The carhop’s eyes widened.
“Kidding,” said Christa. “Um, not that eating disorders are funny.”
“Right,” said the carhop. “Well, y’all enjoy that.”
“Thanks,” said Leigh.
Christa handed me the bags. “Stick these back there with you, Silas.”
I accepted them. I’d been quiet, but Christa had been a chatterbox. She and Leigh were discussing the wedding, which had been canceled on account of us going missing. Christa was convinced that Leigh needed to salvage it.
“So,” said Christa, digging out some cheesy tater tots. “You lost your reservation at the place you were having the reception, and they’re booked for months.”
“It’s not that big a deal,” said Leigh. “The way Griffin and I figure it, we’ve got money to burn, and losing the money pales in comparison to your safety.” She put a hand behind the seat to back out of the Sonic parking lot.
“You lost the money you paid for it?” said Christa.
“Like I said, not a big deal,” said Leigh.
“But that’s not fair. You didn’t use it.”
“Well, we canceled the day of,” said Leigh. “They couldn’t re-rent it to someone else. They didn’t have time.”
“Oh, that sucks,” said Christa. “I totally ruined your wedding.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” said Leigh. “Anyway, Griffin and I were thinking it might be better to get married in a few months. Maybe July or something. Once everything’s calmed down.”
“No,” said Christa. “You can’t do that. July will be sticky and hot, and you’ll be dying in that dress.”
“Well, we thought we might do it inside instead,” said Leigh. “I mean, I thought. Griffin hasn’t really wanted to talk about the wedding. Honestly, I haven’t thought about it much either. We’ve been so worried.”
“You guys have to get married now,” said Christa. “I mean, Mom and I are still here. We have the dresses. What about your cake? What happened to your cake?”
“It’s in our refrigerator,” said Leigh, making a face.
“See? Perfect. You have the cake. All we need is a place to have the wedding.” Christa leaned back to look at me. “Silas, you want the wedding to go on, right?”
“Uh… I guess,” I said. I was really having a hard time thinking about stuff like weddings right now. Mostly I was worried about Christa. Why was she putting on this act like nothing bad had happened to her? Was it a defense mechanism? Was it an attempt to run away from it all?
Whatever it was, it worried me. I was pretty sure it was going to blow up in her face. She couldn’t run from it forever.
Or maybe I was being an ass.
What happened to Christa bugged me. Hell, it tormented me. Maybe I wanted the excuse to have to deal with it myself and that was why I wanted to be able to talk about it. I wanted to beg forgiveness from Griffin. I wanted to find some way to do penance for it.
I wanted to fix it.
And I couldn’t.
“So, how hard can it be to find a place?” Christa was saying. “Maybe we could even find someplace where we could have both the wedding and the reception.”
“A lot of places are booked,” said Leigh. “But I guess theoretically it might work. We don’t have a lot of guests, and most of them live pretty local. There are a few of my friends from Thomas, but if we push to a weekend, I’m sure they could make it.”
“Weekend. Good,” said Christa. “What’s today? What day of the week?”
“Wednesday,” said Leigh.
“So, this weekend, then,” said Christa.
Leigh laughed. “I don’t know. That might be kind of tough.”
“Oh, come on, I’ll help you,” said Christa. “So will Silas. Right?”
“Uh… yeah, sure.”
“See?” said Christa. “We can do this.”
Leigh shook her head at Christa. “You’re crazy, you know that?”
Christa grinned. She popped another tater tot in her mouth.
* * *
There were girls giggling in my living room. I stumbled down the steps to find Leigh, Christa, and Sloane all sitting on the couch holding up lacy garters.
I squinted at Christa. “How are you awake?” I’d been sleeping all afternoon. We’d only gotten back that morning. After stuffing myself on Sonic food, I’d tumbled into bed and slept like the dead. Until now. When giggling had woken me up.
She shrugged. “Weddings energize me. I’m not tired, what can I say?”
I rubbed my face.
“I slept in the car when you were driving, remember?” she said.
“For like twenty minutes,” I said. “Don’t you think you should get some rest?”
She rolled her eyes. “God, doesn’t he sound just like Griffin? I swear, if the two of you had your way, I’d sleep the rest of my life away.”
“Sweetie, maybe you should nap,” said Leigh. “After everything you’ve been through—”
“I’m fine,” she said. “I want to focus on the wedding, not on me. Next garter.”
“Okay,” said Sloane, pulling a blue one out of a bag. “How about this one? It’s something blue, you know?”
Leigh shrugged. “Does it matter?”
“It totally matters,” said Christa. “That’s what Griffin’s going to take off your leg and throw out to all of the eligible bachelors at the wedding.”
“There’s going to be like five of them,” said Leigh. “Can’t we just skip that?”
I turned my back on them and headed into the kitchen.
Griffin was sitting at the table, gripping his cell phone. “Ma, I told you not to get on I-68, didn’t I? That’s going to take you out of town. You need to get off on the next exit and turn around… Well, if you would have called me before you got in the car… Fine…. Yes, turn around come back like you’re going to the hotel… You have what?… Well, then why aren’t you using the GPS?… Ma, if you have the address, and the GPS is telling you turn around, then turn around.” He looked down at the phone. He looked up at me. “She hung up on me. My mother hung up on me.” He rubbed his head. “This whole thing is a freaking nightmare.”
“What whole thing? You mean the fact that Christa and I—”
“I mean the damned wedding,” he said. “I thought I had escaped it, but my sweet little sister had to kick the whole thing into overdrive, and now it’s all happening again, and it’s all happening really fast, and it’s crazy.”
I nodded slowly. “You want a beer?”
“Yes,” he said, heaving a huge sigh.
I went to the refrigerator. “I had some homebrew stuff in here, unless Sloane drank it.” I opened the door. The bottles were still there, although there were less of them than I remembered. I took two out and gave one to Griffin.
“Thanks,” he said.
I sat down across from him at the table. “What did you tell your mother?”
“About where you two were?” he said. “I didn’t say anything. Christa beat me to it. I was dealing with Rolf’s car, and Christa called her and said that she went to some party the night of the rehearsal dinner and that she ended up on the other side of the state with these hippies who lived on commune and didn’t believe in phones. She said it took her this long to get a ride home. My mom bought it. She was royally pissed, but happier to have her home.”
“Why would she believe that?” I said. “She knew I was gone too, right?”
“I don’t know if she even knows who you are,” said Griffin. “But Christa probably said you were at the party too. At any rate, it did what Christa wanted. It made it seem like not having the wedding was a big tragedy, and it made it really important that she get us all on board to fix it. And honestly, I’d rather my mom believe that than know the truth.”
I sighed. “But Christa would never do something that fucked up.”
He laughed. “You kidding? Look, I know my sister is a little on the wild side. She can party with the best of them,
as my mother well knows. Before, I gave you shit about the two of you guys, but I recognize that she was probably more to blame than I might have admitted at the time. I’m sorry about that.”
“No,” I said. “You were right. If I’d left her alone, she would never have ended up getting picked up when I did.”
“Christa says you guys just happened to be at the same bar,” he said. “I know you feel responsible, but this wasn’t about you, Silas. It was bad luck. And Rolf was a bad dude. Trust me, last year, when Marcel came after Leigh, I felt really guilty about it. And the shit she went through because of me. She fucking left me and ran off and I didn’t see her for months. It took me forever to let that go. But you can’t blame yourself.”
I slugged my beer. Damn, that tasted good. “This isn’t the same, Griffin. I went after Rolf. Marcel found you, not the other way around.”
“Stop beating yourself up.” He took a drink of his beer. “Hey, this is pretty good. You make this?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“Look, um, I don’t want to pry.” He leaned forward. “But speaking of the stuff that went down with you guys before, Christa says she doesn’t want to stay in the hotel with mom. She says she doesn’t feel safe, and I get that. She says that the couch at my place is really uncomfortable, and she’d rather be in the guest room at your house.”
“Oh,” I said. “She’s staying here?”
“Well, Sloane said it was all right,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s absolutely fine.”
“Thing is,” said Griffin, “I may have been too harsh before. Thinking that she was dead and stuff has kind of put things in perspective for me. And if you two feel like… I mean, if you guys were out there, and everything got kind of Tarzan and Jane or whatever, and you two want to be together, you don’t have to hide it from me. Like I get that you were alone out there, and you had to depend on each other and—”
I stood up from the table. “No, it’s not like that.” I walked over to the window.
“I’m not going to be pissed off is all I’m saying. If you like my sister, then you can tell me. I promise I’ll be cool.”
I stared out at my back yard. It was a decent-sized yard. I sometimes wished it was smaller when I had to mow the grass. Sloane had done some landscaping out there. She had a little stone walkway and some flower bushes. They were starting to bloom.
“What are you looking at?” said Griffin.
I looked back at him. “Uh…”
“You trying to figure out how we’re going to fit everyone back there?”
“Everyone?”
“Sloane’s convinced we’ll have enough room for everyone. And Leigh thinks it’s pretty enough for the wedding pictures, so I guess we’ll try and make it work.”
“You’re having the wedding here?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Apparently so. Why do you think my mom’s coming here?”
“Whoa,” I said.
He got up from the table and clapped me on the back. “About Christa. You can tell me.”
I swallowed. “There’s nothing between us.”
He raised his eyebrows.
I took a drink of my beer. “She’s not…” I wished I could tell him what had happened, but I’d promised her that I wouldn’t. She didn’t want him to know, and it wasn’t the kind of secret that you just blabbed. “How much do you even know about your sister and guys, Griffin?”
“Guys? As in plural guys?”
“She told me some kind of messed-up stuff,” I said. “She seems to be kind of promiscuous, and I don’t think it’s for good reasons.”
He let out a little laugh. “What the hell are you saying?”
“You know what? Never mind. She’s not into me, all right? She’s never been into me. So, it kind of doesn’t matter how I feel about her, does it?” I drained my beer, set it on the table, and walked out of the kitchen.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Griffin was right. It was a nightmare.
I spent the rest of the day watching the plans for the wedding unfold, listening to Christa giggle like nothing was wrong.
But every time I looked at her, I saw her bloody and naked and staring blankly out into space.
It got so I didn’t want to look at her, so I started to try to stay clear of her.
Staying clear of her meant staying clear of the wedding plans in general. I went downstairs to my workout room, where I kept my weights.
I lifted for a long time.
Too long, probably.
I hadn’t been eating properly, and my body wasn’t strong anymore. I pushed myself, doing curls and then presses.
Until I was sweaty from the exertion. Until my muscles screamed.
But when I went back upstairs, they were all in the kitchen talking about flower arrangements.
“They can’t be red red,” Leigh was saying. “They have to be burgundy or maroonish. You know what color I’m talking about.”
“Well, roses are generally that color, aren’t they?” said Sloane.
“Are they?” said Leigh.
I pushed past them to get a beer out of the refrigerator, and then I fled upstairs to my room.
How could they all be doing this?
How could they be thinking about this wedding after what had just happened?
They didn’t know that Christa had been raped, sure, but they did know that we’d been through hell. How could they possibly think it was a good idea to plan a wedding right away?
We hadn’t even been back a day.
Had they all lost their minds?
I drank my beer. I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to get through this.
Back at Op Wraith, I remembered that Sloane had gone through training to turn off her emotions so that she could be a more efficient killer. They’d never bothered training me to do that. Apparently, I was already good at it when I got there.
For years, I’d never felt anything I didn’t want to feel. I’d sidestepped all my guilt and fear and sadness. It had been easy. It had been like dancing, moving the thoughts out of the forefront of my brain, taunting the more stubborn ones. I’d taken it all for granted.
And I couldn’t do it anymore.
Not when I kept thinking about Christa’s blood-streaked breasts. Her empty stare.
Fuck.
I went back downstairs for more beer.
But there weren’t any more homebrews in the refrigerator. There was only Stella Artois. I grabbed one, and I saw that everyone else in the house was drinking beer.
They were sitting around the kitchen table, pouring over a stack of print-outs.
“Hey Silas,” said Leigh. “We haven’t seen much of you today.”
“Sorry,” I said, opening my beer with the magnetic beer opener on the refrigerator.
“Well, what if we don’t use chairs?” said Christa.
“We have to have chairs,” said Sloane. “People have to sit down.”
“But they aren’t going to fit,” said Christa.
Griffin tapped a piece of paper. “I’m telling you, if we get these, they will fit.”
“But those are white, and Leigh doesn’t want white,” said Christa.
Leigh shrugged at me and turned back to the table. “No, white’s okay, if that’s what we have to do.”
“Doll,” said Griffin, “are you sure? Because we’re only going to do this once, and if you don’t like it—”
“I think so,” said Leigh.
“Well, we should get what Leigh likes,” said Sloane.
I marched over to the table and grabbed Sloane’s arm. “Can I talk to you?”
She gave me a startled look. “Um, sure.”
“Alone?” I raised my eyebrows.
She made an apologetic face at the table. “I’ll be back, guys.”
I led her out of the room to the other side of the house.
When I was sure we were alone and out of earshot of the others, I let go of her.
“What’s up?” She looked concerned.
“I can’t believe you guys are doing this,” I said.
“Doing what?”
“Planning the wedding,” I said. “We just barely got home after being trapped in the woods for days. How is this even remotely appropriate?”
She took a step back. “You’re mad.”
“I’m not… mad,” I said. Hell, maybe I was. “I’m confused. I don’t know how you could think this is a good idea.”
“For Griffin and Leigh to get married? You think that’s bad?”
“No,” I said. “It’s fine that they’re getting married. It’s good, even.”
“This is just because you don’t believe in commitment,” she said.
“What?” I rubbed my face. “This is not about that at all. I’m glad that they’re committed. I’m glad they have each other. I’m sure that it’s very comforting to have someone like that. To go through things together, and then to have someone you could…” I sighed. “It’s too soon. Give us some time to re-acclimate. Give Christa some time. She’s acting so cheery and happy, and I don’t think she’s even processing everything that happened.”
She rubbed my arm. “She seems okay, actually.”
“No, she’s acting okay,” I said.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
She bit her lip. “You’ve always been so strong, Silas. I figured you could handle anything.”
“I can. It’s not about me.”
She furrowed her brow. “Christa says you took all the bullets. She really doesn’t seem traumatized. Maybe you’re just so used to trying to take care of her out there, that it feels weird to know she’s safe?”
I shook my head. I started to say something else.
But then I realized what the problem was. I realized why they were all so gung-ho about the wedding.
It was because they wanted to believe everything was okay.
They didn’t want to think that Christa had been terrorized or that I’d been messed up in the head.
It was better for everyone if no actual damage had been done.
I could disabuse them of that notion if I wanted. I could tell them about all kinds of terrible things that had happened.
But it seemed cruel.
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