26. Neavh

Two days after Clover's text about leaving town, David comes out of the house and finds me sweating and covered in a combination of grease, dirt, and some mystery stains I'd rather not think about.

"Neavh?" he says, his eyes going wide as he pauses halfway to his motorcycle. "What are you doing?"

I gesture at the bright yellow golf cart beside me and the array of cleaning products scattered along the driveway.

"Isn't it obvious?"

He shakes his head. "Um, no?"

"I'm cleaning the golf cart."

He squints at me and then pulls his phone out of his pocket to check the screen.

"You're cleaning the golf cart at…seven-thirty in the morning?"

I blink in surprise and then glance up at the sky to see the sun has moved a lot farther than I realized.

"Is it seven-thirty already?" I ask. "I started just past five."

"You started at five?" David's shocked voice echoes through the early morning quiet of the woods. "Why the hell were you up at five? You worked the late shift last night."

I nod, wobbling a little on my feet now that I've stopped cleaning. "Indeed I did. Thanks for putting that on my schedule, by the way. The tips were great."

He ignores my thanks as he comes over to grab me by the elbow and then slowly guides me to the front step of the house like I'm an escaped dog he found wandering the woods.

"You sit down," he orders. "I'll get you some water. Have you eaten anything? Did you even go to bed at all last night?"

I snatch my arm away and plant my hands on my hips. "David, I am fine."

He raises his eyebrows. "You're shaking, Neavh. You're not fine."

I look down at myself and realize he's right; my knees are trembling, and my fingers keep twitching too.

"Tabarnak," I curse under my breath.

"Sit," he orders. "Right now."

I make a show out of sighing, but I do as he says. He steps around me and disappears into the house for a moment before returning with a glass of water and a foil pack of gummy fruit snacks.

Normally, I'd be teasing him about being a grown man who stocks his cupboard with gummy fruit snacks, but now that I'm sitting, the shaking has gotten worse. My head is spinning so fast I have to close my eyes to keep the trees from looking like they're toppling over.

"Drink this," David commands as he slides the glass into my hand, "and then tell me what the hell you were doing up so early."

I gulp down the cool liquid, and my vision settles enough to keep my eyes open without getting dizzy.

"What are you doing up so early?" I shoot back.

"I have to pick up the truck at the bar and then drive to Port Alberni to get some repair parts for the deep fryer. Now you answer my question."

I set the glass down and reach up to rub my temples.

"I couldn't sleep," I say, "so I decided to do something productive."

He stares down at me for a few moments, his face unreadable, before he sighs and squats down next to me on the step.

"You do realize this is very alarming behavior, right?" he asks as he rips open the snack pack before dropping it into my hands. "You look awful."

I glare at him while I chew on an orange flavoured gummy.

"Gee, thanks," I deadpan after I've swallowed.

"When was the last time you got a decent night's sleep?"

I do a quick mental calculation—or at least, as quick as I can manage with my brain totally fried—and realize that must have been at least a week ago, back before that awful fight with Clover at the yurt.

"I'm fine," I tell David. "It's really no big deal."

He sighs again and shifts out of his squat to take a seat.

"It is a big deal. You've clearly been extremely stressed this past week. You're going to make yourself sick if you keep going like this." He pauses, his face pulling into a grimace for a moment before he asks, "Is this about…your parents?"

I freeze with a gummy halfway to my mouth.

"What?"

"You started acting different after your mom got in touch with me."

I almost drop the gummy in disbelief.

He's really doing this again. We've had at least three arguments about this, and they've all ended with me telling him he needs to stop pushing this thing with my parents.

I press my lips together, fighting to suppress a growl as I glare at him.

"I started acting different after you wouldn't drop it and leave it alone. I told you I don't want to talk about them, and I sure as hell don't want to talk to them."

He clasps his hands in his lap and stares across the yard for a few moments. A songbird twitters somewhere in the distance, followed by the throaty caw of a few crows. Pale morning light dances through the treetops. I could almost convince myself we'd stumbled into an enchanted meadow in a Disney movie, if it weren't for the fact that I'm seething with rage.

"She's messaged me a couple more times," David says without looking at me. "I just think—"

The rage crackles and sparks like a wildfire intent on razing this peaceful morning to the ground, blazing so hot I can't even let him finish his sentence.

"I. Don't. Want. To. Do. This," I sneer.

He still refuses to back off.

"Neavh, you can't keep running from this."

His words echo in my head, taking me straight back to that day with Clover.

She said the same thing. She said I was running away, that I'd keep running away.

"I know it's really hard," David continues. "but maybe if you—"

"Why does everyone think I'm running?" I jump to my feet, raking my hands through my hair as my chest heaves. "Doesn't anyone understand that it was killing me to stay there? Am I a fucking coward just for wanting to stay alive?"

My legs are trembling again, but I don't care. I can't stop. I can't stop until someone understands.

David's eyes go wide as I loom over him. "Neavh, I'm sorry. I—"

"No." I shake my head, my heart pounding like a jackhammer in my ears. "No, you clearly don't get it, so you know what? Why don't I just show you?"

I lunge for the doorknob. My mind races, processing my surroundings in strobe-like flashes of clarity. I feel like I've got a fever, or like I'm high on some drugs gone terribly wrong.

David leaps to his feet. "Neavh—"

"No, don't Neavh me," I bark as I twist the door handle.

I stomp past him and then lunge for my phone where it's sitting on the dining table.

"Come on, David," I call out while I swipe at the screen. "Come see what happens when I stop running away from my parents."

David's face has gone pale. He almost looks like he's about to throw up.

"I'm sorry, okay?" He stretches his arms out towards me before dropping them to his sides. "You don't have to do this."

I turn away as my stomach churns with guilt, but I don't have time to rethink what I'm doing.

My mom picks up on the third ring.

"Hello? Who is this?"

My lungs frost over at the sound of her voice, trapping anything I was about to say in the ice.

"Hello?" she repeats. "Bonjour? Il y a qulqu'un là?"

The ice melts all at once—cracking first and then shattering into a thousand pieces.

She sounds the same. She sounds the exact same she always has, and all it does is remind me that nothing has changed.

The feverish energy returns to my body, and I begin pacing the length of the living room as I clutch the phone so tight my hand aches.

"Hiya, Ma!" I say, my voice so freakishly bright and dripping in sarcasm that even I'm put on edge by the sound.

My mom draws in a sharp breath. "Neavh? Is that you?"

"The one and only," I chirp.

I hear my dad's voice in the background. It's too muffled for me to make out the words, but I know it's him.

"Salut, Papa!" I call out. "You might as well put me on speakerphone, Mom. Let's get the whole family on the line."

David makes a strangled sound where he's still standing over by the front door, and whatever sleep-deprived demon I've been possessed by makes me press the speaker button on my phone too.

He might as well hear this straight from the source.

There are a few scuffling sounds on the other end of the line, followed by some beeping, and then I hear my dad speak directly to me.

"Neavh, c'est toi?"

"Ouais, c'est moi, Papa." I glance over at David and switch to English. "I heard you've been in touch with my cousin."

My mom scoffs. "We had to hear from your cousin that you're in Canada. Why haven't you come to Montreal?"

I wrack my brain for a sarcastic reply, but she doesn't give me a chance to find one.

"We can get you a flight."

My jaw drops, and I stop my pacing to stare at David with wide eyes.

They actually want to see me. They're willing to spot me a cross-country ticket just to come home and visit them.

For a split-second, the flames burning along my skin are snuffed out.

Then she keeps talking.

"It's only June. We could get you back in school for the fall semester."

She keeps going on about how it's not too late for me to make something of myself, how there's still a chance for me to finish school in a ‘reasonable timeframe' and get my life ‘back on track.'

I stop processing the rest. The floor drops out from under me, and I have to brace a hand against the nearest wall to keep myself standing as reality slams back into place.

"Is that really all you have to say to me?" I ask, cutting her off mid-sentence. "We haven't talked in months, and you're not even going to ask how I've been? You're not even going to ask where I've been?"

Both of them are silent for a moment before my dad speaks, his tone clipped.

"You clearly don't want to tell us, Neavh. You don't call."

I start pacing again, my footsteps so heavy they rattle the floor.

"That's because you always do this!"

"Do what?" my mom asks. "Try to help you get your life back together?"

I swallow a scream, and before I can think better of it, I hurl the one accusation I know they won't be able to ignore or brush aside like everything else I say.

"That's not my life. That's his life."

The words land like a grenade. The dead air between us is filled by the loudest silence I've ever heard in my life.

It's deafening, an explosion that rings in my ears and makes even David freeze, his face twisted with horror.

When my mom finally speaks again, her voice is quaking with rage.

"Don't you dare—"

"Don't you dare," I shoot back, spurred on by the fact that at least I've done something. At least she's actually listening now. "Don't you dare try to say you want to help me. You just want to make things easier for yourselves. You want me to live the life you planned for him so you don't have to face the fact that he's gone, but guess what? He didn't want that life either!"

Both of them gasp like they've been stabbed, but it doesn't stop me.

"He never wanted to go to university," I tell them. "You just told him he did, and he wanted to make you happy. I wanted to make you happy too. I bent myself over backwards for you, but you couldn't even get out of bed for me after he died. The only time you ever noticed me was when I was fucking up or when I somehow managed to have some sort of success living up to the standards you set for him. You never noticed me when I was just being me."

My eyes burn, and I swipe at the salty tears I hadn't even realized were pouring down my cheeks.

"I mean, what the fuck?" I practically screech. "What the actual fuck?"

"Neavh Beaudoin!" my dad thunders. "Do not swear at your mother."

"I'll swear as much as I want!" I shout back. "I'll keep swearing until you admit all of this is true."

My mom is breathing so hard I can hear each one of her strained exhales.

"We lost a child, Neavh," she says. "You have no idea what that feels li—"

"I lost the same fucking person as you!" I wail as I sink to my knees on the floor. "Of course I know what it feels like. You're not the only person who gets to be hurt!"

I curl my arm around my stomach, hunching forward like she's punched me.

David rushes forward, but before he's reached me, my dad speaks up.

"You need to calm down."

His voice sounds cold, empty, distant.

He's already slipping away again.

"You need to get more upset!" I scream. "You need to feel something! You just sit around feeling nothing all the time, waiting for me to come fill the void, and I can't, okay? I just can't."

My voice echoes in my ears, and every last ounce of energy seems to whoosh out of me all at once.

Exhaustion descends. My vision narrows, turning black at the edges, and then zooms back out into focus when someone catches me before I can topple into a face-plant on the floor.

David's arms wrap around me, holding me steady. I lean into his chest, too tired to even hold my head up anymore.

It hits me then: just how long I've been exhausted for.

I've been tired for years. I've been tired ever since Charles died.

I worked myself to the bone trying to be what they needed, and now I've run myself ragged pretending I don't care.

It takes me a moment to realize my mom is still talking. I can barely feel the phone in my hand. I blink at it, shocked I've managed not to drop it on the floor.

"You're not being fair," she says. "You're our daughter, Neavh. We care about you. We want you to come home so you can live the life you deserve, the life we've prepared for you."

I try to shake my head, but it feels too heavy. Even my eyelids feel like they're made of lead as I give in and let them drift shut.

"You're not listening," I say, my voice so faint I'm not sure they'll hear it. "You didn't prepare that life for me."

Neither of them says anything in response, but I can hear them breathing as they hold their silence, the strained tension on the line making it clear they've heard.

With David keeping me upright, I find the strength to open my eyes and lift the phone up closer to my face.

"I can't be a stand-in for Charles."

My mom gasps at the sound of his name, and my dad sucks in a sharp breath.

They don't say anything, not even to tell me to shut up. They let the silence stretch on, that deafening quiet that has sucked us all up like a black hole so many times before.

My brother's memory deserves to be so much more than a black hole.

"And even if I could, it wouldn't be enough."

Each word rings in my head like the clear, sweet peal of a bell, calling out through the darkness to remind me I don't have to fall with them, not this time.

"I can't make you happy because you don't know how to be happy, not anymore."

The truth blooms in me like buds on a tree branch—not quite ready to unfurl, but sprouting, growing, gaining the strength to open up.

"You need to find that again for yourselves. I can't find it for you, and if I keep trying to, we're all just going to keep running around the same circle again and again and again."

I wince as I think back to what Clover said about me running, how I'd just keep leaving people behind.

She was right.

I haven't had room for anyone else. I've been carrying so much weight for so long that the thought of piling yet another person's expectations onto my back made my knees buckle.

Maybe I don't have to carry everyone, though. Maybe I can find someone who just wants to walk beside me.

Maybe I already have.

"Neavh, what are you talking about?"

My mom's voice is shaking, and just minutes ago, I would have felt a sick rush of satisfaction at making her feel something, even pain, but now there's only a dull ache in my stomach.

It shouldn't have to be like this, not for any of us.

"We just want you to come home," she tells me.

For a moment, I let myself imagine it.

I picture getting on the plane. I picture meeting them at the airport. I picture moving back into my childhood bedroom and returning to the same classrooms I abandoned four years ago.

I try to picture my parents happy, satisfied, alive—all because I've returned and done what they've asked.

I can see them standing on the front steps of the house, waving me off for my first day back at school, but no matter how hard I try, I can't see their faces. I can't see their smiles. I can't see the proof I've made them happy. All I see above their necks are smudged blurs.

"I can't do that," I say. "Not until you understand what I'm saying. Not until you're ready for things to change."

My mom makes a choked sound, and my dad lets out an angry huff.

"Neavh, ?a suffit," he snaps. "Stop talking to your mother this way. You need to stop running away from your responsibilities and come home."

Running.

So many people have told me I'm running, and maybe they've all been right.

"I was running," I say. My voice sounds hazy, and I realize I'm not speaking to my parents anymore. I'm speaking to myself. "That's true, but what I've been running from was never my responsibility."

There's a moment of silence before my dad huffs again.

"Neavh—"

"Think about what I've said."

I snap back to reality and sit up straighter, some of my sparking energy from earlier returning as I realize I'm done with this conversation.

There's nothing more I can say to them.

"Please," I add. "If you're ready to hear it, then let me know, but if not…I don't want to call again. I don't want you to call David about me either. I'm safe. I'm okay, or at least, I will be, so please respect that, and don't reach out until you're ready to do more than just talk. Don't reach out until you're ready to listen."

My voice doesn't shake or tremble. I sound firm. I sound strong.

I sound like someone who believes in herself, regardless of how much anyone else does.

I press the button to end the call, and as soon as the screen goes black, the phone tumbles out of my hand to land with a clatter on the floor.

I collapse back against David, breathing hard as exhaustion closes in like a thick cloud of smoke. David props me up, my back to his chest and my head lolling against his shoulder.

"Neavh, I…" His voice cracks, and I feel him shudder. "I had no idea. I am so, so sorry. I never would have told you to call them if I knew it was that bad. You tried to tell me, but I didn't listen, and I'm so sorry."

I try to shake my head, and all I manage is jerking my chin from side to side.

"I'm glad I called. I needed that. I needed the proof that after all this time, they haven't changed. They're stuck, and…and so am I."

My eyes sting, and my vision gets blurry as fresh tears streak down my face.

All I can think of is Clover and the last look I got at her, all hunched up at the yurt with her back turned to me.

She didn't turn around.

I looked back, but she didn't turn around.

"I don't want to be stuck anymore," I whisper. "It's making me lose everything."

David shuffles us both around so he can grip my shoulder.

"You're not stuck, okay?" he says as he gives me a squeeze. "Maybe you have been, but today, what you just did… You're moving forward. Maybe they're not, but you are."

I pause for a moment, waiting for that scratchy voice in my head to tell me he's wrong, that I'll always be stuck, that I'll just keep messing things up, but for now at least, the voice is quiet.

Everything is quiet, so quiet I could drift off to sleep right here.

I sigh and sag a little heavier against David.

Sleep would feel so good.

"You think so?" I ask him.

He nods, jostling me a little. "I know so."

Warmth spreads over my body like a thick blanket tucking me in.

"Thank you," I say.

He chuckles. "Thank yourself. You did that."

I manage to nod once before my head lolls, my chin drooping towards my chest.

"Yeah," I mutter. "Yeah, I did, didn't I?"

David chuckles again. "I think we better get you to bed."

Before I can process what's happening, he's gotten to his feet and bent to scoop me up in his arms. I don't have the energy to struggle or try to slide out of his grip. All I do is hang there like a helpless baby monkey while he shuffles over to my bedroom and dumps me down onto the mattress.

"Oof!" I say as I roll to my side and then squirm up to the pillow.

I'm halfway to sleep the second my head hits the soft fabric of my pillowcase. I don't even realize David has thrown a blanket over me and backed away until he whispers to me from the door.

"Hey, Neavh?"

My eyes flutter open before drifting shut again. "Mmmm?"

"I just wanted to say, uh, I love you, you know? And there'll always be a place for you here."

I open my eyes again and find him grinning at me while he grips the door handle. His words fill some of the hole I've ripped inside myself today. I know I had to do it, but I just told my family I don't want to hear from them again until they're ready for something I'm not sure they'll ever be ready for.

Only they're not my only family. I'm not all on my own. I've got David, and I know he's telling the truth.

I'll always have him.

"I love you too, David," I choke out past the lump in my throat.

He smiles at me for another second before he pulls the door shut behind him. I snuggle deeper under the blanket once he's gone, sighing as sleep begins to take hold.

In the final moments before I drift off, I see my brother's face—not smudged and blurred like when I imagined my parents, but clear and crisp as a memory of yesterday.

I see every detail that's begun to fade over the years: the little crinkles beside his eyes when he smiled, the messy wisps of his dark hair, the slight chip in his front tooth from when he cracked it playing soccer.

I see him nod at me before he disappears, and that nod is all I need to assure me I've done the right thing. I've done what's right for me. I've done what I have to do so I can keep going, so I can keep living, and I know when I do that, I keep my brother living too.

"I love you too, Charles," I whisper into the quiet of my room.