Slightly South of Simple (Peachtree Bluff, #1)

by Kristy Woodson Harvey

I realized that there were so many if onlys that sometimes it left out any space for the what could bes.

I knew already that we’d stay up too late, that we’d all hate ourselves when our alarms went off at six so we could work out before the babies got up. But this was the thing about sisters. No matter how much you laughed, no matter how many hours you talked, no matter how many months you got to spend together, it never seemed like quite enough.

Sometimes in the ebb and flow of life, the tide rolling in and out, as Hal would say, we forget to take the time to think about the people who really make us who we are. We forget to say thank you, to tell the people we love that we love them.

These were the good times, even when they were hard.

She wasn’t sobbing anymore. She was eerily quiet. I wanted to take that quiet for calm, but I knew better. I remembered that quiet. It was a panic that defied anything your body was capable of doing, any sound it was capable of making. It was an otherworldly quiet, one that I had hoped none of my daughters would ever experience.

I knew what I was up against now. I knew about the sleepless nights, the crying anywhere, anytime, the inability to eat or drink or even think. This was going to be a living nightmare. Again.

I understood how horrible this moment with Jack was; it registered with me that my life had just crumbled around me again. But when your children are in pain, that’s all you can think about.

you’ll learn that humans don’t think they are a part of biology. They think they are above it.”

My eyes welled as I said it, realizing what my poor mother had gone through these past few months, what she had sacrificed. She was barely working, every time she went to the grocery store she had to buy four different kinds of string cheese and eleven brands of fruit snacks, we were constantly drinking all of her favorite coffee without replacing it, and quite often she was the one who ended up doing all six loads of laundry per day that this family produced. And she never complained. At least, not to us. I’m sure Sandra and Emily got an earful. But she never let us know if she was unhappy. Which made me think that maybe she wasn’t.

AJ burst into giggles, and Taylor followed suit. You couldn’t help but join them, no matter how hard your heart felt. It was too much joy not to take part in. The moments that sneak up on you, the little surprises that keep you guessing, make life so worth exploring, even when the unthinkable happens. I barely realized that hot, angry tears were flowing again.

I saw something in my sister’s face that morning when she got the news. It wasn’t only a look of distress, one of sadness and anger and horror over losing her husband. It was also one of simply wanting her life back. She wanted to get out of bed the next morning and have life go back to normal, have Adam come home. Maybe she’d make some waffles, maybe AJ would whack Taylor with a toy, and he’d have to go to timeout. But that was OK. Because that was normal life, and it was wonderful.

But as we all know, life changes in an instant. Mine is no exception.

“I just want to be us again,” I said, my voice breaking so quickly after the laughter that it shocked me. But this is the nature of healing, I believe. It is the part that I hate the very most, but you have to feel it all before you can move on. He nodded, tears filling his eyes. “Me, too. I’m so sorry I hurt us.” I couldn’t promise that I wouldn’t bring it up from time to time, that I wouldn’t occasionally punish him in my own way, that I wouldn’t be bitchy or tired or short-tempered. But I knew that one day, my daughter would look back and understand that I had fought for our family. That we all had, really. And my son… Well, frankly, I hoped my son would never know.

My friends, who had sworn to kill James, make his life a living hell, get him kicked out of society as he knew it, last name be damned, wouldn’t understand why I made the decision I made. They wouldn’t get why I would be so weak. But lying in bed beside Sloane that night, Emerson on her other arm, the three of us softly breathing but none of us asleep, I knew that didn’t matter. I took Sloane’s hand and squeezed it. She squeezed back. And I knew that there were some things in life, quite a few of them, in fact, that only a sister could understand.