Page 40 of Tear Me Apart
“Stop screaming at me. This is my life. My choice. I won’t break the rules that I set out for myself.”
“The rules you set out for yourself? Fuckyourself. This is Mindy’s life. Who cares what you think about the way things ought to have been done? This is what has to happen. And trust me, if you don’t step up, I will do it without you.”
“Do that, and I will never speak to you again, Juliet Ryder. I swear it.”
“Empty threats. You don’t speak to me now, Lauren. What difference would it make?”
The bitter words hang in the air between them.
“I’m not hungry anymore,” Lauren says, looking out the window.
“Neither am I,” Juliet replies. “This whole charade makes me sick. But we’re going to go inside and eat a proper meal because you are out of your mind, and maybe some food will help you think with clarity.”
She pulls the keys from the ignition and opens her door, then sticks her head back inside.
“And, Lauren, when we get back to Vail, you have to tell Jasper.”
“He’ll never forgive me.”
“You should have thought about that before you decided to base your entire life with him on a lie.” Juliet slams the door hard enough to rock the truck and stalks into the restaurant.
20
The sun is bright on the fresh powder, shimmering off the frozen lake twenty yards from the truck. Lauren pulls a fresh tissue from her purse, dabs at her arm, then applies a new Band-Aid. She didn’t realize she’d pulled the other one off, finds it crumpled under her left heel.
The bones in her wrist are sharp; buff-colored skeleton’s hands on her wasted, skinny thighs. Juliet is right, there’s not much of her left. She has shrunk over the past month.
The well of fear threatens to drown her. Juliet isn’t kidding. She is going to force Lauren’s hand. Another wave of panic hits.
Lauren can feel the edges of her world unraveling. Images she forced away long ago come back to her—Kyle’s hateful, sneering face, the wrenching pain in her abdomen, the blood on her hands. The small ball of warmth with wisps of black hair and translucent skin, silent, so silent, so still. The healthy cries from Mindy’s crib, the sleepless few weeks before she’d met Jasper, when she thought she might die of exhaustion and frustration.
That familiar tug of desperation fills her now, the sense of being out of control, of not having any recourse, of the world spinning too fast for her feet to move on the earth.
What is she willing to lose to save Mindy’s life? What cost will the truth bring?
Juliet is right, damn her. She is going to have to talk about this with Jasper. She is going to have to admit the truth, that Mindy isn’t hers. And suffer the consequences.
She has to do it now, get out ahead of this. She can’t let Juliet be the one to tell him. Jasper will never forgive Lauren, but maybe, for Mindy’s sake, he can learn to live with her deception. She alone can frame the situation. Make him understand.
She marches inside where Juliet has already taken a table by the window that looks out onto the lake. There are two glasses of iced tea on the table. Lauren assiduously avoids her sister’s gaze when she sits down, as if she can see right through her sister’s body. Like she’s a ghost. Like she doesn’t exist.
“Juliet.”
At last, Juliet’s head turns, and Lauren is shocked to see her sister’s red-rimmed eyes, her nose rabbit-pink. Juliet Ryder doesn’t cry at anything. She didn’t cry when she broke her wrist in fifth grade, when her steady boyfriend broke it off the weekend before they left for college, when she missed the astronaut program by a fraction of a point. Juliet Ryder doesn’t cry, ever, period, yet here she is, struggling for control, in public, no less.
Lauren covers her sister’s hand in hers. “I’ll tell him tonight. Then I’ll go back through my files and see if I can find the doctor’s name. I don’t remember her name, only that she was Hispanic, that’s all I recall. You’re right, we need to find Mindy’s birth mother and try to find a match among her family.”
“Thank you,” Juliet manages, but Lauren grips her hand harder until she feels a knuckle pop under the pressure, and Juliet’s eyes grow wary at the pain.
“ButIwill handle this, Juliet. This is my family, my mistake, and it’s my responsibility. Not yours. You stay out of it from now on, you hear me? I will take care of things.”
Juliet simply nods.
“Good. Now, do you still want onion rings?”
21
UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL
