Page 33 of Holding On

Sitting this close to her, I can see it—and I don’t know how we missed it.

“Cherry?” Liam raises an eyebrow at her, finally functioning somewhat normal.

Cami smiles tightly before raising her mitten-clad hands and twisting them like jazz hands. “Ta-da! When I bought her, there was a tape stuck in the cassette player, and it only contained and played one mainstream metal song: ‘Cherry Pie.’” She shrugs as the name is quite obvious.

She knows why we’re here, and she’s still being strong and keeping her head—mostly—held high, except for the occasional glance at her mittened hands fidgeting on the table.

I can’t help but smile at the idea of Cami singing along at the top of her lungs to the same song over and over while driving down the highway. “And how long have you and Cherry been together?”

She nods. “I bought her the week after I turned eighteen, so just over three years.”

For the last three years, Cami has been living in the RV she lovingly calls Cherry. I can tell she’s done her best to take care of it, but calling it a safe and reliable place to live is a stretch, and judging by the wind I can still feel even though we are inside, that’s being quite generous.

I look at Liam, leaning my head slightly to Cami, silently asking if he wants to take the lead here. Liam shakes his head no, and I hum in acknowledgment before turning back to Cami. I lean slightly forward and fold my hands on the table, trying to look as least intimidating as possible, but at just shy of six-four, that’s not easy.

I soften my tone intentionally as I ask my next question. “And … how long have you known that you’re our sister?”

Putting it out there, even if we all likely knew where this conversation was going, causes Cami's eyebrows to shoot up and her eyes to widen like an owl’s.

“Uh … um, I suppose, a smidge longer than that. To be fair, I didn’t initially know about all of you. More broad strokes. There are a lot of you, after all,” she replies in a hushed tone before staring at her mittens like they hold all the answers.

I don’t think anyone expected this conversation, let alone in a cold RV on a random Wednesday evening.

“How long, Cami?” Liam asks gently. I glance at him and his entire demeanor has softened from when we first sat down.

Cami takes a massive breath, exhaling a sigh that is even louder than the wind. She briefly closes her eyes before looking back up at Liam.

“I’ve known that my father was a man named Murphy Callahan basically my entire life.” She glances at me as my jaw is dropped in shock. She knew her entire life? That doesn’t make any sense.

I look at my brother, who looks furious at her answer.

“Well, I knew his name was Murphy for most of my life, but my mother only let his last name slip once when I was nine and I wrote it in my diary. I also knew he was married and had other children.” She rushes out an explanation in an attempt to placate Liam. I think she’s misunderstanding his anger.

“How is that even possible?” Liam demands.

Cami sheepishly looks away as she answers him, “My understanding is that I was the result of a brief affair between my mother and your, uh, our, uh … father.”

“No, that I absolutely understand and believe.” Liam waves his hand in front of his face. “We all know about our father’s history. But how did none of us know about you? Does our father know about you?” Liam presses.

“I can’t believe he had any idea whatsoever. That’s not the man that raised us, even in his worst moments, he wouldn’t keep you away from us all these years like some terrible secret. This doesn’t make any sense,” I ramble but I think I’m in shock. When Liam told me Cami was our half-sister, I assumed she had just recently found out. But she was out there struggling and knew about us?

“No, Mama wouldn’t have allowed that either, even considering … well, the delicate situation.” Liam grimaces.

Cami shrugs slightly. “I don’t have all the answers. I only know what my mother told me before … before she…” Her eyes moisten as she shakes her head, as though the movement will keep the tears at bay. “And after, there wasn’t really anyone around that had those answers either, or even really just around.”

“After what, Cami?” My voice is so gentle it’s almost a whisper.

“After my mom died.”

Liam folds his hands on the dining room table. “I looked into you, it’s nothing personal, it’s what I do.” That’s a massive understatement. He casually looks into people all the time, but when his hunch about who Cami could possibly be was confirmed, he looked into anything and everything related to Cameron Maura Walsh. “You’ve had a file with Connecticut Family Services since you were twelve years old.”

“Yeah. After she died, I didn’t have anywhere else to go, so I became a ward of the state. That’s where her last traveling nurse job had moved us to about six months before everything happened, so that’s where I ended up.”

She means that’s when she entered foster care, where she would go on to be shuffled amongst fourteen different foster homes in the six years she was a ward of the state. Four of the homes she was placed in are no longer eligible for foster placements due to unsafe conditions, including but not limited to child abuse and neglect.

I might be sick. She’s twenty years younger than me, and even if for some Godforsaken reason our mother wouldn’t have taken her in—a scenario that would never have happened in the first place—I could have protected her from that. “One of my siblings was left alone and had to enter foster care?” My face is deceptively calm as I’ve slid the mask on to control my shit, but my tone is grave. “Were you okay? I mean, what the fuck? How the hell didn’t we know this, Liam?” My anger slips but is directed at Liam.

Cami’s soft voice interrupts my fury. “I guess, technically that statement is true, but you didn’t know about me, and all I knew was that I had siblings somewhere out there.” She shrugs. “So, I kept my head down, tried not to get in any trouble, and started saving money from the moment I turned sixteen and could get a job. That money saved, paired with what little my mother had in savings, bought me Cherry and freedom.”