The Hollow Inside

by Brooke Lauren Davis

  Then his gaze settles on me. I don’t look away, which makes his frown even heavier, but it doesn’t stop him from taking inventory of me—and the look on his face says exactly what he thinks about what he sees. And as he shakes his head and starts to turn away, I can’t quite make out what he mutters.

  Jill grabs his tie so suddenly, his head jerks toward her, and his eyes swell to the size of quarters. And she says right in his stony face, “I don’t know if you noticed, but she’s a person. Not a stray. A child. And my decisions about my family are mine. Not your concern.” His eyes go even wider when she jabs a finger hard against his chest. “And you are the last person who should be telling me how to raise children.”

  I freeze. Melody and her brother exchange a look—she raises her eyebrows, and he bites his lip.

  Because of what happened with Mom? How much do her kids know?

  And why is Jill going to so much trouble to defend me?

  Pastor Holland’s face flushes so red that it looks like he might melt with rage on the spot. Before either of them can say another word, Ellis steps between them, gently grabbing his wife’s shoulders and nudging her back into the car. “Sorry,” he says over his shoulder to Pastor Holland. “We’re all a bit tired. I’ll drop by your house later, all right?”

  Neil climbs out of the driver’s seat to let his dad take the wheel and gets into the back, sliding in beside his sister. Melody scoots toward me to make room for him, and the length of her arm presses against mine.

  Pastor Holland is still standing there, glaring. His eyes lock with mine through the window as we pull away, and I want to say that I gave him the finger or at the very least a smirk, but I know the weight of that stare—it’s the same as Mom’s. And it’s always been enough to stop me dead.

  From the front seat, Jill starts cursing and fanning herself with the church bulletin as we start our descent back down Clara Mountain and Pastor Holland disappears behind a curve. “God. What the hell is wrong with him?”

  Ellis squeezes her arm but keeps his eyes on the road without providing an answer.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  It slips out of my mouth before I can think better of it.

  Melody glances sideways at me, frowning, like she’s trying to read my face.

  “For—uh. For sticking up for me,” I add.

  Jill turns in her seat. Her cheeks are still flushed, but she manages a soft smile for me. One that takes me so off guard, I give her one back.

  “Well, I can’t say that I think bringing you up onstage was the right thing,” she says. Ellis’s jaw twitches, and he opens his mouth to argue. His wife continues before he can get a word in, “But he wasn’t wrong when he said we think of our guests as family, Phoenix.” She squeezes my hand. “And we protect our family.”

  There’s a nice little warmth that pulses through my chest when she says that. But it sours quickly. Because I remember that by the end of all of this, I’m going to hurt her family very, very badly. And from what I know of a mother’s wrath, I hope Jill doesn’t get her hands on me afterward.

  Chapter 16

  WE JUST BARELY BEAT the church rush and get a booth near the back of the Watering Hole. The restaurant is a frenzy of servers in black aprons balancing heavy trays of food; people chatter inside and outside and around the doorway.

  I’ve been in a lot of twenty-four-hour truck stop diners off the highway, but this place feels nothing like them. Maybe because everyone here is smiling. The floors are polished wood, the walls are painted floor to ceiling with colorful animals, and there’s a fireplace with two big reading chairs in front of it that must be nice to curl up in during the winter. Paper birds hang on chords from the ceiling. It feels warm. Welcoming. Like Jill.

  I haven’t been here long, but I can already tell that Ellis has left running the restaurant to his wife—he’s content to watch and write about it.

  The place feels all the warmer because Melody doesn’t join us. She said she was going to talk to someone named Annie about a cookie recipe. Jill tries to sit and talk for a few minutes, but she can’t help herself for long. She ties her hair back in a bandana and rushes into the kitchen for her apron.

  That leaves me with Neil and Ellis.

  The tall windows along the front of the restaurant give us a good view of the mountains, all the way up to their foggy tips. I try to focus on them. Jill was right—I am exhausted. And I’m definitely not in the mood to pretend that I enjoy the company of Ellis Bowman.

  Ellis asks me from across the table, “So, what’d you think?”

  “About what?”

  “Did you like the service?”

  I sip my lemonade, refusing to make eye contact with him. “Neil is very talented.”

  Neil flushes red and stammers, “I—well, thank you, Phoenix. That means a lot.” He rubs hard at the back of his neck and looks down at the wooden table, but he can’t hide the pleased look that lights his face.

  Ellis nods and smiles, even though I know that’s not the part of the service he was asking me about.

  Our waiter comes, and Neil and Ellis order. I say I don’t want anything, but Ellis insists, “It’s my restaurant, Phoenix. When you’re here, you never have to worry about paying.”

  And then the man from the next booth turns around and gives Ellis a noogie.

  Ellis’s hands fly up to stop him, but the man chuckles in his ear and says, “Well, if you’re in such a generous mood, I guess you won’t mind comping my bill, too?”

  The waiter leaves, and the man slides into the booth next to Ellis. I glance at Neil, but his grin is genuine when he says, “Hey, Uncle Jameson.”

  Jameson is handsome. His dark hair is thick, his cheekbones shadowy, and the skin around his eyes just barely starting to age. His smile is sharp enough to kill.

  He reaches toward me, the arm of his mechanic’s jumpsuit covered in black stains. We shake hands. “I’m this gentleman’s little brother, Jameson.” His speech is a little hard to understand, the words heavy and running together, and it takes an extra second for me to process everything he says. He laughs when he sees my face screwed up in concentration. “You know, El used to sound like a bigger hick than I do. Before he wrote a few books and got a few followers. Now he’s ironed himself out.”

  The difference between the brothers is so stark when they sit next to each other—Ellis’s blond hair is shining and neatly combed, and Jameson’s is brown and matted like he just woke up. Ellis’s suit is immaculate while Jameson’s jumpsuit looks like it hasn’t been washed in a few months.

  But it goes deeper. That fortune-teller I met, what seems like years ago now, might call it their energies. Ellis radiates ambition and power and confidence. But Jameson is the opposite—something smothers him like a cloud of smoke. Regret? Envy? Bitterness?

  And I notice that Jameson was here alone. Ellis is never, ever alone. All morning, people from town have walked up to him to clasp his hand or slap him jovially on the back, ask about his newest book or his latest tour, how Jill and the kids are faring.

  But not now. Once Jameson sat down with us, the constant orbit of adoring fans always surrounding Ellis is suddenly empty. Like Jameson repels them somehow.

  Which doesn’t add up with Mom’s stories. He wasn’t as popular as Ellis, but he was liked well enough, from what I could gather. Could they be shunning him because of what happened—or what they think happened—even all these years later?

  Maybe Mom isn’t Ellis’s only casualty. And maybe that’s why Jameson’s presence seems to make Ellis so uncomfortable.

  Jameson asks me, “So, you Neil’s new girl?”

  Neil coughs, choking on his water.

  “You would already know who she is if you’d been to church this morning,” Ellis says.

  Jameson stretches his arms over his head, fingers laced together. “Some of us have to work on Sundays, Ellie. Now just tell me where you picked up the pretty little lady?” He turns that sharp smile on me when he says i
t, like he expects me to squirm. I try to give him the same look that Melody is so fond of giving me, like she’s cutting me in half with her eyes. But I must not do it right, because he only laughs.

  No, this isn’t quite the man Mom described to me. He’d been rough around the edges but not callous, the way he comes off now. “She fell on hard times,” Ellis says. “We’re helping her out.” He seems a lot less concerned about bragging now than he did in church.

  “Well, she’s got a great eye then, ’cause Ellis is the richest man in town. And the most gullible, too.”

  Ellis flushes before Jameson elbows him in the ribs. “Aw, I’m kidding. Nobody gets as far as you being a sucker, huh? And nobody knows better than me what it took to get you where you are.”

  Ellis has gone completely stiff when Jill appears at our table, flustered but smiling, clearly enjoying all the business. “Phoenix, sweetheart, I hate to ask you this, but we’re a little shorthanded. Do you think you could take a few orders?”

  I’m about to tell her that I don’t know the first thing about waitressing when she grabs my hand, pulls me out of the booth, and leads me into a kitchen that buzzes with voices and clattering dishes.

  She grabs both of my shoulders. “Sorry. I wanted to get you away from Jameson. I hate to talk badly about family, but—well, I’ll just say I would never leave Mellie alone in a room with him.”

  “Really?” I say.

  Instead of elaborating further, Jill claps her hands briskly. “I need to get back to work. You can hang out back here until the others are ready to leave. Or—” She wiggles her fingers like they’re Fourth of July sparklers. “—you can try out waitressing.”

  I’m about to tell her no. The way Jill’s eyes spark, she reminds me of the girls who used to ask me to play with them whenever Mom took me to a park. She used to let me shoot hoops for a few hours while she sat on a nearby bench and sketched. I tried to be subtle about watching the groups of girls I saw together, playing one-on-one or chasing each other around trees or just sitting cross-legged in the grass and talking. But whenever one of them asked me to join them, I didn’t even have to glance at Mom to know that I had to turn them down. We can’t trust anyone but each other, Phoenix. Aren’t I enough for you?

  But now, I hesitate. She wouldn’t be mad about me spending some time with Ellis’s wife, would she? That’s what I’m here for. I’ve been keeping my distance from people all my life, but now, it’s my job to get as close to the Bowmans as I can.

  I shrug and ask Jill, “What do I have to do?”

  Without another word, she ties me into a black apron with a golden elephant on the front, hands me a notepad and pen, and hurries me out into the dining area, where I immediately have to dodge a woman zipping past us with a full tray of drinks.

  She follows me to the first few tables to make sure I don’t make a complete fool of myself, but then she leaves me to it.

  Some people don’t give me any trouble, but others seem determined to watch me screw up. They ask for BLTs with no T or burgers with all the condiments on the side. They want no ice or extra ice. They split their checks eight ways. I have to refill one man’s sweet tea four times in five minutes.

  But it doesn’t take me long to realize I don’t need the notepad. I remember every detail, down to who wants lemon wedges and who doesn’t, and people seem to be impressed enough by it that they don’t mind so much that I’m not as friendly as most of the other waiters, who make jokes and ask about their families.

  I don’t know if fun is the right word for what’s happening when I weave expertly around the tables and kitchen staff, pocketing tips. Whatever it is, I feel lighter than I ever remember feeling—like for the first time in my life, I’m the opposite of a disappointment. The hours slip past faster than I ever knew they could.

  When the steady stream of customers finally becomes a trickle, I look at the clock and realize it’s almost four. I didn’t even notice when the guys left.

  I find Jill wiping down a table and try to hand her my apron, but she grins at me—that trademark Bowman Grin that Melody must not have inherited—and says, “You can keep it, if you’d like a job here.”

  I run my thumb over the golden elephant. “Really?”

  But I bite my tongue hard right after I say it. I’m lucky Mom wasn’t around to hear the hope in my voice.

  “I’d love to have you.”

  Working close to Jill would be a good way to build her trust. But something holds me back. It almost feels like taking the job would mean betraying Mom somehow.

  I try again to hand the apron back to Jill. “I don’t have a bank account for you to pay me.”

  She waves the argument and the apron away. “Your tips are your paycheck. Now what do you say to coming in tomorrow at eleven to help with the lunch rush?”

  I bite my lip. Making money can’t be a bad thing. And I can keep an eye on Jill and find out more about how to get to Ellis.

  It doesn’t take much to talk myself into it. I tuck the apron under my arm before I talk myself back out of it.

  Nina and Ellis met at the cabin whenever they could—sometimes five times a week, sometimes once in two weeks. From a stifling August to a damp October, they hoarded every moment they could get away with.

  But of course, her father’s watchful eye made it difficult for them. For a while, their excuse was that Ellis was giving her piano lessons. But Pastor Holland grew suspicious when he asked her to play something for him on their piano at home. The notes she hit hardly resembled a song, even though she’d supposedly been practicing for months.

  It was Ellis’s idea to tell her father that she’d started dating Jameson.

  She hated the thought of it—how the old women winked at her in church. We told you it would end up this way, they seemed to be saying. We told you that you would marry a man you don’t love and live a life you don’t want, because that’s what all of us do. You thought you were better, but we’ve always known that you aren’t.

  Even though everyone else seemed immediately pleased by the idea, her father still took some convincing. Luckily, Ellis was the one person in town who seemed to have any sway over him. He came over for one of his late-night talks with her father, and they sat in their rockers on the porch while Nina listened through the open kitchen window. “He’s a good kid,” Ellis told her father. “I know he’s a little immature, but he’s finally starting to figure himself out. I think a girl like Nina would be good for him.”

  It took a few hours, but Ellis eventually wore him down. What finally convinced him was that Ellis agreed to act as their chaperone. Which also gave him an excuse to give to his wife when he left her alone with two unruly toddlers. Jameson begged me, he’d tell Jill with a shrug. Pastor Holland will only let them see each other if I’m there to supervise.

  Ellis would roll up Nina’s driveway in his pickup truck, and Nina would climb in the passenger seat, and Ellis would yell out the window, “We’re picking up Jameson on the way to the theater.” And her father would smile and wave while Ellis drove her off to the cabin so they’d be alone together. Even though it was what she wanted, it almost bothered her, how easily he let Ellis steal her away.

  What if Jameson tells? she asked Ellis all the time. He won’t, Ellis would answer with a smug smile. I told him I’d give him my old Camaro to keep quiet.

  Still, Nina got more and more nervous about it every time she was around Jameson. He would hold her hand when they were together in public and buy her red velvet cupcakes from Sugar House Bakery, supposedly to keep up the illusion, but he kept asking her if she was all right. If she still wanted this.

  Truthfully, lying so blatantly to her father made her feel sick and anxious all the time. The sensation of falling from a fatal height—the desperate urge to somehow go back to the safety of solid ground—still clenched her stomach every time Ellis kissed her.

  But Ellis seemed to like the rush of doing something so deliciously terrifying, something forbidden.
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  Still, she didn’t want to end things with him. Because after she let him do what he liked, he would let her decide. At home, her father dictated everything from the way she dressed, to the people she spoke to, to the rigidity of her posture in the church pew. At school, everyone drifted around her like she was nothing but a rock in a stream. But in the cabin, after Ellis had his way, she could have hers.

  What she liked doing best was curling up on the couch in the fortress of his big arms and watching TV together. Like this was their house and their children were asleep in the next room. They went through piles of VHS tapes—everything from Casablanca to Jaws, The Wizard of Oz to Pulp Fiction. And her father couldn’t tell her what movies were appropriate. He couldn’t tell her that she wasn’t allowed to watch them until she did her chores. He couldn’t tell her anything, because when she was in the cabin with Ellis, she was an adult. She was a woman. She was in control.

  On the weekends, Ellis liked to get her drunk. And one night they were both just drunk enough, and he let her draw all over him in black marker while The Princess Bride pulsed in the background. She covered his arms with trees and hummingbirds and his legs with ocean waves and fish.

  “Draw me something I can keep,” he said.

  The only piece of paper she could find was an old receipt from Annie’s Market. She took a marker and inked a sunflower on the back.

  She tried to hand it to him, but he pouted and said, “I’ll lose this.”

  The wine made her just bold enough to grab a frame hanging on the wall. She accidentally tore the photo as she took it out—one of Jameson’s Little League baseball pictures that his dead mother had hung up.

  “Poor Jameson,” she said.

  “Jameson who?” Ellis answered.

  She put her sunflower receipt in the frame and hung it back on the wall so he could look at it whenever he wanted.

  And that’s how their meetings went.

  Until one afternoon in early spring when she wanted to get out of the cabin. She knew that they couldn’t go on a real date, out in public. So, she settled for walking with him in the woods, her arm laced through his.