IDLE: Book Four of The Seven Deadly Series

by Fisher Amelie

  “Nothing, I’m just, I’m surprised is all. I didn’t, I wasn’t sure if you did that kind of stuff.”

  Salinger laughed. “You’re jumping to a bunch of conclusions.”

  “Oh,” she said, sounding relieved.

  It bothered me, what he said, but I didn’t have the right to be offended. I had my chance with him and blew it. You also have much bigger fish to fry. That sobered me.

  I heard Salinger walk to his bedroom door. Adrenaline shot through my veins. He knocked lightly. “Lily?” he asked.

  “I’m up!” I said, clearing my throat. “Coming now.”

  “Lily?” she whispered, sounding confused.

  “Yeah, Lily,” he explained. “Remember that bad-ass chess girl from Noah’s party?”

  I heard nothing.

  “What?” Salinger asked.

  “Her?” Lyric whisper-yelled.

  Oh God. I am so unbelievably uncomfortable right now.

  I stood and glanced in his bathroom mirror just off his bedroom, next to his bed. I ran my fingers through my hair, leaned over, and rinsed my mouth with water. I opened the door to see Lyric and Salinger having a silent argument. Salinger stood when he heard me, though, and smiled.

  “Sleep okay?” he asked me.

  When Lyric saw me, her mouth gaped wide. “Are you wearing his clothes?” she asked.

  I looked down at myself. “Yeah,” I answered.

  She fixed her expression. “Oh, that’s cool. Sorry for interrupting or whatever,” she offered, but judging by her facial expression, it was anything but cool for her.

  Salinger furrowed his brows. He looked tired of her.

  Lyric couldn’t find her next words. Instead, she stood, swung her hair forward. “Well, I brought dinner,” she said quickly, awkwardly handling a bag placed on his counter. “I’m sorry, I only brought enough for two,” she said, pursing her lips.

  I shook my head and waved my hands forward. “No, man, it’s cool. No big deal.”

  Salinger took a step toward me. “I can make you something,” he said.

  I smiled at him but shook my head. “I should probably get going,” I told him. “Gotta get ready for work and all that.” I went back to his room and gathered all my clothing then came back out. I walked backward toward his front door. “Are you, uh, okay to get to work?”

  He ignored me. “Are you sure you can’t stay?” he asked, looking baffled.

  “Yeah, thanks for the invite, though,” I told him, backing into a wall. “Whoa, sorry,” I dumbly apologized.

  “I can take him to work,” Lyric said, answering my question for him.

  “Cool,” I said, ducking my head as I turned toward his front door.

  I gripped the door handle, but it wouldn’t turn. I unlocked it, but it still wouldn’t turn.

  Salinger’s hand landed above me. “Hey,” he said softly. I turned. We were inches from one another. “Are you sure you can’t stay?”

  “No, uh, thank you,” I told him.

  He stayed close to me. I could see the muscles in his stomach shift through his shirt as he reached above me and unbolted a safety lock above my head.

  “Thank you again,” I said, “for everything.”

  I turned and twisted the knob. This time the door opened and I escaped into the early evening air, walking toward my car, but not before turning back to see if he was still there. He was. He was watching me, leaning against the jamb of his door, tall and stunning. He made my heart race, and that made me feel so selfish. I shook my head to clear the feelings.

  I waved and he nodded his head slowly in acknowledgment.

  I circled back around and practically sprinted back to my car. I heaved all my stuff inside and got in. He watched me until I was no longer in view. When I reached the first red light, I plugged my phone into my car charger. The clock read six o’clock in the evening. I’d slept ten hours at Salinger’s and it had helped, really helped me.

  The phone powered on, indicating a voice mail. I pulled over, put the Scout in park, and looked to see who it was from. It was my attorney.

  “Sylvia?” I asked no one.

  Frantically, I pressed play.

  Lily, it’s Sylvia from Legal Aid, the message played, we met with a judge this afternoon. They feel it might not be best for you to have visitation with the girls as of yet, love. I’m so sorry, but don’t give up. This happens, it continued on, but I let the phone drop on my seat, done.

  I made it home safely and that fact stung, imagining what happened to my mama because of me. I dragged my feet inside and fell on my bed.

  I was losing hope.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I STARED AT THE CEILING, not bothering to glance at my clock.

  “I’m never gonna win,” I told the yellowed tiles.

  I mulled over my options, wondered if the girls were better off where they were, wondered if I was worthy of them, wondered if I’d be able to meet their needs. I wasn’t afraid of the responsibility, but I was unsure of what I was capable of. I didn’t have the best examples growing up. I could recognize dysfunction, knew it so, so well, but I didn’t know how to approach function.

  I cried myself to sleep, overwhelmed with loss, overwhelmed with the maze I was caught in. The maze of what was right. Every turn I made seemed to be a dead end. I was caught in the myriad twists and turns of the labyrinth of what we all need, but only a few know how to achieve.

  I woke to someone sitting on my bed. I shot up, my hand reaching for the figure sitting beside me, but the person caught it, held my wrist, and didn’t let go.

  “Lily,” Salinger said, calming me, “are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” I lied.

  “You didn’t show up to work and we were all worried. Danny sent me.”

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  I fell back against the wall. “Nothing,” I lied.

  The quiet felt deafening. “Don’t lie,” he whispered into the dark.

  He still held my wrist.

  “What do you want?” I asked him.

  “I want action.” He breathed deeply through his nose. “I’m tired of idle, tired of those who blow their smoke, tired of doubt. Get up,” he whispered. “You don’t have to be perfect. You don’t have to be the best at everything you do, don’t have to be flawless, but you do have to try. Just try. Even if trying yields you nothing, keep moving before you petrify, Lily.”

  “I don’t know if I have the strength,” I told him. My voice cracked with emotion.

  “But you do. The world is heavy and I can’t imagine the weight you feel on your shoulders, but you’re going to do it.”

  “How do you know?” I asked him. “No one can know that.”

  “I know this. I just know it. I feel it in my gut,” he whispered, bringing my hand to his belly, then dropped my hand. “Let me help you lighten the load.”

  “I can’t let you do that. I have to do this all on my own.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Because I caused all this.”

  “There is no way you could have known what would happen.”

  “If I’d done what I was supposed to, she’d be alive; she’d be with the girls right now.”

  He stood up and flipped on the light. It took my eyes a moment to adjust, but in an instant, he picked me up and held me against him.

  “Wrong,” he whispered into my hair. “It was an accident. Just that.”

  “If it was only an accident, why do I feel such guilt?”

  “Most people make mistakes and nothing happens. Most people have the opportunity to mess up and learn from it. Your mistake has the cruel and unusual punishment of an accident attached to it, but it was only that. It was only an accident.”

  “I can’t navigate this,” I admitted.

  “You can and you will.”

  “Maybe,” I told him.

  He nodded once then looked around my room. “We’ll need to fix s
o much.”

  “You mean me.”

  He looked at me. “No, us. We. I’ll help you with this. We’ll get everything sorted, get it repaired and cleaned. They won’t even recognize it when we’re done with it.”

  Tears started to stream down my face. “Sorry,” I said, wiping my face.

  “No worries, kid,” he said.

  “Let’s go to the market,” I said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  Salinger drove me in to work and we stayed the remainder of our shift. All the guys were quiet but cool toward me. Danny waved when we showed up, and I smiled back.

  The next morning, while Salinger took me back home, I got an email from the county. They were to cremate my mama at nine a.m. the following morning and her ashes would be interred the day after at eleven.

  “The county will cremate my mom tomorrow,” I told him. “Funeral’s the day after.”

  I emailed Sylvia and let her know so the girls could go, if they were able, then texted Ansen and Katie and let them know as well.

  “I’m not ready for this,” I told the passenger-side window.

  “You’re not supposed to be, Lily. You’re normal.”

  When he said that, it brought me strange relief. I took a deep breath and steadied my nerves. Instead of turning into the little country road I lived on, though, we kept going toward Smithfield. I didn’t bother asking where we were going. I didn’t care. I didn’t want to go back home, and I think he sensed that in me.

  I couldn’t tell whether Salinger was becoming my friend. He was selfless, yes. He took care of me when I needed it, but I couldn’t tell if he was doing that because he felt an obligation to do it or because he actually wanted to be my friend and we just started off on a really strange footing, where all hell broke loose and he was only prodding me along until I could find some stability.

  Katie texted me back and let me know she and Ansen would be there and that she had a dress for me. I sent her a thank you but not much more than that. I didn’t—no, couldn’t—say anything else.

  “When I was little,” I told him, “before she met Sterling, my mama would take us to church. There was an old priest there. Really nice guy. He would let us shop in the little church’s pantry even after hours because he knew my mama worked during the times they were open. At Christmas, he gave us gift cards to Wal-Mart and we had a decent meal because of him. I even got a little doll.”

  “That’s amazing.”

  “He was. I-I wonder if he’s still alive.”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “What made you think of him?”

  “I wonder if he’d be able to make the funeral. If he could give her a proper burial?”

  “You should call the church,” he prodded.

  “Should I?”

  “Go on,” he said, turning onto the highway toward Smithfield.

  I searched for the church on the phone and found their website. I saw pictures of the old building and it looked a little worn out, but stood tall, for the most part. I called their published number and a little voice, a woman’s voice, answered. She let me know that Father Robinson was there and put me on hold. When he answered, his voice sounded exactly the same to me, and it made me happy to know he hadn’t. I told him all about me, and he remembered us immediately, which made me tear up a little. He said he could make the funeral, that he could push some things around, but he would definitely be there. At the end, I tearfully thanked him, not just for offering to be at the funeral, but for what he’d done for us when I was young.

  “He’s coming?” Salinger asked.

  “Yes,” I answered with the first genuine smile I’d had in a long time.

  We pulled into a hardware store, which I hadn’t been expecting. “I think getting some stuff done on your house will help you feel some progress toward bringing your sisters home.”

  I nodded. “I think it would.”

  Inside, he took me to the back of the store where he knew they kept all their clearance stuff. We found a bunch of boxes of outdated tile. It was plain and white, but I thought a black grout with it would look okay and he agreed. There was a new showerhead someone had returned and a standard white bathtub with apron, as well as some returned buckets of paint. We rummaged through and found a pedestal sink really cheap. I added it all up and found I could afford everything but the sink.

  “I’ll have to get the sink later,” I told him.

  “It’s only thirty-five,” he said.

  I shook my head. “I literally don’t have the cash. I’ll have to wait until next week.”

  “No, we get it today. I’ll pay for it.”

  “Dude, you’re helping me so much as it is, I can’t let you do that.”

  He smiled at me. “We’ll never find a deal this cheap again. I’d rather just get it now.”

  “Okay, I, uh, I can pay you back when we get paid.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I won some cash in that tournament. If you’d come, it would have been yours anyway, so—”

  My mouth fell open a little. I swallowed back tears.

  “Oh shit, Lily, no, don’t cry. Jesus, I hate it when girls cry. I can’t take it. Please, don’t worry about that stupid tournament. I just meant you definitely would have won, so I don’t really even consider that cash mine. Please,” he begged me.

  I shook my head and gathered myself. “No, I know, it’s okay. It’s okay. I just feel really bad about it still.”

  He brought his hands to his face and dragged them down his skin. “Jesus, I am such an idiot. Please, don’t feel bad. It feels like a million years ago, and I literally don’t even care about it anymore. It was free money, and I just wanted to gift some your way. That’s all.”

  “Okay, let’s just go before we both end up in tears then.”

  He smiled and nodded. We loaded everything up in the back of his Jeep. It barely fit. I had to sit behind him on the way home since the tub was so long we had to bend the passenger seat forward to get it in. It was crowded, but I was pretty amazed we’d gotten everything for so cheap. It helped that I wasn’t picky.

  When we got back to my house, we brought everything inside. The white of the tile, the sink, and the tub in juxtaposition to the yellowed floors and walls was shocking.

  “There’s so much to do to make this livable. I don’t know how I’ll get it all done.”

  “One room at a time,” Salinger said.

  We spent the morning demoing the existing bathroom, which was cathartic. Since there was only one bathroom in the entire house, though, we were forced to relieve ourselves at Alta Mae’s, but she didn’t mind. She told me she was proud of me working hard to get my sisters back. I kissed her cheek and let her know if she needed me, I’d be where I always was.

  We finished the demo because I found out the bulk trash was coming that Friday and they only came once every two weeks and we knew that was our chance to avoid hiring a dumpster, something I definitely couldn’t afford.

  Around ten, Salinger and I were starved and tired, so I made some ramen for us. He was too sleepy to go home, so he slept on our lumpy couch.

  I was unbelievably grateful to him. I knew I couldn’t have moved forward the way I was without him.

  We worked our night shift, and spent the next morning, the morning my mama was cremated, installing the tub and laying tile. I would randomly burst out crying, but Salinger never made a big deal of it. He’d hand me some toilet tissue and I’d blow my nose and we’d get right back to work. By nine that morning, we’d tiled every single wall to the ceiling. The floor tile we’d found was pitch black and hexagon with a white grout. There wasn’t much available that day, but the bathroom was so small, it was enough to cover. The wall tiles were those cheap square ones you see, but with the black grout it didn’t look terrible.

  “I’m proud of us,” Salinger told me, grout all over his hands.

  I nodded, overwhelmed with emotion. “Thank you so much,” I told him.

  “Let
’s get the sink in and toilet in,” he said.

  “Aren’t you tired?” I asked.

  “Yeah, but if we get them in, we can turn the water back on and take showers here.”

  “Won’t it take a bit?” I asked.

  “Maybe an hour. Let’s do it.”

  He brought the toilet in and set it down carefully on a stack of towels I’d set on the floor.

  “I’ll be right back,” he said, running out to his car. He brought back in a plastic bag full of stuff. “We left this in there the other day,” he said, taking out things I didn’t recognize.

  We watched a ten-minute video on how to install a toilet and followed their instructions perfectly. Before I knew it, we were caulking the base and moving on to the sink, which took a little bit more time than we’d anticipated, but we were done around one o’clock.

  “I can’t believe we did this,” I told him.

  “Does it make you feel better?” he asked.

  “It makes me feel like there’s a light at the end of a very long tunnel. I can’t see it yet, but I can sense it.”

  “Exactly what I wanted to hear.”

  “Thank you so, so much, Salinger.”

  He stood beside me, stared into my crazy new bathroom and nodded. “Of course.”

  We slept for a few hours then went into work. I tried not to think about the fact that when I clocked out, I didn’t get to go home to move forward or get some sleep.

  I had to go home and put on Katie’s black dress.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “I CAN’T DO THIS. I can’t do this. I can’t do this. I’m not rea’dy to do this.”

  “Lily,” Salinger whispered, “you don’t have a choice.”

  I stared over the muddied path, the mist that laid close to the ground. “It’s all my fault and I don’t how I will live with this kind of guilt,” I choked out.

  I swallowed; my bottom lip trembled. I turned from him and looked back onto the grass near the trees. They stood there, the girls, side by side, and I felt like vomiting.

  “What have I done to them?” I quieted to no one.

  Salinger answered anyway. “Nothing, Lily. You didn’t do anything.”