I Saved My Sister, So They Drowned Me Chapter 03
After that dinner, the air in our house turned into a vacuum.
Every morning, there were only three plates and three forks on the table.
Mom’s.
Dad’s.
Lily’s.
I stood at the kitchen doorway.
Mom’s eyes slid right past me and landed on the wall behind me.
“Lily, breakfast is ready!”
Two days later, Dad suddenly came home.
It wasn’t the weekend.
He sat on the couch and patted the seat beside him.
“Nina, sit down.”
His voice was calm.
Almost cheerful.
But it sent a chill down my spine.
“Your mom told me you haven’t been doing well lately.”
“We talked about it, and we think you should go help out at Aunt Rachel’s coffee shop.”
“It’s short-staffed anyway.”
“Getting out of the house might help you feel better.”
“Lily is doing well now.”
“We can’t have another person in this house with issues.”
“If you stay around her and somehow affect her relapse, what are we supposed to do?”
Affect her relapse.
So that was what I was in this family.
I was the problem they needed to remove.
“You’re sending me away?”
“Sending you away? No.”
“We’re doing this for your own good.”
“Go make some money.”
“Get out for a while. Maybe you’ll feel better.”
He paused before adding:
“Your mom has taken care of Lily for so long.”
“She deserves a break too.”
That night, I saw a voice message from Mom in the family group chat.
“Nina hasn’t been doing very well lately…”
“She was under too much pressure taking care of Lily before.”
“We thought it would be better if she went out for a while and cleared her head.”
“If she complains to any of you later, don’t encourage it.”
“It’s not that we don’t care about her.”
“We’re just worried that saying the wrong thing might trigger her.”
Uncle Robert replied:
“I understand.”
Aunt Claire replied:
“Giving her some space is probably for the best.”
I sent Uncle Robert a private message.
“Uncle, that’s not what happened.”
“I think I might be sick too.”
“I want to see a psychiatrist.”
He read it.
Ten minutes passed.
No reply.
The day I left, I stood by the door and said:
“Mom, I’m leaving.”
She was painting Lily’s nails.
Pink.
“Okay.”
“Let your dad know when you arrive safely.”
She didn’t even look up.
The nail polish brush never stopped moving.
Aunt Rachel’s coffee shop was located in the suburbs of Harborview.
She barely spoke to me.
Every now and then, she glanced at me like she was looking at a ticking time bomb.
I knew what Mom had told her.
At night, I slept in the tiny room behind the shop.
A folding cot.
A plastic stool.
A single fluorescent light.
It was even smaller than the storage room I had stayed in at home.
On my fifth day working there, an elderly woman came into the shop.
Her name was Evelyn Harper.
Her hair was completely white.
She leaned on a cane.
She ordered the cheapest coffee on the menu.
Then she sat by the window quietly, slowly finishing her drink.
When she was about to leave, she passed the counter.
Then she suddenly stopped and looked at me.
“Sweetheart, you don’t seem very happy.”
I froze.
She didn’t ask any questions.
She simply reached into her cloth bag and placed an orange on the counter.
“Eat it.”
“It’s sweet.”
Then she left.
I stared at that orange for a long time.
I couldn’t bring myself to eat it.
That night, I placed it beside my pillow.
Whenever I couldn’t sleep, I brought it close and smelled it.
It was sweet.
For the first time in seven months, someone noticed I wasn’t okay without making me explain why.
After that, she came every week.
She never talked much.
She would drink one cup of coffee.
And before leaving, she would place an orange on the counter.
Sometimes it was an orange.
Sometimes it was a few cupcakes.
She never asked why.
And I never told her.
I dried every piece of orange peel and lined them up on my windowsill.
That little row of dried orange peels was the only thing in this place that felt warm.
A few days later, my phone rang.
It was Mom.
“Did you get paid yet?”
“Lily wants to go to a Japanese restaurant.”
“Send back a thousand dollars.”
“Fine.”
She didn’t hang up.
Her voice suddenly softened, like we were just chatting about something ordinary.
“Oh, by the way, I wanted to tell you something.”
“Ever since you left, Lily has been doing so much better.”
“She laughs every day now.”
“She even goes out shopping with her friends.”
She paused for a moment.
“See? The reason she kept having problems before was probably because there were too many people around her at home.”
“The environment was too stressful for her.”
“Now that you’re gone, she actually feels more relaxed.”
I gripped my phone tightly.
I couldn’t say a single word.
“Alright, remember to send the money.”
“And don’t go telling people at Aunt Rachel’s coffee shop about our family business.”
“You’ll embarrass the family.”
I put down my phone.
My hands were shaking.
I opened the Notes app and added another line.
Lily tends to have emotional ups and downs when the seasons change. Don’t leave her alone. Spend more time with her and let her get some sunlight.
As soon as I finished writing, my phone screen lit up with an Instagram notification.
It was Lily.
Nine selfies.
Her eyes curved into a bright smile.
The caption read:
“Finally made it through! Thank you to everyone who stayed by my side during this time.”
There were dozens of comments below.
Mom wrote:
“Mom will always love you!”
Dad wrote:
“Dad is so proud of you!”
I scrolled all the way down.
More than forty comments.
Not a single one mentioned my name.
Nine photos.
Not one showed my face.
I turned off the screen.
The tiny room was dark.
The row of orange peels on the windowsill caught a little bit of the streetlight.
I stared at them.
And suddenly, I felt exhausted.
So exhausted that I could barely breathe.