Page 86 of The Way Back Home

CHAPTER FORTY

August

IDIDN’T LEAVE BETT’Sroom all morning. I couldn’t. I didn’t wanna see Olivia packing up her stuff. If she wants to leave I won’t stop her. She’s right. Olivia Anders is better off without me. I can’t make her stay because I don’t deserve her.

Bett is miserable about it. She tried throwing me out of her room, but luckily for me, she is just four years old and too weak to physically remove me.

Olivia closes the front door, and her footsteps echo up the stairs, and then the hallway toward us. She knocks on Bett’s door, even though it’s open and we’re both already looking up at her. “Hey, I’m about ready to leave. I just wanted to say goodbye, and thank you.” She ducks her head to meet Bett’s gaze. “Both of you.”

“Do you weally have to go, Wivvie?” Bett asks, bursting into tears again.

“I really do,” she says, jamming her hands in the back pockets of her shorts. There are tears in her eyes, but she clears her throat and blinks them back as Bettina tucks her head into my chest and sobs. “But hey, you’ll see me soon, and if it’s okay with your brother you can come visit Betty and me any time you want.”

“I don’t want you to go.” She rubs her eyes with her tiny fists. She can barely get a breath, and it breaks my damn heart. “I don’t wanna vwisit. I want you hewre with me and Auggie.”

“I know, baby girl, but I can’t.”

“Why?”

Why? Wasn’t that the fucking million-dollar question?

I wait to see what she’ll tell my kid sister. I know it won’t be about me, even though I am the reason she’s leaving, the only reason. Because I can’t be trusted. Because I couldn’t keep from hurting her, and that makes me the worst kind of monster because I’m not even aware I was doing it half of the time.

“It’s just time I moved out and you and Auggie went back to having your house back.”

“But I don’t want you to go.”

“I know, sweetheart. But I promise I will come by and see you in a few days’ time. When you’re all better, maybe we can have some girl time, go get our hair done, paint our toes?”

“Otay,” she says between sobs, and my heart breaks. I know most people think I don’t have one. I’ve always kept it guarded, well before war. I’ve lost friends that way, because it seemed like I didn’t care—hell, for the most part, I don’t care—but that doesn’t count when it comes to my baby sister, and apparently not when it comes to Olivia. It’s funny that for so long I’ve felt half alive, a zombie, hollow-boned and empty inside, but I don’t feel half alive now. Now I’m wide awake, gasping for breath, hanging on to my humanity for dear life, and I’m fucking miserable for it. I’d rather be dead, because she’s leaving. She made me feel things I had no right to, and here I am, handing over what’s left of me, watching her walk away, and I only have myself to blame.

“Hey, don’t cry,” Olivia says as she hugs my sister, and Bett sobs into her arms. “This isn’t goodbye, Bettina.”

Bett cries harder, and I have to pull her away from Liv, protect her from the pain even though I’m the one who caused it.A clean break. Yeah, about as clean as walking away from a grenade. I hug my sister who cries out for Liv, and it breaks both our hearts, I can see that from the look in her eyes.

“Would you go already?” I snap.