I swallow. “Do you need a ride?”
A bead of sweat forms and trickles down my temple, and I feel his gaze trace it. Despite the storm clouds unfurling overhead, there’s no breeze to cut through the thick, humid heat. He’s still staring at me, silent, when the sky cracks open.
The rain pours down in fat, stinging drops, slapping against Daphne’s hood like bullets. In seconds, he’s soaked through. In minutes there’ll be water streaming along both sides of the road. Within an hour, whole stretches will be submerged if the rain holds. The crack of lightning bursting brilliantly in the sky promises at least that long.
“It’s just a ride,” I say, but it’s not. Beyond the fact that he’s looking at me as though I’m roadkill, my family would be horrified that I’m asking, and I can’t even imagine what his family would think of us riding in a car together. And suddenly I’m not sure I want him to accept. We’re inches away from each other, and I don’t know what his voice sounds like. I don’t think I’ve ever heard it, never even officially met him.
“You want me to get in your car?” he yells over the din of rain, like I’m asking him to eat the roadkill in addition to looking at it. “Why?”
I draw back farther against my seat, wishing I could crawl behind it and never see anyone look at me this way again, however much I understand it. There’s so much I can’t say to him, so much I don’t know how to say to him, so I say the simplest and most honest thing I can. “I don’t want you to have to walk in the rain.”
There’s a flash, quick as the lightning, where the wariness in his eyes changes to something that causes my breath to catch in my throat. He gazes at me a moment longer, then he’s moving, crossing around the front of the car. There’s no point in dashing anymore—he’s as wet as he’ll ever be. I don’t have a towel or anything to protect my seat, and I don’t care. He lets himself in through the passenger door and closes it with enough force that I don’t even try to hide my flinch. It’s not for the door though.
Heath Gaines is in my car.
I start driving again, smooth, no stalling. Once I learn something, I never forget it.
“You can drop me at the garage on Main.” His voice is low, and I hear the drawl that the rain muted before, the one that says we’ve both lived in Texas our whole lives. I tell myself that the raspy quality is from disuse rather than distaste at having to talk to me, but he’s not looking at me, and I can see him only from the corner of my eye. “They’re used to towing Cal’s truck.”
“I remember it breaking down a lot,” I say before I can think better of it. And then Heath is looking at nothing but me. My guilt is a straitjacket strapped tight. That’s not new—but the pain that twists deep at my tiny admission is.
If I didn’t know Heath, I knew his older brother even less. Cal and Jason had been wary rivals in high school and didn’t become friends until they were assigned as roommates at the University of Texas their freshman year. They made the six-hour road trip home from Austin together a few times along with Jason’s girlfriend. Calvin seemed nice the few times I met him. Always called my mom ma’am and my dad sir. Made a fuss over my little sister Laura’s cockatiel and ensured her eternal devotion, beyond that which he inherently had as Jason’s friend. He even let me drive his truck the day I got my driver’s permit, when Jason had been reluctant to hand over his keys. Calvin had told me not to worry about anything, that I could drive into a tree if I wanted and the damage would just add character to an already beat-to-hell truck. He let me drive all the way to the ice rink before my shift so that I could get in some skating time.
I didn’t hit any trees, then or now.
Omitting any mention of Jason, I tell Heath the story. The more I talk, the more my eyes begin to prick, until the road ahead of me blurs despite the rapidly moving windshield wipers. I come to a stop sign with no other cars in sight. The garage is just ahead. Once Heath gets out, I might never see him again. I move through the intersection and into the parking lot. With tear-filled eyes, I turn to him. “I’m so, so sorry about your brother.” It’s the first time I’ve said that, aloud or to myself. Everything that happened to Calvin is connected to Jason, and until that moment, that memory, I hadn’t known I could feel for one without taking away from the other. I hadn’t let myself try.
Heath’s gaze is slow to meet mine, and when it does, I see pain so staggering that a tear spills free from my eye. I leave it.
He turns away from me and looks out the windshield before lowering his head and locking his jaw. I resist another urge to press back against my door. Not because I’m physically afraid of Heath, but because I am afraid of what he might say and how his words could shred me if he wants them to.
He glances back at me, just his head turning. The pain and everything else is gone, shuttered behind an expression as flat and impenetrable as mine must be naked and raw. “Thanks for the ride.”
Then he opens his door and steps into the rain.
CHAPTER 3
I drive to Polar Ice Rink on autopilot. Jeff, my manager, gives me a funny look when he sees me coming through the door.
“You’re not scheduled today,” he says, accusation causing his still-boyish voice to rise a few octaves even though his thinning red hair and pallid lined face put him somewhere in his early forties.
The handful of people waiting in line to buy wristbands turn to look at me too. I keep my head down pretty much everywhere but especially at work, where I’m forced to wear a nametag. Not everyone recognizes me by sight anymore, but add a name to a vaguely familiar face and whispers start tearing through the rink faster than a brush fire. Small towns—and with a population of less than ten thousand, Telford, Texas, definitely qualifies—are wonderful, until they aren’t. I hold my breath as so many gazes settle on me, but today people only frown at my seemingly innocuous appearance and dismiss me.
“I know,” I say, exhaling and raising my skates for Jeff to see. The funny look doesn’t vanish. And calling it funny is easier than calling it what it really is. “I’m just here to pick up my check and skate a little.” He can’t stop me, much as he’d clearly like to. I do my job and I do it well—the spotless floor and the smooth-as-glass ice I left the night before are proof of that. Normally, I’m here early or late, a schedule that everyone prefers, but as it is for all employees, the ice is always open to me.
I move through the door before he can make another pitch for directly depositing my checks so that I come in less often—as if I would. I take every excuse I can to be on the ice, despite what it costs me personally. I can’t help my involuntary pause, no more than a heartbeat in length, when I see Elena behind the register. I used to call the slightly rounded, salt-and-pepper-haired woman my fairy godmother because she used to let me stay late and skate whenever she closed instead of Jeff. Now I don’t call her anything at all if I can help it. It took her a little longer than most to stop interacting with me, and I tell myself that I’m glad her gaze lowers quickly as I pass her.
I pass a few other coworkers, some more or less obvious in their discomfort with my presence than Jeff, and none give me the smile I would have gladly returned a year ago. Not even the newer people I don’t know well.
I do my best to ignore the pang of loss and my still-damp eyes as I lace up my skates then gather my dark brown hair—as many of the short strands as I can—into a stubby ponytail. Beyond the hoodie I grabbed from my trunk along with the skates I never leave home without, I’m not dressed for skating and I’ve never cared less. Everything in my chest is tight and twisted until I step onto the ice. Instantly, the air feels crisp and bracing, and the sound of the blade hitting the ice—not quite a scrape, not quite a hiss—reaches my ears. I’m smiling before I’m halfway across the rink, reversing and gathering speed for a single lutz jump. My heart lifts before my skates leave the ice. There is nothing like that weightless, soaring feeling. I land and wind up for an upright spin, leaning w
ith my arms extended before raising my left leg high and then pulling my foot in toward my right knee. I slide it down as I draw my arms to my chest, spinning faster and faster, watching the world around me blur. In my happiest dreams, I never stop.
* * *
When I get home, Laura is setting the table for dinner and acknowledges my entrance with only the briefest of glances. Upstairs in her room, her cockatiel, Ducky, is squawking loudly to be let out of his cage, something she never does anymore. She has earbuds in and bobs her head to some song I can’t hear. She never used to be allowed to wear them at the table during meals; it was a technology-free zone where we had to look at and listen to each other. Sometimes we’d grumble—Laura, Jason and me—but I think we all secretly liked the break. More than that, we liked each other. Jason is three years older than me and Laura is three years my junior, but when we were together, those six years felt like nothing. It isn’t like that for everyone; I know that, which used to make our bond all the more precious. Wordlessly, I take two plates from her to help. My high from being on the ice fades the longer we move in silence.
Laura looks like a female copy of Jason when he was fourteen. She has the same long legs, gangly arms and narrow face. Fortunately, for my sister, they also share the same mane of gorgeous honey-brown hair that naturally waves in a way mine can only begin to imitate after a good hour with a curling wand. Her jawline is softer than his though, and even though she still has a baby-like fullness to her cheeks, it’s clear that she inherited the same stunning bone structure and olive-toned skin from our Castilian grandmother on Dad’s side. I take after Mom’s side, which means that my features are less defined and I burn if I so much as think about the sun. Laura’s wide, deep-set eyes—brown like Dad’s whereas Jason and I have Mom’s blue eyes—are trained on nothing as she drifts from place setting to place setting, and I’m struck anew by the way she’s changed during this past year.
She used to bounce around this same table when she set it, brimming with inexhaustible energy that inevitably led to squawking birds, broken dishes and Mom threatening to ground her if she didn’t calm down. Grounding used to be a fate worse than death for Laura, who would have lived outdoors if our parents let her and who could be bribed into doing any chore if it meant she was allowed to spend the night in our old tree house. That Laura is a far cry from the wan figure in front of me. She’s lost so much of the tan she always had, and her hair hangs limp down her back, still bent from a ponytail she had it in days ago. She moves like she’s half-asleep.
“Brooke, is that you?” Mom calls from the kitchen.
“I’m home.”
“Help your sister set the table, please.”
I throw a smile toward Laura, because I’m already helping, but she doesn’t look up, doesn’t stop bobbing her head. My smile fades. “Yes, ma’am,” I call back.
Mom comes through the swinging kitchen door carrying a steaming bowl of pasta and tells me and Laura to get the salad and spaghetti sauce while she darts back for the bread. Unlike Laura, Mom never lost her nonstop energy; she’s set to high speed whether she’s getting food on the table or sprinting to shave seconds off her mile time for an upcoming marathon. If we didn’t eat dinner as a family every night, I don’t think she’d ever sit down. She passes back and forth between the kitchen and dining room half a dozen more times, bringing butter on one trip and a pitcher of sweetened sun tea the next only to start back for salad dressing the second she sets down the tea. She thrives on her own brand of manic energy, and I’m exhausted just watching.
At last she pauses in the doorway, her chocolate-brown curls threatening to slip free from her hastily piled bun as she looks from kitchen to dining room, triple checking that she didn’t forget anything. She didn’t, but that won’t stop her from leaping out of her chair the second she sits down, just in case.
At her call, Dad comes up from the basement, turning sideways to fit his shoulders through the narrow doorway and leaving a trail of sawdust and wood chips in his wake despite his attempts to beat his clothes free. His safety glasses are pushed up on his bald head. His hair started thinning in his twenties, and Dad, practical to a fault, has been shaving his head ever since rather than fight the inevitable. It looks good on him. And what hair he lacks on his head he more than makes up for on his face. His full beard rests just above his collarbones and hides the dimpled chin that I can’t cover on my own face.
The sweet scent of sap and hickory clinging to him blends well with the garlic spaghetti sauce and oven-fresh bread on the table. As he sits, Mom is still flitting from room to room, and it’s only when Dad says her name in his deep but soft tone that she stops.
“Carol. It smells good.” He’s always been that remedy for her, that soothing presence she can’t seem to unwind without, but this past year, even he has had trouble fully reaching her.
She nods and casts one last longing look at the kitchen before taking her seat, as though all the problems in the universe would be solved if she could make one last trip. “Right.”
Laura removes her earbuds for a quick prayer but replaces them the second Dad says “Amen” and we start eating.
Beside me, Laura picks at her food while Dad has nearly emptied his plate and Mom is eating like she’ll win an award if she finishes first. No one looks at anyone else. No one speaks. The only sounds are the occasional scrape of a fork or the clunk from a lowered glass. The meal is such a stark contrast from the boisterous conversations we used to have when Jason was here. I glance across the table, to the empty spot where his chair used to be before Dad removed it. The table, a present Dad made Mom for their first wedding anniversary, is round, but Laura and I still bump elbows sometimes from sitting too close rather than reclaiming the space.
I feel the wrongness of it all wrapping around me and seeping into my lungs. It’s like trying to draw a full breath of steam.
Talking about Jason, acknowledging that he’s gone and trying to make sense of how that could have happened only makes them shut down further. At best I get a Not right now, Brooke from Mom or a Let it be from Dad. The most I get from Laura is nothing at all—sometimes she’ll just turn up the volume on whatever she’s listening to and break what’s left of my heart.
Mostly, I’ve stopped trying. But seeing Heath today, talking with him for those few minutes and somehow not destroying either of us in the process, gives me a courage I’d thought had long since abandoned me.
“I saw Heath Gaines today.” Three forks freeze as three sets of eyes lift to mine. “I was driving with Maggie and he was just walking along the side of the road out past Hackman’s Pond.”
The only part of Mom to move is her lips. “Did you stop?”
“No,” I say. I didn’t, not then.
Thinking that is the extent of the encounter, Mom’s shoulders relax infinitesimally. “Laura, honey, that plate won’t stay warm forever.” She starts eating again, and without looking at me says, “Brooke, finish your dinner please.”
I fill my fork, wondering at my own sanity when I keep talking. “But I did go back and offer him a ride when it started to rain.”
This time Mom’s fork clatters to the table, sending spaghetti sauce splattering like drops of blood on her white tablecloth.
“We talked, a little,” I tell her, tell all of them, my gaze bouncing from one person to the next, looking for a face that hasn’t gone pale. “It wasn’t horrible, not like it could have been.” Not like it is with everyone else, I add silently, thinking of the coworkers I once considered friends. I know it’s not just me who gets the looks, the whispers, the so-called friends whose parents won’t let them come over anymore. It’s been arguably the worst for Laura. Her peers don’t even feign politeness the way some of mine do. I’d probably want to hide behind earbuds too. I pause, listening for her music, but she has it turned down so low—possibly even off—that I’m sure she can hear me. Which means she wants to,
so I keep going. This time I’m not looking for answers; I just want to talk about my brother with the only people on the planet who don’t recoil at the sound of his name.
“I told him that story about me getting my permit and how when Jason wouldn’t let me drive his car, Cal tossed me his keys. Jason was always so protective of his—”
Dad’s fist slams down on the table, nearly toppling Laura’s full glass of iced tea. The impact is so sudden that my teeth clatter together, but I’m not cowed. My heart races. This is the most emotion I’ve seen from Dad since the night Jason was arrested. I don’t want his anger, but I’ll take it over the indifference he’s cloaked himself in the past year. I’ll take anything over that. I’m waiting for his head to lift and his gaze to once again meet mine, for him to yell or shout, so long as he speaks, but he doesn’t. Instead, he pushes back from the table and disappears into his workshop in the basement. As I turn my head to follow his exit, I see Laura hunched over her plate and the single tear that drops onto her untouched spaghetti. My hand reaches out to her as my heart clenches, but Mom is faster.
“Go on upstairs, Laura. I’ll bring you a plate later.”
Laura bolts the second Mom finishes speaking. Then Mom is gathering up Laura’s plate along with her own. Unlike her hands, Mom’s voice is steady when she addresses me.
“Brooklyn Grace.”
That choking feeling squeezes me again. I just wanted us to talk, to be able to say Jason’s name without everyone fleeing in a rage or tears, without seeing Mom struggle to hold on to her composure by her eyelashes.
Even If I Fall Page 2