“Well?” I urged.
“What do you want from us, Eliza?” she finally asked, shaking her head as her blue eyes found mine. “You never wanted me to talk about River. Any time I would in that first year that you were gone, you’d get angry and ask me to stop. You told me it hurt to talk about him. You told me you didn’t want to know.”
“Yes, I realize that,” I conceded. “But come on, this is different.”
“Well, how I was supposed to know what was okay to mention and what wasn’t? What you’d want to know versus what you wouldn’t?”
Beth let out a frustrated breath, glancing at the tree before she found me again.
“You left this town like you never wanted any piece of it ever again, Eliza. I was trying to abide by your wishes. I was trying to give you what you wanted.”
What I wanted.
I laughed under my breath at that.
It seemed everyone was trying to figure out what I wanted, including myself.
I abandoned my pie on the coffee table, crossing my arms over my chest. “I’m just… I feel like a fish out of water. I’m back home in the town I grew up in, and everything is the same, yet nothing is. River’s parents are gone, Beth. They’re gone. I never got to say goodbye. I never got to tell them how much they both meant to me. I never got to…” I held back the sob building in my throat, shaking my head. “I wasn’t here for River. I wasn’t here to help him, to listen to him, to hold his hand at the funeral. He went through all of that alone.”
Beth’s brows bent together, and she scooted close enough on the couch to where she could place her small, pale hand over mine.
“And he knew,” I whispered, shaking my head as my eyes welled up. “He knew his dad was sick, that he wouldn’t be here long. But he didn’t tell me.”
“Of course, he didn’t,” Beth said, as if it were obvious. “He loved you. He wanted you to be happy, and you had literally told him that you weren’t happy here. Why would he try to keep you in that situation?”
“But it wasn’t that simple,” I said, frustrated. “We had been stuck in a rut for a full year. He was miserable, trying to work all those odds and ends jobs, breaking his back, never having a vacation or even a full weekend off. I was working at the supermarket. We were working, day in and day out, all day and night long sometimes just to pay our freaking bills.” I shook my head. “That’s not living, Beth. Neither one of us was living.”
“I know,” she said, rubbing her belly. I knew she was thinking about Robert, about how hard he worked to make ends meet, and how hard she worked to keep their little home up. “But then again, that may not be living to you, but to some of us, just getting by is enough. You know? I mean, sure, Robert and I don’t have a bunch of nice things. We don’t get to go take all these fancy vacations. But at the end of a long day, we come home to each other. We love watching our TV shows together, and we love sitting out at the lake watching the sunset, or taking a long drive through the old winding roads.” She shrugged, a soft smile on her lips. “Sometimes you gotta look past all the hard things you go through and look at all the little things you have to be thankful for. Like someone to hug you, someone to laugh with.” She patted her belly. “Someone to make new life with.”
I swallowed down the emotion still strangling me. “I guess some of us just want more.”
“Maybe,” she said, but her smile told me she thought otherwise. “But maybe some of us just get lost and think we know what we want when really, we have no idea.”
I frowned.
“Why do you think you’re so sick to your stomach right now, Eliza?” she asked. “Why do you think you can’t eat, can’t fathom trying to sleep? Something has changed. Something inside you woke up that you didn’t even realize was there, soundly sleeping, all this time.”
Beth moved even closer, taking both of my hands in hers and looking into my eyes earnestly.
“Let me ask you this, sis. When you left, you said you were off to find adventure,” she said, accentuating the word like it was an epic tale itself. “You’ve been gone for four years now. You’ve seen dozens of different countries, hundreds of cities and towns and farms and lakes and rivers. You’ve spoken new languages, walked down new streets, met new people and maybe even found a new version of yourself, too. But tell me this… have you found what you’re looking for yet?”
My heart thumped hard at the question, another searing zip of pain splitting my chest.
“Because if you haven’t,” she continued, a little shrug on her shoulders and knowing smile on her lips. “Maybe it’s because you’ve been looking in the wrong places. Maybe it’s because it’s been right here, in the town that built you, all along.”
I watched my baby sister like she was an angel, or a psychopath, or maybe a cross between the two. I blinked over and over, my frown deepening the longer silence passed between us.
And the more those words she’d spoken sank in, the more the emotion I’d tried to fight back all evening long surfaced.
“Oh God,” I whispered, pulling my hands from hers to cover my mouth. I shook my head. “You’re right. You’re right, Beth. I… I felt so stuck, so suffocated, that it felt like the only way out was to leave. But all this time, I’ve been searching for this… this feeling. I thought I would know it when it came. I thought one day I’d find a place or a person and everything would just click together and suddenly, right then, I’d know I was where I was supposed to be.”
Beth nodded, smoothing her thumb over my knee.
“And I did,” I said, emotion warping my face before I found a smile, found my sister’s gaze. “I did find that feeling. But it wasn’t in Europe, or Asia, or on a mountaintop or on a beautiful, white sand beach.” I shook my head. “It was in that boring, tiny cabin with no power, no technology, no fancy food or fancy views or fancy entertainment. It was in front of that fireplace, under that stupid old blanket,” I said on a laugh that Beth joined me in. “With that stupid man and that stupid dog.” I sniffed. “I had everything I needed in that moment. And I felt it in my soul.”
It was a revelation. As the words tumbled out of my mouth, I felt them soaring through every inch of my body like a cool breeze on a hot summer day. I pressed my hand to my heart, feeling where it beat inside my rib cage, where it was breaking with another realization.
“But I ran away from it,” I whispered. “I found what I’d been looking for all this time, right where I left it, and it was like finally finding it scared me more than searching for it had.” I shook my head, looking at Beth. “I left him. Again.” A sniff. “I am so, so stupid.”
“You’re not,” she insisted, squeezing my leg. “You were just lost, Eliza. And sometimes that can be easier than being found.”
My stomach toppled over itself, urging me to do something, but I had no idea what.
“What do I do now?” I asked my sister hopelessly.
To which she responded with only a smile, and a kiss to my forehead as she stood and grabbed my plate off the table. “You eat this pie,” she said, shrugging. “And then, you go home.”