Deep Blue Eternity

by Natasha Boyd

  Catching sight of my expression, she and her stuffed chipmunk cheeks burst out laughing, snorting cupcake all over the place. Holy shit, this girl was certifiable. And she was laughing. I loved seeing her laugh.

  “That was mine,” I said, nonplussed.

  She made unintelligible sounds around her mouthful of cake, her eyes watering with mirth. She tried to swallow quickly, but realizing she couldn’t communicate, she picked up another cupcake and held it in front of my mouth.

  She clearly meant for me to eat out of her hand, since she hadn’t held it lower. I hesitated, then leaned forward warily and took a small bite.

  She watched my mouth, the laughter in her eyes dying down.

  The cupcake melted into soft buttery caramel flavor. Really, really good. “Mmmm,” I sounded, wanting to tell her she’d done a great job and trying to ignore all of the weird undercurrents. There were no undercurrents, it was only my fucked up mind playing tricks.

  I opened wide for another bite and she mashed the entirety into the general vicinity of my mouth and laughed her head off. I totally fell for that one.

  “These are really good,” I finally said when I could talk.

  “Thank you. They’re actually pretty mediocre.” Her nose twitched in a small show of distaste. She cleared her throat and swiped the back of her hand over her mouth. “When was the last time you had a cupcake?”

  “It’s been forever.”

  “When you were little?” she asked. “How little?”

  “I mean like, I was a kid, at a birthday party, and probably slept in Spider-Man pajamas, forever ago little.”

  “More. Say more.” Her eyes were wide and hungry.

  “Back when my childhood consisted of cheese whirls and powdered punch. When the most difficult challenge was fending off the teasing about how early my mom called me in for dinner versus the other neighborhood kids. Back before my father’s political career took off and we moved to our mansion, set in lush acreage, with nine-foot high fences and wonderful climbing trees.”

  I stopped. Shit, what was wrong with me? I saw her sifting over my words, teasing out the throwaways and keeping the stuff that mattered.

  “A child’s paradise.”

  “For an only child.” Lonely as hell. “What about you, cupcake memories?”

  She blinked.

  I could actually see her going back, over the hurdle of Abby dying, to a time way before. “Pink, sprinkles,” she whispered and looked past me into a distance only she could see. “Pink butter frosting and multicolored sprinkles. I ate fifteen before my friends arrived and threw up so bad I had to miss the party. I’ve hated pink ever since.”

  “But not cupcakes in general, just pink ones? That’s beneficially selective.”

  “Not just pink frosting, pink the color.”

  “The whole color? Wow, poor pink.”

  She pulled out a chair. “I know. It’s a shame, though. It’s such a jaunty color.”

  “Way too jaunty for you with all your black,” I agreed gravely and poured her a cup of coffee, adding sugar and milk.

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome. So about us getting a cat—”

  “Us? He’ll be mine.”

  “All yours?”

  She nodded. “I can’t send him on missions if he has another owner. He’ll feel conflicted.”

  “So it’s a he? I’m not sure how I feel about that.”

  She laughed. A light cascading sound. It was mesmerizing. Like when we’d played board games and she got the giggles, and I couldn’t tear my eyes off her.

  “Why would you feel weird about it being a he?”

  I shrugged. “He’ll want to sleep on your bed. And keep you company. And then where will that leave me? You won’t need me anymore.” I quirked an eyebrow in a teasing manner to show I was joking. I was, of course. “But you know what? It might be okay. You know why?”

  “Why?” she asked, her expression neutral.

  “Because he probably won’t smell as good as me.”

  The flush of red crossed her smooth chest and swept up her neck and into her cheeks. Her eyes dropped.

  I’d embarrassed her. And not in a good way. I felt like the worst kind of heel. I’d taken her admission offered in the quiet of her post-panicked state last night and turned it into some sport or something. And why?

  Was I actually flirting? The realization hit me.

  What the fuck? I was flirting.

  Sending signals.

  The last thing I should be doing. God, what was wrong with me? Was there a way to be friendly and not do that?

  Shit. This girl needed just one guy not to abuse her trust, just one, and I couldn’t even manage it. “I’m sorry.” The words grated out of my mouth. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you. It was kind of cool actually,” I played off, “that I could comfort you from afar.”

  Please let her not think I was hitting on her.

  Please.

  “Right. No worries. It was still idiotic of me to say that to you and totally inappropriate to sleep in your bed.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “Fine.” She stood up. “Anyway, I best go get showered and changed so I can see about the kitten.” Her eyes glanced toward the bathroom, and I saw her shudder.

  “I cleaned Bert up.”

  “You did? Thank you,” she said with a long exhale.

  “I didn’t bring supplies for a cat like you asked though, sorry. Maybe we can rig something up with a plastic box and sand, and we’ll get real stuff next time. Do you know where JJ lives?”

  She shook her head.

  “Okay, go get ready. I’ll drive you there in the cart. I think they sell some pet food at the general store.”

  She headed to the bedroom, and I had to tear my eyes away from her tight jeans. Turning my back to put our mugs in the sink, I heard her stumble.

  I spun to see her fall back against the wall outside her bedroom, then look to me, her face completely drained of color.

  “What?” I scrambled around the table.

  She gasped in a breath, her hand clutching her chest. And gasped again.

  “God, what?” I reached her and took her arms. “Liv? Liv? Calm down. Talk to me.” Simultaneously I kicked a leg out to her bedroom door, slamming it open to reveal the empty, perfectly neat room. No intruder, no nothing.

  “Liv? Is there another spider? Shit, speak to me.”

  Her breathing seemed to have completely stopped; her face was frozen. I shook her. “Liv!”

  Her eyes finally seemed to focus on mine.

  “Livvy, what is it?”

  “B—” She sucked in a shuddering breath, her entire body quaking under my hands.

  I willed her to keep talking before I had to shake her harder.

  “B—box.”

  “Box? Did you say box?” What the fuck did a box have to do with anything?

  She nodded, her face crumpling as life came back to it in the form of crying. Great.

  I turned my head to look but didn’t understand what she was talking about. Then I saw it, placed squarely in the middle of the perfectly straightened, made up queen-sized bed. A small wooden box. I made to let go and she clung, shaking her head. “Livvy, is it your box?”

  She nodded, then shook her head, then nodded.

  “I don’t understand,” I said gently. “Is it yours?”

  “Y—yes, but Abby gave it to me.”

  “Okay. What’s in it?”

  She shook her head. “I… I don’t know.”

  I frowned, trying to make sense of what the hell was going on. “You don’t know what’s in the box?”

  She shook her head.

  Why the hell not? “Did you put it there?”

  Her body shuddered badly. Like she was in shock. “No,” she whispered.

  Either someone was messing with her, or Liv was doing things and not remembering. Neither scenario was comforting in the slightest. I tried to ignore the chill that was creeping ove
r me. Maybe she did need medication. Stronger medication.

  “Was it there last night?” I continued asking questions in a soothing tone as my mind examined and tossed aside every possible scenario rather than the one I was facing. That she could legitimately need psychological help.

  “I don’t know. I never went in my room.”

  “Wait, I thought you checked all the windows?”

  “I only got as far as the bathroom, and then, the spider, and then I just wanted to… I went straight to your room.”

  I pulled her small frame against my chest and tucked her head under my chin, wrapping her up in my arms. We stood like that for a long minute. Then I gently released her and steered her back to the kitchen. “Sit here, I’m going into your room, okay?” She was still shivering violently, so I grabbed my fleece and draped it around her shoulders. She shrank down into it, pulling it more firmly around her frame.

  Apart from the perfectly made bed, and as far as I knew she normally didn’t make it up apart from pulling it straight in the mornings and the box sitting on the comforter, there seemed to be nothing else out of the ordinary. Her window was closed but unlocked, which didn’t say anything.

  I looked around, but everything seemed normal, so on impulse I crossed to the picture of her and Abby on the swing outside that had been taken when they were young girls. Their smiles were incredible. Abby sat on the wooden plank while Liv stood on it behind her, one dirty foot peeking out from Abby’s light blue dress, her little hands curled tightly around the rope. Two white blonde angels giggling with joy.

  When did it all go so fucking wrong?

  I sensed Liv at the door. She was calmer. “How old were you both in this picture?” I asked, drawing her attention away from the bed.

  “I was six, I think.” Her brow furrowed. “So that makes Abby twelve.”

  “Who took it?”

  “My grandmother. It was only ever the three of us out here, my parents never came.”

  “Never?” I frowned.

  “They didn’t speak to her except to organize our trips out here for the summer. Or she didn’t speak to them, I’m not sure.”

  That was strange, to send your kids off to spend time with a person you never spoke to. But I guessed her parents simply wanted them to have a relationship with their grandmother, even if they didn’t.

  “Your mother’s mother or your father’s?”

  “Mother’s”

  “Do you know why they never spoke?”

  “I’m not completely sure,” she whispered.

  I turned to face her. She was staring at the bed. The box.

  “Why don’t you know what’s in it?”

  “Because I never opened it, okay?” she snapped. “It’s locked. I don’t have a key and Abby told me not to.”

  “She told you not to?”

  “In the letter she left me.”

  “But she’s dead.”

  Olivia flinched, but I couldn’t help my raised voice. “You don’t think after she died, perhaps you should have just broken it open? Surely at that stage it was pretty imperative. She can’t have meant forever. Why the hell did she give it to you then?” What if it held information that could have helped? Could have helped Olivia? Or me? God. The idea was almost too much to process.

  Olivia was staring at me like I’d grown two heads. “What do you care?”

  Shit. I swallowed. “I care because… I care about you. And if it has something in it that could have helped…you…”

  I trailed off.

  “What?” She folded her arms across her chest, her eyes questioning.

  “Helped…” My throat was blocked. Lying about who I was had only condemned me to faking our reality from then on. It hadn’t been an act of survival or of selflessness to protect Liv in her fragile state, it had been an act of utter self-abdication. I’d made myself a slave to my lie, and I would never be able to get free without breaking Olivia in the process, once and for all.

  “Helped how?”

  The quote from Ayn Rand I’d looked up after Liv brought it up the other day rolled around in my head as I stood mutely in front of her. About how there were no such things as white lies. All lies were black and destructive. A white lie was truly the blackest of all.

  I TURNED AWAY, my mind reeling, and stared at the picture again.

  Liv crossed to stand next to me. “I don’t remember Abby ever smiling like that in the years before she died. When I first got here, I couldn’t even look at it. It seemed wrong to see all that joy.”

  “I don’t see you smiling like that either,” I said.

  She was letting me off the hook.

  But I didn’t want to be let off. I gritted my teeth and took a deep breath. “Your Uncle Mike molested her.”

  The statement was a gunshot at close range.

  Liv’s eyes closed and she pulled her lips between her teeth. Minutes passed.

  “How do you know that?” she asked, her voice barely audible. I’d expected some kind of accusing tone, but there was none. How was Liv not drawing the conclusion that I could have helped her?

  “Abby told me.”

  She didn’t open her eyes, but her knuckles got whiter as she gripped the chair.

  I questioned the sanity of what I was doing right now when her mental state seemed so fragile, but I couldn’t take it back. I had to move forward. I had to know. “Did he molest you too?”

  I don’t know what I expected her reaction to be, but the way she went utterly still was even more terrifying. It was almost like she’d left her body. That she was no longer next to me. I didn’t even want to imagine the mental gymnastics of what was going on right now. Was she shutting down or about to talk? I didn’t know. Dread was a revolting feeling. I wished I could vomit it up.

  Finally her head moved.

  A small, slight nod.

  And the world stopped.

  Even though I knew it was coming, I could have sliced open my own body, neck to navel, and pulled my insides out piece by piece, and it would have hurt less than seeing that nod.

  She took a deep breath and turned away from the picture.

  “Did you do it?” she asked, her tone biting. Okay, here it came.

  “Do what?”

  “Put the box there to make me talk?”

  “No.” I was shocked. “God, no.”

  Olivia stood silently with so many emotional walls up I could almost see them shimmering in front of her. Her eyes were hard, back the way they’d been when she first arrived. But they weren’t accusing like I’d expected.

  “Please,” I started. “Talk to me. Don’t shut me out.”

  She laughed hollowly, looking away. “Shut you out? How can I when you know every sordid thing about me? You know I’ve been molested. Touched and caressed by a man old enough to be my father. I touched him too. I bet you didn’t know that?” She cut her eyes to me. “Does that revolt you? It should. Most girls who’ve been molested hate sex, don’t they? That’s what I’ve read. Not me though, right? What does that make me?”

  I couldn’t answer. She didn’t avoid sex, that much was clear. That didn’t mean she didn’t also hate it. How could she not?

  She moved away and then faced me. “He was gentle in the beginning.”

  My stomach rolled.

  “He felt guilty. He told me all the time he didn’t mean to. But he couldn’t stop because… you remind me so much of her, he would say. You hold all the power. Take pity on me and touch me, he would say, see how weak you make me.”

  It was like watching a hologram talk. She was there, I could see and hear everything, but I felt like the Liv I knew was gone. And my body was gone too. I was achingly hollow inside, her words dropping like copper pennies down an empty well.

  “Did you tell anyone? Your parents? Your therapist?” I flinched at my lame questions.

  Liv seemed to come back to me for a moment and her eyes narrowed. “Did I tell anyone?” she asked sarcastically. “I tried. But it seems he
’d gotten there first.” She laughed. A heinous, jarring sound. “Uncle Mike was a respected man, an ex-cop. Apparently he’d had a confidential talk with my parents when I was twelve, before he ever even laid a hand on me. He told them he was worried about me making inappropriate and precocious advances to him. When I was twelve fucking years old. A reaction to the grief, they thought. I don’t know why they chose to believe him over me, and I didn’t know he’d even said that about me until my therapist told me years later. He waited patiently for two years before he started.”

  And I could have stopped it all. Every word she said ripped me further open. I wanted to kneel down and ask her to end it. End me. Take her pain and revenge out on me.

  She glanced at me. “You’re thinking that since you knew about Abby, you could have done something to protect me.”

  God, she was so close to the truth, how could she not see? “Well, you couldn’t,” she went on. “They would never have believed you. No, the only way it might not have happened is if Abby were still alive. Maybe she could have stopped it. Maybe they would have believed her. If she hadn’t run away with that fucking—what was your word?—oxygen-thief, and ended up dying because he was a drunken idiot who shouldn’t have been behind the wheel.”

  I pulled out the dressing table chair before my knees buckled.

  Liv was so deep in her memory with her story, she didn’t even notice. “Uncle Mike robbed her of the ability to make good choices, I guess, just like he did me. Isn’t that what you said the other night? I’m making the wrong choices? Well, Abby chose to run away and die with some idiot guy she knew from high school and leave me at the mercy of that disgusting man. And I hate her for it. I hate Abby.” She looked around, her eyes wildly searching the room.

  A chill went down my spine.

  “I hate you, Abby!” she screamed loudly. “Is that what you wanted to know? Why you won’t leave me alone? Well, now you do. I hate you.”

  My hair stood on end.

  Then, she looked at me dead on. “I hope they are both rotting in their graves.”

  AFTER MY EMOTIONAL morning, Tom made me take a hot shower. To his credit he didn’t push me anymore after my confession and outburst. He didn’t try and comfort me or pity me, he simply got up from where he was sitting, picked up the box from the bed, and put it on the dresser. “Go take a long hot shower. We have to see about getting a cat before JJ leaves for work,” he said, and walked out.