Within These Walls

by Ania Ahlborn

  But instead, she had been cruel. Giving up isn’t going to get Mom back. As though he didn’t know that. As if she had to remind him of what seemed like a guaranteed loss. Vee wasn’t convinced that a runaway bestseller would win back her mother, and perhaps that was for the better. She doubted her mom still loved her dad, and if there was no love there, her father was better off being alone.

  Except that now he thinks you don’t love him, either. She bit her bottom lip hard enough to make herself wince. You’re an idiot, she thought. You can’t be supportive when people need it most. It’s like there’s something wrong with you. You’re broken, Vee. He’ll be happier without you, too. Swallowing against the bitterness in her throat, she shoved her fingers through her hair and nudged her laptop with her bare foot. It was enough to rouse it from sleep. The screen snapped on, and Jeff Halcomb gave her a look of understanding.

  It’s not you, it’s him.

  Because none of this would be happening if her dad hadn’t lied, if her parents could stop screaming for long enough to talk. She was being torn between two people, and the more she thought about it, the more she wondered if she would be better off on her own. Her dad would be happier without her. Her mom was already happier halfway across the world, having erased them both from her mind. Why shouldn’t Vee forget as well?

  She had found a few interviews online. They told a story of a group of people under the direction of a man who loved them unconditionally. Jeffrey Halcomb encouraged a sloughing off of the past to move on to a happier future. It was exactly what Vee wanted, what she felt she needed. Jeffrey had promised his followers love and peace. Who was to say that wasn’t what they had when they all died? Who were the living to equate death with sorrow and pain?

  You should try harder. She had to heed her own advice. If she didn’t try, she’d be moving in a week or two, her parents would still get divorced, and she’d be afraid of what the future held. She’d lose the opportunity to find her spiritual self, and what better place to seek it than in a house of spirits?

  Perhaps, if she tried harder, the ghosts that lived within the walls would reveal their secrets.

  Perhaps, if she just put in a little more effort, Jeffrey Halcomb would help her, too.

  Vee grabbed her phone and composed a text.

  Maybe the stuff with my parents is my fault.

  Heidi:

  What R U talking about? UR parents are crazy.

  Vee exhaled a breath and dropped her phone onto the sheets. Heidi didn’t get it. Sometimes it seemed to Vee that she didn’t even want to get it, and what kind of a friend was that?

  She rose from her mattress, grabbed some things from her closet, and stepped out into the hall. But she couldn’t bring herself to go into the blue room again. Hesitating in front of the door that led into what should have been her bathroom, she only stared at the doorknob, afraid that touching it would bring back the phantoms that were hiding in that house. Vee glanced over the banister to the ground floor. Her dad was in his office. She could hear him in there. Ducking into the master bedroom, she slipped into her father’s bathroom and quietly closed the door.

  Vee pulled her hair into a ponytail. She changed out of her pj’s and into a pair of black jeans and a sleeveless midnight-blue blouse her mom had bought her a few months before. Her dad had suggested the beach, but maybe they could go into town. She could ask him to drive by the school she’d attend if she decided to stay past the summer with him—here, in this house, not some crappy apartment. Maybe they’d go to the movies for once and she’d meet a few kids in the theater lobby. One or two good friends was all she needed to decide where fate would take her; back to New York, to Heidi and Tim, or to a fresh start in Washington with new friends, new boys, and Jeff.

  It seemed to her that Heidi never texted her anymore; it was always Vee texting Heidi. Maybe Heidi didn’t care that Vee was three thousand miles away. Maybe Tim didn’t care, either. Maybe some new friends would do her good. Perhaps trying harder meant trying something new. Because had life in New York really been that great?

  Washington could be cool, she thought as she smoothed her hands over her shirt. Washington could be better. She stared at herself in the mirror with a frown. Her eye still looked bad. It would lead to sideways glances and people murmuring about how maybe, quite possibly, her dad had laid into her like some abusive jerk. Bruises shining from the inside out. She opened the tin lunch box she’d brought with her and began to dig through it. Inside were various types of makeup—lip gloss, eye shadow, eyeliner, and a small tube of concealer. She kept the items hidden the way a superstitious person might keep a dybbuk locked away in a box. They were the fruits of sudden impulse, of a thing that felt wrong and unlike her. Vee never thought she’d be the type to pocket cosmetics when no one was looking, but the proof was laid out in front of her. Maybe her mother was right and the dark clothes and angry music were turning her into someone other than herself. Or maybe this was just who she was—bad, imperfect, inadequate, worthless.

  She blotted some concealer around her injured eye and inspected her face, then turned away from the mirror and with her pj’s and lunch box in her arms, stepped back into the hall. Someone was downstairs. She stalled her retreat back into her room, listening to her father speak. A woman’s voice responded. When she spotted the weird neighbor lady drifting out of her dad’s study and out the front door, Vee pulled in a breath, stashed her stuff just inside her room, and made her way downstairs.

  Try harder.

  Moving across the living room to his study, she stuck an eye over the crack between the door and its frame and peered inside. He was huddled over his desk, already in the thick of work.

  As the child of a professional writer, Vee had learned at an early age to never disturb her dad while he was working. It was a cardinal sin, like waking a sleeping baby or kicking a dog. But if she was going to try harder, some rules would need to be broken.

  She cleared her throat and nudged open the door a little farther. Her dad looked up from a box on his desk, his expression full of what she could only read as fascination.

  “Dad?” She shifted her weight from one Converse sneaker to the other. “What about the beach?” And maybe the movies and swinging by the high school. They’d been cooped up for so long; he at least owed her that.

  Her question seemed to shift his intrigue from riveted to agitated. The change in his countenance appeared for only half a second at best, but she was quick to catch it. She was bothering him, always bothering him. Even though he’d suggested spending time together himself, such a mundane offering didn’t hold a candle to whatever it was their neighbor had presented.

  “Um . . . can you give me a few hours, do you think?”

  “Sure,” she murmured. “Yeah, whatever.” She turned away and, with slumped shoulders, moved into the kitchen in search of a snack. With a cherry Pop-Tart soon held tight in her grasp, she slouched against one of the chairs and tried to keep her emotions in check.

  I work as hard as I do for you! he had yelled at her mom once. Everything I do is for you and Jeanie. Everything!

  But sometimes it was tough to see it that way. At times it felt as though he loved his books more than anything else. She tore the silver wrapper from her breakfast pastry, her bottom lip quivering at this new thought: her mom could be a real nag, but maybe Vee hadn’t been fair. It was possible that her mother had given up on her dad because of this exact thing—the anticipation of spending time together crushed beneath the weight of his inability to disengage. Perhaps her mom had given up because she was too familiar with what Vee was feeling now—cast aside and forgotten.

  Suddenly, Vee felt lonelier than she ever had, almost enough to finally read her mother’s stupid email. Although she tried not to, it was useless—she burst into tears.

  She wasn’t sure why she held her dad in such high regard. Perhaps it was that invisible, unifying stri
ng of weirdness, that camaraderie of liking scary movies and strange music. Or maybe it was the fact that he didn’t make her feel like an alien because her clothes were black or she smudged eye shadow three shades too dark around her eyes. But what did any of that matter if he didn’t have the desire to give her the time of day? How could she live with him if she was completely invisible?

  She considered that perhaps her mom had started paying attention to Kurt Murphy because that new romance made her feel like she mattered. After all, it was nice to be noticed every now and again. Maybe her mother wasn’t the bad guy in all this.

  Maybe Vee had been rooting for the bad guy all along.

  No, forget it. She’s just as bad as he is.

  She narrowed her eyes, willed herself to stop her tears, and rose from her seat. It could be that she wouldn’t live with either one of them. Screw you both, I’ll live somewhere else entirely. Kids did it all the time. They took off, ran away, lived with people who gave more of a shit than their real parents ever did.

  That, or they figured out how to make it on their own.

  Like the Halcomb kids. Just like them, as a matter of fact.

  29

  * * *

  Saturday, April 3, 1982

  Eleven Months, Eleven Days Before the Sacrament

  AVIS WAS DIGGING in the vegetable garden with Sunnie and Robin—Shadow romping about the yard—when the topic came up.

  Sunnie stabbed her fingers into a bed of peat moss and black soil, then let her head loll to the side like a rag doll’s and contemplated aloud: “I wonder when we’re gonna move on.”

  That simple pondering nearly stopped Avis’s heart. There had been times when she, too, had wondered whether Jeffrey and the family would pack up what little belongings they owned and say it was time to go. But that was before the garden and the lovemaking and the various little improvements the boys had done to the house. Deacon and Noah had painted the window shutters. Kenzie had cleaned the dead leaves from the gutters and had been paying close attention to the landscaping. Surprisingly, the strangely frenetic boy had a soft spot for roses and spent his free time tending to a couple of old bushes close to the front of the house. Even Clover and Gypsy had pulled up the rugs and beaten them with brooms.

  Those weren’t the actions of people who were intending on packing up and leaving anytime soon, and so Avis had stopped worrying about it. At least up until the moment Sunnie suggested the idea wasn’t as impossible as Avis thought it to be.

  To wonder meant to want, if only in some small way. Avis knew those types of yearnings were contagious. They would spread from person to person until, at last, everyone would be ready to bid Pier Pointe a fond adieu.

  Sometimes she tried to imagine waking up to an empty house, no pills to dull the pain of loneliness—at least not until her next refill. If they wanted to kill her, an unannounced departure would leave her dead of a broken heart. All Jeff had to do to end her was disappear.

  “Move on,” she said, trying to sound nonchalant. “Where would we go?” We, because she couldn’t let them go without her.

  Sunnie shrugged a little, then gave Robin a look as if searching for help. Robin frowned, unhappy with having to explain. “The pantry’s pretty sparse.”

  It hadn’t taken long for Avis to burn through almost all her savings feeding ten people instead of one. That, and Shadow still had to eat. She was trying to stretch the money as far as it would go, hoping that the vegetable patch would help. But ten people plus a dog was a big number, one big happy family with an emphasis on big.

  Her mind jumped to her dad in his fancy suit and shiny shoes. She’d tell him she was in trouble. Something about the car not working. Or a broken appliance. Or an unexpected vet visit. Something that would have him pulling out his wallet with a sigh, but nothing severe enough to garner too much attention. She didn’t like asking him for favors, but if it was a matter of either swallowing her pride or losing everyone, she’d choke it down and ask for seconds. Another sacrifice, another way for her to secure her place within the clan.

  “My dad has money,” she said. “Just give me a few days.”

  Sunnie and Robin looked at each other. Avis half expected them to re-explain the fact that they weren’t supposed to talk to their old families anymore; that, really, Avis didn’t have a dad. Audra did. But this was a special case. This was for the good of all.

  An hour later, Avis stood in front of the open pantry chewing her nails, trying to get up the nerve to call her father the way she had promised. Jeffrey sidled up to her and brushed his mouth against her ear.

  “Don’t you dare,” he whispered. “You ask him and you compromise everything you’ve fixed about yourself.”

  “But it’s for the good of everyone,” she argued. “A sacrifice . . .”

  Jeff shook his head. “Relying on someone like that for help is as good as chaining yourself to their ankle.”

  Except, wasn’t the house a form of reliance? It was costing her father money he could otherwise be collecting from a paying tenant. Unless, the way Jeff looked at it, after everything she had tolerated, her father allowing her to live there rent free was the least he could do. But she refused to give up on the idea so easily.

  “He’s rich,” she explained. “I just need to make something up, something believable that won’t make him suspicious.”

  Jeff turned Avis to face him and looked her square in the eyes. He was ready to protest, to tell her no, absolutely not.

  “I can’t lose you,” she said, her bottom lip catching a quiver. “I’ll leave everything behind and go with you, but what’s the point in that? What’s the point in living in tents and eating out of trash cans if we can have a house, a kitchen, a safe place for everyone to live? Are you going to make them go through that hardship? For what?”

  “For you.”

  His reply lit the ends of her nerves on fire. They hissed like Fourth of July sparklers, spit gold and silver flakes of flame across her fluttering heart. He’d sacrifice it all, put the ones he loved out on the street for her.

  Because she was important.

  Because he didn’t want to use her.

  For once in her life, she truly mattered; perhaps—dare she even think it?—more than he had ever thought she would.

  Jeff pulled her into a tight embrace, the kind of hug you give someone to say thanks but no thanks.

  “I won’t allow it,” he insisted. “We would rather never see you again than thrust you back into the life you’ve just escaped.”

  Over the past few weeks, she had told him everything. The neglect as a child. The way her parents bought her off every Christmas and birthday. How her mother had screamed at her while still on the phone with the emergency dispatcher. The way her father had looked at her with muted disgust as she lay in the hospital, both of her wrists bandaged up like giant Q-tips. But she had also told Jeff that she wasn’t sure whether it had been her imagination or whether her parents truly did hold some sort of contempt for her. She wanted to believe it was just her illness manifesting those delusions of hatred and ill will. But as soon as she suggested that maybe her parents weren’t as bad as she had made them out to be, Jeffrey struck the idea down.

  It’s not you, it’s them.

  He used words like manipulation and mind control and false love. He told her that they had brainwashed her into believing they were good despite her obvious knowledge that they were anything but. He brought up Stockholm syndrome, post-traumatic stress disorder, codependency. All his points were valid. Everything he said made sense.

  “I forbid it,” he said. “The moment you start asking for money, they’re going to wonder what’s going on.”

  Avis knew her father was impulsive. At times his anger seemed to have no bounds. He was the type to act first and consider the consequences later. There was no doubt in her mind that, if he did discover Jeff and t
he others living in the house he owned, it would end in a screaming match. She would storm off into the unknown and her father would bid her good riddance. And while Avis wasn’t fond of her dad, it wasn’t the way she wanted it to play out. She wanted him to fade into the shadows of her past rather than see him again for one more heaving, ugly fight.

  “Then we’ll have a family meeting,” she said, determined. “We’ll explain the situation and we’ll all go into Pier Pointe and start picking up job applications. There are ten of us, so if only five of us score work, we’ll be fine, right? Even part-time work will pay for groceries.”

  Jeff exhaled. His wary smile gave him away. He was keeping a secret. “We’re drifters,” he finally said. “At least that’s what we call ourselves, because ‘drifter’ sounds better than ‘vagrant.’ But at the end of the day, that’s what we are. We live off the land, off people’s generosity. But sometimes the land doesn’t provide what we need and sometimes generosity runs low. What we’re not, Avis, are blue collar workers. We don’t toil for money, and we don’t spend our lives scrambling toward our own unhappiness. It’s against everything we stand for. Money is the root of all evil.”

  Avis couldn’t help but narrow her eyes. “So what does that mean?” she asked.

  “It means that we do what we have to do to get by.”

  “But what does that mean? You’ll at least have the courtesy of telling me that.”