Chapter 29 - The Price of Independence
I looked down at her hands on my coat.
The manicure she had gotten three weeks ago—the one Eleanor paid for with the grocery money I had wired them—was chipped and peeling. Her fingers were cold, trembling against my chest.
Slowly, gently, I took her wrists in my hands and peeled her fingers away from my jacket.
"No, Hannah," I said.
She stared at me, her mouth dropping open in utter disbelief. "No? What do you mean, no? I'm your sister!"
"You're twenty-two years old," I told her, my voice low, calm, and utterly unyielding. "When I was twenty-two, I was working thirty-five hours a week at a logistics firm, taking eighteen credit hours of night classes, and paying the property taxes on a house I wasn't allowed to invite my friends to visit."
"That was different!" she cried. "You were smart! You were capable!"
"I was *forced* to be," I snapped, the iron rising back into my tone. "Because every time I tried to sit down and rest, Mother put another bill in front of my face and told me that if I didn't pay it, we would all starve. And while I was starving myself to keep you in private school, you were laughing at me behind my back for being a drudge."
"I never laughed at you!" she lied, looking away toward the creek.
"You called me the 'hired help' to your sorority sisters," I said plainly. "I heard you on the back porch last Thanksgiving, Hannah. You thought I was down in the basement doing your laundry. You told your little friends that I stayed home because I didn't have the personality for society."
Hannah swallowed hard, her face draining of what little color it had left.
"Clara... please," she whispered. "I'm sorry. I'll apologize. I'll do whatever you want."
"I don't want your apologies," I said. "And I don't want your company."
I reached into my pocket, pulled out the leather coin purse Julian had given me, and took out three crisp fifty-dollar bills. I held them out to her.
"There's a diner at the crossroads," I said, pointing down the shell road toward the highway. "Martha’s nephew runs the kitchen. He needs a dishwasher and a breakfast prep girl. It pays nine dollars an hour and includes a room over the garage."
She looked at the three bills in my hand, then looked back at my face, horrified.
"A dishwasher?" she breathed, her voice filled with pure, undiluted disgust. "You want me... a Vance... to wash dishes in a greasy diner?"
I dropped the money onto the top of her duffel bag in the dirt.
"Take it or leave it, Hannah," I said, turning back to the garden bed. "The walk back to the highway is two miles. If you start now, you'll reach the diner before the lunch rush."
"You're a monster," she spat, her voice trembling with venom as she snatched the three bills from the bag. "You're a cold, selfish, miserable monster! Mom was right about you! You have ice water in your veins!"
She grabbed her bags, turned around, and began trudging back down the shell road, her heels sinking into the dirt, sobbing loudly with every step she took.
May you like
I didn't watch her go.
I plunged the flat shovel into the cool earth, turned over a fresh spadeful of dark, fertile soil, and let the scent of the living earth fill my lungs.
