The Best I Could by R. K. Ryals

my
bones. “No, it’s not.”
    “You’re not telling me
something, brother.” Jonathan leaned against the bedroom door, his
gaze studying me. “Not just you. All of you.”
    I glanced at him. “You’re the one everyone
looks to, Jon. You’ve got a bright future ahead of you, and no one
wants to mess that up.”
    He cringed. “And I’m supposed to be okay
being kept in the dark? Don’t you think it’s just as hard having to
overcompensate for you and Heather all of the time? Don’t you think
I want to know what happened to you?”
    “Heather doesn’t know either,” I assured
him.
    He snorted. “Are you so
sure? Look at her, Eli. She’s run away from home five times, and
she’s been in trouble more than she’s been out of it. Something’s going on
there.”
    My hands gripped the side of
the mattress. Could Heather
know?
    That thought and the conversation with Tansy
the night before loosened something inside of me, and I met
Jonathan’s gaze, my eyes full of steel. “Mom used to drug us, Jon.
All of us.”
    He froze. “What?”
    “Codeine cough syrup,” I continued. “At least
I think that’s all she used. It doesn’t really matter.”
    It took a moment to register on Jonathan’s
face, but when it did, he stumbled forward, his fists clenched.
“You’re lying.”
    My face shut down, going stony and
unreadable. “You asked, Jon. I told. Do me a favor and go ’fess up
to Pops. I’m all for him kicking me out right now.”
    Jonathan sat hard on the end
of the bed, his head falling into his hands. “You have to be
lying,” he whispered. “Our mom ?” He looked at me. “Eli,” he
begged.
    My chest hurt, but I didn’t back down. “Do
you want me to tell you it’s a lie? I can tell you anything you
want me to tell you. I can pretend whatever you want me to pretend,
but the truth remains.”
    Jonathan inhaled, exhaled, and then inhaled
again. “To us?” he asked. “She did that to us?”
    Standing, I started pulling clothes out of
the bedroom closet. “If it makes you feel better, she started out
doing it to protect me from my father, from his angry outbursts. He
hit me once, or so I’ve been told. I don’t remember it. A mutual
friend of Mom and Dad’s told Mom that a little cough syrup would
help keep me quiet. She tried it, it worked, and the rest is
history.”
    Jonathan tracked my movements, watching as I
pulled on a pair of workout shorts and a T-shirt. “How do you know
if you don’t remember?”
    I shrugged. “What Pops didn’t tell me, I
discovered through police reports and people who knew Dad.”
Stepping into my tennis shoes, I stooped to tie them. “I remember
more than I want to. Mom drugged me until I was eight. She quit
sooner with you and Heather.” I paused, my gaze distant, and drew
in a breath. “There was a drug raid after Mom remarried Dad. DHS
got involved. She lost custody of all of us voluntarily. You went
to your dad, Heather went to her dad—until he abandoned her at
Pops—and I went to Pops. I don’t know the specifics. I don’t know
what Pops did to get Mom off or what he did to adopt me. Honestly,
I couldn’t give a shit. I just know that she moved in with Pops and
continued to drug me because I was too much to handle. It wasn’t
until Pops walked in to find her giving me cough syrup that he
discovered what she was doing. When you and Heather went through
withdrawals after the raid, the authorities assumed it was Dad,
that he was the one giving us drugs. I really don’t know what she
was giving us.”
    Jonathan stared, horrified. “Pops didn’t turn
her in?”
    Anger consumed me, the inferno of emotions
blazing through my body, and I struggled to tamp it down. “He
covered it up. Mom’s …” I paused, my fists clenching and
unclenching. “Mom needs help. She sees people, and she takes
medication when she feels like it, but …”
    “Pops thinks she’d commit suicide,” Jonathan
finished quietly.
    My gaze rose to his. “She’s
not