All Fall Down

by Megan Hart

  Unless Josiah could see right through her, see that she was not the same as other people, no matter how she tried.

  Josiah pulled back and rapped the counter with his knuckles. “Anyway. I just stopped in to see how you were doing. I’ve had some people asking about you.”

  The question popped out before she could stop it. “Who?”

  He took his cup and plate again. Two steps back from the counter. Still smiling. He rattled off a few familiar names, mostly women Sunny hadn’t seen in years. Then, “Patch, too.”

  That was when the bell jingled and Tyler came into the shop. He made a beeline for Sunny without even giving Josiah a second glance. “Hey. Are you ready to go?”

  “I have to wait for—” But there was Wendy, breezing through from the back with an apology for being late. When Sunny looked at Tyler again, Josiah had taken his drink and food to a corner table and was reading a newspaper.

  He didn’t look up when they walked past him.

  “This isn’t the way home.” The tug of the seat belt against Sunny’s throat was like a hand, fingers squeezing. She didn’t want to sound scared or twist in her seat. Face of stone. She was suddenly unreasonably terrified.

  Tyler beat out a pattern on the steering wheel with his fingers. Sunny didn’t know the song playing on the radio, but it had very suggestive lyrics. She couldn’t ask him to turn it off. She wondered if he even noticed or cared. Probably neither.

  He glanced at her. “I know. It’s a long cut.”

  She knew about shortcuts, not long. The three previous times they’d gone out together in a group, he’d brought her right home. “Tyler…thank you for dinner and the movie, but I really have to get home.”

  “What’s the rush?” He used his turn signal, eased into the next lane, took a road she didn’t know.

  She didn’t recognize the streets he was taking, but she could tell they were getting farther from the center of town and into a more rural area. Lots of trees on either side of the car, but no signs of anything she recognized as being close to Chris and Liesel’s house.

  “It’s just…my dad’s wife. She’s been home alone with the kids all day, and she probably needs a break.” Sunny thought of the twisted-down turn of Liesel’s mouth lately, how infrequently she smiled and how quick she was to snap.

  Tyler looked over at her with a frown. “You okay?”

  Sunny shook her head. Her hair fell forward over her shoulders. She wished she’d put it in the braid she was used to. Unbound, it was heavy and hot and got in the way.

  “Hey. I’m sorry.” Tyler pulled slowly to the side, into one of the unmarked side roads off the main one. He didn’t go very far, but the trees rose up around them and covered the car with shadows. He turned off the ignition and twisted in his seat to look at her. His arm stretched out as he put his hand on the back of her seat, fingers close enough to brush her shoulder if he twitched them.

  “Tyler…”

  “Sunny, I really like you.”

  She shook her head again. Heart thumped. She didn’t look at him, afraid of what she might show him in her eyes. He’d see she wasn’t like the other girls who came into the shop and laughed and joked. He’d see she was afraid, and that was stupid, because Tyler was a nice, normal guy.

  “Don’t…you like me? Even a little?”

  Was that the twitch of his fingertips on her shoulder? Touching her hair? Sunny sat up straighter, and her seat belt tried to strangle her. She pulled it, but the stiff fabric had already cut a line into her throat.

  “I like you, Tyler.”

  “You won’t even look at me.”

  Stone. Look like stone. Don’t show him you’re afraid, that you’re freaked out, that you might want to cry.

  Tyler’s smile was hesitant. “Are your parents really all that strict?”

  “No. It’s not that.”

  “So call home. Tell them I’m taking you out for ice cream. I can still have you home in a couple hours.”

  He leaned in to kiss her before she could do more than put a hand between them. Her fingers curled in the soft fabric of his T-shirt. Beneath them, his chest was hard.

  She wanted to sink into it the way the girl in the movie had melted into her boyfriend’s embrace. All open mouths, tongues, hands roaming. Soft sighs, low moans. The scene in the movie had fascinated her at how little like real life the lovemaking had seemed.

  “What’s wrong?” Tyler asked.

  He kissed her again, and she did her best to kiss him back, but his mouth was too hot and wet, his tongue went too deeply into her mouth. She wanted to kiss him because she liked Tyler a lot. She knew what happened when you didn’t kiss back.

  Still, when his hands slid up her body to just below her breasts, every muscle went stiff. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine the movie scene, but could not. All she could see, in fact, was Josiah’s face.

  “I can’t.” Sunny pushed at him. “I really need to get home. Liesel’s been with the kids all day, and Peace gets cranky at bedtime if I’m not there to tuck her in. And I promised Happy I wouldn’t be out too late.”

  His brow furrowed. “Huh? Peace and Happy?”

  “The kids,” Sunny said patiently. “Happy’s four. Peace is almost three. And Bliss will be a year old in a few months.”

  “I don’t get it…why does it have to be you?”

  “Because,” Sunny said, “they’re my children.”

  Tyler recoiled, just a little. Then laughed. “Huh? Wait. You’re kidding me, right?”

  “No.” The stone of her expression wanted to crack, but she didn’t let it. “Please take me home now.”

  “But wait. Wait a minute. You have three kids?”

  “Yes!” she said, exasperated. “That’s why I have to get home.”

  “But…you’re my age!”

  There were many things about her past that Sunny was ashamed of. Many that she’d accepted she would always be sorry for. But her children were neither shameful nor something to regret.

  “I know.”

  “But I thought… I figured…” Tyler waved a hand at her clothes. “You said your parents were so strict and stuff. I mean, I figured you were some goody-goody or something.”

  Sunny looked out her window. No idea where she was. No idea how to get where she needed to go. Powerless.

  She hated feeling powerless.

  “I thought you knew. I thought everyone knew.”

  “Hey.” His soft touch tried to turn her toward him, but Sunny wouldn’t turn. Tyler let her go. “Sure, I heard things, but…I’m sorry, Sunny. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

  “You don’t know anything about me, Tyler.”

  “Can’t I learn?”

  She looked at him. “Maybe. But right now I have to get home. Okay? Can you just take me?”

  He nodded, turned the key, eased out onto the main road again. Sunny leaned forward to change the radio station from what he’d been playing to the soft-rock channel she preferred. Tyler chuckled.

  “My mom listens to this station.”

  “That other music is lewd.”

  Tyler was quiet for half a minute. Now Sunny knew where they were. They’d come out from a side road onto the main rural highway heading south. In just a few minutes, the entrance to Chris and Liesel’s development would be on the left. She relaxed muscles she hadn’t realized she was holding quite so tensely.

  “Sunny…I really would like to get to know you.”

  She let him drive her back to Chris’s house without any more conversation. When Tyler pulled into her driveway, she was already unbuckled and grabbing her purse. If the door had been unlocked she’d have been out of the car before he could say another word, but instead her fingers sli
pped on the door handle when she pushed.

  “Hold on a sec, it locks automatically. Let me get it.” Tyler pushed a button. The door unlocked. He put his hand on her arm. “Sunny. I mean it. I’m sorry if I made you feel bad. I was just…you know. Three kids is a lot.”

  Liesel hadn’t come running out the front door or anything, but Sunny knew she couldn’t sit there much longer. She had to get inside. She looked at Tyler’s hand on her arm. What would it be like to put her hand over his? To hold his hand the way those girls did in the coffee shop, so casual. Not caring what people might say or think. Just holding on to him because it would feel good to touch him and to be touched?

  “I have to go inside,” Sunny said. “Thanks for the ride.”

  He didn’t try to stop her, and she was glad for that. She did stop to look back at him when she got to the front door, but the glare on the windshield kept her from seeing inside. She waved and couldn’t tell if Tyler waved back.

  Chapter 36

  Christopher had ordered steak and shrimp and a baked potato, and he’d kept his mouth so full, one bite after another, so he didn’t have to say anything. Liesel, too aware of how soft her belly and butt had become now that she wasn’t running as often as she used to, had settled for a chicken Caesar salad and an unsweetened tea instead of the loaded burger and margarita she really wanted. She’d been picking at it, not satisfied.

  Christopher was drinking too much. A beer when they sat down, another just before the meal came, a third with the food. Still, Liesel would’ve taken a sarcastic joke or caustic commentary over the silence that had fallen between them at the table in such utter contrast to the rest of the couples eating out here on the deck.

  Hell, in contrast to the way she and her husband had been just a few months ago.

  She’d tried, asking him about work, but he’d said he didn’t want to talk about it. She’d spoken briefly of the children and had discovered she didn’t want to talk about them, either. And what else was there?

  “What happened to us?” she said aloud.

  He looked up from the steak, a chunk speared on his fork, his jaw grinding another into a pulp he took his time swallowing. “What do you mean?”

  Liesel waved a hand at the food, then him. Herself. “This. Us. Everything. It’s all just… We don’t talk, Christopher.”

  He sighed and put down his fork and knife to lean back in his chair. He drank the last of his beer and set the bottle down. “Christ, Liesel. We’re talking now.”

  It was so far from what she meant all she could do was stab at her salad and try not to stab at him.

  “What do you want to talk about?”

  She looked at him, but his mouth had twisted and eyes narrowed. He was saying it to placate her, not because he really understood. She wasn’t sure she did.

  “Us. Life. Anything.” She paused to drag a finger along her jawline. It had been almost two weeks since her visit to the salon. “I mean, you haven’t even noticed my hair.”

  “I noticed.” Christopher’s eyes lingered on her face, then her hair. He looked away. “I thought you said you’d never go blond.”

  His former lack of comment on it had stung, but now she wished she hadn’t poked him into saying anything about it at all. “It covers up the gray.”

  “Whatever makes you happy,” was all he said.

  It was a long and tensely quiet ride home, and though they came back to a dark and silent house, this time there was no furtive making out in the kitchen. No sneaking up the stairs, hand in hand. This time, there was no making love.

  Chapter 37

  Tyler sat in his favorite spot in the front window, typing away at his computer. He’d waved at Sunny when he came in, but she’d been in the back when he ordered his food and coffee. He hadn’t yet come up to get a refill, and she busied herself behind the counter to keep herself from going to him.

  He hadn’t called her since the day he drove her home and kissed her. At first, Sunny’d been relieved, but as a week passed and then another, she came to realize he probably didn’t mean to call her again. Now she stood and stared across the room at him. She listened with her heart, and it whispered to her in the angel’s voice that she should go talk to him.

  But…she didn’t.

  She had nothing to say to Tyler, who claimed he wanted to know her and yet hadn’t called her in over two weeks. So when he gathered his things and brought his mug up to the counter, she let Amy wait on him while Sunny took care of food prep in the back. When she came out again, he was gone.

  “He asked about you.” Josiah said this when Sunny went to his table to clear it.

  Sunny didn’t pretend not to know who he meant. She gave a glance toward the back of the shop, but Amy was busy chatting with someone else. She looked at Josiah. “What are you doing here?”

  “Do you want to know what he said?”

  “No,” Sunny said after a pause. “It doesn’t matter, does it?”

  “Maybe to him. But if not to you—”

  Sunny shook her head and closed her eyes for a moment, thinking of how much she’d wanted to be like the girl in the movie and knowing she would never be. “I like him, Josiah, but…”

  “I understand.”

  She looked at him. Josiah’s smile, so familiar, was like a candle set in a dark window.

  “He’s blemished,” Josiah said.

  Sunny shook her head. “I don’t think that way anymore.”

  Josiah didn’t argue with her. He pushed the chair opposite him with his foot so it scraped along the floor, and gestured for her to sit. Another glance told her Amy had gone into the back. Sunny sat perched on the edge of the chair so she could get up at once if she wanted to. If she had to.

  “You should come to visit us, Sunshine.”

  “Where are you all?” This question had bothered her since the first day he’d shown up in the coffee shop. “Sanctuary is closed off.”

  “We don’t need Sanctuary to live a good life with the family. We have several houses close to each other. It draws less attention that way.”

  “Does it matter if you draw attention?” she asked, confused. “Papa said we should never hesitate to let the blemished know how they can join us.”

  “That was when he was living behind walls.” Josiah sounded faintly derisive. “Him and my brother, living a reclusive life. How could they possibly hope to encourage anyone to join when they made it so obvious that the family is so different?”

  “But…aren’t we?”

  “Of course. We’re enlightened. But we’re still people, Sunshine. And it’s our goal to shine a light for all those who are blemished, sure, but how do you think we should do that? By doing everything we can to stand off from the rest of the world? Or by trying to embrace it? You should know that. You’ve been living outside the family now for a long time.”

  Did she imagine he sounded accusing? Sunny blinked and swallowed, her throat a little dry. “My mother wanted to protect me and my children. She sent us away. And I’m…glad she did.”

  “Are you, Sunshine?” Josiah smiled. “Are you…really?”

  It was as though time had slowed, the rest of the world gone away while the two of them sat and stared at each other across the table. When he reached for her hand, she let him take it. And when he invited her again to come home with him, Sunny said yes.

  Chapter 38

  “C’mon, Christopher. Answer the damn phone.” Liesel held the phone away from her ear at the sound of his voice mail greeting and disconnected without leaving a message.

  Apparently he answered the phone when it was Sunshine calling, since Sunny had said she’d told her father he didn’t need to pick her up. But now that it was his wife calling…

  Bah.


  That way led to crazy town, and she had to stop herself. She’d encouraged Christopher to have a relationship with his daughter, and it should have nothing to do with her. No reason to feel slighted if he spent more time talking with Sunny than he did her, when all Liesel wanted to know was what time he would be home because she needed some things from the grocery store, and Sunny was going out again after work. Liesel could’ve told the girl to come home. Should’ve, maybe. But Sunny had sounded so freaking happy, so much like a normal girl excited about spending time with a boy she liked, who was Liesel to take that away from her?

  With Bliss down for a nap, Liesel moved through the kitchen, cleaning up after the whirlwind of destruction that had been Peace in search of snacks she’d been told she wasn’t allowed to have. Liesel had dealt with the temper tantrum, understanding how easy it would’ve been to spank the little girl, but instead sending her upstairs to her room for a time-out. Happy had gone on his own to color and play with his cars.

  Quiet from upstairs meant she should check and see what they were doing. Too much quiet was a warning louder than screams. Yet Liesel couldn’t bring herself to leave the silent kitchen and discover just what the children had been getting into. All she wanted to do was let herself soak in the quiet.

  She listened again, heard the faint mutter of the children upstairs, and again, knew it would probably be smart for her to check on them. And again, she couldn’t face it. Not yet. Not one more minute of dealing with Peace’s constant questions, Happy’s anxieties, Bliss’s baby needs.

  Some frothy women’s mag had come in the mail, full of articles about makeup and diets and sex tips and celebrity gossip. It was the sort of magazine Liesel had read only once in a while, not concerned with much of what was reported inside its pages, but today she took it along with a bowl of M&M’s and a glass of that gorgeous tequila Becka had given her, and she went into the powder room. She locked the door.

  And she pretended, just for ten, fifteen, maybe twenty minutes, tops, that she’d never wanted children.