Letting Go by Molly McAdams Read Free Book Online

leave us all the time too once she thought I was old enough to fend for both of us for a few days. The only reason she leaves Keith right now is because she knows you’re home and you won’t leave him there alone.”
    “I just don’t know, Jag.”
    “Charlie. He is not your responsibility. You need to go on this trip, you need to get out of Thatch for a while.” I laughed agitatedly and shook my head. “Shit, what you need to do is actually go to college.”
    “I do go to school!” she argued back.
    “No. You take classes online, that’s so different.”
    “How is that any—”
    “Because you’re a fucking genius, Charlie!” I yelled, cutting her off. “I know you have money to go to school. You have the test scores to go pretty much wherever you want. I want you to get away from here, and I don’t understand why you don’t want that for yourself. You’re cheating yourself out of the life you deserve away from Thatch.”
    “You came back. Why is it so bad that I wanted to stay?”
    I groaned and ran my hands over my face. “Because I want to live here. There’s nothing wrong with living here, this is a great town. But I want you to have the experience that going away to school will give you. Not only are you not giving yourself that opportunity, but you’re making it incredibly easy for Mom to make you raise her kid.”
    Charlie just stared at me for a few minutes—hurt taking the place of the hardness in her eyes. “You raised me, Jagger. Are you saying you felt like that held you back from your life?”
    “What?” I asked on a breath. “Are you kidding me? That’s so different. You’re two years younger than me, you went everywhere with me anyway. Taking care of you was as easy as taking care of myself—it was not a hardship.”
    “Well, someone needs to take care of Keith the way you took care of me. And despite what you think about me not giving myself the opportunity of living the ‘college life,’ I don’t want that for myself. I’ve never wanted that for myself. I’m smart because you made me study all the time, but that doesn’t mean I like school or want to do anything that a degree from an online school can’t give me. This is what I want to do, and it’s so hard when you’re constantly on me about doing something different—something that you think would be best for me.”
    I rested my hands back on the counter and hung my head. “Okay, I’m sorry. I just—I’m sorry. Yes, I think you should go on the trip. You’re excited about it, it sounds fun, and I agree with Mom . . . I think it’ll be good for you. Can we just talk about something else?”
    “Sure,” she replied softly, but didn’t say anything else until I looked up at her again. “I hung out with Grey today.”
    “I know. She was excited to see you, that was all she talked about this morning before she left to meet up with you.”
    “Yeah, it was . . . fun. I’ve missed her, I loved hanging out with her again.”
    My eyebrows shot up at her tone. “Then why do you sound like a robot?”
    She shrugged. “I don’t. I told you it was fun. Grey seemed . . . fine.”
    “Yeah. First day back was rough for her, I think, but she’s doing a lot better overall.”
    “I noticed,” Charlie mumbled so softly I almost didn’t catch what she said.
    I pushed away from the counter and crossed my arms over my chest. “Okay, what’s going on? At graduation you couldn’t wait to see her, and now that you’ve hung out with her, you sound . . . I don’t know, disappointed or something. Did something happen today?”
    “No, I’m just saying she seemed fine.” Her voice was still monotone, and one eyebrow was raised as she stared across the kitchen at nothing.
    My head was spinning. I hated arguing with Charlie, and didn’t like that we’d just gotten into it again about the whole college thing. But the way she’d looked then was completely different from how she looked now. She looked exactly how