Lead Me Not by A. Meredith Walters

years. It had stopped being home for me after Jayme died.
    “That’s ridiculous. What if something had happened? No one would have been able to reach you!” my mother reprimanded, digging that knife just a little deeper. She sounded concerned, but appearances were deceiving.
    “Sorry, Mom,” I repeated. But an apology would never undo the damage of the last three years.
    My mother gave a huff, obviously feeling righteous in her indignation. My mother wore martyrdom well. She was the self-sacrificing matriarch of an ungrateful family.
    The whole thing made me sick.
    “You need to come home,” my mother said without further preamble.
    My chest squeezed, and I clenched the phone so tightly in my hand that I started to cut off circulation to my fingers.
    I stayed quiet, not trusting myself to speak. I breathed in deeply through my nose. I didn’t dare look at Brooks, who I knew was watching me curiously. He had no idea of the emotional land mine I had walked into just by answering the phone. He wasn’t privy to the side of my life that I worked hard to hide from.
    “Bre! Did you hear me? This is important. I wouldn’t bother calling otherwise,” she said harshly, cutting me open with the truth of her words.
    “Why?” I finally asked, clearing my throat around the huge lump that had formed there.
    My mother’s annoyed snort was loud in my ear. “Are you serious? Do I really need to remind you of what next weekend is?” she declared hatefully.
    The lump dissolved around the flood of my anger. Fuck, no, I hadn’t forgotten! Forgetting would never be an option for me. She wasn’t the only person who had lost Jayme. But my parents acted as though they alone grieved the loss of the fifteen-year-old girl who had disappeared from our lives too soon.
    “No, Mom. I didn’t forget,” I replied through gritted teeth. I wanted to yell and rage at her cold disregard for my feelings. But Aubrey Duncan was a master at containing emotion. I had to be. It was the only way I got by.
    “The local teen center is doing a memorial in Jayme Marie’s memory, and they want us there. Your father is planning to say something. The newspaper will be there, as well as a local TV crew. The entire family should be present for it.” My mom’s words were final, not allowing any argument.
    I was expected to obey, no questions asked.
    But I wouldn’t.
    I couldn’t.
    As much as a part of me wanted to repair the gaping hole in my family, I couldn’t return to Marshall Creek. I couldn’t go back to the two-story brick house where I had grown up. I couldn’t walk past the closed door that would never open again.
    No way.
    “I can’t make it,” I said quietly, already bracing myself for the fallout.
    “You can’t make it ?” my mother asked angrily.
    I shook my head, even though my mother couldn’t see me.
    “You’re telling me that you won’t come home for a memorial in memory of your baby sister? You can’t take a couple of days out of your life to honor your sister? You of all people should understand how important this is! You owe this to her!” My mother’s voice cracked as it rose to a shrill screech.
    I closed my eyes and tried not to let the hatred overtake me. Hatred for my mother, who would never allow me to forget how I had failed Jayme. Hatred for the drugs that had taken my sister before her time. Hatred for the fucking asshole who had given them to her.
    And most of all, hatred for myself.
    That hatred was a ferocious thing that smoldered in my belly. It was always there. It never went away. And my mother knew just how to stoke it into a full-blown forest fire.
    “I have to go, Mom,” I said, not bothering to try to explain myself to her, to tell her that returning to Marshall Creek was like ripping a bandage off a wound that was only now starting to heal. There was no point. My mother wouldn’t have listened.
    And maybe I was being selfish. Maybe I should make myself go home. But I just knew it would never