The Hollow Inside

by Brooke Lauren Davis

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  I creep to Ellis’s office after everyone else has gone to bed.

  I glance at Melody through her cracked door on the way; she’s sleeping hard, her face pillowed against her elbow. She has her soft, green blanket wrapped around her like a cloak.

  I tiptoe down the hall and through the dark kitchen and then push the office door open as quietly as I can. I unlock the window and close the curtains over it, just like Mom told me to. The warm breeze makes them shiver, phantoms made of cream-colored lace.

  It was so easy, but I have a feeling that tomorrow isn’t going to be.

  I don’t sleep that night. The hours creep along, a cycle of closing my eyes and trying not to think and opening them to stare at the ceiling. A pattern of wishing morning would come and praying it never does.

  When my window grays with light, Jill is already stirring. For someone who wakes up early almost every day, she isn’t a morning person. She scrambles to shower, dress, eat, and get out the door to open the Watering Hole, all in under half an hour. I trace her movements with my ears, lying completely still in bed.

  When I finally hear Ellis roll out of bed, his footsteps thumping softly through the ceiling, I close my eyes tight and curl in on myself like I’m bracing to get punched in the gut. I listen to him walk down the stairs. I hear the drip and steam of the coffee maker.

  I listen to the door to his office swinging open—­

  But it’s not the office door. It’s mine.

  I probably look like a spooked animal when Melody pokes her head in. “Hey,” she says, hair disheveled, her voice still thick from sleep. “It’s supposed to be a nice day. I thought it might be a good time to teach you how to swim. I promise I won’t try to drown you again. And—”

  “Great idea,” I say, climbing out of bed and pushing her back toward her room. “Get dressed.” Maybe if we hurry, I can get her out of the house.

  But I’m too late.

  I’m watching her face when it happens—the confusion that furrows her brow for a split second when she hears her father scream.

  It’s probably a sound she’s never heard before. I wonder if she’ll even recognize it. Then the horror and dread set in, and I know she does. I say her name, but she’s already running out of the room. I follow and hear Neil rushing down the stairs. “What’s happening?”

  I stop when something black and small zips past my ear. There’s another, crawling across the kitchen wall. Melody grabs the handle of her dad’s office door. “Stop,” I say, right before she swings it open.

  A swarm of bees billows through, and then they’re everywhere.

  I hold up my arms to cover my face. They stick to my skin, even when I stomp my feet and try to shake them off. I call the twins’ names, my hand pressed over my mouth so nothing can get inside. I get just a glimpse of where they’re all coming from; on the office floor, there’s a burlap sack with a wooden box inside, coated in broken honeycombs. Mom must have thrown it through the unlocked window.

  “Go!” Melody shouts over the furious buzz of thousands of wings, shoving me toward the front door.

  I tumble onto the front lawn, slapping at my skin and rolling in the grass to crush the little bodies that cling to me, shaking corpses loose from my shirt. But Melody doesn’t come out behind me. It’s another agonizing stretch of seconds before I see anyone else, but it’s Neil, backing out of the house. He’s dragging his father, gripping him under the armpits.

  He hauls Ellis down the steps and lays him out flat in the grass. His eyes are closed. There are red welts starting to swell all over his body. Neil holds his fingers over the still lips, and his voice cracks with panic when he says, “He’s not breathing.”

  And that’s when I remember a story Mom told me about the time she and Ellis were walking together in the woods and he stepped on a hive.

  He’s allergic to bees. I’d forgotten all about that.

  But Mom never forgets anything.

  Melody bursts from the house at the same time Neil shoves his phone into my hands. “Call nine-one-one,” he says and starts pumping his father’s chest.

  Melody drops to her knees by Ellis and stabs a needle into his thigh.

  I hold the phone to my ear, watching the tear tracks on Melody’s face, glistening under the rising sun. But I haven’t dialed the numbers yet.

  I should let him die now. Mom won’t get his confession, but at least she’ll have her revenge so her blue-black eyes can stop looking so haunted. I want the people who love Ellis to mourn him and move on. I want to hold Melody’s hand at the funeral and let her believe that I had nothing, absolutely nothing to do with her pain.

  Mom would be saved, and Ellis’s family would be safe. If he died right now, I could have both.

  I could have both.

  But I know that isn’t true. I’d never be able to look Melody in the eyes again. Mom would never forgive me if I ruined her chances at getting the truth from Ellis’s own lips.

  And besides, watching Neil do CPR on his dad while Melody sits helplessly on her heels—it feels like someone is digging around in my chest with a hot poker. Nailing my hands to the wall. Pulling a rusted knife, slow and deep, across my skin.

  The kind of pain that leaves you gasping and seeing stars. The kind of pain you’d do just about anything to stop.

  So I call 911.

  Chapter 34

  WHEN JILL HURRIES INTO the hospital waiting room, Melody and Neil run to her, and she crushes them both in her arms.

  She kisses the tops of their heads and tells them, “I’m proud of you. Both of you.”

  It feels like an intimate moment, so I avert my gaze.

  I stay in one of the hard, plastic chairs we’ve been waiting in for the last hour while she fusses over their stings, running her finger over the little red bumps on their faces and arms. She even comes to me to tap the one on the tip of my nose.

  “Thank you for staying with them, Phoenix.”

  “I—” I shake my head. “Do you want me to get you anything? I could take the car and get you guys food.”

  I’m halfway out of my seat, but she puts her hand on my shoulder, easing me back down, saying, “That’s all right.” She adds in a whisper, “I think Neil and Mellie will want you here, if you don’t mind staying a little longer.” She swallows hard, eyes glistening. “I’m just—I’m so sorry I wasn’t there. I—” She can’t finish, and the twins converge on her, holding her up. I look away again.

  I slump in the chair, chin dipped to my chest, and pretend to sleep. I am exhausted. But it’s the kind of tired that makes you feel thin, hammered out, beyond sleep. The kind that makes you paranoid. I jump at every sound, and I wait for the suspicion to creep into the others’ voices. For someone to say, He never leaves that window unlocked.

  A nurse walks in thirty minutes later to tell us that we’re allowed to see Ellis. We follow her, hurrying along sterile hallways to keep up with her clipped pace.

  But I’m not quite ready to see Ellis. No one notices when I stop just short of the door and let it close. I lean against the wall and watch the speckled tile between my boots, straining my ears, but I can’t make out any words. They’re probably holding him and telling him they love him. I don’t want anything to do with that anyway.

  I start pacing, which turns into wandering until I find a vending machine. I’m digging in my pocket for change when someone says behind me, “You’re still here?”

  I turn to see Pastor Holland leaning heavily on his cane, a little out of breath. His storm-cloud eyebrows are narrowed at me.

  “They asked me to stay.”

  His frown deepens like he’s disappointed but not surprised. I watch a bright-red vein fracturing the white of his left eye when he tells me, “The Bowmans are a good family.”

  He doesn’t say anything else, but I know what he wants to add. You need to leave them alone.

  I’m here because of you, I want to say. Because your daughter still loves you, for some unfat
homable reason. Because all she wants is for you to stop being so stubborn and love her back.

  Instead, I repeat slowly and clearly, “They asked me to stay.”

  He breaks the stare with an irritated sigh before he walks toward Ellis’s room. I wait a few minutes before I follow.

  When I round the corner of the hallway, Pastor Holland has already disappeared behind the door, but there’s someone sitting outside. Neil has his back against the wall, knees drawn up to his chest, his eyes closed.

  The memory of him from a few hours ago, hands pumping frantically against his father’s chest, is impossible to shake.

  Neil doesn’t look up when I walk toward him. He doesn’t even seem to notice I’m there when I sit down. He doesn’t stir until I press my shoulder to his. And then, he just leans into me.

  “This wasn’t your fault,” I whisper.

  When he speaks, we’re huddled so close together that I can feel the deep rumble of his voice. It’s so intimate, I might as well be pressing my fingers to the soft spot on his neck, counting out the thrum of his heartbeats.

  “I’m angry,” he says quietly.

  “You have every right to be,” I say.

  He laughs without humor. “You don’t understand. I’m so—I’m so fucking pissed off. It scares me, how pissed off I am. I feel like my chest is going to bust open.”

  I’m taken a little off guard at the rage I feel in his voice—the way he shakes. I’ve never seen Neil angry. I suspect it takes a lot. But he’s been through more than a lot in the last few days.

  And as sweet as he’s always been with me, I’m relieved he doesn’t know that the girl who caused his family’s pain is right beside him.

  “I know exactly how you feel,” I say.

  Chapter 35

  JILL SAYS SHE’LL STAY at the hospital. “The rest of you need to go get some sleep.”

  “No,” Neil says, standing next to his father’s door with his arms wrapped around himself, like he’s been cut down the middle and might spill open if he lets go.

  Melody stands across from him, pinching her lips together. “I’m tired,” she says, glancing at her mother like she wants permission. Jill nods her approval.

  Melody presses her car keys into my hand, then turns and walks down the hall. I guess that means I’m going with her.

  I follow her out to the parking lot. When I pull the Jeep onto the road, the sun is hanging low in the sky. We’ve been at the hospital almost all day—the clock on the dash says it’s six in the afternoon.

  It’s a thirty-minute drive back to Jasper Hollow; the closest hospital was in the next town over. The radio is off, and the silence is uncomfortable. Melody’s jaw works, like she’s chewing over something, but she keeps her eyes straight ahead and her mouth clamped shut. I roll down my window and rest my elbow on the frame, letting the wind curl through my fingers.

  “How’s your dad?” I ask.

  She takes so long to answer, I think she’ll ignore me. But then she whispers, “He’ll be fine.”

  I nod.

  I don’t speak again until we clatter over the wooden bridge into town and I realize we probably shouldn’t go back to the house. It might still be crawling with bees—or worse, cops.

  “Should I—”

  “Pull over here,” she says.

  We’re still a mile from the Circle, nothing around but Pearl Mountain and the trees.

  “But—”

  “Just pull over,” she says.

  So I do.

  She doesn’t speak for a minute. Just keeps staring straight ahead. But I can tell she’s working up to it, so I cut the engine and wait.

  “I think I know who did this,” she says finally.

  My fingers curl tight around the steering wheel.

  “Mel—”

  “I got an email from a boy. About a year ago now. His email address was just a bunch of random numbers and letters. And he didn’t say what his name was.”

  She pauses, like she’s still not quite ready. A thousand questions rise in my throat, but I grit my teeth against them.

  She swallows before she plows on. “He said he thinks he’s Dad’s son.”

  I open my mouth.

  Close it.

  My vision swims, like I’ve been spinning around in circles. My body goes weak. I stop breathing.

  That night, in her room, when she got drunk and shivered under the covers. I have secrets, too, you know. I’ve got one so big, it could ruin everything.

  “Which is crazy,” she says. “It’s crazy, isn’t it? Dad wouldn’t—”

  She might shake her head, but I’m having so much trouble focusing my vision, I can’t be sure.

  “What did the email say?” My voice wants to quiver. It’s a fight to make it sound the way it should.

  “He told me that someone was dropping off money in his mailbox every year on his birthday. No note or anything, just his name written on the envelope and a hundred dollars in cash. Nobody ever saw who did it. Except last year, when he stayed up all night and watched. He saw a black SUV pull up around midnight, and then he borrowed his mom’s car—his adoptive mom’s—and followed him all the way back to our house.”

  I rake my fingers through my hair and fight the urge to squeeze my head between my knees.

  Melody swallows hard and looks at me, waiting for me to tell her it’s ridiculous.

  “That’s not enough to go on,” I say.

  “Right,” she says, nodding. “I didn’t believe it either. And neither did Neil.”

  “You told him?”

  “I showed him the email. He told me not to worry about it. People try to get to Dad all the time. Use him, because of his money or his influence or whatever.”

  “You never told your dad?”

  “Just Neil. I didn’t talk to Dad because I was afraid—I was fucking terrified that he’d tell me it was true. So I just tried to ignore it and hoped that would make it go away and we could go on living the way we always had. But then another email showed up. He said he wanted to tell people.”

  “Who?”

  She shrugs. “The media. Everyone, I guess. He didn’t think it was fair that my dad was lying to the world about him. He said Dad’s entire career was based on lies.” Her voice catches. She swallows again. “But he wanted to know how Neil and I felt about it first, because he knew that once he did it, it would make our lives chaos. He said he’d give me a chance to talk him out of it.”

  She shakes her head at her lap.

  “The thing is—I wasn’t sure I wanted to talk him out of it. I didn’t think it was true. But what if it was? That would mean that Dad had been lying to everyone all this time. It would mean he’d been lying to us. I freaked out. I didn’t know what to do. So I talked to Neil, and he said I should just ignore it. That it was all a bluff to blackmail us somehow, and as long as I didn’t take the bait, it would be okay. And he was right—whoever it was, I haven’t heard from him since. I thought it was all over with. But what if all the weird things that have been happening lately are because of him? What if this is his way of making Dad pay for lying about him all these years? Maybe we should tell the police—”

  “No police,” I say, too quickly.

  “Why not?”

  I come up with an excuse quicker than I knew I could. “You don’t know if your dad did anything wrong. It wouldn’t be right to tell anyone about it until you’re sure.”

  “But how do we find out for sure?”

  “Do you know where we can find him? The kid who emailed you?”

  She shakes her head. “He never gave me any information about him.”

  I shrug, like my heart isn’t trying to pound out of my chest and my brain isn’t swirling and she hasn’t just told me that maybe Mom and Ellis’s son is still alive somewhere. Mom looked for him after he disappeared. But there was no trace of where he’d gone, and the blood on the windowsill made her think—­

  “Then there’s nothing we can do right now but wait,�
� I say. “Just let the police continue with their investigation, and if it leads back to this boy . . . ​we’ll deal with it then. I’m sure Neil is right—it’ll all work itself out.”

  She doesn’t look very convinced. But she can’t offer a better solution, so she just chews on her lip and grabs my hand. It takes everything in me to try to keep mine from trembling. But I don’t know if she’d even notice, since hers is shaking so hard.

  Nina rang the Bowmans’ doorbell less than an hour after she realized her baby was missing.

  She had told her aunt and uncle that she was going to take Bailey for a drive and walked past the couch in the living room, where they were watching television, with an empty bundle of blankets in her arms. She held her finger to her lips, like the baby was sleeping and she didn’t want to disturb him.

  It was warm and bright out, the sun bearing down on her while she stared at the Bowmans’ red door, and she felt her whole body flush the same shade, and even her vision started to heat to a desperate, angry red. When no one came after she rang the bell, she pounded on the door with both fists and kicked it with her untied sneakers.

  When Jill finally opened it, Nina shoved past her and started searching the house—the bedrooms first. She tore apart blankets and sheets, flipped over mattresses and chairs, and ripped the clothes from every closet. She turned over couches and opened cabinets and pulled down shower curtains. She chanted, “Where is he, where is he, where is he,” and Jill followed her from room to room, voice quivering from confusion and fear, saying, “Tell me what you’re looking for, Nina. I can’t help you unless you tell me.”

  Nina ran into the nursery when she heard crying, but it was only the twins, with their soft cheeks and golden curls, just like their daddy’s.

  There was one room left—Ellis’s office. He sat at his desk, still in his pajama pants, reading glasses crooked on his face. He had the nerve to look surprised to see her, like he hadn’t heard her tearing apart his house.

  “You goddamned coward,” Nina said, launching herself at him across the desk, grabbing him by the front of the shirt and shaking him hard. “You tell me where he is.”