Maybe his quick remorse—and the fact that he stopped at all—is a good sign.
“Let’s just enjoy game night,” Mom says, sliding him a card. He glances at her, and he must find whatever he’s looking for, because he smiles and nods and takes the card she offers. Sometimes I think they only see some past version of each other. Like she loves who he used to be. I wonder if it feels like loving a ghost. I wonder if it feels like mourning.
We start the next round of the game, and my parents miss the way Juniper never fully settles back into her chair. She’s ready to bolt upstairs if things escalate again. They miss the way Campbell grips the cards in her hands so tight they are bending, the fierce flat line of her mouth, the way her eyes stay on the cards no matter what.
My father reaches for a card. There are circles of lighter skin on his forearm. They’ve been there forever, but it took me years to put it all together.
He says his father was even more strict than him, but it’s code. He means his father was meaner. The circles are cigarette burns.
There are other scars, too. And Mom has hinted enough for me to know that my grandfather didn’t just scream and threaten like Dad does. He hurt them. He hurt them so much that my father is still angry, turning more so every day. And the only outlet he knows is to pass it on again.
My grandfather fought in a war and came back broken. My father grew up in a house that held anger like a stone in its palm. Like it was something worth keeping. And that became the shape of our family tree. When the legacy is anger, the inheritance is fear.
Chapter Thirty-Two
I DREAM OF LIGHTNING SPLITTING THE tree in our front yard wide open, and I wake up to the crack of my door hitting the wall.
Light from the hall spills in, framing the silhouette of a man.
“Get up. Get the fuck up. We have to go through this every fucking time. So I’m going to show you how to do it right.”
Then he’s gone, back into the hall, and I leap out of bed. He’s walking to the girls’ room.
“Leave them alone,” I say. “It’s the middle of the night.”
“Well, you all should have thought of that sooner, and done the fucking chores right the first fucking time.”
Another swinging door, spilling light on to wide-eyed faces. The girls are curled up in the same bed, as instantly alert as I was a moment ago.
Mom is standing on the stairs near me, but her eyes find mine. She mouths the words, I’m sorry.
I know. I know. I know. My heart races in time with the words I want to tell her. I know, but it’s so late and we should be asleep.
I know, but in the morning you’ll have forgotten that thing made of fear in your chest. That ache I feel every day and every night.
I move toward the girls.
“Listen, just let the girls go back to sleep. Show me what we did wrong.”
“So you can all fuck it up again next time? No. Everyone up. Downstairs.”
I shove past him and pick up Junie, then let Campbell follow me past him and down to our living room. Every lamp is on, in this room and the next, and in the laundry room, too. Even the porch light is on. My eyes shift along the wall to the clock. 2:37 a.m.
I have an exam in Honors Calculus in less than eight hours.
We plop onto the couch and await orders.
He comes downstairs with all of our carefully folded towels from earlier that night and throws them onto the floor in front of us.
“Show me how to fold a towel,” he says.
I reach for the closest one.
“No,” he says. “Juniper. Let’s see if the youngest of you can grasp what the older two cannot.”
Juniper is ready to cry, and I feel something sharp deep inside of me when she reaches for the towel. She stands up, and the towel is longer than her body, but she still tries, folding it in half so it’s a length she can manage, then in half again.
“No,” he says, tearing the towel out of her hand and passing it to Campbell. “Your turn.”
Campbell folds the towel lengthwise to start, then begins to fold it down.
“No.” He pulls the towel from her hands and holds it out for me.
“If we knew how you wanted it folded, we wouldn’t be awake right now. Why don’t you just show us so we can go back to bed?”
I shouldn’t have said it. I knew it before my mouth opened. But he doesn’t scream. He doesn’t even make me take the towel and fail at folding it correctly. He just looks at me with eyes that are wide and empty and, in that moment, remind me distinctly of a dead fish. His lips twist into a snarl and he still doesn’t yell, he just says it with so much hatred.
“Stupid cunt.”
He reaches for a vase on the coffee table, grabbing it and hurling it across the room. It hits the window, and ceramic and glass shatter together.
“Now everyone has a good reason to be awake. Since the towels weren’t a good enough reason for Leighton.”
Tears of anger fill my eyes, and I will them away with everything I’ve got. He doesn’t get to see it hurt.
He shakes out the towel.
Not a single tear falls down my cheek, but at a cost. My nails are dug into my palms and I’m biting my tongue so hard I taste blood.
“You fold it in thirds lengthwise,” he says, demonstrating with the towel, “and then in quarters. Then the towels will actually fit on the goddamn towel holder in the bathroom and not look like shit.”
He looks at us on the couch. “Do you understand now?”
We nod, silent.
“Good. Girls, go to bed. Leighton, fold the towels. And then clean up that fucking mess.”
“I’ll help her and then come up,” Mom says, moving forward.
“Don’t even think about it. If she folds them all, maybe she won’t forget how to do it in the future.”
They all file upstairs, but it’s not until his door is shut that I let out a long, shuddering breath of air. I refuse to cry. I fold twelve towels, by threes and then fours, double-checking every crease and carefully lining up corners, all the time refusing to cry. I carry them up to the bathroom in three trips, and align them against the edge of the shelves. Straight lines, perfect folds, no mistakes.
It takes much longer to clean up the broken pieces of glass. There’s still a barrier to outside—a storm window—so I don’t have to tape plastic over it tonight. I take my time with a broom and pan, brushing up the small shards. I pick up the larger pieces by hand, and break the jagged edges out of the window frame so that the girls don’t forget and put their hands there and cut themselves.
I walk around the house, turning off every light. On my path upstairs, I hang the pictures on the walls. This house and its slippery nails.
When I go to turn off the bathroom light, I stare in the mirror. The far wall has shelves for the towels, and it is empty. I turn quickly and see all of the towels on the floor in disarray. I don’t know how or why, but tonight I don’t spend time on the strange things this house does. I’m too tired.
I fold the towels again.
By the time I get back to bed, it is almost five. For the next thirty minutes, I lie awake in the dark imagining how badly this night could have gone.
I throw off my blanket and reach for my light. If I’m not going to sleep, I should study for my calc exam. I sink into my desk chair and turn on my calculator. This is what I need to do: focus on school. Get into college. Move far, far away and . . . then what? Leave Campbell and Juniper to fend for themselves? I try to focus on the workbook in front of me.
In the figure below, AB and CD are perpendicular to BC, and the size of angle ACB is 31 degrees. Find the length of segment BD.
My eyes blur, and the problem rewrites itself on the page.
In the figure below, Leighton Barnes is perpendicular to freedom, and the size of angle ACB is irrelevant because she can never, ever leave. Find the greatest distance she can go before feeling she’s abandoned her sisters.
I stare at the clock. Mi
nutes sink into hours. I watch the sky lighten, layers of gray and then yellow. At dawn, I still don’t have a better answer. Time’s almost up.
Auburn, Pennsylvania
November 4
CROW POPULATION:
42,387
Chapter Thirty-Three
WHAT IS THE WEIGHT OF A WORD? Maybe it’s measured in ink and paper. Maybe it’s measured by the harm it causes. Especially the ones said out loud, in anger.
Some of them sink like stones inside of you. They tug you down from the inside, like an invisible tether. Ice queen always felt like that.
Brat rolls of my back. A drop of water. I ignore it like rainfall.
Bitch is a sliver of wood in my side—sharp. Thick enough to hurt. But I can hold my breath and pull it out. I can keep moving.
Cunt is different. Like a festering disease that settles in my gut. It lives there for months, and I can feel it there, always. Heavy enough to remind me of when he said it the first time, last year, and I felt that same thing that I feel now. Because it wasn’t hatred in his voice, but victory. I’ve got it, it said. A tone of near pride. He knew he’d found a word that I couldn’t ignore, wouldn’t forget. A word cruel enough to affect my sixteen-year-old self, who had never been called a name like that before, but had heard it directed at her mother enough times to know how it should hurt.
A word that reduces me to an assembly of parts, less than human.
A word that makes me nothing but the object of his hatred, which means I’m nothing at all.
Chapter Thirty-Four
IN THE MORNING WHEN I HURRY down the stairs, I want to ignore it. I want to let my eyes do that thing where they slip right past the window without seeing the wrongness. Without realizing the glass is back in the window frame, intact. And I do for a moment. I succeed in seeing only what I want to see, until I round the banister and see the coffee table, with the vase back in the center.
I grab it and run outside to the garbage bins. It’s raining, but I don’t care; I take my time and bury it deep, in the same bag where I swept its shards last night.
A crow caws in the tree in our front yard, and I look up.
I take a step back when I realize that the tree is full, like on the first day of school. Only now that all the leaves have fallen, there is nothing but black birds.
Joe caws from the lowest branch of the tree, and I walk over to him. I tug a slip of paper that is clenched to the branch under his claw and find Juniper’s sprawling handwriting.
Dear Joe, please help us.
I back away from the branch, soaking wet and my eyes filling with tears. Joe flutters down to the ground beside me, then back to the tree. I ignore him, staring at Junie’s latest note.
Joe flies back down again, nudges at something in the grass.
He lifts something shiny in his beak, and hops toward me, until he’s just inches away from my freezing bare feet.
He drops the object.
I reach into the grass and pick up a wedding band. Our dad’s wedding band. When he’s working, he tucks it into the front pocket of his wallet.
I remember his lost wallet, and how Juniper was all wet from going out in the rain, and I realize that she didn’t go out to search the truck at all. She went out to check for gifts.
And she returned with the wallet.
I stare at the ring in my palm.
I’ve been emailing back and forth with the ornithologist I interviewed, and I’ve learned a lot. Crows are actually exceptionally bright creatures. They can understand reciprocity, like leaving Juniper gifts in exchange for food. Like returning her leather cuff bracelet when she lost it.
They can also understand retribution. They hold grudges.
I wonder what the crows understand about this house. I wonder what Joe understands.
Maybe the crows found the wallet where it was dropped, and somehow knew to return it to Juniper.
Or maybe the crows stole it in the first place.
Chapter Thirty-Five
I MAKE SURE THE GIRLS ARE safely on their way to school, and then I hurry across the street in the pouring rain to Liam’s idling car. I hurl myself into the passenger seat and curl my arms around my backpack. It’s a rock on the shore, and I’m clinging to it for dear life.
“Good morning, beautiful.”
Beautiful.
I didn’t cry at my father’s ugly words last night, but for some reason, “beautiful” tips me right over the edge, and I can’t stop the tears that spill down my cheeks.
“Leighton, hey, what’s wrong?”
“Please drive.” I try to rein it in, but I can’t stop crying now any more than I can will the rain outside to stop. It won’t rest until it’s run its course.
My throat burns with everything I’m holding in. It takes immense effort to keep my crying silent and soft, instead of the sobbing, snotty mess it’s likely to become if I try to speak.
I’m distracted by this internal struggle, attempting to keep some semblance of control, and I don’t realize he’s driven past the school until we are pulling into a small gravel lot. It is where we parked on the first night we went out together. Hidden behind a wall of trees, the car probably isn’t visible from the main road anymore. It feels detached from Auburn, detached from reality. It feels like another planet.
“Liam, we have to go—” I sputter, but he’s shaking his head.
“Leighton, you’re scaring me. Please tell me what’s wrong.”
More tears, more burning.
His finger hooks under my chin and his hand—all gentleness—tilts my face up to his, tears and runny nose and all.
“Please, Leighton.”
“I folded the towels wrong.” It’s the stupidest thing I could possibly say, but I have no idea how else to start.
But Liam doesn’t look at me like I’m stupid, and that’s all it takes for me to come undone.
It hits like a wave. First, more tears. Loads more tears. A world-crushing flood of tears. Liam’s arms are around me, anchoring me, but I’m still breaking into pieces. I can’t keep it in any longer.
I cry all the time, in small doses, but I rarely lose control, and never in front of someone.
This is different. This feels like those summer storms where the black clouds roll in fast, and the storm is relentless and violent, but you know that it will end as fast as it began. Summer will resume as if the storm never happened, and everything is just left wet.
Kind of like Liam’s shirt at this point.
It feels better to cry with Liam holding me. Less lonely. And when the tears finally end, I find the words. Not as many words as there were tears, but enough for Liam to fill in the empty spaces, and understand.
“How long has it been like this?” he asks.
“Forever, I think. It wasn’t always this bad. The last two years have been the worst.”
“Why don’t you guys get out of there?”
I sit back, uncomfortable with the question when I don’t have an adequate answer.
“We have, a few times. When my grandparents were nearby, we stayed with them all the time. We just always went back.
“There’s always some excuse for it. Money. The house. Forgiveness. He’s changed. Really this time. But I don’t know. It’s like she can’t even see he’s a monster because she loves him. He isn’t bad all the time, and he tries so hard.”
It’s hard to take my deepest, darkest fears of him seriously in the light of day. He does love us, I think, but it blurs the line, makes me doubt my own fear.
Liam is silent for a few minutes, staring through the windshield. Our parking spot is being transformed into a pond as we sit here.
“I think we should move. We’re going to get stuck.”
“In a minute,” he says. He’s thinking so hard. I’m sure he’s imagining that he can come up with some way to make this better. He can’t. But it makes my heart pound in a hard, grateful way to know that he wants to.
“Does he hit you?” he asks, n
ot looking at me. A few more thank you thuds for that.
“No,” I say quietly, and now he does look up, like he doesn’t believe me. “He hasn’t.”
“Hurt you? Or Campbell or Junie?” he asks, the pitch of his voice falling, like it is being pulled down by the gravity of the conversation.
“No. Um. He’s thrown things at me. He mostly yells. Breaks the house. Threatens a lot. He calls me—” I stop myself. I’ve revealed enough already.
“Leighton, you’ve gotta get away from that. You don’t deserve that.”
“I’m working on it.”
I am.
His hand drops down on mine, closing over the back of it and holding it tight, like I might run away. The dull thuds are not so dull now. They start to really hurt when I hear the conviction in his voice. He makes it sound so simple. So obvious.
But even when we left all the time, the return was inevitable. She’d tell us to get our things, we’re going home.
Home.
As long as it is home to her, that’s where we will be.
“I’m feeling better. Thank you. We should get to school.”
“Let’s go after first period,” Liam says.
He doesn’t have to suggest it more than once.
“Okay.” I lean over until my head rests on his shoulder, and we watch the world around us as it becomes something else in the rain. Something soft and vulnerable, exposed like a wound only halfway healed. Just the thinnest layer of skin protecting it.
“Look at that,” Liam says, pointing across the lot as the rain lets up. In one of the trees in front of us, crows line a branch. As we watch, one of the crows swings down, talons still wrapped around the branch now overhead. He hangs for a moment, upside down, then lets go. He glides, flaps, lands up above again. This time another bird tilts forward and hangs for a moment, bouncing on the branch before letting go.
If These Wings Could Fly Page 13