Page 21 of Releasing 10
“I mean the voices are gone and he’s all better.”
“Holy God fixed Grandad?”
“Yep,” she replied. “Because when you go to heaven, all of your pain goes away.”
I smiled to myself.
That was a nice thought.
“Does Daddy hear the voices, too? Is that why he gets so cross with me?”
“No, Dad’s fine.” She sighed heavily. “And he’s not cross with you, I promise. He’s paranoid of history repeating itself. He’s just scared, that’s all.”
“Of me?”
“No, Liz, he’s not scared of you. Dad’s just… It’s really complicated, and you’re too little to understand any of this.” Sighing heavily, she stroked my cheek with her thumb and smiled again, but this time she looked even sadder. “When you’re a grown-up, I’ll explain everything to you.”
“But I want to know now.”
“Trust me, you don’t.”
“But you’re not a grown-up,” I pointed out. “So how come you get to know?”
“Because I learned about it the hard way.” She sounded sad again. “I wish I didn’t have to know any of this crap.”
“What about the lady?” I asked then. “Does she want to go to heaven so holy God can make the voices go away? Like her daddy?”
“No, because when Nell was in the hospital, the doctors found a way to keep the voices out.”
“How?”
“By giving her special medicine.”
“So she’s better?”
“No, Liz, she’s not,” Caoimhe muttered. “Because she doesn’t take it.”
I thought about the medicine in the bathroom cabinet, the bottle with the nameElizabeth Youngon it, and how Mammy took one out every day and gave it to me. “Am I sick like the lady?” The hot feeling grew inside of me, gobbling up the earlier excitement. “There’s something wrong with me, isn’t there?”
I knew there was.
I heard the voices, too.
They whispered in my ear when I was alone in my bed at night.
“No.” Caoimhe’s voice was hard now. She sounded cross. Like Daddy. “Those tablets are for growing pains, silly.”
“No.” I shook my head. I knew what the growing pains tablets looked like. “The growing pains tablets are pink.”
My sister was lying.
I didn’t like it.
It made me feel dizzy.
“Liz.”
“I hear them, too, Caoimhe.” I sprang up to look at her, feeling itchy all over. “I see things, too. When I’m sleeping. The monster comes to take me. It keeps pushing me down with its sharp nails—”
