This is What Goodbye Looks Like (44 page)

Dad blinks a couple times, trying to process this. “What did you just say?”

Jeremy sits a little straight and uses my hand to pull me closer to him. “I said what I should have said a long time ago. No. No, I’m not just going to do what you tell me to, because I don’t trust your judgment anymore. And I sure as
hell
don’t trust you to be taking care of my sisters while I’m gone.”

Dad’s jaw grits, and I can tell he’s barely keeping his temper.

“It’s okay, Jeremy,” I say. “I can take care of myself just fine.”

“But you shouldn’t have to!” Jeremy snaps. “You’re seventeen. You’re just a kid. You never should have had to deal with
any
of this shit.”

Jeremy stands up and marches toward Dad, stopping only to poke a finger in his chest. “And you should have dealt with this shit way, way sooner. None of this had to escalate the way it did. If you’d protected your kids the way you were supposed to, none of us would even be in this mess.”

Dad swallows hard. “Pointing fingers fixes nothing. It’s useless.”

“Almost as useless as you,” Jeremy snarls. “It doesn’t matter whose fault any of this is. No matter how you look like it, you’ve been acting like a miserable coward since the start.”

Dad stiffens, all of his muscles tightening until I think he might just snap in half. “I’m trying to protect my family,” he hisses.

“You’re trying to protect
yourself
,” Jeremy says. “And I should have seen it from the beginning and stopped it a long time ago.” He nods to me. “Lea’s the one who has the best excuse to fall apart, but she hasn’t. She’s held together better than any of us.”

Dad crosses his arms. “Lea has been very strong through all this,” he says, but he sounds more like a diplomat than a proud father.

Jeremy leans closer to Dad, and I realize my brother is taller. I’ve never actually noticed until now—I always thought they were the same height. But now that he’s standing this close to Dad, their noses nearly touching, I realize Jeremy is a full inch taller.

“Do you remember what you used to tell me about lies?” Jeremy asks.

Dad takes a single step back, but otherwise doesn’t respond.

“You used to say that nothing in the world weighs heavier than a lie.” Jeremy points to me. “Lea is the only one of us that hasn’t sunk. And she’s had to work by herself to keep afloat this whole time, but I’m not going to let that continue.”

“What does that mean?” Dad asks, and now there’s a hint of genuine fear in his tone.

“It means I’m going to support her,” Jeremy says. “And that means I’m going to trust her.”

He turns to me suddenly, and I can’t help but flinch a little at how intense his gaze is. He looks desperate, almost wild. I open my mouth to tell him he doesn’t have to do any of this for me, but the words won’t come out. Because I want him. Maybe I don’t need him—maybe I can keep taking care of things myself.

But I don’t want to.

“You really saw Camille move?” Jeremy asks, his voice a little softer now. “You really believe she might wake up?”

I don’t hesitate before answering.

“Yes.”

Jeremy gives a sharp nod and turns back to Dad. “You’re not taking Camille off life support,” he says.

Dad takes another step back, but he quickly says, “I am. It’s already been decided.”

“And that decision is changing,” Jeremy says. He comes back over to me, sitting on the edge of the bed and putting a protective arm around my shoulders.

“We’ll figure out a way,” he says, looking me straight in the eye. “We have to.”

Chapter Forty-Six

Jeremy looks nearly as sick as Camille when we get to the hospital in the late morning. We pulled his car out of the garage, where it’s been sitting unused for months, and drove the entire way here in silence.

It’s weird to have him back. In so many ways, he’s completely unchanged, just as gangly and geeky-looking as always. But his movements seems sharper than they used to be, more on edge. I wonder if I look the same to him—a little more hardened, a little less whole. Although I don’t know if he’d even notice if I did. My limp seems to be occupying most of his attention, and he won’t stop staring at my cane.

When we get to the coma ward, he’s actually shaking a little bit. The nurse at the check-in desk smiles and asks if Jeremy is a friend of Camille’s, and his face reddens as he mumbles that he’s her brother. I can tell he feels guilty for not being here more often, but he doesn’t apologize to me again, and I’m glad. Apologies will get us nowhere at this point.

I tell him I need to use the bathroom and leave him to go into Camille’s room alone. It’s going to be hard enough for him to see her again, and knowing my brother, having me hovering there will just make it worse for him. I wait ten minutes, hanging out in the lobby and giving him some privacy, and then head back to Camille’s room. Jeremy’s sitting in the chair next to her bed, his hand tightly grasping our little sister’s.

“She looks worse,” he murmurs.

I sit in the chair next to him and start unpacking my laptop. “But she’s going to get better.”

He nods, but I can sense his hesitation, and I know he’s not sure if I’m right. But at least he doesn’t protest.

“Your campaign is doing really well,” he says quietly. “I was looking at it while I was waiting at the airport.”

I click open the campaign page and scan over it. “It’s almost at thirty-two thousand now.”

Just a day ago, I would have been celebrating. But now the thousands of dollars still seem woefully inept.

Jeremy stares down at his own hand holding Camille’s and gives hers a little squeeze. “Maybe we could try increasing the goal,” he says. “I mean, you’re getting a ton of donations. Maybe it’d work if you changed the goal amount to one hundred and eighty thousand.”

We both cringe as he says the amount out loud, and I shake my head.

“No. The website doesn’t let you change the goal once the campaign goes live. So I’d have to start completely over. And we only have a week until Camille’s life support ends. It’s not enough time.”

Jeremy reaches down and strokes Camille’s shortened hair, wincing when he reaches the hastily cut ends. “There has to be a way to petition the insurance company,” he says. “Some way to change their minds so they’ll keep paying for Camille’s treatment.”

I shake my head, and his shoulders droop in defeat, but he doesn’t look at all surprised. I have a feeling he’s done nearly as much research on this as I have. He knows as well as I do that insurance isn’t going to pay for the life support as long as Camille’s doctors continue to recommend it be terminated.

I click through the new messages on the campaign page, going through my normal routine of replying with my thanks. But some of them I don’t respond to, because there’s a new sort of message starting to crop up. More and more people are sending in hate mail about Mom to go along with their donations. With every news article that gets published about Mom’s re-opened case, the public’s animosity toward her just seems to grow.

I tilt my laptop so Jeremy can see it and point toward the message on the screen.

“This mom shouldn’t be walking free, let alone making decisions for her poor little girl. Why is the hospital letting a murderer weigh in on life support decisions?”

Right below that message is another one that’s even more vicious:

“Poor Camille. Someone needs to give her mom a shitty parent of the year award. Hope the bitch gets the death penalty.”

“Everyone hates Mom now,” I murmur.

Jeremy takes his hand away from Camille and rests it on my shoulder. “It’s not your fault, Lea.”

I swallow hard. “Do you hate her, too?” I ask.

“Yeah,” he says. “But I also love her.”

“Me, too,” I murmur. I give a choked laugh and rub at my temples. “You know, I actually thought it’d be easier once I managed to tell the truth. I thought everything would be less confusing this way.”

Jeremy lets out a slow sigh and shakes his head. “I don’t think that’s how it works,” he says quietly. “I think if everything seems perfectly black and white, that’s how you know someone’s lying. Being truly honest means letting people do whatever they want with the truth you hand them. It means letting someone understand things fully and form their own opinions. And everyone’s opinions are always going to be different.”

I lean into Jeremy’s shoulder. “I don’t think Mom’s a monster,” I murmur. “I really don’t.”

He gives my arm a comforting squeeze. “That’s your truth, and I hope you hold onto it. But it’s out of your hands now, Little Lee. It’s up to a jury now to go over the facts and decide what to do with her. And, no matter what happens, it’s not your fault.”

I nod and close my eyes, trying to focus on his words and not the guilt churning inside me. “When are you going back to Colorado?” I ask, suddenly desperate to change the subject.

He shrugs. “Whenever you don’t need me anymore.”

“You have a girlfriend now,” I say. He’s mentioned her a couple times in our previous conversations, but I’ve never had the guts to ask about her. I don’t want to hear that she’s pretty and perfect and everything our family’s not.

“Yeah, I have a girlfriend,” Jeremy says. “We’ve been dating since January. Her name’s Rose.” He glances over to me and hesitantly adds, “You’ll like her. When you meet her, I mean.”

I try not to show my surprise, but I guess I fail pretty badly, because Jeremy lets out a nervous laugh. “Yeah, I want you to meet her,” he says. “When things calm down a little, I mean. And she wants to meet you. She thinks you’re brave.”

I clear my throat, not really sure how to respond. “Thanks. I’m sure I’ll like her.”

Jeremy nods a couple times, then says, “So how about you? Did you go off and find yourself a guy while I was gone?”

He says it jokingly, and I know he figures dating has been the last thing on my mind. But my face must fall, because he instantly looks guilty, and he quickly adds, “Oh. Sorry. You don’t have to talk about it, if you don’t want to.”

“There was a guy in Vermont,” I admit. “It was doomed from the start. And, yeah, it didn’t end well.”

Jeremy’s quiet for a long moment. “Parker’s brother,” he finally says. “That’s who it was, wasn’t it?”

I nod. “Yeah.”

“Wow,” he murmurs. “You’d mentioned you got to know him, but I didn’t think... I mean, it’s just that I...”

I offer him a wry smile. “You didn’t think I’d do something that messed up?”

He carefully considers his response, his words slow and deliberate as he replies.

“I just wish I’d been there for you. No matter what happened, or how it went down. I just wish you’d had someone to lean on.”

I think of Brie, of how forgiving she’s been, and of everyone else at Harting who treated me better than I deserved.

“I had people to lean on,” I say. “Just not the ones I was expecting.”

Jeremy nods slowly. “It always seems to work out that way, doesn’t it?”

“Not always,” I say, nudging him gently in the side. “You came back.”

He shrugs, but my words seem to make him relax a little. “Yeah.” He looks back down at Camille, gently brushing a stray strand of hair from her face. “How are we going to save her?” he asks, his voice a whisper. “We only have seven days left.”

I bite my lip. “I’m doing everything I can.”

“I know,” he says. “I’ve never questioned that. But maybe there’s some other way to get money... Maybe I could try to get a loan, or—”

I shake my head, cutting him off. “I’ve looked into it. There’s no way to get a loan for the amount we’d need. And even if we could, it’d take weeks to process all the paperwork for it, and we still wouldn’t have Dad’s approval to extend the life support, and...”

I trail off, realizing I probably shouldn’t be talking about this right in front of Camille. I open up the campaign page again, replying to a couple of new, non-angry messages and thanking people for their support. Part of me wants to add at the end of the messages,
“But it’s still not enough,”
even though I know it’s not their fault.

“Lea?” Jeremy says, his tone quiet and hesitant.

I glance up. “What?”

He nods to Camille. “No matter how any of this turns out, you were right. Camille’s worth fighting for.”

“I know,” I murmur.

A wobbly smile lifts his lips. “Of course you know,” he says softly. “You’ve always known.”

Chapter Forty-Seven

When we get back to the house that evening, Mom’s car is in the driveway. Jeremy won’t quit staring at it, his eyebrows drawn together in a pained expression. He nearly trips on the stairs leading up to the front door, and finally shakes his head and lets out a long sigh.

“Might as well get this over with,” he says, unlocking the door and pushing it open.

Our house smells like it always does, a mix of freshly-vacuumed carpet and potpourri. The scent seems strangely out of place as I walk inside, almost like it’s too normal. Dad’s waiting for us in the living room, looking just as haggard as he did this morning.