If I open my mouth to answer her, I know I’ll lose it. And I can’t cry yet. If the Bowmans see tears on my face when they come to pick me up, they’ll want to ask Jameson what he did to me.
Mom parks in front of his house—dark and silent, the front door still hanging open.
“Phoenix.”
I look away from her, biting my trembling lower lip. Clenching my shaking hands.
She grabs me by the shoulders, gripping hard, like she’s trying to wake me up from a dream. “Phoenix. Can you do this? I need to know if you can do this. Tell me the truth.”
I nod.
She hugs me. I squeeze her middle, locking my hands behind her back, trying to keep the whole world steady.
“I’ll check in on you soon,” she says, smoothing her fingers over my hair. “It won’t be much longer now.”
“Until we go home?” I can’t help it—my voice cracks on the last word.
She presses her forehead to mine, and her palm is cold when she cups the back of my neck. “Until we go home.”
Chapter 28
THE BOWMANS PULL UP to Jameson’s house just a few minutes after Mom drives away. I’m hugging myself, the wind whipping my hair and goose bumps rising on my legs. Jill rolls down the window, and I manage a smile for her. It’s almost a relief, seeing her face. Not because it makes anything better, but because the concerned look she gives me feels like getting tucked into bed. I know you’re tired. Rest. I’m here.
“Everything okay?” she asks.
I nod. “Just fine.”
“No trouble?”
I shake my head. “He’s inside. Asleep.”
I climb into the back seat, where Melody has her head pillowed on her brother’s knee, his jacket pulled over her shoulders.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “For taking off without you.”
He shrugs, mouth quirking. “Just glad you’re okay,” he says in a whisper so he won’t wake Melody.
Ellis turns in the driver’s seat to look at me while I pull my seat belt on. “Thanks for taking care of my idiot brother, Phoenix,” he says. “I owe you one.”
He eases his SUV down the mountain, back toward the house. Neil puts on a pair of headphones, and I can faintly hear his music. I lean my head against the window and close my eyes, pretending to sleep so Ellis and Jill won’t ask me any more questions.
I hear Jill whisper from the front seat, “If Jameson had done something to her—”
“He wouldn’t,” Ellis said.
“What makes you so sure? After how he treated Nina?”
I peek through my lashes to see Ellis’s hands tense on the wheel.
“That was all consensual,” he said.
“As far as we know. None of that ever added up to me. She never seemed all that serious about Jameson, even when they were dating.”
“You don’t have to be serious to accidentally get pregnant.”
“I know it. It’s just—she worshipped her father. I never would have guessed that she’d so boldly flout his rules. And then everything that happened after, the way she—” Jill bites her lip, unable to finish the thought. “I’ve just always thought that there was more to that story.”
She doesn’t know how right she is.
It’s all making sense to me now, the way Jameson seemed to repel everyone around him. If Jill thinks he forced himself on Mom, she probably isn’t the only one.
Which means Ellis has stood by all these years and—to save his own skin—let everyone believe that his brother was a rapist.
The fortune-teller told me she could sense the pain in my mother. And I think I could sense it in Jameson, too. I just didn’t recognize it for what it was until this moment.
It’s not good to live with that burrowing in your bones, she told me. It rots you. Turns you mean.
Maybe that’s what had happened to the boy from Mom’s stories. Maybe that’s why his smile had become so sharp, his every word a thorn. Because when people treat you like a monster for so long, sometimes the only thing to do is act like one.
-
I hold it together until we make it back to the house. I wait until after Ellis hugs all of us good-night, thanking us for celebrating with him. After I help Neil guide his sister to her room, tuck the blankets in around her, and brush a stray curl behind her ear. After I squeeze Neil’s hand and tell him I’m sorry again.
I wait until I close my bedroom door behind me, shut off the lights, and crawl into bed before I press my face into my pillow and cry like I’m a little girl again, the way I used to when Mom tolerated that kind of thing, before it ever occurred to me that I had to pretend to be strong.
My breath catches when the door opens suddenly, light from the hallway flooding in. I sit up and wipe at my face with the backs of my hands.
Melody leans in the doorway. “Phoenix? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Go back to sleep.”
She comes all the way into the room, closing the door behind her, and climbs into my bed without an ounce of the hesitation sober Melody would have. I feel her hand on my wet face. “Liar.”
I try for a laugh, but it comes out more like a sob.
“Tell me what’s wrong.”
“I’m just a little homesick.”
It’s the easiest lie because it’s not exactly a lie.
“Oh.” She leans back against the headboard. “Do you miss Indiana?”
For a second, I’ve got no idea what she’s talking about, until I remember that that’s where I told the Bowmans I used to live. With my fake, dead grandmother.
“Maybe homesick is the wrong word. I don’t know what I mean.”
“Do you miss a person?”
I shrug, settling in beside her. “Maybe.”
“Something else?”
My chest aches thinking about Jameson, but there are a million other thoughts buzzing in my head, like moths pinging against a porch light, weaving in and out of each other so fast that you can’t tell one from the other.
I need to see Mom again. I need to sleep in a bed that’s mine. I need to feel, for once in my life, like I’m exactly where I should be. Like there’s a safe space to curl up inside, where no one can hurt me. And where I don’t have to hurt anyone else.
“I guess I miss something I’ve never really had, if that makes any sense.”
She rests her head on my shoulder. “It doesn’t.”
I smile, letting my eyes close. “I guess you wouldn’t get it. You’ve got your big house. Your nice family. Your perfect town.”
I was mostly teasing her, but I can just make out her scowl in the dark. She fidgets against me, like I’ve cut through her pleasant buzz, and her usual cat-drenched-in-water mood peeks through. “It’s not all pretty views and quaint festivals.”
“What? You’re too good for small-town life?”
She doesn’t answer for a while, so long that I think she’s fallen asleep. But then she says, “Pastor Matthew started working at the church last summer, getting ready to take over for Pastor Holland when the time comes. Just a few days after a certain party that I’m sure you’ve heard all about by now. A party that was everybody’s favorite topic for a while, like there isn’t any hunger or genocide going on in the world to keep them occupied. And that Sunday, you know how Pastor Matthew started off his illustrious career as the spiritual guide of Jasper Hollow?”
I wince before she even says it.
“With a two-hour sermon on the dangers of letting teenagers stray too far from their parents, the decision-impairing qualities of alcohol, and the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman.”
“Ouch.”
“I wasn’t drunk. That’s the only way anybody could make sense of it—by assuming I was too drunk to know what I was doing. But I knew.”
I nod, her curls tickling the bottom of my chin.
“I could feel everybody I’ve known since I was a baby staring at me the entire service. Like my old violin teacher has any business thinking about m
y sex life.” She lets a long breath out between her teeth. “That’s small-town living.”
I don’t have any idea what to say to that. All I can offer is, “You’re going to college in a couple of months.”
“Yeah,” she says. But she doesn’t sound too reassured.
“You don’t want to go?”
She thinks about it for a long time before she says, “I do. I hate this town. But that doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy to leave behind.”
“Why not?”
“Because Mom helped Neil and me plant cucumbers in our backyard when we were eight. We’ve never been able to grow anything else, but we have cucumbers every year. And—well, there are a lot of cucumber plants in the world that probably look a hell of a lot better than ours, but there’s only one cucumber plant in the entire world that Mom helped Neil and me plant when we were eight.” She glances up at me, her eyes shining in the dark. “Does that make sense?”
I give her a soft smile before I answer, “No.” She laughs and buries her face against my shoulder.
We stay like that for a while before she whispers, “I hope you find a place where you feel at home someday.”
“Thanks, Mel. I hope you do, too.”
She curls her body against mine, and I want to lean into the warmth of her, but I make myself pull away. “We need to get you back to your room.”
“But I want to sleep with you.”
Her curls tumble over her shoulders, and I can almost feel how soft they would be tangled in my fingers. I can just make out the fullness of her lips.
I feel a shiver down my legs. “Not tonight.”
She pouts, letting me take her hand and pull her to her feet. “Why not?”
“Because you’re drunk, and you’ll be mortified about it in the morning.”
“Yeah? What the hell do you know?”
I know that even if she weren’t drunk, this would be wrong. Because she thinks she’s started getting to know me, that she’s learned enough about me to decide she likes me. But it’s all based on lies.
She crawls into her bed like a headstrong child, pulling roughly at the sheets and settling back into the pillows with a hmph. I tuck the comforter around her shoulders.
“Sober Melody wouldn’t just crawl into bed with me like that,” I say.
“Even if she heard you crying?”
“Even then, I think.”
She turns onto her side, facing me. “I’m not so sure about that. I have secrets, too, you know.”
I giggle. “Oh, yeah?”
But she doesn’t crack a smile. Instead she says, very seriously, “Really. I’ve got one so big, it could ruin everything.”
I’m about to remind her that the whole lesbian thing isn’t exactly a secret, but then she says, “I’m not even sure if it’s true.”
I frown. “What do you mean?”
She clamps her lips shut.
“Melody . . . is the secret about you?”
Her mouth still sealed tight, she shakes her head.
My heart pounds harder. “You can tell me. Is it your mom? Your brother? Your—your dad?”
She shakes her head again. “I don’t want to ruin everything.”
“Mel—”
But she’s got both her hands over her face now, and I’m afraid she’s going to start crying. And if I know anything about drunks, it’s that most of them don’t know how to cry quietly. I shush her and run my hand over her hair, before she can wake up the whole house. “Okay, it’s okay, we’ll talk about it tomorrow.”
I coax her into closing her eyes, running my fingers through her hair and whispering snatches of songs. When her breathing finally evens out, I shut off the light, and with one last look at her, the moonlight coming through the window and playing on her blond curls like they’re ripples in water, I go back to my own room. Alone.
When I close the door behind me, I press my back to it and slide down to the floor, threading my fingers through my hair until I feel pinpricks of pain all over my scalp. And, unbidden, a handful of lines from Ellis’s books pop into my head. Believe it or not, he’s written a lot about feeling guilty.
Forgiving yourself is vital to making things right.
Learn from the past, then let it go.
No one is entirely innocent.
But I know those were only words he used to comfort himself. If he really knew anything about life, he would have written something more like this:
There is no outrunning it. There is no reasoning with it. There is no begging it for mercy. Punishment always comes, even if there’s no one left to give it.
Chapter 29
THE NEXT MORNING, I’M drawn out of bed and into the kitchen earlier than usual by the smell of the mushroom omelets Neil is cooking. Jill has the morning off from the restaurant, but she’s never content with standing still. She washes the dishes as Neil finishes with them. Melody and I set the table while the air thickens with the heat of the stove, the sizzle of butter in the pan, and the smell of breakfast. Ellis sits at the table with coffee and a copy of the Columbus Dispatch, reading aloud snatches of the article that ran today announcing his television show. I tune him out.
Whenever I imagine the home Mom and I are going to make for ourselves—and I’ve imagined it a hundred times over—I always picture a kitchen. Never one as nice as this, but with the same sounds and warmth and feeling, both of us bustling from the cabinets to the counter to the table, weaving around each other with plates of homemade food piled high, brushing hips, talking easily. The kind of kitchen where the clatter of plates and the jingle of silverware and the rhythm of laughter all knit together to make a song that’s better than anything on the radio.
It’s a simple thing, but sometimes, it seems like too much to hope for.
When the food is ready, we all sit down at the table. While we’re eating, Jill starts telling stories about how well I’m doing in my job at the restaurant. She tells me how many customers have said nice things about me, how efficiently everything runs when I’m there, and despite myself, I feel my face flush with pleasure. Ellis is sitting beside me, and for just a moment, he covers my hand with his and says, “I’m glad you’re settling in so well, Phoenix.”
His hand is big and warm, and instead of the sickness I usually feel when he gets anywhere near me, there’s something else that jolts through me. Something that scares me.
For a moment, with my hand engulfed in his, I feel safe.
I wonder if my own father used to hold it that way. He must have. Even though I’d forgotten, my hands remember. Even after I’d done my best to scrub my memory clean of Jonah, the landscape business owner in Virginia, there’s a part of me that misses having a dad. The kind of dad Ellis pretends to be.
I look up to meet his gaze. But all at once, the warm look on his face morphs into surprise. Alarm.
“Watch—” he starts to say.
I turn my head to see what made his eyes get so big all at once.
And I duck and cover my eyes just in time.
There’s an explosion of shattering glass and rushing air, and for half a second, I wonder if this is what it was like to be inside Jameson’s car when he rolled down the mountain, right before the frame crushed him.
Chairs clatter to the floor and dishes break. I glance up to see what crashed through the window.
The broken picture frame with the sunflower drawing.
It swings at the end of a thin rope, suspended at the apex of its arc, frozen in the air for just a second. It hovers a few inches above Jill’s head.
Then the frame swings back out, spinning, toward the trees. The other end of the rope is tied to the branch of a big maple in the front yard.
Jill stands slowly, in shock, turning to look out the gaping hole where the window used to be. And then the frame swings back toward her.
Ellis tackles her just before it hits her. I hear the broken glass scatter where they land and see blood seep across the wood. Melody, crouched beside me, s
ees it, too. She scrambles to the floor, crawling toward her parents.
Neil gets there first, lifting his mother to her feet. Melody helps her father, grabbing his hands. I watch, opening my mouth and making noises that aren’t quite words, like my tongue has been cut out. I shake my head, hurrying to the cabinet under the sink, where they keep the first aid kit.
The frame has lost momentum, spinning on the end of its rope like a tire swing. Neil tries to get Ellis to sit down so he can bandage him up. His sleeves are shredded, blood dripping down his forearms, but he brushes his son off and runs for the front door.
Melody’s hands are shaking so hard that she can’t get the bandage unwrapped for her mother. I take it gently from her, peel the wrapper apart, and smooth it over Jill’s bleeding forehead. While I do, I watch Ellis out of the corner of my eye.
He runs into the yard, and instead of going to the frame, he looks up, searching wildly for whoever is hiding up in the trees. Mom might still be crouching somewhere in the branches—it’s the only place she could have let go of the frame from.
I hold my breath while he searches, weaving between the trunks, trying to see through the leaves. But she must be long gone, because he turns away in frustration.
“I’m fine, Mellie,” Jill says while Melody tries to wash the blood off her mother’s hands. Tries and tries, but she’s still trembling hard all over, and she keeps dropping the washcloth, until her brother takes it from her and tells her, “I’ve got it. It’s okay. Everyone’s okay.” But his own voice cracks.
Melody turns to me, her breath hitch, hitch, hitching. I gather her to me, holding her head against my shoulder. While her tears soak into my shirt, my eyes flick back to Ellis.
He grabs the frame in both hands to stop its spinning. And he’s staring at it. Holding completely still, like his feet have grown roots that could hold him there forever.
He’s staring at the sunflower Mom drew.
I see a flash of red writing in the frame that wasn’t there before. I can’t read it from this distance, but my guess is it’s the same as what was on the pages of his manuscript.
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