Jordan lifts her left hand. A massive diamond sparkles from her ring finger. “The wedding is in December.”
I bite the inside of my cheek. Ignore the fact I didn’t receive an invitation. “I need to tell you something.” Speaking it means reliving the moment, but I have to. I’ve been through this with Jake. Now I look at the memory with new eyes.
Duke can’t hurt me anymore.
But he can hurt Jordan. If my story makes a difference for her, it’s worth it.
“The night of my sixteenth birthday . . . he tried to . . .” Swallow. Keep going. “Before I got onstage, he found me at the pre-show party. He cornered me, Jordan. The way he touched me, it made me feel powerless.”
“I know who Duke is. I don’t need you to tell me.”
A chill rushes my senses. “He followed me when I left to look for River.”
“I told you not to say her name.”
“How can you be so cold?”
“I told you.” She flips her hair and checks the time on her phone. “I know who my fiancé is.”
“And you’re okay with it?”
A couple of band members skirt around us and load the elevator. Jordan coats her expression in sugar and they exchange good nights. When the doors close, she crosses her arms and shrugs her shoulders to her ears.
Why won’t she look at me?
“He’s promised me he can change.” Her eyes close. “Dad thinks he can. He says I need to give Duke a chance. We could go far together. Duke knows a lot of important people in the industry. Besides, he loves me.”
My skin freezes. Time seems to still. What she’s saying . . . She can’t possibly believe her own words. “That isn’t love, Jordan.”
“And what do you know about love, little sister?”
In the past, Jordan’s condescension would have stopped me, would have eaten at my heart for days. Now, the same empathy I felt for Jordan the night of River’s suicide overcomes every other emotion.
“I know enough to tell you love isn’t cruel or controlling. I know true love is patient and gracious and understanding. It’s the kind of love that accepts you, tears and wounds and brokenness. The kind River would have wanted us to have for one another.”
The kind Hope showed me.
And Jake.
And Mee-Maw.
And maybe even Merrick Prince.
Jordan shakes her head. “You’re still living in the fantasy world you’ve made up for yourself, Brooke. Face the music. The love you think exists, the kind our older sister ended her life over? It isn’t real. Anyone who says otherwise is fooling themselves.”
How can I bring myself to reconcile Jordan’s words? Did I believe things would be solved in one conversation? Regret washes over me. Part of me wishes I hadn’t come at all.
“You should go. It’s late.”
“Jordan—”
“Go.”
A familiar numbness courses through me. There is no closure for me here. No reconciliation. Still, I came for a reason.
And I won’t leave until I make it to the end.
I reach into my tote, withdraw my manuscript, and offer it to Jordan. My heart ticks off each second that passes.
“What’s this?” Jordan eyes the pages. Still, she takes them.
“Read it.”
“Coral,” Jordan says, reading the title on the front. “Why Coral?”
I exhale. The name triggers a memory. Of the first time Merrick spoke the name I gave him.
“Do you know what happens to coral when it dies?” I ask.
Jordan shakes her head.
I squeeze my eyes. Open them wide. I bled my soul into those pages. Now I’m finally setting them free.
“It loses its color. It turns gray.” Like my world after River died. And Hope. Only recently has the color finally begun to return.
“I don’t get it.”
“You will,” I say. Or maybe she won’t. “It’s about us.”
The horrified expression spreading across her face ought to drown me.
Instead, anchors lift from my shoulders. Whether or not Jordan understands doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change what happened. It doesn’t invalidate my perspective or my feelings or make them any less real.
“Brooke.”
I wait for Jordan’s next words. Hope.
“You haven’t shown this to anyone else, have you?”
Sigh. The story of our sister’s suicide was an embarrassment to our King family name. But somehow, it also aided in helping Jordan rise to the top of the charts. Her voice has become quite the commodity. Even more than River’s was. Our older sister’s face was featured in all the tabloids and plastered across social media after her death. She was reality TV. She was entertainment. A good story twisted and retold a hundred times over.
But my story is different. Because, even with the mermaids and the Sorceress and the Abyss, everything I wrote is true.
Sometimes fiction speaks truth the way nothing else can.
“The first chapter was a school assignment. It even made the finalist list in a statewide contest.”
Jordan gasps.
“It was disqualified when I couldn’t finish the manuscript. It doesn’t have an ending yet.”
Her features relax. “Are you going to publish it?”
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t think—”
“Read it,” I say again.
“Do you need money? Is that it?”
Why can’t she see this goes so much deeper than material things? “I wrote it because I couldn’t hold on to it anymore. I need to let it go.” Even without a proper ending.
I turn to leave. I’ve said everything. Now it’s up to her.
Jordan doesn’t stop me.
I press the button beside the elevator. It lights up and I stand there, alone though my sister is inches away. An awkward silence hangs in the air between us. So much left unresolved. So much pain behind Jordan’s eyes.
When I step over the elevator’s threshold, Jordan rushes forward and blocks the door.
“I’m pregnant.”
My emotions war. I want to kill Duke and scream at my dad and do anything I can to protect the lost girl before me. “Oh, Jordan,” I say, same as I did the night of Red Ti—of River’s death. “That doesn’t mean you have to stay with a man who is abusive.”
“I know what it means.” She doesn’t look me in the eyes. “It means I’m connected to Duke for the rest of my life. No matter what. I’ve made my choice. And nothing you can say will change it.”
I nod. Jordan is stubborn as a clam and twice as hard on the outside. Inside, though . . . inside there’s a pearl waiting to be set free.
Maybe not today, or tomorrow, but someday. “I’m here.” I let my gaze linger on hers so she knows my words are true. “I’m a call away.”
Jordan’s armor seems to crack before she swipes at her eyes again and allows the doors to close. The last thing I see before she’s gone from my vision is the tear that slips down her cheek. The one she doesn’t hide.
I wrap my arms around my middle and take the elevators back to the lobby. Jordan has to walk through her own season of darkness. I only hope she’ll eventually let me help her find the light on the opposite side.
A quote Hope wrote in my journal back at Fathoms invades my thoughts. The first half once stood out more than the latter. Now I recall the quote as a whole.
“Life damages us, every one. We can’t escape that damage. But now, I am also learning this: We can be mended. We mend each other.”