The Shattered Genesis (Eternity) (31 page)

             
“You left them! And they’re dead now!”
I screamed at her as tears ran from my eyes. “You killed them!”

             
“I did
nothing
. They killed themselves! Let me make this quite clear to you: You are here, you are alive. I had a choice between saving you and saving them. Observe your surroundings to deter
mine what my exact choice was.”

             
“How could you do that?! They’re our parents!” I couldn’t make sense of it. I couldn’t fathom such grief. My parents had always been distant and sometimes, I truly believed that my love for them was waning. But now they wer
e gone because of Brynna. I hadn’t even been able to say goodbye.

             
“They were nothing to me, Violet.” She scowled at me for showing such an abundance of weakness. “If you were even half as smart as I am, you would say the same thing.”

             
“You’re evil!” I pus
hed her now. “You’re evil and you’re a bad person and you’re a… a…
bitch!
You’re a …”

             
I meant every word that I shouted. I meant every awful thought that I couldn’t quite transform into words. I hoped that she would be left behind someday. I hoped that sh
e would die. After she was dead, I hoped that she would burn in hell for being so heartless.

             
She crossed her arms over her chest and watched me, shaking her head slightly, waiting for me to be done. Behind her dark-rimmed glasses, her eyes flashed not wit
h hurt at any of the terrible things I was saying, but with a mild irritation. I wanted to rip her apart. I couldn't believe how badly I wanted to kill my own sister.

             
“I hate you!” I shrieked, “I hate you, Brynna! I wish you were dead instead of them! It
should have been you!”

             
Our mother and Maura had both screamed the same words at one point in her life. If Brynna was human, what I had just said would have reduced her to a sobbing, broken mess. But her eyes only burnt even more brightly as a smile formed
on her lips.

             
“You know that, don’t you?” I laughed in bitter rage through my tears. I would keep screaming my insults, accusations and cruel wishes for her demise until she broke. I would keep screaming until I lost my voice, if that was what it took to
bring her down. “You know that you were the one that deserved to die!”

             
I was saying all of that to my sister, who had, in her later years, been the one who raised me. She had molded me into the person I was. My parents had never been there and when Maura
was gone for three years, the responsibility of Penny and I landed on Brynna’s small shoulders.

             
I knew that. But I also knew that despite all they had done, I loved my parents and she had left them to die.

             
“Plus, you knew that they would have left you be
hind! You knew they didn’t want you! I couldn’t understand why before, but I do now! They would have left you because they didn’t love you! Because you’re
evil!
”

             
I collapsed on the ground in a fit of tears, wanting to kick my feet and scream until my face
turned red and my lungs no longer drew in breath. I could feel her gaze resting heavily on me. I could feel every last bit of her contempt at seeing what she believed was a pathetic display of failed strength.

             
“Have your tantrum, little girl.” She said a
fter a long moment of watching me. “My stars… I raised you better than this.”

             
With that, she turned and calmly walked away.

XXX

             
Maura was talking to me. I don’t know how long I sat on the floor in that hallway before she showed up. When Brynna returned
to the group, I’m sure Maura immediately began searching for me. Knowing my sister’s cruel tendencies, she knew that I would be in need of comfort. But she never could have imagined what I had just learned.

“Darling, sit up. Come on. That’s it.” After I ha
d crumpled to the ground, I slid sideways so that I was lying on my side at the base of the wall. Anyone who walked by me would assume that we had broken open some celebratory bottles of champagne while they were all still sleeping and I was just a sad, dr
unk girl who would pass out eventually and be out of everyone’s hair. But obviously, Maura knew better.

I’ll admit that I was giving her no help; her small hands were attempting to lift the full weight of my body. But she was strong when she needed to be a
nd was eventually able to maneuver me into a sitting position. I felt her hands on my face and her thumbs wiping my tears away.

“What happened, darling? What did she say? Whatever it was, you know she didn’t mean it. She’s just…” Maura sighed and moved my
hair away from my face with both of her hands. “That’s just who she is, right? You know that.”

“Mom and Dad aren’t here, Maura.” I told her.

Her expression fell; she was as stunned by the revelation as I had been.

“She left them behind.”

While she had been
shocked before, now she was downright horrified. Who wouldn’t be? The child she had raised had finally snapped and committed a foul, sinful act. She had left two people she was supposed to love unconditionally behind to die on Earth because she felt they
were unworthy of being saved. In short, she played God. There was no way Maura couldn’t be horrified as she was seeing for the first time, clear as day, that Brynna was evil through and through.

I thought Maura was going to leave me. I thought she was goin
g to storm after Brynna and scream at her all the things that I had already screamed. But she didn’t. We sat on the floor in silence for several minutes.

“I knew she was hiding something. She’s worse when she’s hiding something. But maybe we’re not giving
her enough credit. Maybe she tried to save them and they didn’t believe her.”

I looked up at her, saying nothing. My expression forced her to rethink that hypothesis.

“But she doesn’t
hate
them, Violet. I know that she doesn’t. They have their issues, yes.
But she could never do something like that. She could never have left without telling them what was going on. I know that she blames them for Rachel’s death but that wouldn’t make her leave them behind.”

“She has always hated them, Maura. I had my issues
with them, too. But I never could have left them to die!”

“Of course not. Alright, listen to me,” She grasped my hands and I looked up at her, “I know this is difficult but we’re going to get through this. We’ll deal with this when we get there, okay? Righ
t now, we just have to make it to Pangea. Then, we’ll grieve, we’ll be angry. We’ll do whatever we need to do to heal from this. Whatever you do, do not tell Penny.”

“How are we going to explain why Mom and Dad aren’t here?”

“We’ll tell her that they’re me
eting us on Pangea. She’s only four, darling. She’ll believe it. Then, once we’re there, we’ll tell her everything. You have to think about it this way, Vi: We’re stuck on this ship for two weeks. There is nowhere to get away from each other. If you spend
this entire time hating Brynna, you are going to drive yourself mad. So, you just have to put it away for right now. I know that is so hard. It’s unfair to ask this of you. But even though this ship is large and there are some places to get away, there are
n’t enough. Do you know what I mean?”

I nodded.

“I’ll never forgive her for this, Maura.” I whispered as new tears fell. “You know that, don’t you?”

Maura nodded and I saw tears glistening in her eyes, too.

“I wish that wasn’t the case. But I know that it
is.”

“Does Elijah know?”

Maura wiped at her eyes and nodded.

“Don’t expect him to be angry. He’s shocked and he will grieve for them, but he won’t be angry like you are.”

“Are
you
angry, Maura?” I looked at her now, thinking that she would lie in order to
alleviate my own fury at Brynna. What we needed more than anything was unity. We were traveling through space to an alien planet where we would be forced to start our lives from scratch. In that time of uncertainty, we needed what we knew. We needed to kee
p the people we had always known close, as they were the only familiar things that we would ever have again. They were the only reminders of our first world.

But Maura nodded in response to my question, those tears I had seen in her eyes finally streaming
down her face. A soft sob escaped her and she covered her mouth to stifle the next that was sure to come. I leaned forward and wrapped my arms around her, crying again. I needed her more than ever now that my parents were permanently gone from both worlds.

“If I would have known,” Maura sobbed,  “I would have stayed.”

I nodded, surprised at my own agreement.

“I would have stayed, too.”

XXX

             
Brynna and Elijah were talking quietly. I watched him put his face in his hand, knowing that he was fighting the same
assault of tears that Maura and I had succumbed to earlier. She and I stood side by side, hand in hand, watching Brynna speaking to him with her hand rested on his knee. That was how she was comforting him. There was not even a hint of softness in her eye
s and I knew that from her lips, she was spewing nothing but lies and excuses.

             
“They would have left us behind.” “They never cared about us.” “I did it to save our lives.”

             
It was all bullshit, in plain terms.

             
“I need you two to understand something.” Ja
mes said suddenly. As though under mind control, Maura and I turned our heads simultaneously in his direction. “It won’t change a thing, I know. But I cannot, if I am remaining honest, let her take all of the responsibility for her decision.”

             
“There’s not
hing you can say,” I felt tears, angry ones this time, welling in my eyes, “Even if you all said that they couldn’t come, she should have stayed with them. Either that, or she should have done everything in her power to convince you and your friends to let
them come. She’s their daughter.”

             
“Look, I know that you love your parents, Violet. But they were responsible for this. Your mother, throughout her time in office, stepped on every toe she could. Your father covered up the things she did. They were respo
nsible for what was coming if, in fact, it was nuclear.”

             
“But you don’t know for sure that it was!” I snapped at him, furious that he would insinuate, though he did so with a veil over it, that my parents were solely responsible for the destruction of the
earth. “If it was a solar storm or something, then they weren’t responsible. That doesn’t mean that she had to abandon them! That doesn’t mean that she had to trick us into coming with her! We’re just as guilty now, don’t you understand?!” The tears began
to fall again, “We’re just as guilty because we didn’t force the truth out of her!”

             
“We never would have gotten it out of her. You know that, Violet.” Maura told me quietly as she shook her head. “Our hands are clean in this.”

             
“They’re not!” My was body
trembling now with a rage I knew was spiraling out of control. “We should have made her tell us the truth. Now, we left them behind and they died alone. Mom was in the house by herself! Dad was in his office! They died alone when it hit!”

             
“How do you kno
w that?” Maura asked as she grasped both of my hands tightly in her own. “Sweetheart, I’m sure they were together. Brynna said that they knew this would happen so I’m sure that he was there with her. Don’t torture yourself, Violet. Don’t picture how it hap
pened. Please, if not for your sake, then for mine.”

             
“But I know it! I
know
!
”

             
Maura looked at James for help but he was rendered silent by my determination to believe. But he also knew, from his own ability to just
know
, that I was probably right. When M
aura continued to stare at him, begging for him to reassure me that my belief on the subject was just a grim fantasy, he shrugged slightly.

             
“I can’t say that she didn’t see it. When did you see that, Violet?”

             
“While I was asleep!” I cried before putting
my face in my hands to hide from their concerned gazes for just a minute. “I woke up crying for them. But you wouldn’t know that, would you, James? You and Brynna were off exploring like this is some vacation! Like the world didn’t just blow apart! Like ev
eryone you ever knew didn’t just burn away! What is wrong with you two?! How can you not care about this?!”