4: 4
I looked at my brother's furious face.
And what came to mind was the way he used to hold me like something precious.
Once, a boy at school snatched my apple.
He chased that kid down and made his life hell for a whole semester.
When did it start to change?
Was it when Vanessa moved in with us for her college applications, and the caring little messages he'd send me every day just stopped?
Or was it when I came home for the holidays and found my room had become Vanessa's room?
I couldn't untangle it, and I didn't want to anymore.
“The doctor said suppressing my emotions looks like this.”
I repeated it calmly.
My parents didn't believe me.
“Because of you, Vanessa has to be a single mother for the rest of her life!”
“She suffered so much as a child, and it took everything we had to get her back!”
“And now she has to walk on eggshells around you!”
Erica watched me too, her expression complicated.
“Jemima, you're not the same. You used to be such a kind person.”
Godfrey came over and put a protective arm around me.
“Don't push her. She's just sick.”
“Once she's better, everything will be like it was.”
Like it was?
Kept stupidly in the dark by every one of them.
Thinking my life was happy?
I turned my body aside, away from Godfrey's reaching hand.
He sighed and pushed me into the room off to the side.
“Get some rest.”
Not that resting was optional.
I was strapped tight to the wheelchair by the restraints.
There was nothing I could do but close my eyes.
Outside the door, the laughter started up again.
Vanessa and Malcolm had everyone smiling and delighted.
Malcolm told on me in his hurt little voice.
He said that back at the hospital, when the others weren't around, I'd spat at him.
My brother couldn't sit still. The next second, the door was flung open.
He carried in a bucket of ice water and dumped it over me, soaking me head to foot.
“Jemima, you really are getting worse by the day!”
Malcolm ran in and pretended to explain on my behalf.
“Don't be angry, Uncle. Jemima just misses her little baby so much that she can't accept me right now.”
“I believe if I just act a little more like that little baby, Jemima will like me.”
My parents came in behind him.
“You prepared so many things for that child back then.”
Godfrey opened the closet and pulled out a dust-covered box.
The safety lock charm I'd finished so early.
The little wooden horse I'd carved with my own hands.
After I lost the baby, I locked them all away.
If anyone so much as mentioned them, I'd fall apart.
But now, all I had left was calm.
Malcolm's eyes lit up as he dug through the box, turning each thing over in his hands to play with.
His hand slipped.
The jade charm dropped to the floor and shattered.
Everyone looked at me tensely.
I didn't even lift an eyelid.
But Godfrey watched me, his brow drawn tight.
“No scene? That's not your temperament, Jemima.”
“You're thinking about how to get back at us, aren't you?”
“I won't give you the chance.”
He took out his phone and, right in front of me, called a fully locked-down psychiatric hospital two thousand miles away.
He told them to send people immediately to take me.
When two big men lifted me onto the transport van, I didn't say a word.
Godfrey's eyes went red.
“Jemima, I don't have a choice here.”
“Whenever I have time, I promise I'll come see you.”
I didn't look at him. I just gave a light wink to the staff who'd come to collect me.
Godfrey still didn't know.
There was no future between us.
Among that stack of documents he'd just signed was a divorce agreement.
Godfrey took his people home.
And found several officers waiting at the front door.
A girl who looked faintly like me climbed out of the patrol car, crying.
She rushed straight to my parents.
Threw herself into their arms and sobbed until she couldn't breathe.
“Dad, Mom! I finally found you.”
