The problem was that she knew she’d need money. She didn’t know how much, but it had to be more than the hundred dollars her aunts and uncles had sent her for her birthday. She was still trying to think of a way to get more.
But now, sitting in the pew closest to the front, looking into her father’s bloodred face, she knew she wouldn’t do it. She was going to have the baby she didn’t want, and Ellis didn’t want, and her father didn’t want, because she was terrified of what her eternity would be like if she didn’t.
Ellis sat two rows behind her, and she tried to catch his eye over and over again, but he stared straight ahead at her father the entire service. He had his arm around his wife, and his son sat on his knee. Jill held little Melody close to her heart.
After the service, Nina tapped Ellis’s shoulder before he could step outside the wooden double doors. He ignored her, but his wife noticed and said with a warm smile, “How are you doing, sweetheart?”
“My dad needs a box from his office taken to the car. I was wondering if Ellis could help me. It’s heavy.”
Ellis wouldn’t meet her gaze, busying himself wiping Neil’s runny nose. “I’ve got to help Jill with the kids.”
But Jill was already pulling Neil out of his hands. “Nonsense. I’ve got these two.” She slipped out the door before her husband could argue. So Ellis followed Nina down the hallway, into her father’s empty office.
When she told him, he grabbed the edge of her father’s desk with white knuckles. For a full minute, he didn’t speak—just swallowed over and over again, staring down at his hands with a horrified look on his face, like they’d just been cut off.
When he finally spoke, he said, “Are you lying to me?”
“Why would I do that?”
He bit his bottom lip and ran both his shaking hands through his hair.
“Are you—are you going to go through with it?”
Her father’s Hell sermon must not have scared him the way it scared her. Maybe he thinks I’ll be the only one punished.
“Yes,” she said.
He dropped to his knees in front of her. He took both her hands in his and looked up into her eyes and begged her, “Please don’t tell anyone it’s mine.”
For a moment, Nina was too baffled to reply. “Who else’s would it be?”
He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. Tell them it was someone you met on that church retreat you went to. Tell them . . . tell them he forced himself on you.”
She ripped her hands from his. “No. Someone could get in trouble.”
“Then just don’t tell them anything. Don’t say who it was.”
She pulled nervously at the ends of her hair. “But—”
“Nina.”
His voice shook, and he looked almost like a child, staring up at her with shining eyes. Like she held the weight of his entire world in her hands.
“Nina, you can’t tell anyone. Please. I have a family. I have to take care of them. Jill would never speak to me again. My career, all that work we did on the book. Jesus, I’ll lose everything. Do you understand that?”
“Ellis—”
“I’ll pay you. I’ll pay for whatever it needs. Just please, please promise me you won’t tell anyone.”
She’d felt a sick, constant churning in her belly ever since she took the pregnancy test, but she forgot about it for a moment now. Just long enough to feel the ache in her chest for him.
Even if the life she knew was over, that didn’t mean she wanted to destroy his.
She nodded. “Okay.”
Ellis surged to his feet and took her in his arms, crushing her to him, his chest heaving. She could feel the dampness of his tears on her hair. The intimacy of it made her squirm. She kept her arms stiff at her sides.
She walked home, hoping the redness would leave her face by the time she made it there. But every time she let herself think about anything, a fresh bout of tears scorched her cheeks.
Her father was sitting in the rocker on the front porch when she crested the little hill just before their house, still in his church clothes. He smiled and waved at her, but as she came closer, he saw her hair sticking to her damp cheeks.
He tried to lift her face with his hand, but she couldn’t look at him. He tried to ask her what was wrong, but she wouldn’t answer. So he wrapped her up in his big, sun-browned arms. She buried her face in his shirt, and he smoothed down the back of her hair with his rough hand. And she knew that she would hide there forever, tucked away in his arms, if he’d let her.
Until a man drank up the whole ocean or counted every speck of dirt on all the mountains in the world.
Chapter 22
I WILL NOT CRY. Tears have never saved anyone. I’d choose anger over tears every time.
But I can’t get angry with Mom for leaving me either. She told me to stay away, and I didn’t listen. This isn’t her fault. It’s Ellis I should be angry with, for making all this necessary in the first place. I tighten my grip on the steering wheel and focus on him until my eyes dry up and blood burns in my cheeks.
The street that goes to the Circle is blocked off for the Dawn Festival, so I park the Jeep as close as I can before I get out and walk, head down.
I’ve been picking up as many shifts at the Watering Hole as I could get ever since Jill gave me the job, but I’m not scheduled to work today. Jill said she wanted me to enjoy the festival, and when I come through the glass door, she tries to turn me out. But then she sees my face and says, “What’s wrong, honey?”
I don’t answer her. She frowns, a concerned little line creasing between her eyebrows. But she doesn’t argue when I tie on my apron.
In the restaurant, I find a third option for coping with being deserted—one other than tears or anger. I take orders and get people what they need and clean up spills and carry out heavy trays and pour refills. I work nonstop, always moving, and for a while, I’m entranced by the rhythm of that motion, of fulfilling promises, of receiving tangible rewards in the form of crisp dollar bills stuffed in my apron pockets. This is the only place in Jasper Hollow where I feel absolutely capable. Until I’m jarred right out of that beautiful rhythm with one hushed word.
“Melody.”
Whispered like something dirty. Something that doesn’t belong in polite lunch conversations.
The girl who said it is part of a group in the big corner booth. They all look around my age, and one of them is wearing a Jasper Hollow High School T-shirt. And the way they glace toward the front of the restaurant, to make sure Jill is out of earshot, makes me pretty sure I know exactly which Melody they’re talking about.
I grab a rag and start wiping down the empty table next to them, close enough to hear their lowered voices.
“Somebody should really warn the girl living at their house about her,” one of them says.
Giggles. Are they talking about me?
“They were pretty cozy together this morning at the ceremony. Maybe she doesn’t want to be warned.”
More giggles. My heart rate picks up.
“But . . . how do you know?” another girl asks.
“Didn’t you hear about the party last summer? At David Cochran’s house?”
“That was before I moved here.”
The next girl who speaks does it so quietly I almost don’t catch her words.
“Melody got caught kissing a girl.”
“Janie McCormick’s cousin,” another one pipes up. “She was visiting from Chicago. I hear she works at a gay bar. They have tons of them there.”
Some of them bite down on their knuckles to keep from laughing too loud. I stop pretending to clean the table.
“They were right in the middle of the kitchen. They didn’t even try to hide it.”
“Melody always seemed like such a normal girl, you know? Like, she’s got a temper, but I thought she was a good person. I just couldn’t believe it. Especially when her dad is such a good guy, you know?”
“Do you think she’s, lik
e, a full-blown lesbian or she just wanted to try it?”
“I don’t know, but I’m on the swim team with her, and I swear she was checking me out when we were changing after our meet in Lancaster. My mom took it to the school board and everything, but nobody wanted to kick her off the team because they were so worried about winding up on the news for being homophobes. A bunch of PC bullshit. Now I have to change in a bathroom stall.”
That one’s voice holds something in it that makes me remember what Jill said to me not long ago. If you meet anyone who acts too big for their britches, it’s a Walsh.
The girl pulls out her phone and adds, “At least I made some money off the picture,” and she pulls it up to show everyone around the table so they can giggle some more.
It would be satisfying to go over there and slam my palm on the table hard enough to rattle the silverware. To see how fast all their bluster gets sucked out of the room when they realize that someone was actually listening to them.
I’d love to lean in so I’m eye level with the Walsh girl—whose eyes happen to be the same shade of blue as the toilet water at the Bowmans’ house—and say, I think she hasn’t looked at you once. In fact, I know she hasn’t. Because a girl like Melody would never settle for a bitch like you.
I’d like to watch her squirm like she was choking on a chicken bone. Her cheeks flaming hot enough to fry eggs on.
But I know better. People like me don’t have the luxury of boldness. I’ve built my life on subtlety. Invisibility. I’ve got too many secrets to risk causing a scene.
So instead, I walk calmly back to the kitchen and grab the carafe from the coffee maker. And with a furtive glance around to make sure no one is paying attention to me, I use an empty cup to stir in a generous helping of dirty dishwater. I fish out any noticeably large bits of chewed food that get mixed in.
And then I go back to the girls’ table, and with a smile, I refill their empty coffee cups to the brim.
-
When the sun slips behind Clara Mountain, the lights from all the shops come on and spill into the Circle, mingled with the twinkle of string lights and the bluegrass twang of a local band called the Jasper Hollow Bullfrogs.
The dancing starts when Neil kicks off his shoes and spins a little girl around in the grass under Harriet’s Oak. She’d been crying over not winning a prize at the ring toss booth, but now the tears are dry on her face, and her laugh echoes in the night. Other kids drag their parents onto the makeshift dance floor. Girls grab their boyfriends, wives rope in their husbands, and then the Circle is a riot of dancing feet and twirling skirts.
I’ve just finished up a busy shift. And I’m still hurt and confused by Mom abandoning me, but the hard work has numbed my mind just enough to get caught up in the fun. Melody seems content to stand on the fringe and watch, but I grab her hand and drag her right out into the middle.
She refuses to dance at first, her arms crossed firmly over her chest while I twirl around her. I’ve never really learned how to dance, but I’ve also never really learned how to be embarrassed about it. She bites her lip, fighting hard to keep the sour look on her face, until I link my arm through hers and spin us until she’s too dizzy to care much about being embarrassed either.
When I let her go, she steadies herself with her hands on her knees, her head down. I hear her laughing, but it’s when she looks back up at me, hair springing loose from her braid, that my breath catches.
Because she gives me my very own, first-ever, pearly white, mile-wide, Melody Bowman smile.
The feeling that thrills through me then—it’s like my veins are made of light bulb filaments, pulsing with enough electricity to make me glow.
I grin even more than Neily does for the rest of the night. Most of it, anyway.
Except for the part where I see Tim, the baker, working his way through the crowd, followed by a couple of stern men in sheriffs’ uniforms, asking people what they know about the manuscript someone stole from his bakery late last night.
-
The Bowmans and I don’t leave the Dawn Festival until long after dark, our skin glowing warm from the sun and our feet aching in that satisfying way that comes from walking miles and miles, even if it was only in circles around a restaurant or up and down the crowded streets of a small town. Melody sold all her cookies, Neil spent the afternoon catching up with friends over cold apple cider, Jill’s restaurant was packed from open to close, and I made over a hundred dollars in tips.
We meet Ellis back at the house. He left the festival hours earlier, claiming he didn’t feel well. But whatever ailment he had has miraculously cleared up, and he’s all smiles, sitting down at the table with his family over glasses of lemonade while they recount stories from the day, their laughter echoing through the big house’s halls.
But what I see later that night tells a very different story.
I’m lying awake when I hear someone creeping down the stairs. I sneak out of my room and down the hall, and I peer around the corner and through the kitchen. I see Ellis’s open office door.
His back is to me. But I can see he’s holding a piece of paper. One of the manuscript pages.
Tell the truth.
He walks to the window, his socks completely silent against the carpet. And he stares out for a long, long time. I angle my head to get a look at his face.
He does so well, hiding his fear in front of others. Just like he’s hidden everything else. But it’s naked in the moonlight—in his wide, searching gaze as he scans the dark trees outside of his big, beautiful house that once felt so safe and now probably feels more like a giant target.
He looks for her, his hands white-knuckled on the windowsill. But Nina Holland won’t be found until she wants to be found.
Not even by me.
Nina knelt on the floor of the Walsh Clothing Company men’s department and shoved as many T-shirts as she could into her backpack. Her stomach strained against the top she was wearing. She got it for being a vacation Bible school counselor the summer before, and it was the only one she had that came close to hiding how swollen she’d become.
The teenage boy who worked at the register snuck up behind her. He grabbed her wrist before she even knew he was there.
Of course, he knew her. He sat behind her in geometry. She let him copy her notes once after he’d been out sick for an entire week. But that wasn’t enough to keep him from taking her to his manager.
They called her father at work, and he was there in ten minutes.
He yelled at the manager first for taking the word of an idiot cashier. Then he accused the cashier of stealing the shirts himself and trying to frame his daughter for it. Then he watched the security tape in absolute silence, a burning shame crawling up his neck and weighing down the corners of his mouth.
Nina wanted to drop at his feet and beg him to let her start her whole life over. But she just stood beside him with her hands clenched together and her eyes on her tennis shoes.
He dragged her out to the car by her elbow. The manager called after them that they wouldn’t be welcome in the store again.
The yelling started the moment the doors closed. “What the hell were you thinking?” and, “You just can’t get it together, can you?” and, “How am I supposed to lead a congregation if I can’t keep my own daughter under control?”
“Daddy, I—”
“I just don’t understand why. If you wanted a bunch of T-shirts, I’d have gotten you some. Hell, you could have borrowed some of mine!”
He didn’t pause for her answer. He hardly seemed to take a breath the whole ride back to the house. By the time he parked in the gravel driveway, his face was red with the effort of expressing his absolute disbelief about everything.
So instead of waiting for him to pause, she just came out and said it, right in the middle of his sentence.
If he hadn’t been looking right at her, he might not have noticed that she’d spoken at all. Whatever he was about to say was lost forever. He fu
mbled for a moment. And then he could only manage, “What?”
“I’m pregnant.”
She watched his face. His eyes were locked on hers. The red of his skin got deeper, and it spread from his neck to his hairline. His arms and hands glowed hot, and his chest heaved, and she waited for a bout of screaming louder than any hellfire sermon he’d ever given before.
But he didn’t say a word.
He breathed in and out, looking down at his hands knotted around the steering wheel, the skin stretched taut over his knuckles. Then he got out of the car and walked away, toward Clara Mountain.
Nina jumped out and yelled after him, “Don’t leave! Please! I need you!” But he didn’t turn around or give her an answer.
He was gone for hours, and he didn’t come back until long after Nina had gone to bed. But she thought maybe that was for the best. Of course he needed time on his own, to come to terms with it.
But he didn’t speak to her the next day either. Not when she ate breakfast with him. Not when she asked him questions. Not even when she cried and grabbed his hands, begging him to say anything. He didn’t look at her or acknowledge her for the entire day. Or the next.
He pretended she didn’t exist for a week.
He left for work before she woke up for school and stayed there until late at night. And when he did come back, he went straight to his room and locked the door behind him. Even when she sat outside on the floor and begged him to come out. She would spend whole nights whispering through the wall that she was sorry. That she was scared. That she couldn’t do this alone.
On a Friday, she skipped school and walked all the way up Clara Mountain in a misty drizzle. She pushed open the heavy doors of the church. A maintenance worker was standing in the lobby with a toolbox, staring while Nina walked past him, her long, black hair sticking to moon-pale skin.
She knew that everyone in Jasper Hollow would know by tomorrow that she’d gone off the deep end. The maintenance man would tell everyone the way her wet dress clung to the hard lump of her belly, and no one would believe him at first, but word would spread like a brushfire anyhow, and soon, there would be no denying it.
The Hollow Inside Page 15
