Four Of A Kind - Chapter 220: [4.38] My Sister, The Bravest Person in This Room

I stared at my mother sitting in my kitchen.

My kitchen.

The kitchen where I’d taught myself to cook at twelve because she kept forgetting to buy groceries. The kitchen where I’d made Iris’s lunch every morning for the past six years while Diana slept in or didn’t come home at all.

And now she was drinking tea there at ten forty-seven on a Friday night like she had any right to occupy that space.

“I need to sleep,” I said. “Move.”

“Isaiah, we need to talk.”

“No. We don’t.”

“I came all the way from California.”

“Nobody asked you to.”

She flinched. Good.

I walked to the couch, my couch, the piece of furniture I’d slept on for six years so Iris could have the bedroom. Diana watched me drop my keys on the coffee table with a clatter that sounded too loud in the quiet apartment.

“Where were you?” she asked.

“Work.”

“Until almost eleven?”

“I have multiple jobs. You’d know that if you’d bothered asking before now.”

The words came out sharper than I intended. Or maybe exactly as sharp as I meant them.

Diana set down her mug. “I deserved that.”

“You deserve worse.”

She stood. Walked closer. Her face did that thing where it tried to look wounded and maternal at the same time, the expression she’d perfected over eighteen years of being an inconsistent disaster.

“I know you’re angry.”

“I’m not angry.” I sat on the couch, started unlacing my shoes. “I’m tired. There’s a difference.”

“Isaiah—”

“Diana.” I used her name deliberately. Not Mom. Not Mother. Diana. “I have an AP English test. I have work. I have Iris to take care of because you decided California sounded better than your kids. So whatever speech you practiced on the plane, save it. I don’t care.”

That was a lie.

I cared too much and that was the problem.

Four girls had just confessed feelings for me in a parked car and I’d shot them all down because I was terrified of losing the ten thousand a month that kept Iris fed and the lights on. Now my mother sat in my kitchen drinking tea like she’d never left, like two years was just a weekend trip instead of abandonment.

The universe had a sick sense of timing.

Diana moved to the armchair across from the couch. She wasn’t leaving. Of course she wasn’t leaving.

“I met Jack in July,” she started.

“Don’t care.”

“He owns a tech company. He’s stable. He has a house with three bedrooms and—”

“I said I don’t care.”

My phone buzzed in my pocket. Probably one of the sisters. Probably all of them. I’d just rejected four simultaneous confessions and they were probably comparing notes on how spectacularly I’d crashed and burned.

You’re scared that if you let yourself want something, it’ll get taken away.

Cassidy’s words from earlier echoed in my skull.

She was right. She’d been completely, devastatingly right.

Diana kept talking. Something about California weather and good schools and fresh starts. Her voice had that dreamy quality she always got when talking about her latest escape plan.

I pulled out my phone. Seventeen messages.

Harlow: we’re on the way home!! thank u for tonight 💜

Cassidy: still think you’re an idiot

Sabrina: 🌹

Vivienne: We meant what we said. All of it.

Harlow: also i named my bear Isaiah Jr

Cassidy: i did NOT name mine after you

Cassidy: his name is Buttons and it’s a coincidence

Harlow: cassidy DEFINITELY named hers after u 😂

Sabrina: Mine is reading Dostoevsky.

I stared at the screen. Heat crawled up my neck.

They’d driven all the way to Philadelphia because they were worried about me. Spent two hours playing arcade games and eating greasy pizza because they noticed I was falling apart.

Then I’d told them no because I was practical. Responsible. Smart.

Coward.

“Are you even listening?” Diana asked.

“No.”

Her mouth tightened. “I’m trying here, Isaiah.”

“You’re trying now. Where was the effort two months ago? Six months ago? How about when I was sixteen and you left Iris home alone past midnight three times in one week?”

“I was going through something.”

“You’re always going through something!” I stood. My voice rose despite my best efforts. “You’ve been going through something my entire life. And every time it gets hard, you leave. You find a new guy or a new city or a new excuse and you disappear. Then you come back when it’s convenient and act surprised that we learned to live without you.”

Iris’s door opened.

She stood there in one of my old shirts, her hair messy from sleep, her eyes wide.

“Zay?”

I forced myself to breathe. “It’s fine. Go back to bed.”

“You’re yelling.”

“I’m not yelling.”

“You kind of are,” Iris said quietly.

Diana stood too. “Sweetie, your brother and I are just having a conversation.”

“Don’t call her sweetie. You don’t get to do that.”

“I’m her mother.”

“You’re the woman who gave birth to her.”

Iris walked between us. Small and fourteen and braver than either of us.

“Stop.” She looked at me. Then at Diana. “Both of you just stop.”

The apartment went quiet.

Iris’s hands were shaking. She grabbed my wrist with one hand and Diana’s wrist with the other.

“I don’t remember you,” she said to Diana. Her voice cracked. “I was twelve when you left and I barely remember what it was like before that. Zay’s the one who made me breakfast. Zay taught me how to do laundry and helped with my homework and sat with me when I was scared of thunderstorms. Zay’s been my parent since I was eight and you were just the person who came home sometimes.”

Diana’s face crumpled.

“But I still wanted you to come back.” Iris’s grip tightened on both of us. “I wanted you to be my mom. I wanted you to care enough to stay. And then you sent that text and took the money and I knew you weren’t ever going to be that person.”

Tears streamed down her face now.

“So I don’t know what you want from us. I don’t know if you want forgiveness or if you want us to move to California or if you just want to feel better about leaving. But whatever it is, you can’t show up after two years and expect us to forget everything that happened before.”

My chest hurt.

Iris let go of both of us. Wiped her face with her sleeve.

“I’m going to bed. You two can keep fighting or talking or whatever. I don’t care anymore.”

She walked back to her room. The door closed with a soft click.