by Hart, Megan
“Don’t,” he said. “I like it when you sing. It makes me think you’re happy.”
“I am happy.” The impulse to admit it, say it out loud, surprised her, but she wasn’t sorry she’d said it.
When he pulled up in front of a small duplex and killed the engine, Rebecca leaned forward to look through the windshield. Beneath the slash of rain on the glass, everything outside seemed to be moving. Unsettled, she sat back and looked at him.
“Your house?”
“Yeah. Is that okay? It’s nasty out tonight. I just thought we could watch a movie or something. Hang out,” Tristan added.
Rebecca nodded after a moment. “Sure. That’s okay. Are your parents home?”
“My mom doesn’t live with us anymore. I’m not sure where my dad is, but I figure he’s on a job. He’s a truck driver,” Tristan told her. “He’s usually gone for a week or so at a time, depending.”
The idea of parents not being around all the time was intoxicating and unnerving. Rebecca’s parents travelled once a year on vacation without her, but her grandparents always came to stay while they were gone. “That must be hard.”
“No. It’s better when he’s not around. I mean, he’s kind of hard to live with.”
She twisted in the seat to look at him. In all their conversations, they hardly ever talked about Tristan’s family life. Well, they hardly ever spoke about hers, either. They didn’t have to talk about their lives to know how different they were.
“Tristan,” she said, but stopped herself.
He waited, then smiled. He reached to tug one of her curls, watching it spring back up. “Rebecca.”
She wanted, desperately, to ask him about Allie. If there was something going on. She didn’t. What if he said yes? Could she be angry? Could she complain?
“Let’s go inside,” she said instead.
In Tristan’s small and messy kitchen, she accepted a can of cola and popped the top. Sipping, she tried not to stare at the worn linoleum, the stack of dishes piled high in the drainer, the lack of a dishwasher. The yellow fridge. A food and water bowl sat on a mat by the back door. The kitchen smelled faintly of bleach overlaid with damp.
“The dog’s been dead since last year. We just never seem to get around to getting another or getting rid of the bowls.” Tristan looked embarrassed.
Rebecca shook her head, not sure what to say. He took her into the living room, where none of the furniture matched and all of it looked worn. The console television was ancient. He waved her toward the stairs instead of the couch.
“I have a DVD player upstairs. In my room.”
She laughed. “Uh huh.”
“It’s true!” Tristan laughed, too.
Rolling her eyes, she followed him up the creaking stairs and into his room. It was cleaner than the other rooms had been. Same kind of worn furniture, but everything was tidy and organized. He had a small television on a stand with a DVD player and a collection of DVDs in a tall rack, along with a VCR and the accompanying tapes.
“I have a pretty big collection. Pick whatever you want.”
Rebecca studied the movies, pulling out a plastic case that had once belonged to the local video store. She ran her fingers over the price sticker. “I didn’t know they sold off their old movies. My parents usually just buy them. They don’t even have a membership there.”
“They’re cheaper when you buy them used,” Tristan said.
It wasn’t the first time there’d been a glaring difference in the way they each looked at the world, but it was the first time it embarrassed her. She put the movie back. Tristan reached around her to pluck a different one from the rack, some kind of gun-chase comedy.
“How about this one?” He turned his face to look at her.
They stood so close she could count his eyelashes and see the faint spray of freckles across his nose. He’d pushed his thick sandy hair, wet from rain, off his forehead. She wanted him to kiss her.
He did.
It was so good, this thing with Tristan. All of it, except the parts where she couldn’t tell anyone. The parts where she knew her parents would not approve. Where Richie would be hurt. Where her friends would all talk behind their hands about her. How she had to worry if there were other girls, or worse, just one other. How nobody could possibly understand this.
Tristan put the movie into the player, and they settled on the bed. He plumped the pillows so they could get comfy while watching. She leaned against his shoulder, their fingers linked companionably at their sides between them.
The movie played. Squealing tires. Shooting guns. Eventually, Rebecca pushed up on her elbow to offer her mouth to Tristan, who kissed her at once. Slow, sweet, lingering kisses that kindled a fire inside her that soon threatened to consume them both.
They’d fooled around a lot but had never gone this far. This wasn’t the back seat of a car or the back row of a bargain movie theater just outside town or a sleeping bag in a field at the end of a dead end street. Tristan’s bed had more than enough room for both of them to wriggle and roll.
Naked, he moved on top of her. Positioned himself. Kissed her. She kissed him back. Her arms went around him, pulling him down.
“Are you sure?” Tristan murmured into her ear.
Her body tensed, relaxed, every muscle answering for her. Still, she found her voice. “Yes. I’m sure. I want this. I want you.”
It was supposed to hurt, but didn’t. It was supposed to be good for him, and not for her, but it was. It was supposed to be a lot of things, but it was not supposed to be love.
“I love you,” Tristan said. Then again. “Oh, God. I love you, Rebecca.”
The words were there, fighting in her mouth to get free, but she was too consumed with the sudden, overwhelming pleasure rocking through her. She couldn’t speak at all. Could only gasp and dig her nails into his back.
He said he loved her, and she drew blood.
Tristan was still on top of her when the first shouts rose outside his room. Something slammed into the hallway wall hard enough to rattle the cork board hung next to his bedroom door. Again, another slam, another shout. The crack of flesh on flesh.
It took Rebecca too long to figure out what was happening. Tristan was still on top of her when the door flew open so violently that it hit the wall. He pulled the covers up to shield her, but as he moved, she got a clear view of who was bursting through the door.
Jennilynn Harrison, blond hair tumbling over her shoulders, stumbled backward as the man in front of her pushed her without letting her move freely by keep his hand on her throat. She had her hands on his, but wasn’t fighting him. He shook her in his grip, while his other hand drew back and slapped her across the face. Her entire body turned from the blow. Blood spattered from her split lip.
“Jesus Christ, Dad, get out!” Tristan shouted.
The older man, who bore little resemblance to Tristan, turned his bleary gaze on him. “The fuck are you doing here?”
“The fuck are you doing?” As he’d done the night of the party, Tristan tried to use his body to keep Rebecca out of sight, but it didn’t work this time.
Jenni, clearly drunker even than her companion, staggered. Her gaze focused on Rebecca. “Holy shit.
“You’re bleeding. Christ.” Tristan tugged off the comforter to wrap around him, leaving Rebecca beneath the sheet, and grabbed a handful of tissues from the desk. He shoved them into the blond girl’s hand. “Clean yourself up.”
“Can’t, can’t,” she said and threw the tissues all over the floor. She waved an unsteady hand toward Tristan’s dad. “Has to look real or else they won’t believe it.”
“It looks real all right,” Tristan said.
His father grabbed Jenni by the elbow and yanked her through the door and into the hallway. “C’mon, you dumb bitch.”
He didn’t slam the door behind them, so Rebecca had no trouble watching as the older man kissed Jenni. What a mess. Both of them came away from it smeared with blood. Rebecc
a’s stomach turned.
Just before they moved out of sight, Jenni looked over her shoulder at Rebecca. She was laughing, even with the blood dripping steadily from her lip and a pattern of dark bruises beginning to show on her neck. Her grin didn’t read to her eyes. They looked blank, absent. Jenni looked like a ghost that had started haunting itself.
Tristan sat heavily on the edge of the bed. “God. Shit. I’m sorry, Rebecca. That was crazy.”
“Did you know they were…umm….” She sat up to put her lips on his shoulder.
“No. I mean. God. Gross.” He shuddered and turned his face to hers. “What the fuck, right? Jenni and my fucking dad?”
Rebecca shuddered at the thought of it, then again with regret how so special a night was now going to forever be tainted by what had just happened. “Will you tell your mother?”
He shook his head. “I told you. She doesn’t live here, anymore.”
“They’re divorced.”
“They didn’t have to get divorced. They weren’t married.”
So that rumor had been true. Rebecca didn’t know what to say. She let her forehead rest in the place her lips had kissed. Tristan breathed with a shiver. His skin goosepimpled.
“That was so fucked up,” he whispered.
Chapter 20
Jenni
Then
This was what they were going to do.
Jenni would meet up with Barry tonight. She’d make him give her the pills, all of them. She wouldn’t give him the money for them. She’d keep both.
“I’ll just, you know.” She said this to Steve with a wave of her hand, not finishing or planning to until he gave her a look of bland ignorance. “Seduce him.”
“I don’t fucking like that,” he said, like he had any say in what she did.
Jenni rolled her eyes. “I won’t really do anything with him. I’ll just make him think I will. He’s just gross enough he’ll go for it.”
“Needs more.” Steve drew on his cigarette, making the cherry tip glow. “Gotta make sure he doesn’t try to come after you for any of it. Or me. You need to make it so you can threaten to go to the cops. Black eye, split lip. That sort of thing. Tell him you’ll tell the cops he did it.”
“He won’t hit me,” Jenni said.
Steve snorted soft, derive laughter. “He doesn’t have to.”
* * *
Shit. Jenni startled awake. She’d nodded off in the front seat of Steve’s car. She sat up straight with a groan at the stiffness in her joints and neck. Bruises. The rough twist of tissue tugged her nostril as she pulled it out.
“Don’t get blood on my seats.”
“Is that all you care about?” She twisted to look at him, barely able to focus.
Steve took his eyes off the road. The car swerved. Jenni screamed.
“Just shut up and let me drive,” he said. “We’re almost there.”
Chapter 21
Rebecca
Now
So many plans to make, and Rebecca’s mother didn’t seem capable of making any of them. Dad had done most everything for Mom forever, or he’d hired people to do it for her. Now, she was lost.
“We can call a caterer,” Rebecca said now, trying to be patient because God knew, all of this was hard enough without her losing her temper at her mother’s helplessness. “Or order in food from someplace. I mean, I know we’re in Quarrytown, but someplace has to deliver. Doesn’t it?”
Jews, by tradition, were buried within as short a timeframe as possible. Her father had gone into the ground two days ago, but so far, her mother hadn’t been able to organize the shiva. The seven-day period of mourning would happen at their house. People were supposed to bring food, Rebecca thought, but to be honest, she wasn’t sure. Wouldn’t it be better to have some, in case? Growing up, they’d never been very observant, and in the years since leaving home, she’d definitely never become more so.
“Is someone calling people or letting them know?” Rebecca asked now, gently, trying hard not to let her mother hear the frustration in her voice.
“Lorna is doing it.”
Rebecca’s ex-mother-in-law. She hadn’t spoken to the woman in a decade, much to what Rebecca always assumed was their mutual relief. She sighed internally now. She could call Richie, see what was going on. That would mean she had to speak to him, but hell. Maybe he’d heard from Grant, who was still not answering her texts.
“We have to invite everyone he knew,” her mother said now. “They’ll all want to come.”
Rebecca bit the inside of her cheek. “Daddy knew everyone, Mom.”
“They’ll all come to honor his memory.” Her mother sniffled into her hankie.
What would it have been like, Rebecca wondered, to love Richie that much? To love anyone that much, other than herself? She loved her son beyond anything she’d ever dreamed could be possible, and she’d cocked that up in a way that seemed irreparable. She couldn’t even begin to imagine giving her heart to a romantic partner so deeply that losing him would leave her devastated. The question was, did that make her envy her mother, or was she happy she would never have to suffer the way Mom was?
“Is it like a wake, or what?” Rebecca wracked her brain to remember anything she could about sitting shiva, finally pulling out her phone to search for information.
“We have to cover the mirrors. Tear our sleeves. We’ll wear black ribbons.”
Rebecca nodded. “Sure, Mom. Whatever you want.”
“I’m going to have a nap. I’m so tired, Becky-boo.”
Not even the hated nickname was going to make her lose it with her mom. “That sounds like a good idea. You go, I’ll figure this out.”
With her mother resting, Rebecca thought about calling Lorna. Frankly, she didn’t have the emotional wherewithal at the moment to face the woman who’d once referred to Rebecca as “that tart.” Right now, Rebecca didn’t have the strength for mourning her father, not for comforting her mother. Not for any of this.
It would be so easy to call for a car to take her to the airport. She could be somewhere else within a few hours. Anywhere else. Far away from Quarrytown, the place she’d run from and had never intended to come back to again.
At the very least, she needed to get out of the house right now and find a few bottles of wine and maybe a pack of cigarettes. She’d never taken up smoking as a habit and could take it or leave it, most of the time. Right now was more like a “take it” kind of night.
How weird to be behind the wheel of her dad’s car. He’d only allowed her to drive it a handful of times, never without him beside her, coaching and guiding. The engine revved as she eased it down the driveway. The rural highway was a good place to open it up, and she hit eighty before having to slow down. It was a left-lane ride, as her dad had always been fond of saying, and again, Rebecca considered simply driving on. Through town and beyond. Take the car, she thought, and go, just…go.
Of course she wasn’t going to do that. She certainly had been a disappointment to her parents, but she wasn’t a terrible person. Mom needed her, and even though Rebecca didn’t want to be here to participate in some ancient Jewish mourning ritual, she was here, and she was going to do whatever she could to help her mother.
The liquor store was in the same strip mall it had always been. No more familiar anchor stores, they’d all gone out of business, but most everything else looked the same. Inside, Rebecca tried to fool herself into thinking she could get away without a basket, but ended up grabbing a cart. She was going to stock up.
She had two bottles of a red blend in her hands when she turned and nearly dropped them both. The woman standing next to the cart had been trying to move past her, and she startled, too. Rebecca laughed self-consciously and set her bottles in the cart.
“Rebecca?” The woman asked. “Um, hi, it’s me, Alicia. Harrison?”
“Oh. Wow. Allie! Alicia,” Rebecca amended, since maybe the other woman had grown out of the nickname. “Hi. How are you?”
&n
bsp; “I’m fine. I heard about your father. I’m sorry. Morry was a good guy.”
Rebecca’s throat closed. “You knew my dad?”
“Yeah. I mean…everyone knew him.” Allie looked into the cart, but if she was judging the amount of wine in it, she didn’t show it.
“We’ll be having a shiva. Sitting shiva. A thing,” Rebecca said quickly. “It’s a Jewish thing that my mother wants.”
Alicia gave her a small smile. “I know what it is. Sure. My grandmother-in-law passed not too long ago, and they sat shiva for her.”
“You did? Here?” Rebecca paused. She’d heard that Alicia had married and then divorced Ilya Stern, but were the Sterns Jewish? In a town with a very small Jewish population, you’d have thought she would have known.
“Yeah.”
“Can you help me figure out how to plan it?”
Alicia looked surprised. “Sure. I guess. I mean, if you need someone.”
“I don’t know anything about it. Mom said my ex-mother-in-law is helping organize it, but unless she’s changed a lot, whatever that woman tries to plan is going to be a shitshow. Sorry. A clusterfuck. Sorry.”
Alicia laughed. “Don’t be sorry. Sure. I can help you figure out what to do. I don’t know that much about it, but if you need help I’m happy to do what I can.”
“Thank you,” Rebecca said sincerely. “I’m trying to be the good daughter and figure out what would be appropriate. Do you have a few minutes? We can run next door. I’ll buy you a coffee? Just let me pay for this.”
In the small café next door they ordered coffees and took them to a small table by the front window. Alicia laid out what she knew about setting up shiva, and offered the name of the local rabbi. Rebecca didn’t recognize her name, or the name of the synagogue.