by Kris Ripper
“I honestly can’t begin to imagine what you’re thinking most of the time, Singer.”
He glared at her, but didn’t reply.
The front door opened again, no doorbell. “Hello, my lovelies! I come bearing refreshments, hint— Oh, hey, Mrs. Thurman.” Frankie leaned insolently back against the counter. “You look real nice, you going somewhere?”
“Just coming in.” The lie was quick to her lips. She didn’t spare a glance at Singer. “I will leave you to it, then. Have a good night.”
The girl returned her smile. “Yeah, you too. Hey, Singer, you want me to get glasses down?”
It burned, the way these people seemed so comfortable here. Viv was on her way to the guesthouse, while that obnoxious Frankie was rooting around in her kitchen, pouring wine. And Emery, who was with Lisa—
Viv paused in the doorway to the guesthouse. Were they in Lisa’s bedroom? Behind that unseemly locked door? She hesitated, almost tempted to go back inside. But what could she do? Singer hadn’t shown the least bit of interest in looking out for his sister, that Frankie girl was useless, and no one had a key to Lisa’s room except Lisa, which was hardly safe.
The back door opened and she made her decision, firmly closing herself into the guesthouse.
Their voices grew louder, then hushed. Viv stood to the side of the window, shielded by the curtains, and watched. Singer poured wine into four glasses. Frankie toasted him, and both of them drank. The back door again, and this time Lisa and Emery emerged.
He was smiling at her. They took up glasses of wine as well, for another casual toast, and Viv backed away from the window.
She sank down onto the couch, feeling numb. A burst of laughter grated over her nerves. They wouldn’t let her help, but she couldn’t abandon them. She was their mother. And yet they kept pushing her away, like very small children, insisting they could do everything on their own when they patently could not.
More laughter; a splash.
Viv dug her earplugs out of her traveling bag and settled them into her ears. She’d just have to think of some other way to get through to them. Or at least to Lisa. Maybe there would be an opportunity later. If she couldn’t sleep, there might still be a chance she could speak to Lisa, try to talk sense into her.
It was Viv’s responsibility, after all. That’s what mothers were supposed to do.
34
Lisa
91 days since leaving Grace
They’d finished the wine course and Frankie declared it “hot tub o’clock,” which seemed like a bad, very bad idea, and Lisa thought for sure Singer would complain. Singer had yet to enter the spa since she’d come home, though the Derries did with some frequency. But Singer acquiesced with a sigh and went inside, offering Emery a bathing suit.
So. They were in a hot tub.
Singer cleared his throat. “We may have to make a rule about you and the spa, Emery. It feels like cheating on Jake to even sit across from you mostly naked.”
“I am not a home wrecker.” Emery smiled and stretched his arms out over the rim of the spa, displaying his steamed-and-glistening tattoos. He had a few on his shoulders and back, but Lisa’s favorite was the fox on his chest, tail curling around a nipple, looking over its shoulder as if Emery had a spirit animal and it wanted you to know it was watching.
Oh my god, Lisa, stop staring at his chest.
“Damn,” Frankie said. “Totally not what I invited you here for, Emery. Though not a bad idea, actually—”
Singer splashed her soundly. The idea of Singer splashing someone was so outside of Lisa’s image of him that she tried to remember having ever seen him play a practical joke on someone. Or tease in such a physical way.
“Thank you very much, but I am entirely taken.”
“Yeah, except for the whole not getting laid in—”
“New parents often put intimacy on the proverbial back burner, Frances. Not that you would know, having never maintained a relationship of any kind for longer than five minutes—”
“Oh my god! Singer Thurman, you prick. Don’t be mean to me or I’ll withhold refreshments. Plus, I banged Caldecott for like two months!” Frankie, cheeks flushed from the wine, grimaced. “Fuck, forget I said that. Hell.”
Lisa sat up straighter. “You did?”
“Who’s Caldecott?” Emery asked.
“High school basketball coach,” Singer said, as Lisa was saying, “My first real boyfriend.”
“Oh, fuck me. Sorry. Never mind.” Frankie waved a hand and turned to root in her pile of clothing. “Pot. I need pot.”
“Wait. He and I hooked up right after graduation.” Lisa shook her head. “But you were a year behind me. Oh. After I left, then?”
“Not so much, no.” Frankie held a lighter to a little glass pipe and inhaled.
All three of them watched her until she breathed again and passed the pipe to Singer. (Oh my god, Singer smoked? That was almost crazy enough to distract Lisa from Frankie.)
“He and I didn’t date. We just fucked.”
“I can’t believe he was cheating on me.” Not that it mattered now, but still.
“He wasn’t. Fuck me.” Frankie scrubbed her eyes. “We stopped fucking before you and he started, Lisa.”
“But—” That didn’t make sense. “How old were you?”
“Sixteen, junior year, and it’s really okay. He was an idiot. If anyone was taking advantage, it was me.” Frankie held out her hand to Singer. “Give.”
Singer passed the pipe back without comment.
“Wait, he was having sex with you when you were sixteen?” Lisa would have been a senior. She’d been such a stupid fool, always flirting with him in front of people. “Oh god. Is that why you hated me? Frankie—”
“Nope. It’s over. I got nothing but love for you, Lisa. Shit.” She moved to repack the pipe, but Singer grabbed it.
“I have this.”
“It was going to be my distraction from the looks of pity, Singer.”
“Deal with it.”
“That’s rich, coming from Mr. Head in the Sand.”
Singer didn’t bother to respond.
“Anyway,” Frankie said. “Can we get back to how Singer’s not getting laid at all? I’m pretty sure passing the humiliation torch is in order. Unless Emery has some secrets he wants to spill?”
“Ignore Frankie.” Singer finished with the pipe but didn’t raise it to his lips immediately. “I didn’t know. About Caldecott. I’m sorry.”
“Shove it right up your ass. I don’t need anyone to be sorry for me, and definitely not you, buddy. How’re things going on the home front there, Singer Thurman?”
Singer sucked in smoke and held it until his eyes watered. “Jake and I have accepted that for the time being our needs, as a couple, are secondary to Miles’s needs—”
Oh good, a change in topic away from Lisa’s ridiculous adolescence. “But why won’t you let anyone watch him? I offered, Jake said his parents offered—” She shut her mouth over the words. Or maybe she should just give up on talking altogether. “Sorry. Never mind.”
Singer looked shifty. But Frankie just looked pissed. “Why the hell wouldn’t you? Jesus, Singer. Is this some stupid bullshit about self-reliance, because I swear to god, sometimes you’re a fucking fool.”
“Thank you, Frances.” Singer moved to get out of the spa, and Frankie actually reached for his arm.
“Fine. You don’t want to talk about it? Fine. But either you want to fix this thing or you don’t. You’re right, I’m not a fucking expert on this shit. I don’t have to be, dumbass, because I’ve been watching you two for years. You guys blow out, yell at each other, cry, get drunk, and fucking make up. What the hell has changed?”
“We have a baby, for one.”
“Hence: babysitter. Hell, Lisa and I could keep the kid aliv
e for a few hours, Singer, Christ.”
“I was serious,” Lisa added. “I actually watched kids at the farm. It—wasn’t as bad as I always figured.”
“Uh, scratch that, Auntie Lisa can take care of the kid while I illegally download Barney videos and get him hooked on ice cream.”
Singer raised his glass across the spa. “So, Emery. Any interesting tattoos lately? Please?”
“Not lately. But I’m sure I can entertain you with some old stories you haven’t heard before. Let me think. Oh, Alice loves this one. So like one night this group of guys walk in…”
Emery told a good story, but Lisa found her thoughts wandering anyway. The water felt good on her skin, and it wasn’t too cold out. She’d forgotten how pleasantly soft pot made the world, though she needed a lot more of it if she wanted to dull the twinge of humiliation every time she looked at Frankie.
Frankie Derrie slept with the basketball coach. In high school. While Lisa was flouncing around making doe eyes at him during practice. God, her past self was so embarrassing.
*
Frankie went home early, claiming it was no longer fun to crash on the couch with the specter of Viv standing over her disapprovingly when she woke up. Singer stayed only long enough to take a few last hits off the glass pipe they’d been passing around, then told them good night.
Leaving Lisa and Emery.
It wasn’t awkward, being alone with him. Not even in the spa. But she wasn’t exactly sure where to look, so she’d defaulted to watching his hands, riding the surface of the water. When he pulled them out and sat a little straighter, she braced, expecting him to say he had to leave, too.
He didn’t.
“So, just so we’re on the same page, I’m attracted to you. But I’m not— There’s no pressure. I really like hanging out with you.” He carefully dried his hands on his T-shirt and put the pipe aside, testing the temperature of it before tapping it out over the big abalone shell ashtray, but using his knuckles to keep the noise down. When he was done with the pipe he submerged his hands again, and for a second they flickered, almost squirming.
Lisa’s heart skipped. But then they were just hands, fingers, no snakes. She couldn’t even trick her eyes into seeing snakes.
“And I understand completely if you’re not interested. Obviously.”
Not interested wasn’t exactly it. “I’m pretty … messed up, right now. And you’re—” Gorgeous, considerate, funny, smart.
“A loser with no long-term goals?”
“What?”
He grinned.
“No, just, you’re—” This time he didn’t interrupt. This time Emery leaned forward, like he was honestly curious about what she’d say. “You’re amazing. So. You know. Probably not exactly in the mood for ‘recently fled a cult.’”
His eyes widened a little. “Is that how you think I see you?”
“It’s how everyone sees me. Mother hardly has a conversation without mentioning it.”
“Please believe that my feelings toward you are not even close to maternal, Lisa.”
She answered his smile with her own. “You bought me a lock for my door. And an orchid.”
“The lock isn’t maternal. Singer would have gotten you a lock, if you’d asked. Wait, that’s totally running against the point I was making. I don’t feel fraternal toward you, either.”
“I’m pretty screwed up. Mother keeps bringing me to therapists, but there was only one I liked, and she didn’t.”
“Why not?”
“I think because he was on my side, not hers. Saul Smith. That’s a cool name, right? Sounds like he should be a detective or something.”
“Wait, your mother will only take you to a therapist who’s on her side? That’s messed up.”
“I’m messed up. I was just staring at your hands, reassuring myself they’re not snakes.”
“Snakes?”
She shrugged. “Sometimes my fingers turn into snakes. I don’t know how to describe it.”
“That’s interesting. I wonder why?”
Why, why, she knew why. At least sort of. “I had a friend. Abigail. She said she used to dream about snakes a lot when she was a kid, was completely terrified of them. When things got bad for her, she’d start seeing snakes everywhere. And it’s like, the minute she died, I started seeing them, too.” God, that probably wasn’t what you wanted to tell someone who didn’t, yet, think you were crazy. Unless he was lying. But … no, she didn’t want to believe that.
“That’s interesting. Snakes. Even as a kid?”
She nodded.
“She died recently?”
“Maybe seven, no, maybe eight months ago now.”
“Was it some kind of accident?”
“Isn’t every death an accident of some kind, even if the actual accident happened years before? Abigail’s accident was intentional. I found her hanging in the kitchen. She loved the kitchen at the farm.”
Emery shifted, water surging around them, bouncing off her and rippling back toward him. She braced herself, suddenly certain he was going to put his arm around her, and then what? Kiss her? Hold her down, head under water?
“And then you started seeing Abigail’s snakes.” He paused, and she went still, waiting for the feel of his skin on her skin.
It didn’t come.
“Lisa? You okay?”
No. Not now. Not right now. Do not do this right now. But she could barely breathe, and everything was starting to go dark. Focus on something, Carey had said. She picked a spot of chipped enamel, right at the water line, and stared at it. The water, still bubbling, sometimes covered it, sometimes uncovered it, leaving a blurred dark spot where it should be. Breathing came easier when she stopped thinking about it, but the minute she realized it had gotten easier she started thinking about it again.
“How often does it get this bad?” His voice was perfectly calm over the sound of the water.
She shook her head, focused again on the chip, breathed.
He would ask questions, demand answers. The light she kept thinking she saw in his eyes when he looked her way would extinguish and she would just be Singer’s crazy sister, growing out her fingernails and thinking about snakes behind her locked bedroom door.
“The mind’s a strange place. And childhood fears are the most unshakable, I think. I wonder if she had a bad experience with snakes, or if she just knew they could be dangerous.” He paused again. “I’m trying to distract you. I’m not sure it’s working.”
“It is.” She turned her mind away from Abigail’s body that morning and thought about her voice, about the way she spoke when no one else was listening. “There were rumors. About Abigail. Some of the girls, our age, thought maybe she was a lesbian. She … didn’t really like men. I mean, she liked them fine, but when it was her turn, she’d get one of the girls to cover. Sometimes me. I mean, all of us would go to him. Were … eager … to go to him.” She blushed and kept her eyes on the chip. At least she was breathing now.
“That must have put her in a delicate position.”
“I guess I didn’t think it did? Until Di, who was kind of the highest-ranking older woman, asked a few of us if Abigail had ever come onto us, and of course she hadn’t, but you could see even just asking made the others … think about it.”
“About every time they’d been alone with her, every time they happened to look over right as she was looking at them.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “How do you know these things?”
“Human nature. Power of suggestion’s been documented scientifically, Lisa, you know? So what happened?”
“I’m not sure. But then she started being scared all the time, talking about her snakes, and I told her we could leave, that we could get her help—like, a psychiatrist, or something. But she said as bad as it was at the farm, it was worse outsid
e, that no one ever understood her. And then she died.”
“Poor kid. Was that what made you want to leave?”
It would be so easy to say yes. But that wasn’t really it. She would have stayed forever, even after that, even after Di’s terrible questions.
“They didn’t let me hold a ceremony for her. They said she had unnatural attractions. That God had encouraged her to remove herself from our midst to keep us free from sin and she couldn’t go to heaven.”
“That sounds awful.”
“Yeah.” She leaned back, looking up at the stars. “And I knew it wasn’t true. Not— I mean, maybe she was gay, but it wasn’t God who made her hang herself. She was sick. They should have helped, at least tried to help, instead of making her into some kind of lesson. After that I stayed for a while, but all of it seemed less … right. In my head. My heart.” Tears pricked her eyes, and as she blinked, they fell into the water.
“I wish I’d been able to meet her.”
“I wish I’d made her leave with me. I think she’d still be alive.”
She expected him to say all those ridiculous things people said, those mindless reassurances, but he didn’t. Emery didn’t say anything at all. He didn’t try to make her feel better, and he didn’t get too close, even though she was still crying.
“I’m sorry about Abigail,” he said softly.
“Me too.”
He left maybe an hour later, after they’d talked about normal things long enough to plaster over the weirdness. She told him more about Saul Smith, and Emery didn’t seem to judge her for going to therapy. He actually seemed to think it was a good idea.
It was dangerous to care about his opinion, but she found that she did. No matter how sternly she lectured herself about how she wasn’t getting involved with anyone, and definitely not with Alice’s almost-brother. Even if she did want to know the stories behind his tattoos. And how his skin tasted. And what it would feel like, inside her head, if she let herself get closer to him.