Torn - Part Three (The Torn Series) by Ellen Callahan Read Free Book Online Page B

sleeves. “Don’t reply to any of it. You don’t have to. Just…” She waved, still laughing and crying at the same time. “Just drink your damn coffee!”
     
    We attempted small talk after that, though we spent the rest of our time mostly in companionable silence. It was like a wall had come down between us. My own confessions and apologies could wait for another night - this was about Katherine getting everything off of her chest and clearing the air.
     
    Things would probably never be right with my family. Our mother and our father, they just had too many problems, too many personal issues that Katherine and I couldn’t even begin to help them with. But between the two of us, between sisters… for the first time, I thought that we were going to be okay.
     
    I hugged her before we got back in the car. “I want you to come visit me,” I said. “For Christmas shopping. It’s a good excuse to come down to the city, even just for a day. Maybe in a couple weeks?”
     
    “Sure, Alexa,” she said, “I want to see where you live.”
     
    I thought about my apartment and grimaced. Katherine was working on getting her life together and was succeeding. It was time for me to think about taking a few steps forward. If my room was a reflection of how I felt inside, then I was in real trouble.
     
    I knew what the first issue to attack was, too. I was still afraid to admit it but I couldn’t let it get out of control - not like it had for Katherine, not like it still was for my mother. But I was going to have to address all the drinking I was doing, and soon.

CHAPTER 7
     
    “Alexa! These fucking pies of yours are burning!”
     
    They weren’t. My mother was just in a mood. She was nervous about the meal, about my father and her brother clashing, about having so many people in the house, about everything. Why she insisted on hosting the holidays when she so clearly hated it was beyond my understanding. We could have met at another relative’s home. Hell, we could have skipped them entirely and Katherine and I would have been downright relieved.
     
    But this was Thanksgiving every year. Turkey, pies, screaming.
     
    I scrambled to get the pie out of the oven while my mother watched. “Strawberry rhubarb!” I announced, placing the steaming hot dessert on the stovetop. I retrieved my second pie from the fridge and slipped it in to the oven for its own turn. “Pumpkin!” I announced to no one in particular. My mother remained unimpressed by my enthusiastic baking, but my father would be happy.
     
    Both pies were cooling on the windowsill when he arrived two hours later. Katherine and I had to pretend to be nonchalant about having him there. Too much excitement would set our mother off on a rant about how we loved him more than her, on and on. We knew the drill. We gave him short hugs and resumed our preparations in the kitchen while he sat at the dining room table by himself, away from all three of us.
     
    His sister Dana was the next to arrive. I was basting the turkey when she and her two teenage sons rang the bell. My dad let them in while my mom sipped wine from a coffee mug at the kitchen table. “You missed a spot,” she said to me, refusing to get up to greet the arrivals. They’d have to come in and say hello to her. It was all part of how she’d always operated.
     
    Luckily, there was merely routine tension as we set the table. No one got into a screaming match, the boys were on decent behavior considering they were teenagers. My mother was cold toward everyone but at least she was quiet. She took up her spot at the head of the table with a haughty sigh.
     
    I was just beginning to relax, to think the dinner was going to go okay, to imagine that we’d get through the night without any major fights, but then my uncle arrived.
     
    My mother’s brother, Uncle Rickie, and my father had never gotten along, not even when our parents were still married. Katherine and I exchanged a glance as he strode