by Sonia Hartl
“You don’t have to tell me any more if this is too much,” I said. Tears hovered in his eyes. Even though I wanted to know what had happened, and wanted him to feel comfortable enough with me to tell me, I would’ve done anything to keep them from falling.
“I’m okay.” He squeezed my hand back. “I just need a second.” He took several deep breaths, like it was a technique he was used to, like he’d had to calm and center himself countless times in the past. “I was restless and horsing around in the car. Normal behavior for nine-year-old boys, according to my therapist.”
“That is normal.” I’d babysat enough a few years ago to know how fidgety and energetic kids at that age could be.
“I’m not there yet. Sometimes I can look back and say I was just being a kid, but those days are few and far between. I’m trying. Therapy helps.”
I’d had no idea he was in therapy. “I’m glad it helps.”
“I found one of my mom’s cloth headbands she wore at the gym, in a cup holder.” He took another deep breath. “I thought it would make a good slingshot. I looped it over the gear shift and pulled it back, and put the car in reverse. We had a steep driveway.”
I could see him then, a nine-year-old boy in his Little League uniform, messing around in the car while his dad ran inside. The fear he must’ve felt when the car shifted into reverse and started rolling backward. He wouldn’t have understood how to stop it.
“I didn’t know.” He paused, his breath coming out faster, more panicked. The tears hovering in his eyes broke free. “I didn’t know Daisy had snuck out of the house with her chalk. That she wanted to draw a picture on the sidewalk, of me winning the game, for good luck.”
I stopped breathing. Stopped hearing sound or seeing anything around me. The pieces of what had happened that day came together. A car rolling backward on a steep drive, a five-year-old girl so caught up in her chalk drawing that she didn’t see it coming toward her. The horror of it crashed into me, and I wanted to scream a warning to that long-ago girl to run, to get out of the way, but she couldn’t hear me. She wasn’t here anymore.
I wrapped my arms around him, and he was shaking so bad. “It was an accident. A horrible, tragic accident. You were just a little boy.”
His tears soaked into my shirt as I held him, rocking from side to side, trying to calm the tremors racking his body. “I still feel it, the impact. The bump of the tires as they ran her over. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and I don’t know where I am, and I think I’m back in that car, and my dad is running out of the house, but it’s too late. She’s gone. And I’m the one who killed her. I killed my baby sister, who loved me enough to draw baseballs in every room in our house. I was her hero, and she’s dead because of me.”
“It was an accident.” I held him while he sobbed, murmuring the words over and over again. It was an accident, an accident, an accident. Every beat of my heart hurt for that little boy forced to endure the kind of nightmare most adults couldn’t survive.
I had no idea how much time had passed while I rubbed his back, holding him through it until the tears on my shoulder began to dry. When he finally looked up, his face was bleak and swollen. I brushed away the last of his tears and kissed him gently.
“The days following the accident were hard on my parents.” He had a faraway look in his eyes, but his voice sounded steadier. Like he had to talk his way through the worst of it before he could face the other side. “The media had parked out on our lawn, and they still had to bury their daughter and grieve. They were dragged all over social media. It became a viral story, a cautionary tale about parental neglect. Even though it was my fault.” He stopped, breathed, and started again. “Strangers on Facebook and Twitter took hard swings at my dad for leaving me alone in a running car.”
I didn’t want to tell him that if a story like that had crossed my timeline, I probably would’ve had the same reaction. It was so easy, too easy, to judge people you didn’t know online. To see a tiny slip of their worst moment and make assumptions about them as a whole. And to deal with that while also trying to grieve a lost child … I couldn’t comprehend the toll that would take on a family.
“My parents sent me to live with my grandma and Gigi,” he said. “Just for a little bit, they said. Until the media circus calmed down. My dad was a quality control engineer down in Kansas City. He lost his job over what happened.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. They felt like useless words, but I was at a loss.
“The boss he’d worked under for ten years told him that if he couldn’t even keep an eye on his own children, then he probably couldn’t be trusted to keep an eye on the parts in the shop. He said that to my dad three days after we buried Daisy.”
“What the fuck?” I didn’t mean to yell that out loud, but what kind of a monster would say something like that to a grieving father?
“My dad was a villain online; the hate was so strong, it spilled over onto everything. Their friends stopped talking to them because they didn’t want to be associated and catch even an ember of the heat directed my parents’ way.”
“I’m so, so sorry. None of you deserved that.”
“My dad couldn’t get another job. Every time a prospective employer googled him, it was all over. They eventually changed our family name.” That was why I hadn’t been able to find anything on him when I googled. “My parents left KC and moved to St. Louis. My dad got a job, and eventually the Internet moved on to their next scandal. They didn’t bring me home, though, and after a year or two, I stopped expecting them to.”
“Why not?” My heart broke all over again for Paxton, left alone to deal with what had happened. What it must’ve felt like to know he’d been abandoned.
“Part of it was because, with Gigi, I’d started to get better. She introduced me to raising rabbits for show, and having something small and innocent to care for, to know the rabbits depended on me, it was like a different sort of therapy. One I desperately needed. If she hadn’t done that, I would’ve taken my own life years ago.”
My hand clenched his on instinct. He always said raising rabbits saved him. I didn’t know he meant that literally. “You’re not thinking of doing that anymore, are you?”
He shook his head. “I’ve had a lot of therapy, both clinical and with the rabbits. I still have bad days, but they aren’t nearly as bad as they used to be, or nearly as often. I’m learning how to live with it. I’m learning how to live.”
“Do your parents visit often?” I hadn’t spent a ton of time over at Paxton’s house, but they couldn’t have come to visit that often if everyone in town thought they were dead.
“They don’t. I think it’s easier for them to stay away. Because part of them … even though they don’t want to admit it, part of them blames me still. And I can’t do anything about that. They love me, but it’s hard. All of it is hard for all of us.”
That even a part of them could blame him for an accident like that made a fierce anger roll within me, but I checked it for his sake. “Why did they come today?”
He turned his head away from me. “My mom is pregnant. They’re going to try to start a family again, and they wanted to tell me in person.”
“Are you okay?” I placed my hands on his cheeks. “I keep saying I’m sorry because I don’t know what else to say, but if there is anything I can do, I’ll do it.”
“You don’t have to do anything. Being here, not running from me, is more than I could’ve hoped for.” He took my hands and kissed both of them. “I’m fine with my mom’s pregnancy, or as fine as I can be, I guess. To be honest, they haven’t felt like my parents in a really long time. I’m not angry at them for shutting me out. I’m not expecting to be part of their new family. I wish them well, but my feelings for them are very distant and healed over. Like watching someone else’s life from a telescope.”
I understood why he’d tried to warn me when I first went viral, the kind of fear he felt for me. I even understood why he’d gotte
n so angry when I played into it. The kind of memories it dredged up for him turned my veins ice-cold. What his family had faced, what he had faced, once the wolves of the Internet had sunk their teeth in was unimaginable. They already had to live through the worst, but to have it used against them day after day was nothing short of hell. Paxton had already lived through it, knew what it had done to his family, and he saw the same thing happening to me.
For the first time since I’d gone viral, I had no desire to check Twitter.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-THREE
PAXTON AND I SAT on that lawn chair until he needed to get ready for work. I didn’t want to leave the Hamptons, but he assured me he was okay. I offered to walk him home, and we only made it as far as the woods before we fell on each other again. We made out against a tree, behind some bushes, and had a near miss with a patch of poison ivy. Paxton told me he’d wanted to kiss me since the first day we’d started working together, so we had a lot of lost time to make up for. I couldn’t get enough of touching him, kissing him, just being near him.
I didn’t turn my phone back on. I had no idea what people were saying about me, and I didn’t care. It was so freeing not to care.
We finally pulled away from each other when Paxton had to do the responsible thing and show up to work. I offered to drive because I wanted to go in and see Elise, but when we reached the door outside Video and Repair, it was locked. Paxton and I looked at each other. Elise, Brady, and Midnight were all supposed to be there.
“Should I text Midnight?” I asked.
Before Paxton could open his mouth to respond, Midnight flung open the door, Brady and Elise behind her. “Guess what day it is.”
“Sunday,” Paxton said.
“Correct,” Elise said. “It’s also Cleaning Day.”
“Already?” I asked.
“We tried to text you, but didn’t get a response,” Midnight said.
“Sorry, my phone’s been off all day.”
Cleaning Day was a Video and Repair tradition. Once a quarter a company came in and did a full-scale clean on the store: carpet scrubbing, shelf washing, a total detox of the place. Those of us who worked here, minus Butch, took advantage of the store being closed to go camping. Midnight’s uncle had a small patch of land up north he’d bought for hunting. We’d all gone camping up there on the last Cleaning Day, and would probably go again on the next one. Part of her would always be the farm girl who loved the outdoors.
“Is it okay if I bring my girlfriend?” Brady asked. I had a feeling I knew his girlfriend, and I couldn’t hide my smile. But we’d never allowed outsiders for Cleaning Day before, usually because we spent most of the night drinking and bitching about work, and it would’ve bored anyone else present. “It’s just, with everyone else coupled up, I don’t want to be alone in my tent while you’re all banging.”
Oh my God. I tried to swallow my laugh and failed miserably. “Did shy and quiet Brady just use the word banging in a sentence?”
“Shut up.” He grinned at me, and his cheeks turned pink.
“One of us! One of us!” Elise chanted.
“Hold on.” Midnight held up a hand. “Who else is coupled up?”
Elise, Brady, and Midnight all turned to me and Paxton. Paxton just raised an eyebrow, like it would be up to me when and where to reveal our new status.
“We’re a thing.” There was no point in hiding it. It’s not like we’d do a great job of keeping it quiet once we got up to the campsite.
“What kind of thing?” Midnight smiled as sweetly as venom.
“A thing. You know.” I pointed between her and Elise. “That kind of thing.”
“Like, you both finally set your bullshit aside, because it’s obvious to anyone with eyes you both have a huge thing for each other? That kind of thing?” Elise asked.
“As much as it does wonders for my ego to hear you talk about my huge thing”—Paxton poked Elise on the nose and she smacked his hand—“you can quit torturing my girlfriend now.”
“I knew it!” Elise punched the air. “I can’t believe you two kept this from me. How long has this been going on? Tell me everything.”
“It just started.” Though, if I were being completely honest, it had been going on for a while; we’d just now gotten around to figuring it out. I said to Brady, “It’s fine if you bring your girlfriend, but she’s probably going to find us boring at best and annoying at worst.”
“I think she’ll have fun. She knows you all.” Brady winked at me. “And she still wanted to come for some reason.”
“Who is your girlfriend?” Midnight asked.
“Strawberry Sinclair,” Brady said, more to Paxton than any of us.
Everyone besides me froze.
“Awkward,” Elise mumbled.
Paxton cleared his throat. “How long has she been your girlfriend?”
“Most recently, since Friday night.” Brady held Paxton’s stare, as if considering if he should elaborate. “She broke up with me a few weeks ago to focus on 4-H, and only agreed to your date because she thought she’d see me there. Is it still cool if she comes?”
“I don’t mind,” I said. I found the whole thing more amusing than I should’ve.
“I don’t mind if she comes along either,” Paxton said. “But do me a favor and tell her I’m sorry for the sucky date before we all get there.”
“She knows.” Brady let out a laugh. “The whole damn town knows you’ve been in love with Macy for the last year.”
Paxton stiffened beside me as that one word hung in the air between us. Love. It rattled around in my system like a pinball. I knew Paxton liked me, and he really liked kissing me, but love? Was he in love with me?
“We should get going. Me and Macy have to pick up our tents,” Paxton said, with an emphasis on tents, as in two, as in we weren’t sleeping together. “Do you know how to get there, Brady?” When Brady nodded, he took my hand. “We’ll see you then.”
I got in the driver side of my car, and Paxton got in the passenger side. I put the key in the ignition, but waited a beat before starting it. “So, about that love thing?”
“Oh, you heard that?” Paxton gave me a half grin.
“Do you?” I turned to him. “Love me?”
“I guess it depends.”
I pursed my lips. “On what?”
“If it freaks you out,” he said softly. “Then definitely not.”
“And if it doesn’t freak me out?”
“Then I’d tell you I’ve been in love with you since our first day at work. When Midnight tried to put on her shift supervisor face and terrorize you like she did Brady, but you weren’t having any of it. I watched you wait until she went into the break room, then you put a wad of gum in the receipt paper so it would get all stuck and messy with the next customer she rang up. And the first thing that popped into my head when you did that was Damn, I think I love that girl.”
I laughed. “That’s a terrible reason to fall in love with someone.”
“What can I say? I’m a sucker for girls who can hold their own and aren’t afraid to pull out a wrench and scare the shit out of some hipsters every now and again.”
I leaned over the console, until I was close enough to feel the warmth of him. “Lucky for you, I’m a sucker for boys who know how to break into community sheds and who love old movies as much as I do and who raise rabbits for show.”
“That is a very specific set of desires. How fortunate for me indeed.”
“I love you too.” I pressed my lips against his, cursing the console for being so boxy and in the way when all I wanted to do was crawl onto his lap.
A tap on the roof of the car had us breaking apart.
Elise bent down, waving the air in front of her. “The hormones. I can’t take it. I’m choking on the fumes.”
I wrinkled my nose at her. “Did you need something?”
“Bring a jar of your grandma’s blackberry jam for breakfast. Momma made us a loaf of bread, and s
he ate all the jam we got for fixing your dryer already.”
“Will do.” I started cranking up the window to make her go away.
“Save it for the campsite!” she hollered as she climbed into her truck.
I sighed and turned the ignition. “We probably should go or we’ll never make it there.”
Paxton was grinning at me.
“What?” I rubbed my cheeks. “Do I have something on my face?”
“You love me,” he said.
I thought we’d already established that. “And? You love me too.”
He settled back in his seat. “I just like saying it out loud.”
“You are such a dork.” I took his hand and threaded his fingers through mine.
I drove to the end of Main Street and turned down my road. We planned to grab my tent first and then stop at his house on the way to our campsite. An unfamiliar car sat in the drive. A new car. The kind that probably had heated seats and a rearview camera.
I glanced at Paxton. “Wait here.”
If another reporter had shown up, I didn’t want them anywhere near Paxton. Though I couldn’t imagine Gram letting anyone in the house, and I didn’t see anyone skulking around the Hamptons. My heart thudded as I approached the screen door. The sound of laughter floated outside. Definitely not a reporter.
The first thing I noticed was Mom sitting on the plastic-covered couch. She never sat on the couch. Neither of us could stand the feel of it. The second thing I noticed was the man sitting beside her. They both stood as the door slammed behind me. He had warm brown eyes and the beginnings of gray hair around his temples.
“Macy, I want you to meet Roger.” Mom held his hand. She looked as happy as she had at the Royals game, and I decided right then not to hate him on sight.
“Hi. It’s so nice to meet you”—don’t call him cradle-robbing Roger, don’t call him cradle-robbing Roger—“Cr-oger.”
“Croger is my stage name.” He had a gleam in his eye. “You can call me Roger.”