Before Thirty

40. Blake

"Not when you're off in the middle of butt fuck nowhere trying not to get killed."

"I'm helping people," I grit out.

We stare at each other across Ang's kitchen table, and I'm beginning to wonder why Ang thought this was such a good idea. Instead of being down the hall packing for her honeymoon, a facilitator would be nice, someone who understands where this conversation is supposed to go. I haven't got a fucking clue, and my patience is thin this morning.

"Ang says that you believe we picked Mom and Dad over you."

I let out a mirthless laugh. "You did. You had a chance to leave them, and you didn't take it."

"That's not what we thought we were doing." He clears his throat and shifts in his seat. "When you offered to quit school and take us on, we didn't want that for you. We thought we were giving you a chance at a better life. You wouldn't have to drop out. Wouldn't be stuck with us, here. Jamie and I thought you'd come back. Get your degree and come home. But instead, you just fucked off all over the world helping other people."

I sit back in my seat and stare at him, trying to calibrate what he's telling me. "Why didn't you say that then?"

"Because if we told you that's what we were doing, you'd have stayed. You'd have dug in your heels. We didn't want you to stay, but we didn't want you gone so fucking long. When we didn't make the choice you thought you thought we should, you washed your hands of us."

"This doesn't make any sense," I say. Except some of it does. I could see Sam and Jamie conspiring to make me go to university, get my degree, better myself. Maybe they even hoped I'd come back to drag them along with me. "If that's how you felt, why were you all such dickheads to me and Diana when we came to visit?"

"We were pissed. You hadn't been home in years. We'd barely heard from you. Then you turn up with a trust fund baby whose family had given you these scholarships, done things for you none of us could have ever done."

"Don't talk about her like that," I say. "Don't ever talk about her like that."

"I don't know what you told her, but she clearly thought we were all worthless from the minute she arrived."

"She didn't think that," I say.

Had I soured her opinion of them before we arrived? It's possible. My relationship with Diana and her family was very different from the friendship I forged first with Gwen. And the difficulties with my family were fresh with Diana, at the surface. Diana was always one to fight someone's battles for them, not necessarily with them.

"Jamie and I have no problem feeling worthless all on our own. Jobs have dried up. More people are leaving here than arriving. Things are shit a lot of the time, and you come home acting like your shit doesn't stink."

Silence sits between us for a few beats while I try to file all this conflicting information. Everything he's saying goes against what I've always believed, but I can see where his interpretation could also be true. Everyone hurting, no one saying the right thing.

"If you wanted me here, why didn't you reach out to me like Ang did?"

"Pride. Anger. Took me a long time to see the situation from your side." He tips his head. "Took Ang pointing out that not everyone experiences things in the same way. You could be right, and so could I."

I release a long breath and lean back in the kitchen chair. Lack of communication and hurt feelings were a terrible combination. The notion that I could have had some relationship with my brothers and sister this whole time is a tough pill to swallow.