“Move,” she says again, voice scratching.
“I’m asking you not to do this.”
She tries to lunge past me, but I tackle her at the same moment the gun goes off again.
I sit on her stomach while she writhes under me, screaming and clawing at my face. I try to pin her arms down, but I freeze when I feel the cold barrel of the gun buried in my stomach.
“Get off me.”
“It’s me,” I tell her, though my voice is so broken by now, so exhausted from trying to hold myself together all this time, I don’t even know if she understands what I said.
She screams, pressing the gun up hard through my ribs like a punch, pushing the air out of my lungs until I’m gasping. “Why did you stop me? Why did you stop me?”
I can just make out the faint blare of sirens in the distance.
I grab her by the shoulders and shake her hard, her bones so close to the surface that they’re sharp under my hands. “We have to go. I’m not leaving without you. I promised I’d never leave you, didn’t I?” I peer down into those eyes. Those eyes that look black until she lets you get close enough to see the blue. The whites are shot through with red veins. Her grip on the gun shakes. I know she’s tired, too.
The sirens are getting louder.
I press my forehead to hers. “Come on, Mom. Choose me. For once in your goddamn life, choose me.”
I feel the pressure on my stomach ease, just a fraction. When I draw back, she’s frowning up at me.
“I’m still here,” I whisper.
She stares at me, lips parted, like she’s looking at someone she’s never seen before. Or maybe like she’s found something she didn’t know she’d lost.
The girl she drew once, with a pair of blazing wings.
And then the grief breaks over her like a wave. The gun clatters to the stage beside us, and she wraps her arms around me, shaking so hard that I can barely lift her up, even though she’s lost so much weight. “My baby,” she mumbles into my hair, and I don’t know if she’s talking about me or Bailey, but it doesn’t matter.
Now that she doesn’t have the gun, half the people have started rising from the ground, confused, some of them already running for their cars. I can see red and blue lights flashing against the dark trees, coming around the corner. We have to get out of here. I half drag Mom toward the edge of the stage.
Then another voice comes from behind us. And it says with a chilling calm, “My dad didn’t kill Bailey.”
I turn to see Neil. The ropes that tied him lie at his feet.
He’s holding the gun Mom dropped.
“I did,” he says.
“Neil?” Melody says, standing behind him.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I had to do it. I had to protect my family. And that’s why I have to do this.”
He points the gun between Mom’s eyes and pulls the trigger.
Chapter 44
A WHITE VAN THAT’S seen better days. A bird carved into the passenger door with the tip of a key. Curly fries bought with cup-holder change. Long games of Monopoly with more pieces missing than found. Learning to whistle and snap my fingers. Learning to drive. Learning to slip my hand into someone’s pocket without a soul noticing, without a soul getting hurt.
Reading to each other from books found in donation boxes. Painting her nails by firelight, amazed by the steadiness in her hands, the shape of her fingers, callused like an artist’s. Imitating the way she drew pictures, just so she would keep drawing them. Picking her bouquets full of the most beautiful weeds I’ve ever seen.
Jim Croce and radio talk shows and radio static. Fingers and hair, breath and thoughts entwined. Warm soup on cold nights. Walking under twinkling skyscrapers so tall, they disappear in the clouds. Wandering dark fields in the middle of nowhere, the sky a sheet of black silk, a thousand holes poked through it and flashes of Heaven peeking through.
Warm, cold, rain, shine, night, day, asleep, awake. Up in the stars and drowning in the ocean.
The wildflower she picked and carried home.
Chapter 45
MOM’S BODY FALLS INTO mine, and we both crash into the stage.
It all happened so fast, I didn’t even have time to scream.
She’s facedown beside me in a pool of spreading blood, and I reach for her, frantic, turning her over to see for myself.
Her blue-black eyes stare back at me.
Then they blink. And she says, “Phoenix?”
And then I look beside her and see another limp body. And I understand what happened.
Pastor Holland has Neil pinned under his tall, broad frame. Neil struggles to get free, the gun knocked from his hands.
As Neil pushes and scrambles, Pastor Holland doesn’t move.
The blood pooling on the stage is coming from the hole at his temple.
When Mom sees it for herself, she throws up over the edge of the stage, into the grass. She grips the boards like the earth is tilting around her.
My ears are ringing, as though a bomb just went off. I hardly register all the people running for their cars and yelling for each other. I don’t have time—the sirens are so close.
I grab Mom around the waist to haul her to her feet, and then I reach down to grab the gun from where Neil dropped it.
Melody’s hand gets there first.
She snatches it away from me. But she doesn’t point it at me—just holds it out of reach, while she stares me down.
Even after everything that’s happened, everything I’ve done to her, she still says, “Go.”
And I know that’s the closest thing I will ever get to forgiveness from Melody Bowman.
Without another look back, I drag Mom off the stage—carry her almost, because it seems like she doesn’t have control of her legs anymore. I hardly even notice Ellis when we stagger past him, passed out from the pain of his gunshot wound.
But Mom is awake for every second of her pain. She screams like every inch of her is on fire—bursting blood vessels, blistering skin, crackling bones, and smoke-filled lungs. She screams like someone will listen and put out the flames. She screams and screams, but there’s nothing I can do to stop the burning.
I force her into the van, which she parked behind Sugar House Bakery so we could make a quick exit. Then I jump into the driver’s seat and hit the gas, and just as the Circle fills with police cruisers, we speed off into the dark, leaving Jasper Hollow and all the wreckage in our wake far, far behind.
Nina Holland’s favorite memory of her father, the one that she held close to her heart all those years away from home, was a quiet one. Before everything that happened. She was in eighth grade, and she had a D-in Mrs. Snyder’s Algebra I class. And she had finally worked up the courage to show her father her interim report.
It was a Sunday morning, and they always got to the church before the sun came up on Sunday mornings. The window showed it was still dark outside his office—the tiny, green-carpeted room down the hall from the sanctuary.
He was looking down at his sermon notes when, without a word, she placed the yellow slip of paper right in front of him.
She held her breath with her hands knit tight together as he picked it up. Looked it over. Lifted his eyes to her.
And he said, “Let’s take a walk.”
He put one hand on her shoulder and the other in his pocket, and they walked down the quiet hallway, past the empty sanctuary, out the big double doors, and onto the church lawn.
She had a million arguments on her lips, ready to throw up like a shield. But she forgot every one of them when her father stopped on the lawn and turned to her. His face looked even more severe than usual in the predawn shadows, and she braced herself for whatever he had to say next.
But he didn’t say anything. Instead, he took off his jacket and spread it out on the dew-covered grass. And he sat down on it.
She stared at him in stunned silence—her tall, dignified father, sitting on the ground.
He spread his coat out a
nd patted the space on it beside him. And she took that as her cue to sit down, too.
“Mrs. Snyder called me last Friday,” he said.
She swallowed. “You’ve known all week?”
He nodded.
Great. Now she’d be in trouble for keeping it from him for so long, too.
But he put his arm around her then. She was so nervous about his reaction that she hadn’t realized how cold she was. Not until he tucked her close to his side and melted the chill with his warmth.
He said, “I want you to remember something. It’s a secret that all parents have. And I’m only ever going to say it this once, and if you ever bring it up again, I’m going to deny it. All right?”
She nodded gravely.
He pulled her in tighter and spoke right into her ear, even though there was no one else around to hear him.
“I am your father. But I’m also a person. Just a person. Which means that sometimes I don’t know what’s best for you, and sometimes I make the wrong choices, and sometimes I’m a bad father. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
She nodded again, though she wasn’t entirely sure she did just yet.
“You didn’t show me your grade for a week because you were afraid I’d get mad. Really mad. Is that right?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“I’m sorry that’s what you’ve come to expect from me. I’m sorry that I can’t always be better for you.”
“I forgive you,” she said instantly, burrowing her face against his shoulder.
He rested his cheek on the crown of her hair. They sat there together and watched the sun crest over Mattie Mountain, their own little private Dawn Festival.
“I just need a little more time to come around than most people,” he said. “Never give up on me, and I’ll never give up on you.”
“I won’t,” she whispered back. “I promise.”
Chapter 46
I DRIVE.
That’s what we used to do, before Jasper Hollow. We drove. Wandered. Did our best to outpace our demons, until the day we decided to run toward them.
Did we beat them? I don’t know. The truth is out. Pastor Holland learned what really happened to Bailey, who his daughter really was, before he died. Maybe she was right and that’s all it took for him to forgive her. For him to realize that he loved her enough to take a bullet for her.
But then I remember that night in her bedroom, where he kept all her clothes neatly folded, when he told me, I’d like to talk to her. And I wonder if he already knew that he loved her enough.
There’s no way to ask him now. The truth shifts and dissipates like smoke.
Mom lies on the mattress in the back, staring blankly up at the ceiling. She hasn’t said a word since we drove away from Jasper Hollow. I keep the van’s radio on, turned up—the only bit of privacy I can offer her.
But I’m glad she’s asleep when one of the stations shares some breaking news.
Neil confessed to the whole thing, right on camera while the police put him in handcuffs.
He was going to spread lies about Dad. I had to stop him. So I told him to meet me in Jasper Hollow, just to talk. Dad and I were coming back from a college tour—he didn’t know a thing about it, I swear—and I was driving. He insisted on switching seats and telling everyone he was the driver, but it was me. Anderson started walking toward us, and I stepped on the gas, and—
I turn the radio off.
-
I don’t have any particular direction in mind, and I pay more attention to the time than the miles. Getting through each hour is an accomplishment, because I’ve always heard grief gets better with time. I cling to the idea that every minute between us and that gunshot is a minute closer to Mom feeling okay again.
I try not to think about what I’d be doing right now if I were still in Jasper Hollow. About my apron from the Watering Hole, recently washed and folded neatly in the top drawer of my dresser.
I drive through the next day and deep into the night, little stars flaring to life above the infinite road. The sky is so wide here that it seems to curve at the edges, like we’re trapped under an empty bowl. I drive until I’m too tired to go any farther. Then I pull off the road, far into an abandoned field, grown over by dandelions that dance in the warm breeze.
I put the van in park and cut the engine. Then, without looking back at her, I say tentatively, “Mom?”
She doesn’t respond. I didn’t expect her to. Lost in her head—and I worry that maybe this will be the time that she never finds her way out again.
Instead of joining her in the back, I decide to give her space and sleep outside in the balmy night. I don’t bother with the tent. I just grab a blanket and find a soft patch of dirt to spread it over.
If the inside of the van felt too cramped, out here, the world’s too big. Too much empty space to fill with thoughts, about what Melody is doing, and how Jill feels about me after everything, and whether or not Ellis and Neil are in jail. About what life will be like for Mom and me from now on.
Then I hear the back doors of the van swing open and shut. And a few seconds later, Mom settles down beside me on the blanket.
I let my head fall to the side, and I meet her wide, shining gaze. We stare at each other for a long time.
She reaches for me. I reach back.
We don’t say a word. Just hold on tight, rocking each other through our griefs—hers for her father, mine for our perfect life in a warm house with a little orange cat. I don’t know how long we stay like that—until we both fall asleep, swept up in our own dreamless oblivions.
We wake with the sun the next morning, and Mom says, “I’ll drive.”
Though I have no idea where we’re supposed to go from here. After everything, we’re on the run again.
We’ll never have the life we’ve been chasing. That realization crushes me.
I know we’ve crossed too many lines to ever really deserve it.
But now, I’m not sure that anyone does.
Chapter 47
TWO DAYS LATER, MOM parks the van on a quiet suburban street. Just a few driveways down from a little green house with a basketball hoop in the driveway.
We watch it for a couple of hours, the way we used to before we broke into a place. Only one person lives here, and he doesn’t come back from work until dark. He walks to the front door with his shoulders slumped, like he’s got something heavy slung across his back.
The house is just a place to come back to. The grass is overgrown and uneven and sprouting through cracks in the driveway. The siding could use a power wash and paint job. The garage door hangs crooked on its tracks.
But the basketball hoop has been taken care of. The weeds pulled around the base and the backboard scrubbed to a shine.
The man has focused much less on taking care of himself. His hair and beard are long and unkempt, his clothes hanging on his wiry frame. He eats his dinner standing at the kitchen counter and then tosses the balled-up wrappers in the trash. He braces his elbows on the counter and holds his head in his hands for a few minutes.
The lights in the kitchen switch off, and the man goes to the living room to watch TV. He falls asleep in a recliner with a Seinfeld rerun on in the background.
“You’re the one leaving me,” I say to Mom quietly, my eyes still trained on the man. “You always said I’d be the one to leave you.”
“Not forever,” she says.
“I just don’t understand.”
She squeezes my hand until I meet her gaze. “You deserve to know him,” she says.
Tears prick at my eyes. “You sure you just don’t want me around anymore?”
She grips my hand tighter. “You’ve always tried to do what’s best for me, and now it’s my turn to do what’s best for you. Even if it hurts me.”
I stare hard at the man, motionless in his recliner.
“What if he turns me away?”
“He won’t.”
“But—”
&nbs
p; “I’ll wait here for tonight. You can come back out if he won’t let you stay. But that isn’t going to happen. Okay?”
I press my lips together. Nod.
We make our last hug short and tight. She kisses my forehead. And then I get out of the van.
I don’t let myself look back as I walk up to the door.
I knock three times.
There’s a pause. I imagine him grumbling as he pushes himself up out of the recliner. His slow shuffle to the door.
Then he opens it. And he stares at me, waiting for an explanation, like maybe I’m selling insurance or Girl Scout cookies.
I open my mouth, but I can’t think of one to give him. All that time in the car, and I couldn’t come up with a single plan beyond knocking on the door.
And then he steps forward, into the porch light, and stares hard into my face.
After a moment, tentatively, he says, “Lily?”
Lily. A nervous laugh escapes my mouth. No one has called me that in years—not since Mom and I ran away and she gave me a new name. I almost forgot it ever belonged to me. I don’t know how I feel about it right now. I may not be Lily anymore, but I’m not sure that I’m Phoenix either.
“Dad?” I say.
I brace myself for questions. Maybe anger at me and at Mom. The only thing I’m really hoping for is that he’ll let me in and that maybe he’ll have something in the fridge that hasn’t expired.
But then he staggers forward, wraps me in his arms, and crushes me to him. At first, I don’t have any idea what to do in response, because I didn’t do anything to earn this. Nothing except come back.
Hesitantly, I hug him. His whole body shakes, and his tears dampen my hair. “Lily,” he says. “Lily. My Lily. God, I thought—”
He can’t talk anymore, so he just holds on to me harder.
A lot of thoughts tumble through me, too many to latch on to more than this one—I don’t know this man. But something looms larger than anything else, swelling above the chaos in my head.
It’s the same feeling I had with Mom when she used to stroke my hair while I rested my head in her lap. The same feeling I had with Melody, the night we danced and she smiled at me for the very first time.
The Hollow Inside Page 28
