Kessa Barns hadn't seen her family in person for nearly ten years. Other than the yearly holiday FaceTimes at Thanksgiving and Christmas, she kept as little contact as was polite. The choice was her own. She'd simply decided, save for her brother there wasn't a single one of her siblings, or parents for that matter, she desired to remain close with. They'd all made it perfectly clear to her, on that last Thanksgiving holiday she'd spent with them, that they could've lived their entire lives better had she never been born.
Kessa had known, at the time, her mother had meant the knowledge to hurt and manipulate her, but still she'd fallen straight into the trap. She always known she'd been a later-in-life baby. Her father had dubbed her the miracle child because by the time her mother, Sindy Barns, had become pregnant with her, they'd believed they couldn't have anymore children. She'd become the youngest of the four Barns children, two older girls, Rowan and Mollie, and one older boy, Jules. Her brother was nearly ten years older than she and the only one she could remember growing up in the house with her. He'd been her best friend, her closest confidante, her biggest hero. She knew all those reasons and more were why Jules was on the other end of her phone begging her to come to the Barns' family reunion they'd planned for Thanksgiving this year.
"Kessa," Jules asked, his tone laced with an edge of impatience. "You there?"
"Yea, sorry," Kessa said, distantly. "I'm here."
"Well," Jules prodded, struggling to keep his temper calm. Kessa snapped out of her daze of memories and realized she hadn't heard a single word he'd been saying for the last few minutes.
"I'm sorry, Jules. What did you say?"
Kessa could hear Jules sigh irritably on his end and realized for the first time since she picked up his call that he sounded strange. It was unlike Jules to be so impatient or irritated or anything negative at all. He'd always been the laid back, glass-half-full kind of guy. Kessa had always assumed it'd been because he'd had to deal with so much estrogen and hormones growing up. Now he sounded more tense than she'd ever heard him and it turned her stomach into knots.
"Jules, I'm sorry, I'm listening. What is it?"
"It's mom she's sick and you need to come home," Jules said flatly, but hurried as though if he didn't get it out fast, he wouldn't be able to say it again. Kessa's breath caught in her throat and the knots in her stomach turned harder. Memories she'd managed to lock away, deep in her psyche, sprung free and rushed through her mind. Night upon night of crying herself to sleep when she realized mommy wasn't coming to say good night. Days upon days of walking on eggshell because she never knew which mommy she would be facing that day.
"Oh, Jules, I don't know," Kessa admitted softly.
"What don't you know, Kessa? Mom's dying. Do I need to say it any clearer? You need to come home, dammit." Jules had finally lost the battle with his temper, he'd all but screamed into the phone so that Kessa had to hold it away from her ear. Yet, still, she remained calm. The days in which her family, or anyone else for that matter, could pull her out of her character were long gone. Not ever again.
Kessa had spent her childhood in constant competition for the affection and approval of her mother. She'd discovered very early on that to earn the love of Sindy Barns was an absolute impossibility. Sindy was a deeply unsatisfied woman and Kessa knew her mother instigated the resentment she'd felt from each of her siblings; she'd been a forced responsibility on them since she'd been in diapers. Her older sisters especially, had grown to hate their obligations to their baby sister because neither was able to go away to school or experience a...