Page 84 of Hit the Ground
“Yes. I paid a company to pack everything up and donate what they could. They sent me the things Silla had set aside for me.” Her eyes slid to the box like it was haunted. “I don’t know what’s in there.”
“You gonna open it?”
Rubbing her lips together, she returned her gaze to me. “I’ve been thinking about it but decided to wait for you.”
“That was a good idea. No reason for you to do it alone.” I squeezed her knees then took her hands in mine. “Give me a kiss, then we’ll take it inside and see what’s in there.”
A small smile curved her lips as she leaned forward and gave me my kiss. Firm and lingering. Not long enough for me, but we’d get to that after facing down what we needed to.
I pulled her to her feet and picked up the box, which was lighter than I’d expected. Guess Alice’s sister hadn’t had much in the way of personal items. Being sick all her too-short life, maybe Silla hadn’t had the chance to collect a lot.
I took the box to her living room and placed it on the coffee table. Alice wrung her hands as I unfolded my pocketknife and poised it over the tape.
“Ready for me to open it?”
Her forehead crinkled, but she nodded. “I don’t know. Let’s get it over with anyway.”
I sliced through the tape and spread the cardboard flaps. Tucking my knife away, I stood behind Alice, my hands on her waist. She let her back rest against my front for a drawn-out moment then took a deep breath.
“Okay. Here goes,” she whispered, reaching into the box.
The first thing she pulled out was a well-worn gray hoodie with “UCLA” printed on the front. Alice clutched it to her chest then pressed her nose into the fabric.
“This was her favorite sweatshirt. Silla desperately wanted to go to college there.” She pulled in another deep breath. “Thatwasn’t going to happen, so she told me I had to apply there. I did, for her, and when I was accepted, I lied and said I wasn’t.”
“To protect her?”
She nodded. “I didn’t want to go there, and I knew it would gut her that I had the opportunity to go to her dream school and turned it down. It was better she didn’t know.”
“You were a good sister.”
“I don’t know about that.”
The next few items were shirts and a hat from Alice’s alma mater, Savage University. A San Francisco snow globe Alice had sent Silla when she’d moved there for grad school. The eye mask and slippers Alice had given her for one of her birthdays. Copies of the academic publications featuring research papers Alice had written in college. A binder filled with short stories Alice had written for Silla when she was a child. A Playbill from a musical the whole family attended during one of Silla’s good spells. The programs from their parents’ funerals. Alice’s high school diploma. A scrapbook of movie tickets, most Alice and Silla had seen together.
By the time she got to the bottom of the box, she was sitting on the ground, surrounded by the things her sister had deemed important enough to save. Pieces of their life together—and Alice’s after she’d moved on.
Alice shook her head as she reached for the final item—a photo album. “I don’t understand her,” she rasped. “How did she…why would she care about any of this?”
I sat behind her on the couch, peering at the album over her shoulder as she flipped through it. She dragged her fingers along each page, over the younger version of herself and the girl who looked so much like her. Even though their resemblance was uncanny, it was clear who the healthy one was and who was sick.
As Alice turned the pages, the girls got older, and the space between them widened. Silla became more haunted withshadows as she leaned away from her younger sister. And Alice’s smiles became smaller, her gaze distant, until the final picture, where she wasn’t looking at the camera at all.
Alice closed the album, her shoulders slumping as she released a long exhale. “That’s it.”
I leaned forward and kissed her crown, letting her know I was there but allowing her the space to work through it.
She drummed her fingertips on the album. “I hoped maybe she’d written me a letter. I don’t know why. Just…why would she keep all these things and only let me know after she was gone? Why couldn’t she have shown she cared when she was here—”
A sob broke free like an escaped prisoner. Once the wall had been breached, more followed, each more frantic and desperate than the next.
“I don’t get it,” she cried. “I don’t understand her.”
This woman was tearing my heart to shreds. Unable to take it or let her go through this alone a second longer, I lifted her into my arms. She came easily, pressing her face against my chest. Holding her close, I rocked her as she let her feelings flow. Her sadness and grief fell like rain, and her body shook like panes of glass in a storm.
I’d been waiting for this. She’d been too calm telling me about her sister. Too removed, like she hadn’t been speaking about her own life. That wasn’t Alice. She felt things. She was sensitive with a tender heart. I’d known she had to be hurting, but she’d been hiding it, maybe even from herself.
There was only so long a person could hide from their own feelings; Alice’s had finally caught up to her. As much as it killed me to see her this way, I was glad she was facing it with me. I’d be here to hold her up and help her heal in any way she needed, even if that meant holding her while she cried.
