Don’t Make Me Turn This Life Around by Pagán, Camille (top novels of all time txt) 📗

hate to say it, but maybe this is how she learns. Maybe this scared her into never pulling that again. I know it’s not great to have to eat your food whether you feel like it or not, but if she doesn’t . . .”

Was he kidding right now? If she didn’t, she could slip into a coma and die. “That cannot possibly be an option,” I said firmly.

“I know that it feels better to think that way, but we need to make sure Charlotte understands the risks,” said Shiloh, still watching me in the mirror. “If last night is any indication, she isn’t taking this seriously.”

“So, we take it seriously for her. I want her to have a childhood. I don’t want her to spend every waking moment worrying about her blood sugar.”

“She has a childhood,” he said, frowning. “A really good one. Kids deal with hard things all the time, and you know what? They grow up to be adults who are good at dealing with hard things. Look at you and Paul.”

He was trying to be kind, but he couldn’t have picked a worse example if he’d tried. If I thought about it—and I mostly tried not to—there was a reason Paul and I had turned out the way we had. Yes, I was a natural-born optimist, while Paul had emerged from the womb expecting the sky to fall. But over time I’d come to understand that our personalities had probably been dialed up a dozen notches in direct response to our mother dying. I didn’t want that for Charlotte.

“You guys almost done in there?” yelled Isa. “We’re ready to go to the beach.”

“Let’s finish talking about this later, okay?” said Shiloh, and I nodded.

“We’re done, but you’re absolutely eating breakfast before you go anywhere near the water,” I announced as I emerged from the bathroom.

“Thanks a lot, Charlotte,” muttered Isa.

“What did I do?” she growled back.

“You need to eat so your blood sugar’s okay before we can go have fun,” Isa said, rolling her eyes.

“Isabel Milagros, I hear one more comment like that from you and you’ve lost your phone until October,” snapped Shiloh.

Neither of us raised our voices at the girls very often, but honestly? Isa had deserved it.

“You think Charlotte chose to get diabetes?” I said to her. “Or that this is fun for her or any of us?”

“Thanks for reminding me that I ruin everything, Mom,” said Charlotte before opening the glass double doors and walking out onto the patio.

I felt like someone had just tied a cement block around my waist and tossed me overboard. My mother would never have phrased it like that—and come to think of it, my father wouldn’t have, either. So if my daughters were fed up with me, I couldn’t blame them.

I was, too.

After a terse breakfast we headed to the beach. Even at nine in the morning it was already blazing hot, but the sun was hidden by a cluster of ominous-looking clouds, with more rolling in by the minute. “Think that’ll pass by the time we’re on the ferry?” I asked Shiloh.

He grimaced. “I’m guessing now’s not the best time to tell you there’s a tropical storm watch in effect.”

“Since when?” I said with alarm. As a pilot, he had access to weather data that put the app on my phone to shame, so I barely bothered checking it myself.

“This morning, apparently—last night they were just predicting showers.”

“But a watch isn’t the same as a warning, right?” After the argument I’d had with the girls that morning, I really—really—needed to get to Vieques so we could hit reset on this vacation. “Do you think we should be worried?”

He shrugged. “Watch, warning: none of it is great. I mean, there were half a dozen storm warnings every hurricane season when I was growing up, but I can only think of a single one that ever actually materialized into something truly dangerous. Since Hurricane Maria, though, I worry more than I used to. The weather patterns are more severe than they’ve ever been, and it’s only getting worse. You saw the shoreline.” He gestured to our right, where an entire stretch of beach we’d loved had disappeared into the ocean.

“I hate to even suggest it, but do you think we should stay in San Juan instead of going to Vieques?” I asked, crossing my fingers that he wouldn’t say yes.

“I’m not sure,” he said, his eyes following Isa and Charlotte. “I think we check the weather again before we head to Fajardo and make the best decision we can at that point.”

The horizon was a deep gray. I had a sinking feeling in my gut, but I reminded myself that the same feeling had told me my cancer was back. Maybe I was wrong about this, too. “I bet it’ll pass,” I said.

And to my surprise, it did. Within the next hour the sky had cleared and the storm seemed to be petering out, so we decided to proceed as planned.

I’d vetoed flying; after our near crash on our first trip to Vieques, the ferry seemed like a far safer option. Except maybe it wasn’t, because as our boat began to cruise away from the marina in Fajardo, the waves grew higher and higher. One after another, the waves slapped against our ferry, which was bouncing with such vigor that I was certain we were catching air. Normally, I wasn’t afraid of the water. But right before I’d gotten up that morning I’d had a dream about Charlotte. She’d been drifting away from me on a life raft, and I’d stood on the shore, paralyzed and unable to swim to her. I’d awoken coated in sweat, my heart pulsing with panic.

“You okay?” Shiloh whispered beside me.

“Yes,” I quickly replied, pushing away the image of my daughter desperately waving for me even as she went farther out to sea. But it was probably just leftover anxiety from her hypoglycemic incident playing tricks on my mind. “I