Total pages in book: 24
Estimated words: 21955 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 110(@200wpm)___ 88(@250wpm)___ 73(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 21955 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 110(@200wpm)___ 88(@250wpm)___ 73(@300wpm)
She didn’t answer, but just started swimming away from me. I followed, keeping pace right behind her, grabbing her feet once in a while. But she wasn’t laughing—I could see by her face that she was still pretty pissed at me. I didn’t feel like bugging her any more, so I just started swimming. I knew her well enough to know that she’d get over it faster if I left her alone. We were both going parallel to the shoreline, and I figured she would swim enough to get over being mad, and then we could go back to hanging out. I wished I could take her in my arms.
So I just focused on the feeling of slicing through the water, and pulled ahead of Julia easily. I swam until I was starting to get tired, and then stopped to let Julia catch up. I scanned the water. Very few people were swimming. I didn’t see her among them. I started to swim back the way I had come, thinking I’d just missed seeing her—she looked a lot different with wet hair.
But she was nowhere.
Julia was gone.
Julia
“Seriously, Mom?”
“Yes, seriously, Julia. I was perfectly serious when I invited Nick to dinner, and he sounded perfectly serious on the phone when he said he would come.” My mom is kind of a smart-ass, but I wasn’t in the mood for it.
“I thought you knew I didn’t want to see him.” I rubbed the handle of a silver fork with the felt polishing cloth to avoid making eye contact with her.
My mom sighed. She sighed her way through my teen years, and here she was sighing again. She had also been through a lot after the car accident, and when I was in the wheelchair, she quit her job to take care of me. So I hated to give her a hard time, but this mattered to me.
“Why are you doing this to me?” I said.
“I’m not doing anything to you,” Mom said, rubbing the bowl of a tablespoon. “ He’s my son—”
“Stepson. Step!”
“Good lord. Okay, stepson. I don’t know what difference it makes. ‘Stepson’ sounds so cold. And we all know how everyone feels about stepmothers.” She made a goofy face then, trying to get me to smile, but I just couldn’t.
“It’s just more accurate. He’s not your real son.”
“He may not be my biological son, but I can still care about him, can’t I?” I made an annoyed sound, but my mom kept going. “And your father misses him, Julia. Even though he knows Nick was wrong, he still loves him.” I didn’t mind her calling Joe my dad—I called him Dad half the time myself. But that was different!
“Well, fine. I was planning to go to the library tonight anyway. I can just leave early and grab dinner in the cafeteria,” I said.
“Julia, I want you to be here.”
“Even knowing how I feel? Why?”
“Because it’s time you forgave him. Look how he’s making amends! Not every brother would give that kind of money to the hospital that saved his sister’s life.”
“Step! Step! Why can’t you say step!”
She sighed again. “It’s time to let this go. More than two years have gone by. And look at you! You’re fine now! Accidents happen. I don’t understand why you can’t just forgive and move on.”
I took the silver pie server out of its place in the mahogany case. This silver was my mom’s pride, inherited from her grandmother. I polished the shiny surface until I could see my face in it. Maybe Mom was right. Maybe if I just forgave him I could forget about everything and go forward in my life. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? My face looked distorted, ugly, in the smooth silver utensil. I didn’t want to forgive him. I just wanted the benefits, the clear light feeling of letting it all go and walking into my future. Happy. Not bitter. Not alone.
Something occurred to me. “Hey. This silver. We’re polishing this silver for him? For Nick? For him to come to dinner?”
“Yes.” My mom wouldn’t meet my eye. “I thought it would be nice.”
“I thought you only used it for Christmas.”
“And special occasions.”
“What special occasions? You never used it for birthdays, or your anniversary, or my graduation. What’s so special about this?
“It just…seemed right.” Mom might have been blushing a little, but I couldn’t tell.
“Because he’s so rich now? Is that it?” I sounded like a teenager, but I didn’t care.
“Not that he’s rich, but he’s used to having things nice….” She was blushing.
“I can’t believe this! He used to eat cold pizza for breakfast right out of the box! And after what he did, now he rates Grandma Tremaine’s silver?”
“Julia—”
“This is bullshit, Mom!”
“It’s not just that he’s rich. I want…. I want our family back. I want things to be okay again, like they were. That’s what’s so special, that’s—”