment of conception and for every day of our lives until that damn accident. Only to find out years later that you guys lied to me about how he died. When he died. It’skillingme.”

“Oh my God,” my mom cried, burying her face in my dad’s chest. “Heknows.”

“That Declan didn’t die until a month after the crash? Yeah,Iknow.”

My dad’s gaze locked with mine, and I was surprised to see what I thought might be relief in his eyes. “How’d youfindout?”

I pulled the letters out of the front pocket of my jeans, smoothed them out, and handed them to him. “Faith stumbled across the truth when she reached out to her donor family to say thank you. The transplant center offered to forward her letter to them, and they sent ittoyou.”

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