I felt my lungs seize, felt everything inside of me go ice cold. I exhaled slowly and saw the room start to fade around the edges of my vision.
“So you are telling me you knew this entire time that you were going to lose the house, that no matter what happened, Karsen was going to have to change schools and end up tossed around and uprooted?”
He didn’t answer me, but he didn’t need to. The truth was evident in everything that had happened inside these walls over the last year.
I shook my head. “You’re disgusting.”
I turned and went to go find my mom. I was over it. I was telling her it was well past time that she checked into an in-patient treatment program and I didn’t care if I had to get two more jobs to pay for it. The chaos that was the Carter household ended today.
“Brysen.” My dad’s tone was sharp, so I stopped and looked at him over my shoulder with one foot already out of his office. “How did you find out?”
Well, that was a tricky question, wasn’t it? I gave a bitter little laugh. “Race Hartman is Dovie’s older brother. We’ve been spending a lot of time together the last few weeks.”
He bolted up in his chair and slammed his hands down on the desk.
“No. I forbid that. He’s not a young man you can have in your life. He’s dangerous.”
I knew that, but so far, all that danger was directed at other people and all he had done for me was try and protect me and take care of me. Right about now, out of the two of them, Race and my dad, Race was by far the lesser of two evils, even if I was seriously pissed at him.
“No, Dad, he’s not. People like you, people who don’t know when to stop even when it’s obvious they are putting their family, their lives, at risk, are the dangerous ones. Race just gives men like you enough rope to hang yourself with.”
My dad swore and then the anger in his gaze got speculative. “How close are you to Hartman, exactly?”
Oh my God, he did not just seriously ask me that.
“No. He won’t forgive the debt or give the Lexus back on account of me, Dad.”
Now it was his turn to bark out a harsh laugh that grated.
“Oh, don’t be naive, Brysen. I’m wondering if your boyfriend is invested enough in you that I might make it out of this hole I dug alive. Race has a business partner that doesn’t take too kindly to being stiffed. If I don’t come up with at least half of what I owe, there is a good chance you’ll be getting a phone call to come and identify my body in the morgue.”
I didn’t even have the words to respond to that, so I just finished making my escape from the office and trucked my way to my parents’ room, where I knew my mom was bound to still be in bed. I was surprised, though, that when I came around the corner, she was in the hallway leaning against the wall. She was crying. The crying wasn’t anything new, the fact that she was sober, and that her gaze was sharp and clear, was.
“He gambled the house away?”
“That’s what it looks like.”
She bit her bottom lip and started to wring her hands. “This is all my fault. If I hadn’t been drinking, hadn’t caused that accident, none of this would be happening now.”
I didn’t disagree with her, so I didn’t offer up platitudes and useless reassurances.
“Well, now you have the opportunity to try and make some better choices, Mom. You need help, physical and mental. You need to be in a treatment program, and you need to see a professional for your depression. All the vodka in the world isn’t going to help you get a handle on it.”
She started to cry harder. “I can’t believe this is happening. How could he do this to us?”
I wanted to shake her. They both had a firm hand in the disaster that was currently unfolding, but it was past the time to start handing out blame.
“Mom—”
She interrupted me with a wail. “What’s going to happen to you and Karsen?”
In my opinion, it was way too late to worry about that, so I simply told her the truth. “I’ll take care of Karsen, just like I’ve been doing for the last year.”
She sniffled a little and put a hand to her chest. After a moment of silence, she dipped her chin at me.
“Your aunt Eleanor in Texas would probably be willing to take you girls in for a while.”
I gritted my back teeth. I wasn’t going to Texas. It was hot, it was far away, and as much as I didn’t want to admit it because he was currently on the top of my shit list, Race wasn’t there, which automatically made it unappealing.
“Mom, worry about yourself right now. I’ll be fine and I’ll make sure Karsen is fine.”
I mean I knew she had her own issues, that she had never been perfectly healthy of mind and spirit, but if there was ever a time to rally and pull it all together and give it her best shot at being a mom, at being a woman who cared for her daughters, now was it.
“What about the money?”
Yeah, that was going to be a problem I was going to need to think on it for a second until I figured out a solution.
“Let’s just find a place for you and then we’ll figure the rest out as we go, okay?”
She nodded and disappeared back inside of her room. She came back out a second later and handed me two bottles of vodka. One was almost empty, and the other hadn’t been opened yet. I sighed and headed to my own room without saying a word to her.
It had been a crap day and all I could think as I tried to pick it apart and compartmentalize all of it was that I was so thankful Karsen wasn’t home to witness the last of our family’s flimsy shields of normalcy and happiness being ripped away.