The Hollow Inside

by Brooke Lauren Davis

  She couldn’t go back to being alone.

  She couldn’t lose her child. Not again.

  That’s when she started to beg and plead. To bargain. “I’ll be better. I’ll try harder. I won’t turn away from you anymore.”

  But it was too late. Jonah wouldn’t change his mind.

  So she took a deep, steadying breath, and she said, “All right. I’ll leave in the morning.”

  He offered to sleep on the couch for the night so she’d have the bed to herself. She acted hurt and said she couldn’t stand to sleep in the room they had shared.

  He said he was sorry, and she believed him. He said he would help her find another job, and she thanked him. And then they went their separate ways.

  She lay down in the living room with her eyes wide open, listening hard for an hour, two, until the house was silent and she was certain that Jonah had fallen asleep. All the while, she worried at her lip, biting until blood dripped red down her chin.

  Then she went to her little girl’s room. She gripped her by her thin shoulders and shook her awake, and she told her, “We need to go. Now.”

  Chapter 41

  I BLINK AWAKE TO Melody’s face leaning over me, what feels like days later. The sunlight slants through the window. Her eyes are shadowed, and it makes them a liquid brown that comes to life when she tilts her head one way and then the other, and for a moment, I’m contentedly mesmerized.

  And then I remember that I passed out. Why I passed out. And I sit up so fast, Melody and I almost smack foreheads.

  Kidnapped. Mom kidnapped me.

  I must look like I’m about to spiral out of control again, because Melody grabs me gently by the shoulders and eases me back down on Pastor Holland’s couch. “You were out for almost an hour. Don’t rush it.”

  Jill runs in from the kitchen when she hears her daughter’s voice and announces to everyone else in the house, “She’s awake!”

  A man I don’t know emerges from behind her. He introduces himself as Dr. Whitaker and waves a flashlight in front of my eyes while the Bowmans and Pastor Holland huddle around to watch.

  I sit through a lengthy examination on the couch. Dr. Whitaker asks me questions about dizziness and head trauma and family history. I try hard to seem conscious and alert, but it’s not easy. Because over his shoulder, through the window to the backyard, something bright flashes at the edge of the woods, like someone is signaling with a hand mirror.

  Mom. She wants to talk. And she’s not subtle about it. She’s desperate enough to be careless.

  But I can’t slip away. Not with Jill’s watchful, worried eyes on me the rest of the day, checking in every ten minutes to ask if I feel dizzy or if I need an ice pack or if I want to lie down. I have to wait until long past dark, after everyone else falls asleep.

  -

  It’s almost two in the morning when I step into the woods. She’s waiting for me in the deep shadow of a bent oak tree.

  Neither of us speaks for a long time. I take inventory of her—bone-thin, every inch of pale skin covered in red bee stings, deep pits dug out of her cheeks and beneath her eyes. She watches me from under the thick fringe of her black lashes, her eyes half-wild.

  “Why the hell are you looking at me like all of this is my fault?” I say.

  Her hands clench into fists. “Why did you keep me waiting for so long? I was worried.”

  “I didn’t want to blow our cover. Which makes one of us,” I snap.

  “You’re abandoning me, aren’t you?” she says quietly. “That’s what you’re going to tell me? I always knew you would. Just like everyone else.”

  “Yeah, well, unlike everyone else, I’ve got a pretty damn good reason.” I step closer to her, and she’s startled, her eyes darting away like she’s afraid of me suddenly, but I get right in her face. No more evasion. No more riddles and mazes.

  “I’ve always been on your side,” I tell her. “I believed you when no one else did. So why did you lie to me?”

  “I was afraid you wouldn’t want to come with me. That night.”

  “So what?” I said. “You didn’t think that maybe there was a good reason for that? That maybe I would have been better off with him, living a normal life?”

  She swallows. Blinks. A shiny film covers her eyes.

  “No,” I say. “Of course you didn’t. Because it’s never been about what’s best for me. It’s always been about you.”

  I start to turn away in disgust, but she stops me with her hands on my shoulders. “He was taking you away from me, Phoenix, and I couldn’t let him do that. I couldn’t. You’re mine. A man could never understand what a child is to a mother.” She shakes her head again, muttering now. “Ellis never understood that either.”

  “So you did the same thing he did? Kidnapped someone else’s kid?”

  “No,” she says fiercely. “No, no, no. It’s different.”

  “I don’t see how.”

  “You were mine. You loved me.”

  “I didn’t know you. I don’t know you.” I start to back away from her. “After everything Ellis put you through. You stole me.”

  “You don’t understand,” she says, desperation thinning her voice. “You’re supposed to be the one who understands.”

  I take another step back. “I can’t do this. I have to—”

  “You promised,” she growls. “You promised to help me. You think the girl changes that?”

  I flinch. Did she watch Melody and me through Pastor Holland’s window? The thought makes me feel violated in a way I never have before. Since the day we met, Mom and I have shared everything from food, to blankets, to dreams. But the thought of her spying on me and Melody makes it feel like maggots are burrowing under my skin. Like no part of me is really mine.

  “I’ve protected you,” Mom says. “You loved me first.”

  She waits for me to answer, but I bite back the words that rise in my throat. Because if I let myself speak, it’s going to be what I know will hurt her the most. Not now. Not like this.

  “She’s just like him,” she hisses. “They’re all like him. She’s going to use you until she gets bored of you, and then she’ll leave you in the dirt. You’ll have no one. Do you understand what that means? Do you know what being alone really means?”

  Don’t say it. You can’t take it back once you say it.

  “She’s a liar. She’s a Bowman. I thought you were too smart to let her get to you. I thought I could trust you, but you were so much weaker than I thought. Even after I told you the truth about that family, you let them fool you. I should have known—”

  “Bailey is dead.”

  She flinches. Swallows.

  Then she says, “I told you that. There was blood—”

  “No. He didn’t die that day. He died a year ago.”

  She shakes her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  So I explain it to her—the cold, hard truth. The emails to Melody, his plan to reveal who his father was, the accident. The video of him turning toward the headlights in his last moments. The photograph his new mother held of him while she cried.

  Mom blinks, a dazed look on her face, like she’s just run into a wall she didn’t know was right in front of her.

  “You mean—” But she can’t finish her sentence.

  “I mean,” I say, “that Ellis didn’t kill him the night he took him from his crib. He put him up for adoption. I mean that Bailey was less than an hour away from Jasper Hollow for thirteen years. I mean that when you ran away, you left him behind. And now it’s too late to get him back.”

  For the span of a few seconds, the whole world is poised on the edge of a blade. Teetering back and forth between the moment I spoke and the moment Mom understands everything I said.

  It lasts long enough for me to regret what I’ve done. I take a step toward her, reaching out like I can pull the words back.

  Her lips open in a silent cry that she doesn’t seem to have the strength to give. Befo
re she collapses, she hooks her arm around my neck, and we both fall to our knees in the dirt.

  For weeks, Mom has been getting weaker, thinner, ignoring my offers to bring her food or give her money. But no matter how frail she looked, her bloodshot eyes still glowed hot, like what was left of her heart was a coal-powered engine.

  But all that heat drains from her in an instant. She is boneless in my arms, and the only sign that she’s still alive is her muttering, too low and weak to understand, the erratic beats of broken wings.

  “Mom—Mom, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said it.”

  I wanted to hurt her, but now that I’ve done it, I feel the pain in my own chest. The shaking in my own hands. The dizziness in my own head. Make it stop, make it stop, make it stop.

  “I’m sorry, Mom. Talk to me. Look at me.”

  I was all self-righteous bluster a few seconds ago, but that’s shattered now. Maybe other people can turn it off like a switch, the second someone they love stops deserving that love. But Mom is sewn into my fabric. Trying to pull out the stitches is like ripping myself to ragged pieces. And the longer she lies limp in my arms, the more I feel the tearing.

  I know that I should hate her. Be scared of her. Run away from her. But in my life, should has never meant a thing. All that’s ever mattered is what is.

  She doesn’t cry or scream or wail. She just shuts off. The muttering has gone silent. Her eyes are dry and blank as a corpse’s.

  “Come back,” I say, my voice breaking, my body trembling enough for the both of us.

  I draw her into my lap and rock back and forth with her until the sun starts its climb behind Mattie Mountain and the night sounds go quiet with the dawn.

  I’m sweating, but Mom is cold, and I rub down her arms with my palms to try to warm her.

  “You’ve still got me, okay? You’ve always got me. Just like I promised.” I clutch her close to my heart, vision blurry with tears.

  It’s like talking to a stone. I might as well be the only person in these woods. Do you know what being alone really means? she asked me.

  “It’s better to be angry, remember?” I say. “Angry is always better than sad. Let’s be angry together. Come on. Come back to me. Tell me how to fix this.”

  When her eyes finally, finally come back into focus, a relieved sob shakes me. I pull her in tighter.

  She presses her cold lips to my ear and tells me what she needs me to do.

  Chapter 42

  I WAKE UP ON the morning of filming for Ellis’s show with Melody’s head burrowed against my collarbone and her arm curled around my waist. Her eyelashes flutter against my cheek as she dreams.

  Neil is already in the kitchen, making a large breakfast for the big day ahead. And I shouldn’t, I know I shouldn’t, but I wonder what he would do if he were me.

  I imagine going into the kitchen and asking him, Is it ever right to do something wrong?

  Maybe he’d laugh at me or look at me with disgust. Maybe he couldn’t even begin to understand. Maybe I’m the only person in the world who has ever been torn this way.

  But I’ve never pretended to be as good as everyone else.

  -

  We each have a job to prepare for the ceremony. Jill left the house at five this morning to ready the Watering Hole for the surge of out-of-towners. Neil runs around the Circle with a clipboard, making sure all the trucks and booths and speakers are where they’re supposed to be. Melody and I take Pastor Holland’s truck and load up boxes packed with candles. And Pastor Holland follows everyone around and intimidates them into working faster, because intimidating is what Pastor Holland is best at.

  Ellis’s signing starts at noon, but he walks around the Circle all morning having earnest conversations with the people who have come from all over to see him—as earnest as any conversation can be when there’s a cameraman recording the whole thing. He puts his arm around their shoulders, leans in close when they talk, and does an excellent job of pretending he cares more about what they have to say than about how well the angle highlights his jawline or the way the sun makes the distinguished threads of silver in his hair shine.

  By the time the signing starts, it’s ninety degrees, but it feels more like a hundred with all the bodies packed into the Circle. They crowd around picnic tables and shop doorways, taking hundreds of pictures of the place they’ve read so much about, holding their phones high above their heads to try to capture shots of Ellis at the head of the line, which snakes all the way down Bowman Avenue to the base of Clara Mountain.

  I notice there are a lot of kids here, twisting around their parents’ legs and swinging on the low branches of Harriet’s Oak. I watch them, clenching and unclenching my slick hands.

  But no one is going to get hurt today but Ellis. Mom promised me that.

  Melody and I set up tables and make neat stacks of candles, then help pass them out and answer questions. Throughout the day, people recognize her as Ellis’s daughter and ask to take pictures with her. They say things like, I bet Ellis is a wonderful father. You are so blessed. What a perfect place to grow up in.

  She does a good job of answering the way she’s supposed to, smiling when it’s expected, pretending not to mind all the strangers touching her like they have a right to her.

  I’m just a girl trying to help the day go right—that’s what I tell myself to calm the sick nerves in my stomach. I pass out more boxes, help organize the signing line, carry trays of food from the Watering Hole out to picnic tables in the Circle. The sun starts to slip toward Clara.

  I keep busy, and just like the rhythms of my job at the restaurant, it calms me and keeps the time from being unbearably slow.

  It’s four o’clock by the time I take a break, sitting at a picnic table with a glass of lemonade that Jill brought me. I’m taking a sip when I see the hand mirror flashing between the trees down the road, where the asphalt curves and disappears around Pearl Mountain. The signal.

  I knew it was coming, but I still choke on the lemonade, coughing, eyes watering.

  Then I feel a strong hand pound my back. I glance behind me to see Neil, frowning down at me, eyes full of concern. “You all right?”

  I nod. “Fine.”

  He’s already changed into his clothes for the candle lighting ceremony—we’re all supposed to be onstage with Ellis for his speech. I twirl my finger in the air. “Let’s see you.”

  He smirks and gives me a full turn. I whistle and bare my teeth like I’ll eat him for dinner, which makes him tut in disapproval. “Girls are aggressive these days.”

  “Always have been,” I say. “We’re just less interested in hiding it now.”

  Neil laughs, the deepest, most honest, most beautiful laugh I’ve ever heard. I have to swallow hard to force down everything that wants to rush to the surface, but he still notices, and the frown returns. “What’s wrong?”

  “Do you—do you think you could take a walk with me?”

  He doesn’t ask me why. He doesn’t hesitate a second before he holds out his hand to pull me up from the picnic table. And then he follows me away from the crowd, toward the trees, where the signal came from.

  For the first minute or so, I can’t speak. Neil ambles patiently beside me, his hands in his pockets.

  I clear my throat, reaching for something to say. Anything.

  “I made out with your sister.”

  He stammers, “I—uh—well, congratulations.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I mean, I knew you liked each other. I knew that from the beginning—”

  “How the hell could you know that?”

  He shakes his head, smiling. “I probably knew how Melody felt before she knew. At least, before she’d admit it to herself. Maybe it’s a twin thing.” He shrugs. “You, I wasn’t as sure about. But you seemed to enjoy irritating her even more than I do.”

  Somehow, even with the sick churn in my stomach and heaviness in my lungs, he manages to make me laugh.

  We walk in silen
ce for a few more moments, drawing closer to that dark spot in the trees. We round the bend in the road, out of sight from the Circle. “You don’t think there’s something wrong with us?” I ask.

  “No.”

  “But your dad—”

  “He’ll have a problem with it. I mean, I hope you guys tell him someday. Really. And I’m sure, eventually, he’ll get used to it and we’ll all live close together and have really awesome barbeques at each other’s houses. But it won’t be like that at the beginning.” He drapes his arm over my shoulders and squeezes. “He’ll come around, though. Because we’re a family, and Dad and I won’t ever let anything change that. And until he remembers it, you can have awesome barbeques with me.”

  God, Neily’s head must be a nice place to live. I have to look away from him to get my trembling mouth under control and swipe my forearm over my burning eyes.

  And that’s when I hear the noise beside me—a hollow crack.

  Neil falls.

  Mom stands over him, holding a rock.

  Bring me one of them, she whispered to me last night, in the woods while I held her. I’ll let you decide which.

  Every time I tried to even think about giving Melody over to Mom, my heart stuttered in my chest and all I could think was, No.

  As fierce and brave as she is, Neil is stronger. If something goes wrong—­

  But nothing is going to go wrong. We’re going to get our confession, and Melody will end up hating me, but she’ll be safe, and so will Jill and Neil. Mom promised.

  I scramble into action, taking his ankles while Mom lifts him under the arms, and we carry him into the woods where the van is waiting, back doors flung open. Once we get him inside, I help her bind his hands and feet with rope.

  He lies so still that I hold my hand over his mouth, just to make sure he’s still breathing. Then I brush a curl back from his forehead, slowly, trailing my fingers over his skin like he’ll be able to feel everything I want to say. You’ll be all right. If you knew the whole story, I think you’d understand.

  And then I glance up and notice it, balanced there on the dashboard—a small, black handgun.