Page 90 of Cruel Submission

Her shoulders draw in. Not a flinch—not exactly—but the echo of one. That half-reflex she’s been learning to interrupt in sessions with Dr. Harrison. I watch her catch it. Watch her straighten. She’s so much stronger than she was a month ago, and it still terrifies me how easily the ground shifts beneath her.

“Okay,” she says. Careful.

God, I don’t want to do this.

For weeks, I’ve been curating the truth, not wanting to upset her. Dad’s sick, yes, but he’s fighting. He’s responding to treatment. There are good days. We’ll visit when you’re ready, when you’re both ready, and it’ll be this beautiful reunion, and he’ll cry, and you’ll cry, and it’ll fix everything that’s been broken.

A fairy tale built on half-truths and omissions.

Dad’s stabilized since his last bad turn, that’s true. But he’s nowhere near the man she remembers. Too thin, alarmingly frail, and often unable to stay awake for long, I’ve been afraid of what seeing him might do to Debra. And vice versa. Would his heart take it if he learned what she’s been through? Would he blame himself, the way I blame myself, for not trying harder to find her?

“You know I told you he hasn’t been well?” I start.

Her eyes don’t leave my face. “Yeah.”

“Well...” I swallow. “His cancer took a turn for the worse.”

Her mouth drops open. “How bad?” she asks, eyes welling.

“Until recently, he’s been getting better. Responding to treatment.” I press my palms together. My rings bite into my fingers. “But his doctor just called me. Dad’s back in the hospital. ICU.”

“ICU?” Her voice sharpens. “How many times has he been in?”

“He’s been in and out for almost a year. Almost since before I started working for Arkady.” I swallow. “The cancer metastasized to his lymph nodes a while ago. They tried aggressive chemo, targeted radiation. Some of it helped. Some of it didn’t. But yesterday they said his kidneys have started struggling, and now…” I trail off because my throat is closing around the words and I can’t—

“Now what?” Debra’s voice is steady. Steadier than mine. That survivor instinct she’s honed.

“We don’t know how much time he has left.”

I say it.

Out loud, into the garden air, and it becomes real in a way it wasn’t before. In my head, it was a doctor’s prognosis, clinical words on a chart. But now, it becomes a countdown. I don’t know if he’s going to pull through.

Debra doesn’t move. Then her face crumples—not slowly, not gradually, but all at once, like a wall giving way.

“No.” The word comes out thin, punched. She folds forward, arms wrapping around her own ribs. “Mira, no—”

“I’m sorry, Deb.” Tears burn hot down my cheeks. “I should have told you sooner. I should’ve told you the first day, but you were—”

“I was what? Too broken?” The edge in her voice isn’t anger. It’s grief wearing anger’s mask. “You thought I couldn’t take it?”

“I thought if I kept paying for his treatment, things were manageable. That I was handling it.” My voice cracks on the word handling, because what a joke. What a pathetic, self-serving lie I’ve been telling myself.

The tears are coming properly now—both of us. Debra reaches for my hand, and I grab hers like we’re thirteen again, sitting in the back of Uncle Eddie’s car after Mom’s funeral, holding on because the world had just proven it could take anything from us whenever it wanted.

“I’m so sorry,” I whisper. “I was trying to protect you, and I ended up just—keeping you in the dark. Like everyone else has done.”

The comparison sits between us. Like Gavriil, who locked her away. Like Arkady, who hid her from me. And now me. Her own twin.

“You should have told me.” She squeezes my hand hard enough that my knuckles ache. “I had a right to know.”

“I know.”

“Even when I was at my worst. Even when I couldn’t leave the room without—” She stops. Regroups. “I needed to know, Mira.”

“I know,” I say again. Because there’s nothing else. No defense that holds up.

We sit there, processing it all. I cry into her shoulder, and she cries into mine, and it’s messy and awful and somehow the most honest we’ve been with each other since she came back to me.