Shattered Truth

Hell had found me.

I wasn’t surprised. I’d always known it would catch up to me. It wasn’t the sort of thing you could out run after what I had done. And yet, I still felt as if I’d just been kicked in the stomach.

“What did you say?” I asked in stunned disbelief.

“They’re in town,” Seth, my best friend since kindergarten repeated while shoving his hands into his jeans pockets.

I sat down heavily on my bed, no longer able to hold myself upright. Memories swam across my vision, blurring everything out around me. I lowered my head into my hands and fought to keep my breathing even.

“You’re sure?” I asked after a moment of tense silence. “You’re absolutely sure?”

Seth stood quietly for a few seconds before answering on a defeated sigh, “Yeah. I’m sure. I saw them shopping on Main.”

My breathing hitched as panic clawed its way up my throat.

I felt rather than saw him come towards me. His approach was slow and careful, as if he were afraid the slightest misstep would send me fleeing from the room. He stopped once he was directly in front of me and knelt down till his head was level with mine. His callused finger traced my jawline from the bottom of my earlobe to the tip of my chin, and then with a gentle nudge he tilted my face up out of my hands so that I was looking directly into his familiar green eyes.

“Maybe you saw wrong,” I whispered desperately. “Maybe the people you saw just looked like them.”

Seth held my eyes for a moment before slowly shaking his head, an emotion closely resembling sympathy and faint regret blooming across his features. “Wes….”

He hesitated, taking an extra second to silently contemplate what he was about to say before voicing it. Then in the most apologetic tone I’d ever heard, “They stopped and said hi to me.”

I felt the last of my strength fall away from me like the petals of a dying flower on a cold winter day. The world tilted sideways as I slumped over on my bed and folded up into the fetal position. My arms wrapped around my knees in a grip so brutally constricting that both my hands went numb. If only the rest of me would follow suit.

The pain I’d worked so long and hard at keeping safely buried inside of me reared its ugly head with a swiftness and force that stole my breath away. My day of reckoning had finally arrived.

“Wesley look at me,” Seth quietly pleaded.

He grasped at my wrists, gently prying apart my white knuckled hands and unwinding my stiff arms from around my legs. His hands moved from my wrists to my ice cold hands and I couldn’t help but marvel at how he pulled them to his chest and cradled them like they were the most precious objects in the world. Though every inch of me was wracked with agony and all I really wanted to do was pull so far into myself I’d completely disappear, I knew that I couldn’t do that. I had to at least try and hold myself together for the sake of person kneeling in front of me.

Seth was…well my everything. He was my childhood playmate, my partner in crime, my best friend. He was the one and only person who had stuck with me through everything; the good, the bad, and even the horrifically ugly. I knew I didn’t deserve to be happy, but Seth did. And for reasons I would never understand, his happiness seemed to be directly tethered to mine.

I lifted my eyelids and focused everything I had left in me on my best friend. The expression he wore was one of acute pain and concern. It was etched in every line of his face; a face I knew almost as well as my own. I hated to see him like this. He shouldn’t look this way because of me. He should be smiling like the laid-back, fun loving guy I knew he was.

Slowly, I pulled one of my hands from his and reached up to smooth my index finger over his furrowed brow. His expression softened at the contact. Suddenly he released my other hand and stood up. “Shove over for me,” he said nudging my thigh with his hip.

I scooted myself over a bit and immediately felt a sense of calm and relief drift over my tormented soul as Seth lay down next to me. He turned so that we were lying face-to-face and pulled me to him till our legs overlapped and wound around each other’s. He reached for both of my hands and pulled them to his chest as he had before. I looked at his big masculine hands surrounding mine and tried to pinpoint when exactly my best friend had made the transformation from a gangly, freckle-cheeked, precocious little boy to the tall, muscled, beautiful young man before me.

My eyes trailed a path from his warm capable hands, up his strong arms, across his broad chest, along the column of his neck, and then finally rested on his angel’s face. His eyes were steadily trained on me in a way that was so incredibly intent it was frightening. Instantly, I knew something was wrong.

“Seth?”

His lips pursed. “She asked about you.”

I inhaled sharply, completely and utterly shocked.

His thumbs began to trace patterns over my knuckles. “She wanted to know how you were doing with school. Whether or not you’re working. Stuff like that.”

My heart pounded so heavily it felt like it might burst through the walls of my chest. Echoes of the past shouldered its way out of the darkest recesses of my mind and filled my head with memories of pitiful wails and tortured sobbing.

“Wesley.”

I blinked and attempted to focus again on Seth.

“Willow asked to see you.”

I couldn’t breathe.

Seth’s forehead gently pressed against my own. “Please say something,” he begged.

I swallowed. “Why?”

“So I know you’re okay?”

I shook my head. “No I meant…why would she want to see me?”

Seth pushed some of my tangled hair away from my face as he silently considered my question. “Because she loves you.”

A hysterical sob finally forced its way through my lips and a torrential downpour of tears began to spill down my cheeks.

“I don’t know if I can,” I choked out. “I don’t know if I can face her again.”

Seth pulled me as tightly to himself as he could, almost as if he were trying to absorb some of my pain through his touch. He rocked me and caressed my arms as he whispered soothing words in my ears. Just exactly like he had that fateful night two and half years ago.

********

I sat curled in a tight ball on one of the many uncomfortable yet pragmatic plastic chairs that were housed in the building, holding myself together the only way I knew how. I looked a fright. My eyes were practically swollen shut from all of the crying I’d done, and dried tears and snot was smeared all over my face. I was exhausted to the point of passing out, but sleep was impossible.

I didn’t think I’d ever sleep again.

I replayed the events of the last hour over and over again in my head, ravaging my memories for answers to my questions. How had this happened? What could I have done differently? Why hadn’t I known something was wrong?

But no matter how many times I asked these same questions over and over again, the answer remained the same: I don’t know.

I was defeated. Annihilated to the point of being unrecognizable. Completely and absolutely destroyed.

Shouts echoed from the opposite end of the hallway and my eyes shifted toward the sound. Everything inside of me seized up.

They were running toward me, expressions of panic and fear streaked across both their faces. My sister reached me first.

“Where is he?” she hysterically demanded. “Tell me where he is.”

I looked at my beautiful sister’s face, a face so like my own. Older, though only by a few years, and just a bit softer since embarking on the journey of motherhood. But almost an exact replica otherwise.

Years worth of memories crowded my vision. Every one contained my big sister in some shape or form. Our heads bent closely together as we accessorized our Barbie dolls. Her worried expression hovering over me after I’d just fallen out of our favorite climbing tree and broken my arm. Her raising up the corner of her comforter so that I could slide in with her during a thunderstorm. Ducking under a flying diary as she screamed at me for invading her privacy. Her standing behind me as she artfully arranged curls she’d spent all afternoon creating for my senior prom. Standing at her side in a sage green tea-length dress and holding her bridal bouquet for her as she exchanged vows with her college sweetheart. Watching her face illuminate as she looked down at the beautiful baby boy she’d just delivered.

“He’s gone,” I whispered.

She jerked back from me like I’d slapped her. “No,” she said flatly while shaking her head. “No, I don’t believe it.”

My brother-in-law, Derek, was now by her side. He knelt down in front of me and grabbed my hands in a grip so tight my fingertips turned white and tingled.

“Wesley, explain to me what happened,” he pleaded.

I’d been so sure there wasn’t a single tear left inside of me. But I was wrong. They paved wet salty tracks down my cheeks and dripped off my chin onto my knees. I looked around my brother-in-law for my sister. She stood behind him, her chest heaving as she took huge breaths. Her hands were clenched at her sides and her eyes were glued to me waiting for an answer.

I opened my mouth to try and explain, but the words stuck in my throat.

In a burst of movement, my sister shoved Derek out of the way and fell to her knees in front of me. Her eyes were fierce and desperate. “Wes, tell me it isn’t true,” she begged. “Tell me this is just a dream.” Tears began to pour down her cheeks as her voice frantically rose. “Tell me my baby boy is going to be okay!”

I shook my head in complete and utter defeat before brokenly whispering, “I can’t.”

In all the years of my life, my sister’s only ever looked at me with love. Even when she was extremely annoyed with me or worried or infuriated, love was always present in her eyes. But with those two words, every ounce of love she had ever felt for me went out of her eyes like a snuffed out flame. She withered, folding in half till her forehead rested on the plastic chair beside me. And then she released a tortured wail unlike anything I’d ever heard before, like the sound of something dying from the inside out.

My heart shattered for a second time that night.

Not sure of how else to help her, I reached out and placed a tentative hand on her shoulder. She reared back and flung my hand off of her like she couldn’t stand my touch and then turned and pinned me with a look so full of hatred I couldn’t breathe.

“Don't touch me,” she hissed.

I sucked in a shallow breath. “I’m sorry Willow.” My shoulders began to shake as sobs wracked my already bone-weary body. “I’m so, so sorry….”

“I don’t care how sorry you are!” she screamed in my face, spittle flying from her lips. “I trusted you, Wesley! I trusted you with the most important thing in the world to me. My son. My baby boy. And you KILLED him!”

I felt frozen. Chilled to the very depths of my soul. She was right. She was absolutely right. I had killed my sister’s son. My nephew.

“Mr. & Mrs. Prescott?”

Willow and Derek simultaneously turned toward the questioning voice and then lurched to their feet when they recognized the inquirer with his white coat and ceil blue scrubs as someone of medical importance and more to the point someone who could answer their questions since it seemed I could not.

“Yes, yes that’s us,” my brother-in-law confirmed while rushing forward with his arm protectively wrapped around my sister’s shoulders. “Where’s our son?”

The doctor’s expression turned grave. “He’s right here,” he answered while motioning to the room directly to his right. I watched as Willow made a move to head inside, but was quickly halted by the doctor. “Mrs. Prescott, please wait.”

Eyes flashing she turned on the doctor. “I want to see my son,” she said with steel in her voice, shoulders set and determined. “Now.”

“I understand ma’am,” he assured in a soothing tone, “but before you go in there I need to make sure you know what you’re walking into.” Regret blossomed across his features.

And just like that, all of my sister’s bravado disappeared and she seemed to quietly cave in on herself like a Mylar balloon slowly deflating.

She knew now. Really and truly knew.

“Mr. and Mrs. Prescott…” The doctor paused, looked down at his hands, and shook his head as if angry with himself. Then after a short breath, continued with grim resolve. “I truly hate to have to tell you this…but your son didn’t make it.” Whole-hearted sympathy reverberated in his voice, “I’m so incredibly sorry.”

Derek, who until this point had just barely managed to remain a calm, steady pillar for my sister, finally fell apart. His arm dropped from around Willow’s shoulders and he bent in half, sobs wracking his tall slender frame.

Wetness yet again streamed down my cheeks at the sight and all I could think was how I’d done this. How I was responsible for all the agony and suffering ensuing right in front of my eyes.

How this whole situation was all my fault.

My gaze moved to my sister then, and what I saw utterly terrified me. She was staring at the doctor, her face perfectly vacant of any expression. No sorrow. No pain. Not even anger. She just looked…empty.

“We did absolutely everything we could,” the doctor continued feelingly, though it was clear to me that both my sister and brother-in-law were no longer listening. The doctor continued to explain things in hushed tones for a short while longer. Then finally:

“Are you ready to go in?”

Willow looked to Derek then turned back to the doctor and nodded her head. Almost as an afterthought, the doctor glanced at me over my sister’s shoulder and asked, “Would you like your sister to come too?”

I opened my mouth to hastily decline, but felt myself give pause when my sister briefly looked back at me. The expression on her face….

“She’s not my sister,” Willow stated flatly.

All the air in my lungs whooshed out of me in one breath. I watched numbly as she grabbed Derek’s hand and walked into the room my nephew was in without looking back. The doctor shot me a sympathetic glance before following closely behind.

I sat unmoving and stared blankly at the space Willow had inhabited just seconds ago, replaying her words over and over again in my head. A strange feeling of disconnect floated over my body and I found myself standing on legs that were shaky and uncoordinated.

She didn’t want me here. I had to leave.

I went through the motions of making my way down the hall to the elevator and pressed a button that looked like an arrow pointing down. It lit up red. I wondered briefly why I wasn’t reacting to what my sister had just said. I should feel angry or hurt or…anything really. But I didn’t.

I felt absolutely nothing.

The elevator’s stainless steel doors slid open and my eyes landed on a sight that instantaneously pulled me from the haze of numbness I was helplessly drowning in. He’d come.

Seth had come.

“Wesley,” he breathed my name as if it was a sacred prayer.

I felt myself rush towards him, desperate for his touch. And then I was there, colliding into his familiar form, instantly wrapped up in his tranquil warmth. I clutched him to me as if he were the only thing in this world that could heal my battered soul. As if he were the only person capable of putting the shattered pieces of my self back together again. As if he were my savior.

“I’m here. I’ve got you,” he whispered soothingly into my hair.

“Please don’t let me go,” I begged.

He squeezed me to him tighter. “I won’t,” he vowed. “I promise. I won’t ever let you go.”

********

It had taken almost two hours to calm myself to the point of being able to talk coherently again and as a result I was physically and emotionally drained to the point of being delirious.

“What should I do?” I rasped, my voice hoarse from exhaustion.

My head rose and fell on Seth’s broad chest as he took a deep breath of consideration. “I don’t know,” he finally answered.

I tilted my head up to look more closely at my best friend. One of his arms was wrapped around me, the other folded behind his head. He was staring straight up at the ceiling, a frown on his face. I twisted from where I was tucked into Seth’s side to my stomach and used my forearms to pull myself up along his body so I could look directly into his face.

“What are you thinking about?” I asked curiously.

His eyes remained on the ceiling. “You,” he answered simply.

“What about me?”

He turned and looked at me. “About how I don’t remember the last time I’ve seen you truly happy.”

I was arrested by the intensity of his gaze.

“And how seeing Willow again could maybe change that.”

I rolled his words around in my head, weighing their significance. “And what if it doesn’t? What if…what if I never get over what happened?” I hesitated before voicing the worst of my fears. “What if Will never forgives me?” I finished in a faint whisper.

“Then you’ll get through it,” he answered with quiet conviction. “And I’ll do everything in my power to help you get through it.”

I looked at Seth again. Really looked at him. And suddenly I realized I trusted him more than anything else in this world. And if he, for whatever crazy reason, believed I could do this, then I’d do it. “Okay.”

His eyebrows rose. “Okay?”

“Okay,” I repeated with a nod. “But only if you’re there with me.”

The right corner of his mouth hitched up in an adorable grin. “I’ll always be there for you. Don’t you know that by now?”

********

My eyes darted anxiously around the restaurant as I fidgeted in my chair and ran my fingers along the chain of my necklace. Seth had gotten it for me last year on the anniversary of my nephew’s death. The chain was sterling silver and hanging from it was a single silver letter “S” for Sam. Samuel Derek Prescott. My Sammy.

“Wes.”

I looked to my right and found Seth eying me with concern.

“You okay?”

I felt like running from the room. I felt like I was going to throw up. I felt light headed and tingly all over. Any or all would have worked. But I didn’t tell Seth that. Instead, I merely nodded.

He grabbed the hand that had been nervously fiddling with my necklace and kept a firm hold on it, somehow anchoring my chaotic thoughts to the earth.

“You are such a horrible liar,” he muttered affectionately with a rueful shake of his head. “But I guess I can’t really complain about it since it’s one of the many things about you I fell in love with.”

I turned toward him with a startled frown, more than a little taken aback by his choice of wording. I had told Seth I loved him at least hundreds of times if not more, and vice versa. But never, ever had one of us said anything about being “in love” with the other before, and to hear it fall so easily from his lips was shocking to say the least.

“What did you just say?” I asked incredulously.

He flashed a knowing and shockingly sensual grin. “You heard me.”

My mouth dropped open. Who was this and what had he done with my best friend? “But….”

“Wesley?”

My mouth snapped shut and my head involuntarily jerked towards the voice that had just called my name. Though I hadn’t heard the sound of it in over two years, I knew without a doubt who it belonged to. Willow.

It took me only a few seconds to find her in the crowd. She was weaving back and forth between people, fighting to make her way to our table. Something about the way she moved struck me as not quite right and yet strangely familiar. I gasped when I finally saw the reason why.

She was pregnant.

Immediately I turned to Seth. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I demanded.

“It wasn’t for me to tell,” he answered simply.

And as much as I wanted to argue with that reasoning, I couldn’t.

Faint stirrings of the panic I’d experienced earlier reemerged with a vengeance and I felt my heart start to race and my hands get clammy with nervous fear. A tremor ran throughout my whole body and I fought the urge to get up and flee.

Suddenly Seth was there. Right next to me. Turning my face towards his. “Wes, it’s going to be okay. Relax.”

I squeezed my eyes tightly shut and nodded my head. “I know, I know. I’m trying. I just can’t seem to calm myself down.”

“Do you trust me?”

My eyes popped open at the strange inquiry. I had no idea why he was asking me this right now, but whatever the reason the answer was always the same.

“Infinitely.”

The worried expression on his face melted into a soft, relieved smile. “Good.” And then he kissed me.

In that moment my whole world changed. Everything I thought I knew about love and friendship rearranged itself till all that I could see, hear, smell, think, and feel was Seth. My best friend. My savior. My home.

His lips released mine and then returned for a brief but incredibly satisfying second kiss. I had never been so calm and relaxed in my life.

“I’m glad to see you guys finally realized that you’re perfect for each other.”

I blinked and turned to find my very pregnant sister directing a face-splitting grin at Seth and I from across the table.

“I’ve always known,” Seth replied matter-of-factly. “I’ve just been waiting on Wes to figure it out.”

Willow smiled fondly at Seth. “Well I’m glad you waited then.” She turned and rested her familiar eyes on me. “Lord knows she deserves it.”

I shook my head in confusion feeling like I had accidently stepped into an alternate universe. This wasn’t going at all the way I had imagined.

She stood before us in awkward silence for a few moments before finally asking, “May I?” while pointing to the chair in front of her.

I nodded.

She gingerly lowered herself into the chair across from Seth and I, set her purse on the ground at her feet, and then focused all her attention on me. “Thank you.”

I frowned in honest confusion. “For what?”

She anxiously fiddled with her hands. “For seeing me.” A short laugh escaped her lips. “You know I’ve thought about this moment a lot. What I would say. How you might react.” She paused. “Whether or not this is fixable.”

She ran a hand through her hair, a nervous habit I’d seen her execute thousands of times before. “You look older,” she finally said. “Beautiful, but older.”

I fidgeted awkwardly under her unwavering stare. “Well I am older.”

“Yes,” she nodded in agreement. “You are. But on you it looks different.”

I had no response for that. I wasn’t sure I knew what she meant.

“It’s your eyes. “ She hesitated, “It’s like there’s a lifetime’s worth of pain in your eyes, Wes.”

I felt my breath lodge in my chest.

She looked down at the table. “And it’s all my fault,” she finished in a voice wrought with regret.

I sat for a moment, stock-still. Processing the words that had just left her lips. This didn’t make any sense.

“But it isn’t,” I stated with certainty. “It’s mine.”

My sister looked at me then, and I mean really looked at me. Emotion after emotion scrolled across her features in rapid succession. Confusion. Shock. And finally, horrified amazement. “You truly believe that don’t you?”

My mouth opened and then promptly shut again. What else was I supposed to believe?

Her eyes locked on Seth who, thus far, had sat quietly throughout the whole exchange steadily holding my hand like he’d never let go. “Seth? Is that really what she believes?” Willow asked.

Seth turned to look at me for a second, silently asking permission to answer Willow’s question. I shrugged helplessly. I had no idea what I wanted anymore.

I watched his jaw work as he quietly contemplated what to do. He then sat up straight and set his shoulders, a sort of grim determination infusing throughout his body. He turned back towards my sister and leveled a look on her I’d never before seen on his face while slowly and distinctly answering, “It’s what you made her believe.”

I inhaled sharply and then turned to see how my sister would react to the accusation.

Her eyes were closed and she was wincing as if physically in pain.

Panic consumed me as I desperately grasped for a way to fix this. “Will, Seth didn’t mean that,” I hastily reassured her. “He’s just saying it for my sake and…”

Seth turned on me then and I found myself momentarily stunned into silence at the emotion on his face. He was infuriated. Livid. More angry than I’ve ever seen him before in my life.

“God Damn it Wes, stop it!” he yelled at me. My mouth fell open. Seth didn’t yell. Ever. “Just fucking stop!” My mouth dropped open a little wider. And he definitely never cursed at me.

I swallowed convulsively. “Stop what?” I whispered.

I watched his sudden burst of anger melt away from him as he haphazardly ran his hand through his harvest wheat hair. “Stop defending Willow,” he finally replied on a tired sigh.

“I’m not…”

“Yes. You are.” He then pinned me with a look so full of love and adoration that my heart stuttered for a second. “I can’t watch you take the blame for something that wasn’t your fault anymore. I just can’t.”

I had no words. Not one.

He turned back towards Willow and warily continued. “I won’t sit here and pretend that I have even the slightest clue of what it’s like to lose what you lost or to go through what you went through. It would be ignorant and honestly just plain stupid to do so. What I do know, though, better than anyone, is what your little sister went through.” He rubbed the back of his neck with a shaky hand and the color leaked from his face as he recalled memories of a time I honestly don’t remember much of. “I’ve had to watch your sister punish herself for what happened with Sammy every single day for the past two and a half years. Every. Single. Day. I watched her lose a dangerous amount of weight because she stopped eating and anytime I’d try and force her to eat she couldn’t ever stomach it for more than a half hour before she’d get sick and throw it back up.”

I frowned at the memory. In the two months that had immediately followed Sam’s death and my return to school and the dorms, I lost 36 lbs. It’s scary to think about now, about how physically damaging that had been on my already small frame. But at the time I hadn’t even realized what was going on. I didn’t notice at all the pounds falling off me like the leaves on a tree on brisk autumn day. All I knew was the thought of eating was intolerable.

Seth finally figured out that the best way to keep me fed was to have me drink the same high calorie protein shakes that his college athlete buddies used to bulk up. A low amount of intake that was easy on my stomach, and yet still packed with tons of calories had been just the trick. Skip forward five months and thanks to Seth’s genius problem solving skills I had gained the majority of my weight back and luckily my appetite.

“I watched her cry herself to sleep for hours and hours every single night. And after she’d finally cry herself into exhaustion and doze off, I had to listen to her scream in agony from her nightmares. Nightmares that no amount of sleeping pills would get rid of.”

The nightmares had lasted close to a year. Again, I don’t really remember much from that period in my life, but what little I do remember entails me walking around campus like a zombie from lack of sleep and Seth always being there to help with school. I’m about 99% sure I would have flunked out that year if not for him.

The nightmares eventually faded though. Seth and I figured out that I slept more soundly when he slept with me. Apparently he was my living nightmare shield. At first, I hated asking him to stay with me. I already relied on him for so much, asking him to do one more thing for me felt manipulative and just plain wrong. But he never seemed to mind. And when it was all said and done, my need for sleep overrode my conscience.

The crying myself to sleep, however, had not been so easily resolved. To be honest, I still did it from time to time. Even when Seth was there.

“And to this very day, I still watch her deny herself things she wants. Things she needs. Things she deserves,” Seth revealed, frustration roughening his deep voice. “All because she doesn’t believe she has the right to be happy. All because you made her believe on the day of Sammy’s death that it was all her fault,” he spit, undisguised venom dripping from his words. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to watch the person you care most about in this world do that to themselves? What it’s like to try and convince them over and over again that they didn’t do anything wrong, yet all the while knowing that it doesn’t matter how many times you tell her, she’ll never believe you. To know that the only one she’ll believe is the person who made her believe it in the first place?”

Seth’s chest was heaving with the effort it took for him to breathe.

Self-loathing and guilt hit me like a punch to the gut. I knew there had been times when Seth had been frustrated, or angry, or just plain worried sick for me. But I had never really understood just how hard it had been for him. How much the things I had done and still do hurt him.

And yet he’d stayed with me through it all.

I was compelled by the sudden urge to throw my arms around him and never let go. To find a way to show him that I appreciated everything he’d done for me. To do something, anything, that would make him see how much he meant to me.

Though I despised doing it, I switched my focus from Seth to my sister. She was looking at me with an expression wrought with sorrow. A single solitary tear fell down her cheek, glimmering in the afternoon light before falling on the table. She sniffled and then shook her head, answering Seth’s earlier question. “No. I don’t know what that’s like.”

Seth leaned back in his chair appearing drained yet strangely satisfied. “That’s right, you don’t.” There was a short moment of silence, and then Seth’s voice floated into the air, low and regretful, “I know things were really bad for you too, Will. And I know I’m being unfair,” he admitted. “But God damn it, you almost took her from me.” He bit his lip. “You almost destroyed her.”

Willow’s chin quivered with emotion and her face had paled to a ghostly shade of white. “Christ,” she whispered. “I’ve made such a mess of things.”

A transient quiet filled the space between us. Filled it till it was brimming with unspoken words of emotion. Remorse, anguish, despair…

“Wesley.”

Like a moth to a flame, I turned toward my sister’s voice.

“Sam’s death wasn’t your fault.”

A ball of emotion lodged painfully in my throat. I fiercely shook my head, hating myself for wanting so badly to believe the lies flowing from her mouth.

“It was my fault,” I whispered brokenly.

“No. It wasn’t,” my sister said more firmly. “It was nobody’s fault. It was an accident.”

Tears welled up in my eyes and desperately clung for purchase at the corners. “But you said…”

“I was wrong,” she cut me off angrily. I flinched. I’d always hated it when Willow got angry with me.

“Wes…” she paused, swallowing convulsively. “I was angry.”

“I know,” I replied. “At me.”

Willow sadly shook her head. “Not just at you. After Sam died, I was angry at everything and everyone for a very long time. I was mad at God for him taking Sam away from me. I was mad at the doctors for not finding a way to save him. I was mad at Derek for not remembering to take the wedge out of his crib after I’d asked him to. I was livid with myself for not just doing it myself as soon as I’d learned it was dangerous. I was a mess, Wesley. A completely self-destructive mess.” A bitter laugh escaped her lips. “You and I are a lot a like, huh?”

I shook my head in denial. “But I went to sleep. I shouldn’t have gone to sleep,” I insisted.

Seth scooted his chair closer to mine and reached under my hair to lay a comforting hand on the back of my neck. He lazily stroked the skin there like he always did when I got anxious and needed help calming down.

“Sam died from SIDS. Not because you fell asleep.”

“But if I’d just checked on him earlier…” I went on with my eyes shut, picturing myself going though the motions. Imagining myself picking up my rosy cheeked, happily smiling Sammy from his crib.

“Wes...”

“Or if I had just let him sleep on my chest like I normally did when I watched him, maybe he’d still be alive.” If I concentrated hard enough, I could almost feel Sammy’s soft, warm body on mine, rising and falling with every tiny breath he took.

“Wesley, stop!”

I blinked and suddenly I was no longer with my sweet nephew, but back in a restaurant with my sister and best friend; both of them looking at me with concern.

“You can’t keep doing this to yourself,” Willow said quietly. “Trust me, I’ve played the what-if game and it never ends well.” Sadness swallowed up her features. “It doesn’t change anything. All you end up doing is driving yourself crazy.”

My mouth opened and closed once. Twice. And then, “I don’t know how to stop,” I admitted. “Some days it’s all I can think about.”

Willow reached tentatively across the table and placed her warm hand over my ice cold ones. “Then we’ll help you.”

“You’ll help me?”

Willow released a sound that was half laughter half sob. “God, the fact that you even have to ask me that….” She ran a shaky hand through her hair. “If you’ll let me, yes. Of course I’ll help you. It’s the least I can do after what I’ve put you through.”

The words coming from her mouth sounded so alien to me. Wrong.

“I wish you’d stop saying stuff like that,” I murmured.

My sister flashed me a watery smile. “And I really wish you’d believe me when I say it wasn’t your fault, but that’s not going to happen anytime soon is it?”

I frowned then brusquely shook my head.

“Then I guess we’re at an impasse.”

Silence enveloped the table.

“So what now?” Seth asked. “Where do we go from here?”

“Well,” Willow began hesitantly, “I would completely understand if you wouldn’t want to come, but if you’re free and want to go, I wondered if you’d like to come to Olive’s baby shower.”

Seth frowned. “Who?”

Willow smiled at me and placed a loving hand over her burgeoning belly. “Derek and I’s little girl—Olive.”

Hot tears welled up in my eyes and spilled unhindered down my cheeks. Seth turned to me in concern. “Woah, hey now. What’s the matter?”

I couldn’t answer him because all I could do is look at my sister. “You’re naming her Olive?”

She nodded and looked at me as if she was begging me to understand.

And finally I did. I really did. And it was the most beautiful revelation in the world.

Willow didn’t blame me.

She loved me.

Seth looked back and forth between us, a perplexed expression settling over his features, “I don’t understand.”

I smiled at my sister, a big, huge, open smile. My first true smile in two and a half years, and it was like the darkness living in my soul had dissipated to nothing and all that was left was an all-encompassing feeling of joy.

I turned to Seth and pulled our clasped hands up to my mouth, pressing his knuckles against my lips. He looked at me, at my glowing face, and a small grin of his own pulled at the corners of his lips.

“There she is,” he said to me as he reverently placed a hand to my cheek. “God I’ve missed you.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

He shook his head. “Don’t be. I’m just glad your back.”

“Me too.” And then I leaned forward and kissed him with all the happiness and love I felt living and breathing inside of me.

My sister cleared her throat and an embarrassed laugh escaped my lips as I pulled away from Seth. He looked down at me, green eyes sparkling, and shook his head like he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing.

“Wes, explain to me what’s going on,” he pleaded.

I turned to my sister and found her watching us with fondness. “Explain it for me?”

She nodded then looked at Seth. “For the longest time I absolutely hated that our parents named her Wesley.” She laughed. “I was convinced everyone would think she was a little boy. They of course named her that anyway, but to appease me they let me pick her middle name: Olivia. And because I’m stubborn, I refused to call her by Wesley or Wes after she was born...only Olivia. After a few years, Olivia somehow got shortened to Olive.”

I looked to Seth and watched as understanding settled over his features. “I’ve never heard you call her that.”

“It was only when we were kids,” I interjected quietly. “And she never did it around other people.”

“It was our thing and our thing alone,” Willow explained while flashing me a secret smile.

Seth nodded at Willow’s tummy. “So you’re naming her after Wesley,” he says.

Willow looked at me and me alone. “I’m naming my daughter after the most amazingly beautiful, intelligent, strong-willed, wonderful human being I’ve ever known.” She swallowed and continued thickly. “The most important girl in the world to me…” She swiped at a few stray tears that had escaped her eyes. “And hope to God that she’ll someday forgive me for not being there for her when she needed me most. And for not doing my best to let her know how much I need and want her in my life and hopefully in my daughter’s life.”

Love. So much love it crowded out everything in the room around us. Shining so bright from her eyes that it nearly blinded me.

“You just did let me know.” I said while reaching across and grasping my big sister’s hand. “You just did.”