The most devastating emotion was grief.
All-consuming.
Suffocating.
A horrible, monster of an emotion that embedded its very poison into a person’s soul, and didn’t let go. Instead of eventually freeing its victim from the never-ending torment, to allow them to step back and breathe, the grief continued to spread and infect like a disease.
There was no healing. There was supposed to be. The stages of grief were eventually supposed to move on to a point where a person could go forward, away from the constant struggle, and begin to heal.
Cara Rossi had yet to find that stage.
She didn’t think she would ever reach it.
Her grief had gone far beyond the instant devastation, and straight into a hellish non-existence where no one could possible understand how bereft she was, left in her little world.
There were those people who believed that when a person lost someone they loved, a piece of their soul went with them. Cara wasn’t sure how she was supposed to take that statement every time someone offered their well-intentioned, yet incredibly hurtful, advice.
She hadn’t just lost someone she loved.
Her best friend. The identical face she stared at for everyday of her life since birth. Someone she hadn’t spent more than a few hours away from at a time for two and a half decades.
It wasn’t a piece of her that was missing. It was an entire half ripped away. Twenty-five years together and then … gone.
Her identical twin was dead.
Just like that.
But, it’s been four months, Cara. And, look at the beautiful day outside, sweetheart. More of, she would want you to smile, and to be happy. A few, can’t you try a little more?
Four months was a long time to be missing something so incredibly important to Cara’s everyday life. It was a long time to be walking around out of control of her emotions, incomplete, alone, and lost.
She had a hard time closing her eyes.
She could see that day.
Perfectly.
Clearly.
Painfully.
When gun fire rang out …
When white marble steps turned red with blood …
When her twin died.
How was Cara ever supposed to move on, when every time she closed her eyes, she was standing back on the steps of that mansion, staring at her sister’s blood on her hands, and listening to Lea gasp for help?
She couldn’t.
She never would.
“You could always come back to Chicago,” Tommas said, posing the suggestion quietly. “I could get you a ticket tonight, Cara.”
Cara rubbed at the tension headache beginning to form at the base of her skull, and focused on the words her older brother was saying over the phone. She wasn’t sure how to answer without hurting his feelings. The siblings had already been separated by countries for years, only occasionally coming together for family events. Tommas, in Chicago. And Cara, in Toronto, studying at the university.
“The break might be good for you,” Tommas continued, when Cara stayed silent. “Chicago isn’t Toronto. Things might feel familiar here.”
“Chicago isn’t home,” Cara snapped.
Tommas took a sharp inhale. Cara was even surprised at her outburst, colored heavily with anger. Her brother’s silent response was answer enough. Cara wished that she could check her temper toward her brother, but she didn’t have anything to give him, but for her anger.
Her brother—more than anyone left living that she loved—knew how she felt about Chicago. Or … her parents.
Or rather, the remaining parent she had left.
Addiction, hate, and pain. That was all their childhood had ever been. It was all that was left in Chicago.
“Ma would like to see—”
Cara stopped her brother before he could even attempt to say more. “I don’t give a shit about Ma, Tommas.”
Tommas cleared his throat. “She lost her husband. Give her a break, Cara.”
“A man she hated. A man she only pretended to love and only when she was drunk. A man she beat on. A man she put first before her children. So, her husband is dead, big fucking deal. I doubt she feels even an ounce of the hell that I’ve been living with for four months.”
“We don’t know what goes on inside Ma’s head.”
“I don’t need to know. Her soul is black. Her heart is black. She should be dead like he is. We would all be far better off without them both.”
“Cara.”
The truth hurt, but it was better than a blissful lie. Those hurt worse in the end.
Cara and Lea had been eighteen years old when they’d left. Dual Canadian citizenship and the family ties they had in Ontario got them away from their abusive, alcoholic parents. Tommas, however, had been long gone from the house by the time the twins left.
Tommas also had ties to the Chicago Outfit—a criminal organization that had been bred deep into their family’s blood and name for decades—like their father. It was all he knew. Leaving Chicago, and the Outfit, had never been a thought in her brother’s mind.
Now, seven years later, Cara was twenty-five, their sister was dead, and nothing was going to ever be the same again. Tommas thought going back where she hated the most, to the people of the Outfit that he called family and the place that had taken Lea from her, would fix this.
It never would.
“I’m not going back to Chicago,” Cara said after a long stretch of silence.
“Ever?” Tommas asked.
There was no judgement in his tone. He’d asked it with very little emotion, as though he already knew exactly what her answer would be.
“Not if I can help it, Tommas.”
Cara waited for those words to sink in, hoping that her brother finally got the point. She loved Tommas, even if their relationship was strained from years of separation and the past. She knew that Tommas loved her, too.
“I don’t think you understand how difficult it is to get up in the morning. I pass her bedroom and try not to breakdown. I still have all of Lea’s things. They litter this apartment from top to bottom.” Cara couldn’t bear the thought of getting rid of any of it. But she could barely stand to look at it all, either. “The apartment—and even Toronto—is basically the same thing. I struggle daily, to even leave the apartment and get done what I need to do. Every place I visit, all the sights I see, are touched by a memory of Lea. And that hurts,” Cara said quietly.
There was a lot she didn’t say, too.
Her college marks were suffering, her dream of becoming a therapist diminishing with missed classes. Frankly, she needed to be the one talking to a therapist, but that meant opening the front door and going outside.
It felt like her heart was ripping apart at the seams, the second her hand touched the front doorknob. She was leaving behind the only tangible ties to her sister that were not merely memories.
She was so useless like this.
Broken.
Incomplete.
Without.
“Cara,” Tommas said.
The softer tone her brother used brought Cara from the black abyss that was her thoughts. Her new constant companion.
“Yeah, Tommy?”
“I know it’s hard—”
“Harder, actually,” Cara interrupted.
“I’m sorry. I want to do something to help, but I need you to give me some kind of direction here, Cara. Or how to help. What do you need me to do?”
Leave me alone, she thought. Stop making me remember. It hurts.
Cara would never say those things to her brother, as they would hurt him.
It had been his people who had taken her sister away, even if it hadn’t been him, directly, who had pulled the trigger. It was still the Outfit. Tommas was an Outfit man. Cara didn’t know how to separate Tommas from the organization.
It was dirty money, bad blood, stained histories, and pain.
“Cara?” Tommas asked again.
She took a deep breath and rolled from her side to her back on the bed. A comforting place that she rarely left, now. Slinging her arm over her face, she blocked out the light that filtered in through the blinds.
“Just give me some time,” Cara settled on saying.
“Is more time actually going to help, Cara?”
“I don’t know.”