Even If the Sky Falls Read Online Free

and guilt are all I have left, anchors during this screwed-up situation that I never thought I’d be in. But that’s the now. Back then I was happy. I went to church. I smiled all the friggin’ time and ate without my mom having to yell at me. I didn’t snap at my friends or refuse to see them or refuse to talk to anyone for days. . . .
    More important, back then I was just a girl who missed her brother. My amazing, strong, older brother who made the perfect Sunday pancake; who knew just what scary story to tell me so I couldn’t sleep a wink at night; who knew when I needed him to defend me at school and when I could handle things on my own; who knew I needed to share a laugh or roll my eyes at our parents when they acted ridiculous; and who went off to war to do his duty and left me behind.
    Despite how proud we all were of my brother, I missed him terribly—as did our parents, of course—there wasn’t a Sunday Mass where we didn’t pray for his safe return and the return of all the other soldiers out there. “What kind of people would we be if we only prayed for our own family?” my mom would say. I never answered. I didn’t—and still don’t—understand why it’s selfish to pray just for the ones you love. I smiled and joined my mother in a prayer for every soldier in the world and their families, but silently, in my own heart and mind, I only prayed for Adam.
    It had been almost a year since he’d been gone—his gnawing absence a wound that was scabbed over and picked on occasion to reveal the pulsing pain of loss. Was he okay? Did he think of us? What did he do every day? Did he . . . kill people? Would God forgive him if he did? Would I?
    We went on with our days, my parents pretending tocare about what I did, hanging out with friends, having fun, only to have the guilt bombard me at night, keeping me up, until exhaustion won.
    Also, funny thing, when someone you love goes off to war, it’s like you aren’t allowed to say how much you miss them, at least not to other people. Well, you are , but you have to then agree that he’s doing the right thing and fighting for his country and missing him becomes this childlike statement that gets swept under the rug, like “I’m bored” or “Are we there yet?”
    I’d encountered this phenomenon more than once in the year he was gone and most always from an adult asking me how we were holding up and how my parents were. “I miss Adam,” I would always say, and they’d nod and tell me all the good he was doing overseas as if it couldn’t get done by anyone else, and aren’t you just being a bit selfish, young lady? At least that’s what it felt like.
    Then they’d smile that sad, pitying smile and pat me on the cheek, and I would make a note not to talk to anyone about Adam.
    I missed my damn brother. Let that be that.
    By then the emails had stopped between us—he simply didn’t have the time to write back, my parents insisted. But I kept going—I kept writing—almost as if to spite everyone, I didn’t care if he read them or not, I needed to write to him, to tell him about my day and who said what stupid thing in class and wasn’t it just ridiculous that such andsuch happened. I imagined Adam poring over my words, remembering what it was like to be back home surrounded by those he loved and maybe those he hated, clinging to the normal in any way he could.
    A year after he was deployed we got word my brother was coming home. We were beyond excited—we cleaned and scrubbed every single surface of the house, bought all of his favorite snacks despite my mom’s opinion on what the Lord thinks of sugar. We fixed his room till it was so perfect it hid all our worries.
    When he walked into the house, I leaped into his arms, crying and saying how happy I was that he was home. He patted me on the head—“Me too, kid,