by Noir, Roxie
“Around. The. Side,” she repeats, then looks at Eli. “You too.”
“It’s groceries,” he protests. “The ducks need to go in the fridge.”
“Ducks?” I ask as Levi sighs and turns back through the door.
“Have feathers, go quack,” Caleb supplies.
“Thank you,” I deadpan, and Charlie snorts.
“Please tell me they’re already butchered,” Mom says.
“They’re already butchered,” Eli says dutifully.
“All right, you can stay, I guess,” she says, and steps back out of the room.
“You’re spit roasting ducks?” Charlie asks.
“Wait, that’s today?” I add.
“You two have gotta pay attention,” Eli drawls, a slow smile coming onto his face. “Yes, today is Rusty’s Little House on the Prairie feast extravaganza. Levi’s been crafting the roasting mechanism for days.”
“Where is Rusty?” Caleb suddenly asks, stretching his legs in front of himself and leaning back on his hands.
We all look around. It’s been quiet for at least half an hour.
Too quiet.
“I think she’s in her room,” I say, suddenly suspicious. “I’ll go tell her you guys are here.”
I heave myself off the couch and head for the stairs. I know she’s probably just reading a book in her room, but one of the very first things I learned as a parent was that noise is suspicious, but quiet is extremely suspicious.
“Hey, munchkin,” I call out. “Your uncles are he—”
I stop short when I reach the top step. There’s something on the floor between Rusty’s room and the bathroom, four or five drops of dark liquid.
It takes me a second to realize what it is, and then my stomach leaps into my throat.
“Rusty!” I shout. I reach her bedroom door in one step, slam it open. It’s empty and in the second it takes me to scan the room, I also see her desk chair pushed back, a sharp stick on her desk next to a bright red smear, the drops of blood on the floor closer together here.
I’m at the bathroom door in another second. Locked.
“RUSTY!” I shout, rattling the knob, shoving at it. I slam my hand against the door, full-blown panic blossoming through my chest even as I tell myself that it’s not that much blood, just a few drops, she’s not in there bleeding to death.
Nothing happens. She doesn’t unlock the door and it doesn’t magically unlock itself. I try the knob again, as hard as I can, hoping that maybe the old mechanism will break and when it doesn’t, I slam my shoulder into the door. It’s old, solid wood, as old as the house and it shudders but doesn’t break.
“Hit it again,” Caleb’s voice says behind me. Pain spikes through my shoulder as I do and the door shudders, gives slightly, and then when I slam it one more time with my shoulder the frame splinters and the door comes open and I half-fall into the bathroom.
“Rusty,” I gasp.
She’s there, sitting on the toilet with the lid down, legs dangling, a mass of toilet paper pressed between her hands, bloody strands of it littering the floor.
Not covered in blood, not lying broken on the floor. There are no head wounds or severed limbs, no sliced arteries.
“I’m sorry!” she says, looking at me wide-eyed, her face already tear-stained.
I’m already on my knees in front of her, her hands in mine even as I’m still checking her over: head fine, body fine, legs fine, one hand hurt.
“It’s okay,” I say. “Shh, sweetheart, it’s okay, what happened?”
She sniffles, another sob breaking through as she holds out her left hand.
“It slipped,” she whispers as I peel back the wadded mass of toilet paper, the last few layers soaked through with blood, until I can see the wound.
She flinches as I unstick the paper, more blood welling up from a two-inch gash in her palm, right through the meat below her thumb.
“Ow,” she whispers.
“I bet that hurt,” I say, trying to commiserate while my heart is still beating wildly, every nerve in my body still rattling even as I hold her hand, trying to assess the wound.
“It was an accident,” she says, her voice still small, hurt.
“I know, honey,” I murmur.
Sniffle. More blood wells up as I try to examine her blood-stained hand as well as I can. I don’t think it’s deep enough to need stitches, but it’s hard to tell. Every time I touch her hand, she jerks it away slightly, fresh tears rolling down her cheeks.
I’m rattled. My heart is still pounding. I’m still sweating, still half-imagining the worst things that could happen, even though they haven’t, and I take a deep breath and try to concentrate.
“Here,” says Charlie’s voice, and I realize that she’s kneeling next to me on the bathroom floor, a first aid kit open next to her. “Can I see?”
“I don’t think she needs stitches, but I can’t tell,” I say as Rusty holds out her hand to Charlie. I rub my knuckles across my forehead, trying to tamp down the quake making its way through my core.
She’s fine, I tell myself. She’s fine. It’s a cut.
What the hell happened?
“Okay, Rusty, I need you to hold your breath for a few seconds because this is gonna hurt,” Charlie is saying. She’s got a pad of gauze pressed to the wound, holding Rusty’s small hand in both of hers, totally calm and patient and in control. “Ready?”
Rusty nods and sucks in a breath, eyes still wide.
“Here we go,” Charlie says, and pulls the gauze off. Gently, she touches Rusty’s palm, pulling the edges of the wound apart. Rusty’s turning pink, her feet kicking against the toilet.
“All right,” Charlie says, completely unfazed. “Good news, kiddo, I don’t think you need stitches.”
Rusty exhales in a rush, then sniffles.
“Okay,” she says.
“We’ll bandage you up and have you out of here in no time,” Charlie says. “Can you be brave again for a little while?”
“I think so,” Rusty says.
Charlie coaxes Rusty to the sink, has her hold her breath again while she rinses out the cut and I slump on the bathroom floor, back against the bathtub. Rusty whimpers and I close my own eyes for a moment, listen to Charlie soothe her slowly, calmly.
She’s always been good at emergencies. It’s the strangest thing, because in the rest of her life she can be scattered, a space cadet, but the moment something goes wrong she’s completely on top of it. Once we saw a car accident while we were getting coffee during Rusty’s ballet class, and I swear Charlie was the first person out there, calming down the drivers and ordering me to call 911 and telling the other onlookers to direct traffic, all before anyone else had managed to stand up.
When they’re done at the sink Rusty comes over to me, sits in my lap while Charlie bandages her up: gauze, medical tape, a big bandage to hold everything in place. By the time they’re finished Rusty’s smiling again, even though she’s got the hiccups from crying.
“Plus, you’ll have a cool scar,” Charlie is saying. “You can tell everyone that you got into a knife fight and won.”
“Don’t encourage her,” I murmur.
“What’s a knife fight?” Rusty asks.
“It’s a fight with knives,” I tell her, resting my chin on her head. “They’re very bad.”
“Oh,” Rusty says. “It wasn’t a fight, just an accident.”
Charlie finishes wrapped the bandage, presses it against itself.
“What happened?” she asks Rusty.
Instantly, Rusty goes silent, her little body suddenly tense in my lap.
“I wanted to help Levi make roasting sticks,” she says quietly. “And my knife slipped.”
Her knife?
“What knife?” I ask, just as Charlie’s head snaps up and she looks at Rusty.
“The knife I borrowed,” Rusty whispers. Now she’s squirming in my lap, arching her back, trying to get up.
“Borrowed from where?” I ask
.
Charlie’s eyes meet mine, wide and hazel, guilt written all over her face. I swallow hard, fighting the rising tide of anger, because I’m pretty sure I know exactly who gave my second grader a goddamn knife.
“Charlie’s workshop,” Rusty finally admits. Charlie’s gone pale beneath her freckles and her gaze drops from mine.
I take a deep breath, jaw clenching, and wonder what the fuck Charlie was thinking.
“I said you couldn’t take that knife,” Charlie admonishes her, gently, glancing at me again. “Did you take it anyway?”
“I just borrowed it,” Rusty says. “I was going to give it back. I’m sorry.”
“I didn’t want you to take it because I didn’t want you to get hurt,” Charlie says, her voice sharper now. “Rusty, if you take something without permission that’s stealing.”
Rusty’s breathing picks up and moments later a sob breaks through. She rubs her eyes with the backs of her hands, flopping sideways against my chest like she’s trying to burrow in.
“I’m sorry, Charlie,” she says. “I didn’t mean to.”
Charlie opens her mouth, looks at me, and shuts it again. I hold Rusty, sniffling and sobbing, against my chest and shake my head at Charlie.
I’ve got questions for her, starting with why the fuck did she have a knife in the first place and ending with how easy was it for her to take it? But I don’t ask them right now, not while Rusty’s having a breakdown on the bathroom floor.
“Just go,” I tell Charlie, my voice tight, clipped.
“I’ll clean up,” she says, touches Rusty’s shoulder one more time, and then she’s gone.
I close my eyes, hold my kid, let her cry, and wonder if any of the parenting books I own cover this situation.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Charlie
Turns out there’s nothing to clean up, because Clara, Eli, Levi, and Caleb did it already: the floor is spotless, the desk is no longer blood-smeared, and Levi is holding a thumb-width stick with one end barely sharpened in one hand and my penknife in the other.
“This yours?” he asks, holding it out on his palm, blade closed.
It’s the one I let her borrow when she wanted to carve a wombat, when I gave her a hunk of soft pine and taught her to be very careful, cutting away from her fingers. The stick looks like it’s oak, much harder. No wonder it slipped and she cut herself.
I feel awful, like there’s a hand around my windpipe. Rusty’s in there, sobbing to Daniel, and it’s my fault. What the hell was I thinking, letting her use a knife and not watching where it went?
“Thanks,” I say, and put it into my pocket, where it weighs heavy as guilt.
“She okay?” Levi asks.
I swallow, my throat tight. I just want to find a corner where I can hide and cry away my guilt, but instead I’m faced with Daniel’s family after letting Rusty slice herself open.
“We should make sure we keep an eye on her hand, but she should be fine,” I say, not meeting anyone’s eye. “Keep it clean, see that it doesn’t get infected, but it should heal okay.”
“I think she might be more upset than really hurt,” Clara adds, sympathetically. “If she’s anything like her dad, she’s mad that she’s not invincible. Come on.”
She heads back downstairs. Caleb puts a hand on my shoulder and rubs it sympathetically, and I nod in thanks.
“I’ll be down in a sec,” I tell them. “I’m just gonna… you know.” Cry, probably.
They leave, footsteps fading down the stairs, the hubbub from the kitchen rising again as I turn toward Rusty’s room, put my face in my hands, and take a deep, deep breath.
Holy fuck, I feel awful. Rusty’s hurt and now Daniel’s pissed at me, all because I wasn’t paying attention, because I totally forgot that she had that knife and didn’t think to double-check—
The floor creaks behind me, and I whirl. Eli’s standing there, alone, arms folded over his chest.
“Is he being a dick about it?” he asks gently.
I bite my lips together and shake my head, afraid that if I try to say anything I’ll start crying.
“You sure?” he asks. “Daniel can be a real unforgiving, uptight asshole sometimes.”
“It’s fine,” I whisper.
Eli sighs, and then he’s in front of me, wrapping his arms around my shoulders, pulling me in for a brotherly hug.
“It’s not your fault,” he says. “Trust me, I know how he can be.”
“Thanks,” I mutter into his shirt. Eli pats my back a few times, then releases me, one hand on my shoulder. He’s only a year older than Daniel. The two of them have always been close, so by the transitive property, I know Eli pretty well, too.
“Besides, that kid’s in for way worse than a few cuts and bruises,” he says. “Daniel seems to have conveniently forgotten all the hell he used to raise. Were you around when he ran into a sharp tree branch and it almost went clean through his shoulder?”
“Oh, my God,” I mutter. “Yeah.”
“He never would tell us how that happened,” Eli says, casually.
It happened when we were eleven and had discovered that if you spray hairspray into an open flame, you can make a mini flamethrower. We were chasing each other around the woods, like idiots, and Daniel turned around to unleash a gout of flame in my direction.
When he turned back around, still running full speed, there was a pointy tree branch exactly at shoulder level.
“No?” I say, just as casually, and Eli laughs.
Even as I was practically dragging a bleeding Daniel back to his house, he made me swear not to tell anyone what we’d been doing, terrified of how angry his parents would be. I’ve kept the secret for eighteen years and I don’t plan on telling anyone now.
“Well, I tried,” he says, then reaches out and ruffles my hair like I’m his kid sister. “Sorry he’s a dick. See you in a few.”
With that, Eli leaves Rusty’s room, and I’m alone, the bathroom door across the hall still shut. Behind it I can hear Daniel and Rusty’s voices, one high and one low.
I give myself another thirty seconds, and then I follow his family downstairs.
* * *
“You gave her a knife?”
I take two seconds before I answer him, finish mincing the stalk of celery I’m working on.
“No, she took it,” I say, sweeping the small chunks to one side of the cutting board. “She asked if she could take it home, I said no, and apparently she just took it anyway.”
“She said you let her carve a wombat,” he says, standing in the middle of the kitchen, arms folded over his chest. I brush celery bits from the knife onto the cutting board, not looking at him.
“She was looking at the little wooden animals in my shop and wanted to make one,” I say.
“So you did give her a knife.”
“I didn’t give her a knife, I let her use one temporarily while being supervised,” I snap. “I was five feet away the whole time.”
“Charlie, she’s seven,” he says, pushing a hand through his hair, voice rising. “You can’t just hand a seven-year-old—”
“Jesus, Daniel, I didn’t just hand her a machete and tell her to bushwhack a path into town,” I say. “I showed her how to use a pen knife and then I let her carve something while I kept an eye on her from a couple feet away.”
“Apparently it wasn’t a very close eye if she managed to take it!” he says.
“She stole it!” I hiss, trying to keep my voice down, because I don’t want this argument getting more public than it already is.
“You left it where she could take it!” he says, hush-shouting. “First you gave a second grader a knife—”
“— I didn’t give her a knife, for fuck’s sake, I just told you—”
“And then you just let her take it because you probably forgot she even had it,” he says. “I guess I should be glad she didn’t burn it down. I don’t know why I ever let her go into your workshop, the last time I was there
you had a hacksaw just sitting out on a chair—”
I put the kitchen knife down. It clatters on the cutting board.
“She didn’t slice herself open on my watch,” I point out, gripping the edge of the counter with both hands, glaring at the cabinets in front of my face, trying to maintain control and not lash out at Daniel. “Yes, sure, I handed her a knife and she sat quietly for an hour and made some progress on a pretty okay looking wombat, because contrary to what you apparently think, I’m perfectly capable of monitoring a situation.”
“Until she took it.”
Finally, I turn around and glare at him.
“Well, look at who her father is,” I say.
Daniel doesn’t say anything, but his jaw flexes, his short beard shifting, and even though I know the silence means he’s really pissed I keep going because goddammit, this is not my fault.
“She asked if she could have it, I said no, and then she took it anyway,” I say. “Remind you of anyone?”
“The fuck is that supposed to mean?” he asks, his voice dangerously quiet.
“It means how many times did you get dragged down to the Sherriff’s station for stealing lighters and malt liquor from the Gas ’N’ Go?” I hiss. “The only reason you don’t have a juvie record is that every deputy in the county knew who your daddy was—”
“The shit I did has nothing to do with this,” he finally says, stepping closer.
I fold my arms, glaring upward.
“Only that the apple apparently doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
“How the fuck is this about me?” he shout-whispers. “You can’t keep track of the knife because I swear to God you’d lose your head if it wasn’t screwed on and somehow—”
The sliding glass door to the porch slides open, and Levi steps through, then stops. He nods once, a plate full of foil-wrapped potatoes in his hands, then proceeds across the kitchen to put it down on the counter in complete silence, Daniel and I still standing about two feet apart.
“Eli said to tell you five more minutes,” he says, not making eye contact, then heads back out.
“Thanks,” I say to his retreating form.