The Silent Waters (38 page)

I didn’t want to leave Maggie May, but I knew I had to. She had a lifetime of her own panics. The last thing she needed while she was becoming better was to deal with mine.

“Guess who’s back? Back again? Cheryl’s back!” Cheryl hollered, walking into the house with two suitcases and dreadlocks. It had been a week since Brooks sent me home and gone up to the cabin without me. Everyone tried their best to convince him not to go alone, but he wouldn’t have any part of it. He had his nurses who checked in on him and cared for him each day, but otherwise, he was out on his own in Messa.

Daddy, Mama, and I sat down at the dining room table eating dinner as Cheryl came charging into our house, unannounced. Last I heard she was on some island with her boyfriend.

“Cheryl,” Mama said, surprised, but still happy to see her world traveler. “What are you doing here?”

“What? Can’t a girl come visit her family?” She pulled the chair out beside me and sat.

“Always,” Daddy replied. “But last we heard, you were deeply in love with a boy named Jason, and getting dreadlocks on some sandy beach.”

She shook her head. “True, that happened.”

“Where’s Jason?” Mama asked.

“Well, funny story actually. The woman who did my dreads ended up also doing my boyfriend, too.” Everyone’s faces dropped, and Cheryl smiled. “Aw, come on, now. No sad faces. You know what I always say, when life gives you lemons, find vodka.” She reached for my hand and squeezed it. “And find family, too.”

Mama shifted in her seat and looked at Daddy with sad eyes. Without words, they held a conversation, until her lips parted. “Girls, now that you’re both here, I think this is the best time for your father and me to tell you the news.”

I sat up straighter, and Cheryl did, too. “What’s going on?” she asked.

“Your mother and I…we’re…” Daddy swallowed hard and gave me a tight smile. “We’re separating.”

What?

No.

“What are you talking about?” Cheryl questioned, confused. She laughed nervously. “Come on. You’re not separating. That’s ridiculous.”

“Well, it’s been a long time coming actually,” Mama explained with a shaky voice. “And now that Maggie has been able to leave the house, we just think it’s time.”

“It’s the best thing, really. For all of us,” Daddy lied through his teeth.

I knew he was lying, too. Because if he were telling the truth, his eyes wouldn’t have looked so sad.

After dinner, Cheryl came into my room, where I was lying on my bed, listening to music on my iPhone. She lay down beside me and took one of my earbuds so she could listen, too.

“I’m twenty-seven years old, and somehow I feel like I want to become my angsty teenager self again, crawl into my closet, and listen to Ashlee Simpson’s
Autobiography
album over and over again, because my parents are splitting up.”

I’m twenty-eight and feel the same.

“How’s Brooks?” she asked, tilting her head in my direction.

I shrugged.
He said he needed space, to be alone.

She nodded. “I get that. When you asked him for space, he gave it to you…so I understand you feeling as if you need to give him the same.”

We kept listening to the music, and Cheryl chuckled. “Remember when we were kids, and I said to you. ‘I don’t know what I’m doing with my life,’ or something?” She started giggling. “Ten years later, and the words still ring true.”

Even though the thought was depressing, we couldn’t stop laughing at it. Sometimes all a person needed to relax their troubled mind was their sister and some laughter.

Within seconds, we were listening to “Pieces of Me,” by Ashlee Simpson, rocking our heads back and forth. We listened to the album a few times, until our minds were back in our childhood days.

Whenever the song “LaLa” came on, we’d stand up and dance with one another. Even though I was proud of Cheryl for traveling the world, I would’ve been lying if I said I wasn’t happy she came home.

Even though Brooks asked for his space, I needed to remind him the same way he always reminded me that he wasn’t alone. I’d send him a text message each morning.

Maggie:
You okay today, Brooks Tyler?

Brooks:
I’m okay, Maggie May.

Then, a message each night.

Maggie:
You okay tonight, Brooks Tyler?

Brooks:
I’m okay, Maggie May.

Even though it wasn’t enough to make me stop worrying, it was enough to help me sleep sometimes.

The town of Messa was tiny. The lake took up most of the area. There wasn’t much to the place except a grocery store, a high school, one gas station, and a library, which were all lined up on the coast of the lake. It was all on the opposite side of Mrs. Boone’s cabin, though, which was even nicer. It kept me feeling more alone. I’d only traveled into town for food, then I came back to the cabin.

The only other place I’d found worth visiting was right on the outskirts of Messa—a bar.

It was a hole in the wall.

No one knew it existed, which made it perfect for me. It had whiskey, and pain, and loneliness wrapped up in its quiet walls.

I hadn’t stopped reading forums online about me. I hadn’t stopped watching fans turn against me, tagging me as a drug addict, calling me a liar and a cheater. They believed every lie the tabloids fed to them, turning their backs on me as if I hadn’t given them my all in the past ten years.

As if I were truly every negative word written about me.

I knew I should’ve stopped reading, but I couldn’t put down my phone or the whiskey. The comments from those who claimed to once love me stung more than they should’ve.

Just replace the druggie. It’s been done before!

My brother died from alcohol abuse. The fact that Brooks is so reckless is concerning. I hope he finds help in the rehab center.

He’s a disgrace to music. Millions would kill to have his life, and he just threw it away.

Piece of shit celebrity. Just another tale of fame going to a person’s head.

This is like his fifth time in rehab. Maybe it’s time to start realizing nothing’s going to change.

He’ll be dead by thirty, just like all the other ‘late and great’ drug addict performers.

I reached out for more whiskey as the words became engraved in my mind. There were supportive comments, too, but for some reason those felt like lies. Why is it that negative comments from strangers seem to hurt you the most?

“I think you had enough,” the bartender said sternly, a gentle undertone to his speech as he moved the bottle of whiskey farther from my reach. He had a silver, thick mustache filled with secrets, lies, and potato chip crumbs. Whenever he spoke, the mustache danced above his upper lip, and his words fell from the left corner of his mouth. Long, curly gray hair sat on his head, which he wore pulled back into a bun. An old man bun. The guy had to be over seventy, and he somehow seemed to be effortlessly cool, calm, and collected.

The complete opposite of me.

Each morning and night, I lied to Maggie when I messaged her back.

I shut my eyes and tried my best to recall the bartender’s name, which he’d told me hundreds of times during my state of drunkenness.

Kurt rhymes with hurt.

Lately Kurt was the closest thing I had to a friend. I remembered the first time I met him, two weeks ago when I walked into his bar. I’d been a mess for the past two weeks. The first time he met me, my shoulders were rounded as I sat. My arms were crossed and my forehead met my forearms where I proceeded to try to stop my memories in the corner booth of his empty bar. He didn’t ask me questions. He simply brought me a bottle of whiskey and a glass of ice that night—and the following evenings to come.

“One more,” I muttered, but he frowned and shook his head.

“It’s one in morning, buddy. Don’t you think you should get home, maybe?”

“Home?” I huffed, reaching for the bottle, which he refused to give to me. I looked up into his blue eyes and felt a tug at my heart.
Home.
“Please?” I begged. Begged—I begged him for alcohol. How pathetic. “Please, Kurt?”

“Bert,” he corrected, a grimaced smile.

Dammit.

Kurt rhymes with hurt, which rhymes with Bert, which is his name.

“That’s what I said.”

“Not what you said. Probably what you meant, though.”

“Yeah, that’s what I meant, Bert. Bert. Bert.” How many times could I say his name before I forgot it again?