Page 81 of His to Teach
On the sixth day, Wednesday, Mason shows up at the apartment. I instruct Emma not to open the door, forgetting that he holds the lease and therefor has his own key. He doesn’t usually use it, always respectful of our privacy. In fact, the only time I can remember him coming in without knocking was the morning he showed up to surprise me with coffee and pastries.
The morning he ruined everything.
He knocks for a solid ten minutes. “Harper, come on,” Emma says. I think she’s starting to get exasperated with my constant moping and she’s definitely sick of the knocking. “He’s your brother. It’s been nearly a week. You’re going to have to talk to him eventually.”
Before I can argue with that, the lock rattles. Mason is letting himself in. Damn it.
I’m tempted to dash across the room to engage the chain lock, but days of wallowing on the couch have slowed me down. Before I can even get up, Mason is striding into the room, his expression tight.
“You didn’t hear me knocking?” he snaps.
“I didn’t want to talk to you,” I snap right back. He glares at me for a long moment before sighing and turning to Emma. “Can you give us a minute?”
“Sure thing,” she says quickly, clearly not eager to get in the middle of our sibling squabble.
“Traitor,” I mutter as she darts out of the room.
Mason takes a seat on the armchair across from me and I pull myself up into a sitting position. There’s not much I can do about the pajamas I’m still wearing at two p.m. but I refuse to face off with my brother laying down.
“Why aren’t you at school?” he asks.
“Why aren’t you at work?”
His glare returns. “I’m not at work because I’m here, checking on you.”
His unspoken words ring in my head.My little sister, always a burden.
“I didn’t ask you to do that,” I say softly, looking down at my blanket. I might be pissed at him, but I still hate to see the disappointment in his eyes.
“Harpy, you can’t go on like this. You have responsibilities.”
I don’t know how to explain it to him, the way that it feels like nothing matters anymore. School, my friends, the research I’ve been doing. All of it is meaningless without Nate.
I open my mouth to put some of this into words, but something else entirely pops out. “Why didn’t you send me to boarding school?”
He stills. “What?”
“After they died. I know you considered it—I heard you talking with Uncle Jim after the funeral.”
Mason shakes his head, looking lost. “I did consider it,” he says, his expression more than a little bewildered. “Mainly because I didn’t think that I could do a very good job with you. But in the end…” he shrugs. “I couldn’t go through with it.”
A little light starts to flicker in my chest. Could it be true that he really did want me around?
His next words dash that hope.
“You were my responsibility, I wasn’t going to shove you off on someone else.”
And there it is. The core of my brother’s moral code. Responsibility. Doing the right thing. Of course that’s the reason he stepped up. He saw it as his duty.
“I’m grateful for that,” I mutter. “I really am. But it would have been nice…” I swallow. “It would have been nice if you kept me around because you wanted me there, not because you felt like you had to.”
His mouth drops open. “Harper?—”
I stand, feeling how sore my muscles are. Maybe I have been sitting on this couch for too long. “I’ll try to go back to school tomorrow,” I tell him. “Sorry to worry you.”
“Hang on,” he says, standing. “We need to talk about?—”
I hold up a hand, somehow managing a small smile. “I’ll be fine. You should get back to work.” Then I walk to my room, lock the door, and curl up in my bed, feeling more alone than I ever have.
