Her eyebrows winged up so far, they looked like they might fly right off her face.
“Yes, I knew her in school. Why do you ask, I mean, I know she is—was your aunt? You poor thing you didn’t even get a chance to know her,” she glanced at her clipboard, “She died the year—the month you were born.”
“She wasn’t my aunt, gawd you’re such an idiot! She was my mother, and I know how you used to torment her as a teenager. So you can just drop the “Sweet as Pecan Pie” act.
Referring to myself in the third person felt weird, but in this case, it was necessary. She tapped her pen against the clip of her clipboard as she regarded me through icy blue eyes.
“Hmm, well, I think I’d better put in a call to your father about keeping you just a little longer. We must have missed something, and I want to make sure you are 100% mentally, or very close to that when you leave. Being delusional is and can be a side effect of a concussion. I don’t want to take any chances,” Mrs. Johnson said in an even tone. “And for the record, I was just a kid myself back then and am not proud of the bully I was. If I could bring Echo back from the dead and apologize, I would, but unfortunately, life doesn't work that way. Also, I do not appreciate your snarky attitude. You were lucky I didn’t press charges for you assaulting my daughter.”
I almost died as I connected the dots laid out in front of me. My old high school bully’s daughter was my daughter’s current high school bully—and they were not even a year apart. That meant that I was not the only one who’d had a baby on the way by the age of sixteen. I could have keeled over from the sheer irony of it. None of that mattered though at that moment because this woman dared to call me delusional. Who the hell did she think she was!
“Excuse me,” I said in an accusatory tone, “but you must have mistaken me for someone else. Did you just call me delusional? I am not delusional in the slightest.
She regarded me quietly, and then like a light switch flipping, I saw her confusion turn the tide and become understanding.
“Oh, good lord Eden, I don’t mean that you are crazy. I was talking about you thinking you are Echora’s daughter. Everyone knows you belong to Daryl. Such a shame his fiancé died at such a young age. Everyone holds him in such high regard. Being a single mom is hard enough. I can only imagine how hard it must be to be a single dad and raising a daughter.”
How could the people of this town be so utterly ignorant? It didn’t take a rocket scientist to draw the correlation of how I died when I was about ready to pop and then Daryl showing up around the same time with a brand new, “fresh out the box” baby girl. I always found it unbelievable that the whole damn town bought that bull shit story my parents and brother fed them. I decided it just wasn’t worth the argument and let it go. I didn’t want to deal with Sandy Johnson any more than I had to—I still hated the girl regardless of how much she’d grown up. Was it Petty? Probably, but I had a really hard time giving a damn.
“Whatever,” I said and looked out the window absently. She, thankfully, got the hint and left.
When Drew walked into the hospital room, the frown I was wearing got even deeper. He was the single most annoying person in Eden’s life—well, for me anyway. I was happy at first, but then Eden decided to act like I wasn’t even there, I guess in a way I felt like I’d been replaced. Until Drew had come along, it’d always been just Eden and me. I’d never admitted it to her, but I missed those days.
“Eden?"
When I didn’t answer, I saw the disappointment cross his features and then the doubt.
“Listen, Drew, I’m going to be straight with you. I know you don’t trust me. I know you don’t like me, and to be honest, I don’t like you much either, but I am just as worried about Eden as you are, probably more actually. When she regains her mental feet, I won’t have a choice because her sense of awareness is this body’s natural default, and so once the warring between the dominant seat starts, I wouldn’t last long even if I intended on fighting her for it, which I don’t. I might not have a body to exhaust, but my mind is my own and Eden’s, nowadays, is way too strong to fight off in a permanent sense, or even a temporary one for that matter. Do you understand?”
As he stood there staring at me, I couldn’t help but think that Eden had chosen such an expressive young man. I could read him like a book, and right about then that damn hamster was running the wheel in his head. I had to laugh; there was no sense in trying not to. He brought his far-off gaze toward me.
“You won’t fight her then when she does come back?”
“Nope,” I said with a shrug. “Cross my heart and hope to die!”
“That’s not even funny, Echo.”
“What’s not funny,” Daryl said as he walked into the room.
For the first time in almost two decades, I had the opportunity to actually talk to my brother, one on one, and finally, be heard. I knew that he’d been here earlier, but at that point, I couldn’t speak as myself because other people were around. I wondered if he even knew I was running the show.
“Hi Dare, it’s been a while, hasn’t it.”
He stopped
