Through the Fire by Donna Hill Page A

her?” she asked softly. “What did you do?”
    “I…I killed her.” He said it so abruptly and with such force, Rae was momentarily taken aback.
    “I…I don’t believe that. You couldn’t kill anyone. That’s not who you are. That’s not the man I see sitting here. What really happened?”
    “What really happened?” he tossed back nastily. “I’ll tell you what really happened, I did to her what our mother did to us,” he said, his voice losing some of its power. “I was responsible, and I didn’t do what I was supposed to do, too wrapped up in my own world, my own choices. I didn’t think about her, what she needed. I should have been looking out for her and I didn’t do it.”
    “How old were you when your mother left?” she asked gently.
    “Sixteen…”
    Briefly she shut her eyes, unable to imagine the fear and enormous responsibility that had been heaped on his young shoulders. Though she’d left home at sixteen, it was her choice, not something thrust upon her. “Quinn, you were just a child yourself—”
    “I was a man,” he ground out. “I had to be—for both of us.” His eyes grew dark with the memories of the things he’d done to survive.
    Rae could feel the chasm opening betweenthem, the distance. She needed to pull him back before he shut down again, cut her off.
    “Why did your mother leave?” she asked, giving him some much-needed breathing space. “Did you ever find out?”
    He looked at her, narrowing his eyes. “She had problems, couldn’t deal with them or us. I guess she felt the only way to handle what was going on in her life was to walk away from everything. Just split. She was selfish, didn’t think about what that one stupid act would do to us, her kids. It messed us up, messed us up real good.”
    “And you’ll hate her for the rest of your life, right?”
    “I didn’t say that.” He bristled. “I deal with it. I don’t hate her.”
    “I think you do and it’s poisoning your life,” she said. “Hate doesn’t hurt anybody but the person who does it. Think about what having these feelings has done to you, to your life.”
    “I think I’ve done damned well considering what I’ve come through,” he said proudly. “Hey, I could’ve ended up like some of the other brothers out here. Lives totally wrecked. But I’ve stayed on my feet.”
    “Tell me about your sister,” she said, trying to keep him talking, keep the conversation away from her and what she’d nearly revealed about her own demons. “What happened?”
    He visibly sagged as though she had sucker punched him. It took several minutes for him to recover his composure. He swallowed hard. “My twin sister was killed…shot down in a drive-by shooting in my old neighborhood. It…it…was my fault ’cause she kept buggin’ me to move, to find a new place, get out of the neighborhood. And I kept puttin’ it off, comin’ up with excuses. Then one day she was dead. Gunned down like a common thug. And I could have prevented it all if I had just moved out of there when she asked me to. So you see, I killed her as sure as if I’d pulled the trigger.”
    “Quinn, it’s not your fault,” she said sternly. “It’s fate, chance, destiny, whatever you want to call it. When it’s your time…nothing and nobody can stop it.”
    “No.” He shook his head.
    “No, no what?”
    “No, I don’t believe that. I was responsible. I let her down.”
    “I see. So you’ll spend the rest of your life hanging on to the guilt like some sort of badge of honor,” she goaded. “Is that what it’s about? You’re better than that. And if your sister loved you as much as I’m sure she did, she’d never want to you live like this.”
    He sprung up from the stool, nearly knocking it over. His expression turned into a mask of pain and rage. “You don’t know shit! You don’t know anything about me, what’s going on inside me. Your life is all laid out for you. Yeah, you talk a good game, getting