by Lindy Zart
“Who did you lose?” he asks quietly.
“Who’s ever stayed is the right question to ask,” I tell him. My chest compresses as I watch the clouds above swirl and float. I don’t know if my parents are alive or dead. I was never given any information on them. I’ve accepted it, for the most part, but once in a while, I wonder. “They all go, Blake. Eventually.”
“I don’t think they leave,” Blake answers in a low voice. “Every life is a soul, and how can those really stop being?”
“That’s like saying they’ve always been. How can that be?”
Blake averts his face. “Maybe none of us really go completely away.”
“Seems logical.” I purse my lips at the muteness that follows. I’m not saying it isn’t possible; I’m just wondering how. “So, what, after someone dies, you think they go to Heaven and everything is wonderful? They watch us from above?” Derision adds a rough element of disbelief to my voice.
He runs a hand over the back of his neck. “I don’t know. I think they go…somewhere. Sometimes you just have to believe, right? I feel my grandfather. Maybe it’s all in my head, but I think he’s around, in some way.”
“Piper died on my last day with the Hampsons,” I admit, my throat closing around the words. I swear she knew I was leaving, because she died that morning, and sometimes during the night, I feel her soft body lying against my side. I’m not telling Blake that. He can confess his insanity all he wants, but I will not be publicly announcing my own.
A furrow appears between his eyebrows. “Piper? Oh. Piper. The dog.”
“The first day I showed up, she greeted me with a wagging tail and a friendly bark. And every day I spent there, she was by my side. She loved me, and I loved her. She adopted me.” I toe grass from my ankle, my stinging eyes locked on a particularly puffy cloud. “No human being ever did, but Piper the dog did. It sounds dumb, I know.”
“It doesn’t sound dumb.” Blake moves closer, the heat from his body warming my heart along with my side. “How many different homes were you at?”
I shrug, hoping I look more casual than I feel. “I don’t know, probably five or six.” A dozen. A dozen different homes from the time I was born until I graduated from high school.
“What was it like?”
I take in his dark eyes, his somber expression. “A nonstop adventure.” My lips twist. “Honestly, I wasn’t the best student, and I never really made a lot of friends. What was the point? I’m not making excuses, but it was hard to constantly have to adapt to new surroundings. I didn’t care about a lot of things, because I was never around anything long enough to care. I got in trouble a bit, petty stuff, but I could have rebelled more. I wanted to.”
“What held you back?”
I inhale, and slowly exhale. “The thought in my head that my parents were watching me, somehow. I deluded myself into thinking they didn’t want to leave me. That they were important people in trouble with dangerous criminals and left me to protect me.
“That they’d died—that one I almost hoped for; that they hadn’t had a choice in the matter. The stories I used to make up,” I say softly. At Blake’s snort, I amend, “And still make up, sometimes.”
“Have you ever tried to find information on them?”
I smile, feeling the sadness in the bend of it. “No.”
“Why?”
“I don’t want to be disappointed. At least with my fantasies, they’re exactly how I need them to be. And what does it change, knowing how it all went down? Nothing.”
Blake’s voice is dark and full of regret when he finally says, “I used to be like you, Opal. More dangerous, to be sure, but reckless like you. Never thinking of consequences. Living on impulse and adrenaline. Living in the moment because nothing else meant as much.”
My back stiffens. “I’m not reckless. I’m fearless.”
He shakes his head. “No. Being fearless means you do things that scare you; being reckless means you take unnecessary risks. It’s different.”
“I’m not—” I start to protest, but the look on his face erases the words from my mouth.
I guess I can be reckless. I think of my spontaneous trip with little belongings and money to my name. No car, no phone. How I took off without a word to anyone. Okay. So I’m a little reckless.
“What made you stop?” I ask Blake. “Being reckless, or whatever.”
Blake levels thunderstorm eyes on me, and I fight not to flinch at the smoldering heat whirling within their depths, like stars and wind dancing. Don’t try to figure me out and I won’t try to figure you out—that’s what we both are not saying. I’m not sure what we’re agreeing to do, or to not do, but Blake seems okay with it. The warnings are all there.
Don’t dig too deep.
Stay back.
Remain unattached.
He crouches, finding a rock. Blake stares down at it as he turns it around and around within his fingers. Squinting at the brightening sky, he chucks it toward the pond. A tiny splash disturbs the calm water.
“Someone died.”
6
Blake
The driveway is washed out. Hands on my hips, I stare at the mess that should be a gravel road. I turn and stride back to the truck, slamming the door after me. I sit with my hands tightly gripping the steering wheel. It isn’t like there is a deadline on the meeting with my dad, and Opal appears to have no obligations of any kind, other than to her free spirit, but the longer I’m around her, the more my priorities get scrambled. Altered. I have to get to Bismarck, and I have to say goodbye to her.
Before I think up all crazy kinds of things, and maybe act on some of them—more than I already have.
“I take it we’re not going to Bismarck,” Opal says after a time.
“The road is out,” I growl.
She shoves something under my nose. “Carrot?”
Without turning my head, I shift my eyes in her direction.
“I bet you’re thinking of smoking. Here’s a carrot.”
“Why did you bring the carrots?”
“I don’t know. In case I got hungry.”
“You’re always hungry.”
“See? Good thing I brought them.” And she shakes the orange vegetable at my face, bumping my nose with it.
I take the carrot, roll down the window, and chuck it.
Sighing, she asks, “What needs to be done to fix the road?”
“I’ll have to call someone.”
“So do that.”
“I will do that, after I’ve been angry for an appropriate amount of time,” I say around gritted teeth.
Opal laughs, opening the door to the truck. She grabs her bag and hops down, a carrot hanging from the corner of her mouth. “I’ll wait on the porch while you do that.”
The door slams, and I watch her through the rearview mirror. I wouldn’t exactly call her walk ungraceful, but it isn’t smooth. It’s fast, and there’s generally a bounce to it, like she has somewhere to be, and she’s happy about it. Opal skips to the porch, doing a spin at the end before she sits down on a step, and a muscle twitches beneath my eye. I think the last time I skipped was in grade school, and it was mandatory for gym class.
I close my eyes and let the back of my head thump against the headrest. I mentioned the death of Billie; my girlfriend I inadvertently killed at the age of nineteen. Because I was stupid and drunk and driving a car. Drunk on love and alcohol and drugs, Billie and I were dynamite, and all we did was race against blowing up. I knew we would, eventually. I just didn’t think she’d be the only one destroyed by it.
I left out the particulars, gleamed over what a mess I was at that time of my life, but it isn’t hard to figure out. No happy, levelheaded kid would get into the trouble I did. Stealing, fighting, drugs. Skipping out on school. Driving as fast as I could to see if I’d crash. In and out
of homes for troubled kids. Drinking. Let’s not forget the depression and suicide attempts. Coming home late, not coming home at all. Rehab centers. Anything wild and irresponsible, I went for it.
I did everything I could to get my dad’s attention, and when I got it, I didn’t want it. It was all so twisted. It still is.
Opal didn’t say anything. In fact, she acted like I never spoke. There was no reaction. I’m not sure how to feel about that. She looked through me instead of at me. I confessed that I was responsible for the death of someone, and she pretended to not hear me. I suppose, logically, I should be glad. We don’t need to bond. We can’t.
I turn the key, put the truck in reverse, and aim it back toward the shed.
That done, I get out, reaching into my pocket for my cell phone. My call log shows multiple missed phone calls and unanswered texts. Without checking, I know who they’re from. I promised Graham I’d call as soon as I reached North Dakota, and to his way of thinking, I should have been there by now. Vowing to myself to get in contact with him tonight, I make a phone call to one of the local rock quarries.
“Hey, Dan, this is Blake Malone. I have a washed out driveway in need of some gravel. How soon can you get out here?”
“Hey there, Blake,” an old, brittle voice greets. “I didn’t know you were back.”
I look toward the house. Opal lies on her back on the porch, using her backpack as a pillow as she munches on carrots. As I watch, she leisurely dips her hand in the bag of them resting on the step below and procures a handful of baby carrots. It reminds me of a video I saw once of a sloth eating food.
My lips twitch and I turn my attention to the phone call. “Yeah, well, someone forgot to throw me a welcoming home party.”
“Assholes.”
Laughing, I face the truck. “The world is full of them. Anyway, how’s your schedule looking?”
Dan Kline sighs, and I know I’m not going to like what he has to say. “Well, with the storm doing havoc all around the area like it did, we’re pretty swamped. Tomorrow, at the earliest, but it’s looking more like the day after.”
I bite back my inclination to swear.
“Blake?”
“I’m here.” I rub a hand against my forehead and gnash my teeth. Shaking my head, I drop my hand. “Yeah. Sure. Put me on the schedule.”
“Will do. See you soon.”
“See ya.”
I look at Opal. Two more days with her. There’s running water in the faucets, electricity. I bought a small supply of food on the way here, and there are canned goods galore in the basement, so we’re good that way.
I turn my attention to the highway in the distance. It’s almost a mile just to get to it, and another fifteen to reach Bismarck. It isn’t walkable. I look at the truck, wondering if it could make it over the small pond that’s replaced a portion of my driveway. And do I want to take the chance with it? No. I don’t. Not with my grandpa’s truck.
Kicking at a twig that got pushed this way from the thunderstorm, I amble toward Opal.
“Good news,” I chirp as I sit next to her legs. “You get to spend two more days with me.”
She propels to a sitting position with lightning fast moves, her boot clipping my ear as she spins her legs around. “That isn’t going to work.”
“I know—it doesn’t seem long enough, does it?” I make eyes at her and she glares back.
“I have places to go,” Opal states.
“Where?” I softly demand, rubbing at my stinging ear.
She entangles a hand in her flyaway hair, tugging it and wincing when she finally gets it loose. “I don’t know. Places. Places other than here.”
“Hmm.”
Jumping to her feet and sending the bag that once contained carrots spiraling to the ground, Opal jumps down from the porch and whirls around to face me. Her eyes are glittering; her cheeks are as red as apples. She looks flustered, agitated. Sexy as hell. “What am I supposed to do here for the next two days?”
I stand and walk toward her, stopping when we’re face to face. I have to lower my head to meet her eyes; she tips hers back to do the same. “You can work off the expenses you’ve stacked up,” I tell her, making sure my voice is low and suggestive. “I have a long list of jobs for you to perform.”
Her throat bobs as she swallows, and I know the direction her thoughts have gone. Mine went there too, briefly. Just long enough to torment me.
“You can start by…” I take a lock of her sunset hair between my fingers and gently tug, staring at the strands. They shine under the glint of the sun. I set my gaze back to her, noting the uneven way her chest moves as she breathes. “Picking up sticks around the yard.”
Opal stumbles back a step, blinking at me. When I laugh, her face scrunches up and she gives me a push. It feels like a light tap on my shoulder. “You’re not funny, Blake.”
“I’m a little funny,” I state, grinning.
“Only a little. A very small amount.”
And that’s what we do for the next two hours—we pick up tree limbs and whatever else the storm blew around. No words are exchanged as we work—only fleeting looks. The sun lowers in the sky, and the atmosphere darkens. It’s strange, but I feel like we’re a team. Opal and me. The loner and the liar, somewhat reformed and picking up tree debris. One side of my mouth lifts.
“What are you going to do with all the sticks?” Opal asks as we finish up for the night. Daylight is leaving us. Her hands rest on her hips and there’s a line of sweat framing the neck of her shirt.
I watch a trail of perspiration travel down the hollow of her neck to get lost within her cleavage. My mouth goes dry. “Build a dam.”
She gives me a look before turning her attention to the hills. “There’s a lot of land here. Was your grandfather a farmer?”
“No. Other than the garden he put in each year for my grandmother, he wasn’t much for working the land.”
Opal waits, her eyes on me.
“He liked antiques,” I say with a faint smile. “He had his own shop on the highway, a mile outside of Bismarck. He sold it when he started having health problems.” And then it was a short seven months later that he had a massive heart attack.
“I didn’t notice many antiques in the house.” Her eyes haven’t left me.
The wind gathers strength, pushing and pulling at my T-shirt, threading through my hair. “That would be because my dad got ahold of them when I was out of commission and sold them. Time to go in.” Bitterness fills my mouth, and I stride for the house.
“Out of commission?” she asks, her voice confused.
I fought my dad on it, told him he had no right to take things meant for others, meant for me, but I was in a rehabilitation center at the time—the last one I frequented before cleaning up my act for good—and he had all the power. He always had all the power. The first step to taking it back was to quit wasting my life on drugs, and I did. I’m never going back to that life. The drugs lost. I won.
Drugs are not an escape; they are a prison.
By the time Opal joins me in the kitchen, I’ve washed up and made egg salad. And calmed down enough that the image of my dad’s face doesn’t make me want to punch a hole in the wall.
“You’re more domestic than me,” she observes, stopping beside me. The scent of coconuts dipped in rain and sweat tickles my senses. She grabs the spoon I used to mix the hardboiled eggs and mayonnaise, and scoops up egg salad with it. Opal eats it from the spoon and sets the spoon back in the bowl. “Yum. You can make me egg salad any day. It’s good.”
“Don’t tell anyone. It’s bad for my image.” I catch her eyes and wink.
She hurriedly turns away and washes her hands at the sink, moving out of my line of vision. The refrigerator door opens. “Do you have anything to drink around here other than water and expired milk? Maybe something with alcohol
in it?”
My shoulders tauten and I slap together four egg salad sandwiches. I quickly learned that Opal’s size has no bearing on her appetite. “No. Just water.”
“Oh. Water it is then.” The refrigerator door closes.
I hear the dip in her voice, and I offer her a plate with two sandwiches on it. I don’t release it until she meets my eyes, speaking loudly and clearly as I tell her, “I’m an addict. I don’t have drugs of any kind around, not even alcohol. I’m no fun at all. Really boring. A guaranteed bad time.”
“What happened?” she asks after a brief pause, seeming uninterested in my confession.
I hear myself telling her, “I liked it too much.”
“Well.” Opal shrugs. “Except for an occasional drink, I don’t do any of those things either. We can be boring together.”
I can’t come up with some smartass comment, like I generally do. She just minimized the whole flawed make-up that is my past. Like whatever happened back then doesn’t matter. Like my addictions have no bearing on who I am. I look at her profile, studying the lines of her features. Opal has a natural, even clumsy, elegance to her that should turn me off but doesn’t.
“I don’t think you’re boring,” I tell her.
She grabs the plate and sits down, her eyes not meeting mine. Opal takes a hefty bite of her sandwich, chews, swallows, and repeats. She won’t look at me, intent on shoving food in her mouth. This goes on for too long; Opal is quiet for too long. It makes my skin twitch. It makes me doubt myself, and my inclination to open up to her like I haven’t with anyone else.
“Don’t act like that,” I say as I sit down, a hint of pleading in my tone. I hate that it was there, that she probably caught it.
Her eyebrows lower as she lifts her gaze. Opal holds up a finger until she swallows. “Like what?”
“Like…I don’t know. Like you have to tiptoe around me now.”
Eyes softening, Opal says, “Never. I’m just…I’m not sure how to respond. And anyway, it doesn’t matter. We all have our messes, right? I mean, look at me. I exaggerate, I’m on the run fr—”