A Sky for Us Alone

by Kristin Russell

  “No. I’ll listen to anything you want to say, but if there’s one thing I learned up there, it’s that answers just lead to bigger questions. That’s fine and all, but right now, I’ve got plenty of questions I need to answer for myself, and no one else can do it for me.”

  Mama Draughn tilted her head a little and smiled, then rested her chin in her hand. “What?” I asked, wanting to hear her thoughts behind the expression on her face.

  “Was just thinking about when you stayed with us here for a little. I’d watch you playing outside. You’d run in these circles, over and over, and I knew it was because you were doing the same thing in your head. I’d wonder when you’d finally take off running in another direction and start exploring. Here you are. You’re doing it.”

  “I might ask you to remind me of that again sometime,” I said, and looked around the room, taking a last mental snapshot to remember. The pictures of June that were curling around the edges, the yellow curtains Mama Draughn washed and ironed every month, with the holes she mended, and the ghost smells of everything she’d ever cooked in her kitchen.

  “I have one favor to ask you,” she said.

  “I owe you more than that.”

  Mama Draughn glanced at the closed bedroom door where Mr. Draughn was napping, the sound of the fan turning around coming through softly. “He doesn’t know. About June. And—”

  “Amos,” I said, so she was clear on the fact that I knew what she meant.

  “Right. That’s what drove Nuna away. That I never told him, and I never will, because I feel it would be cruel to break his heart over a foolish night that I’ve spent more than half my life paying for in guilt. And if that makes me a liar, so be it.”

  “I understand,” I said. “A lot more now than I could have before.” I reached down for my backpack and pulled it into my lap. In the bottom, I found the revolver she’d lent to me. “Here,” I said, putting it on the table.

  “You don’t want to take it with you? I’d hate to think it, but you might need it.”

  “I might. But I’d rather leave it behind, along with some other things that aren’t as easy to get rid of. Might as well start there.” I stood from the table and hung the pack over my shoulder.

  She walked around the table and pulled me toward her, her knotted fingers that had worked love into countless crusts and dinners pressing into my back.

  “I’ll be talking to you,” I said.

  “I believe you. That says a lot.”

  When I got in the car, the sadness of two goodbyes mixed with my excitement about finally getting to Tennessee. She was the beginning at the end of everything else we’d soon put behind us.

  Chapter 48

  I WALKED AROUND THE side of her trailer and made sure that Moore’s truck was gone before I knocked. I’d parked the car near Widow Hemlock’s, beside the row of holly bushes that partly kept it from view of the road.

  As soon as my knuckles lifted from the door, I heard soft footsteps from inside and the sound of the TV volume dropped. Then there was Omie’s little voice, and Tennessee saying “Shhh,” while she came closer.

  “Hello?” she said, through the still-closed door.

  “Hey, it’s me.” I listened to her unlock the chain first, and then the lock.

  “Come in,” she said, standing behind the door and opening it just enough for me to get through, then pulled me inside and stretched her arms around my neck. “You’re safe,” she said, and I noticed the dark circles under her eyes like she hadn’t slept for a few nights.

  Omie got up off the couch and ran to me, squeezing my legs in his little arms.

  “Come on, Omes,” Tennessee said to him, and took one of his hands. “I’ll put the Mickey Mouse video on for you in our room so me and Harlowe can talk a minute, okay?”

  I waited in the kitchen while she set up the DVD player and headphones in their room. I wondered how many times she’d relied on those headphones to try to keep Omie from knowing about their dad, and how’d she’d handle it when he started asking questions himself. There was a casserole dish half-covered with foil on the table, an opened bottle of orange juice, and a box of cereal.

  When she came back, I pulled her toward me, and the tightness in her shoulders released a little beneath my hands. She lifted her face to mine and I kissed her, thinking how when I was in the grave on the mountain, I wasn’t sure that I’d ever get to do it again and how much I was looking forward to countless others. “Are you packed?” I asked. “Everything’s ready for us to go.”

  She settled back onto her heels from her tiptoes that had lifted her further into my lips a moment ago. “Some things happened while you were gone,” she said.

  My stomach flipped. “I’m listening,” I said, and rested my backpack on the floor.

  She pulled one of the chairs out from the table, and I reached for the one next to her, scooting a little closer once we were both sitting.

  “Almost as soon as Dad left, he started calling constantly. He sounded paranoid, saying that someone was following him and that he thought Amos was out to get him. A couple of times he cried and said God was punishing him for not taking better care of Mom, but then in the same breath he’d say random awful things I can’t even repeat about the black guy sitting beside him at a traffic light or the Hispanic woman in line at the restaurant.”

  “Or the kid who pulled up in front of him at the gas station,” I added.

  “Yeah,” she said, and frowned down at the fingernails she couldn’t stop picking at. “It all sounds really familiar, doesn’t it?”

  “It’s why we need to get both of you out of here,” I said. “Because he’s right on the edge, and you don’t know how much longer he can stay there.”

  “Where do you think we should go?” she asked.

  I hadn’t had any time to think about it, or look at a map. “We can pick somewhere together, and if we don’t like it, we’ll go somewhere else,” I said.

  “I can’t jerk Omie around like that all over the place.”

  “And I don’t want you to. Listen, I’ll tell you while we’re driving, but I can take care of us now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I have money. Plenty of it to get us settled until I can find work. You won’t even have to worry about it, you can just go to school and take care of Omie.”

  “Wait a minute,” she said, and shifted in her chair, leaning a little farther away from me. “Having money doesn’t mean you can be there in the ways I need you if we’re really going to do this.”

  “No, I know that. It won’t fix everything, but it will make it easier, you have to admit that.”

  “Not if everything else is a struggle and we don’t have a place we can call home.”

  My stomach sank and my heart rose up in my throat.

  “After the calls from Dad, I phoned my aunt Celeste. They’re coming for us tonight instead of tomorrow.”

  “Tennessee,” I said, but she cut me off before I could say any more and put her hand on my knee to get me to calm down.

  “They just sold their house and decided to move outside of Williamsburg,” she said. “So Dad won’t be able to find us there. There’s an even better school with an honors program so hopefully I can get a college scholarship, and a bigger house where we’ll have our own rooms. They’re changing everything for us. So we can have a better chance. I can’t say no to that, no matter how much I care about you. I told you from the beginning, my life isn’t my own right now. As soon as Mom died, it became about Omie, and it will be for the next fifteen years, until he’s ready to go out on his own.” Her voice grew louder and she pressed one of her palms against her forehead like she was getting a headache. “I don’t want to do it all by myself anymore, Harlowe.” She took a deep breath and looked into my eyes. “Not if I don’t have to. I’m so tired,” she said, and ran her fingers along her wet cheeks.

  “But I want to be there with you,” I said.

  “I know you do, but you can’t
right now as much as they can.”

  “What if I wanted to move there too?”

  “Harlowe, please don’t make this any harder. I already feel awful because I know you had this idea that we could start everything new together—and for a little while, I thought maybe it could work, too, but it just doesn’t feel right. The timing’s all wrong.”

  My tired heart dropped into my shoes. “If it’s about timing, then I’ll wait,” I said.

  The front door opened and Moore walked into the room.

  Chapter 49

  “WHAT IS HE DOING here?” Moore crossed the room and walked straight toward us, his false leg dragging a little behind the other.

  I gripped my backpack but didn’t answer him.

  “You let him in here?” Moore turned to Tennessee when I was silent.

  “Shhh!” She held her hand up like she wanted to silence everything. “I need to check on Omie,” she said.

  “Stay back in your bedroom,” he said while she walked away, and fixed his sight on me.

  I stood from the table. “I’ll go now. Tennessee told me it wasn’t a great time. This is all my fault.”

  “Damn straight it’s your fault. I knew as soon as I laid eyes on you that you were one to stir up shit whenever you got a chance, and then you went and proved it. Several times over, too.”

  I thought of how many times I’d kept my mouth shut about all the things that had made me mad for so long. “You didn’t know anything about me then and you still don’t. You were just looking for someone to blame and I got in your way.”

  Moore flung his hand toward me like his reach for my throat was automatic. I dropped my backpack on the floor and backed away from him. From the corner of my eye, I saw Tennessee standing at the back of the room. He came toward me again, and this time got ahold of my face, his fingers stretched toward my eyes. I couldn’t see him or anything anymore when his hand covered my vision and pressed against my nose.

  “Leave him alone!” Tennessee screamed.

  “You can fuck up your own life if you want, but not hers,” he said, when I managed to push his hand off my face, but the one around my throat tightened even more.

  I swung at him, but he held me out so I couldn’t reach him. I sensed something behind him, but knew better than to take my eyes away from his face. There was a loud thud against the back of his head. Then came the sound of glass and clay crashing against the floor. Tennessee cried from behind him, and pieces of a light bulb and lamp scattered in the scuffle of their feet.

  Moore let go of my throat, and then turned around to look for Tennessee. As soon as he found her, he grabbed a handful of her hair and pulled it so tight that her neck stretched back and she fell to her knees on the floor. She tried to catch her breath through her sobs. I rushed toward them along the ground, but Moore kicked me away. He took hold of the locket Tennessee’s mom had given her, the chain shining bright against her skin.

  “You don’t deserve this,” he said, and tore the locket from her neck. It flew into the air and then spun on the laminate floor. Tennessee scrambled after it. I tried to reach her, but before I could I saw Moore open the kitchen drawer and bring out a knife.

  “No!” Tennessee screamed at him from the floor.

  We turned toward Omie’s shrill cries in the hallway. He stood there, watching all three of us, wetness spreading across the front of his shorts and running down his leg. Tennessee ran over to him, swept him into her arms, then down the hallway to their room.

  The knife turned in Moore’s hand, and butane sparked in his eyes. The scar pulled his face back into the smile that held nothing but hate. Through the adrenaline pounding in my veins, I realized I’d turned my ankle again at some point during the fight and it throbbed along with the heartbeat in my ears.

  I backed slowly away from Moore and then froze, hoping to throw him for just one instant. In his confusion I bolted for the door and managed to get out onto the porch. He followed me into the yard and swiped the air with his knife. His eyes filled with the kind of crazy that left no room for anything else. Just like at the gas station, I knew I could have been anyone, as long as it was someone he could hurt.

  Two kinds of screams flooded from the front door of their trailer. Omie ran onto the porch, Tennessee yelling after him, unable to hold him back any longer.

  “Stop!” Tennessee yelled at Moore, and at everything else that spun beyond our control.

  Moore kept his gaze on me while he inched forward. We were almost to the end of the drive by then. I stumbled on a rock behind me and he swiped the knife in my direction. I ducked just in time for it to miss my throat and nick the front of my shoulder instead.

  Through the pain, I heard Omie’s and Tennessee’s cries from the porch matching mine. Moore found his footing fast this time and sprang toward me once more.

  There was the sound of tires in the drive behind me, and Moore looked away from me for one instant to see the car. Then I heard it. The shot rang through our valley and echoed against our shredded mountains before sinking into the earth along with the bones of our people.

  A look of surprise came over Moore’s face when the breath left him, and he fell toward me. This time he missed entirely, and once he had fallen to the ground, he never moved again.

  In a shaken blur, I turned to find Mr. Draughn holding his shotgun, and, standing close behind his elbow, Mama Draughn.

  Chapter 50

  I LIMPED AROUND MOORE’S body, toward them.

  “Widow Hemlock called,” Mama Draughn said before I could ask. “Are you hurt at all?”

  I pressed my hand against my shoulder and then looked down at the smear of blood on my fingers. “It’s not too bad,” I said, then left them to walk toward the porch, where Tennessee and Omie stood.

  She held Omie in her arms, his head against her chest. I wrapped my arms around them both, hoping that maybe I could blanket her trembling and sobs at least a little. We watched Mr. Draughn leave the shotgun in the bed of his truck, and then both of them walk toward us.

  “Tennessee, I’ll go inside and make some calls,” Mama Draughn said. “You don’t need to worry about the details.” I knew she would most likely call Amos first, because it was the fastest and easiest way to get these things taken care of.

  “I can’t stand out here any longer,” Tennessee said. Mr. Draughn and I followed her and Omie inside. Once she saw that Omie would let her, she set him down beside Mr. Draughn on the couch, where he curled up against him. Mr. Draughn pulled his old watch and chain from his pocket, the same one that I coveted as a kid. I knew Omie would have plenty of questions for Tennessee in the months and years to come, but I was glad to see that right then he was still as trusting of Mr. Draughn as he had been the first day he met him. Watching him, though, he seemed much older than he had been less than two weeks ago. That summer had done the same to all of us, I was sure of it.

  Tennessee took my hand and pulled me into a corner where we could talk without anyone hearing us. She leaned into my chest and I rubbed her back. “I don’t know what I feel right now,” she said. “Or what I’m supposed to feel. I think I’m sad, but I’m also a little relieved, and oh God, that feels so terrible to say.” Her tears soaked into my shirt.

  I didn’t know what I could possibly tell her, so I asked, “What do you need from me?”

  “The same you needed from me. Just to know you’re there. Even if we aren’t in the same place. Celeste should be here soon.”

  We heard the sirens, same as the night when we’d found Moore in the bathroom, but Mama Draughn walked out onto the porch to answer the questions this time. I was glad that I wouldn’t have to see the look on Moore’s face again, and hoped the memory of it would lift for all of us at some point, too.

  “I’m sorry if I made things harder for you earlier when we were talking. I’ve never felt better in my life than when the three of us are together, and I really wanted to have that all the time. I still want it.”

  “I know,” she
said. “Thing is, neither of us can fix this stuff for each other.”

  I sighed and then said, “Yes, but that doesn’t mean I’m not mad about it.”

  She looked over at Omie and Mr. Draughn and drew a deep breath. “I’m mostly packed, but need to grab a few more things. Come with me?”

  We walked down the hallway, past the open bathroom to her room.

  “I don’t want to take too much,” she said, looking at her still-full bookshelves and then around the room at Omie’s stuffed animals on the bed.

  “I feel the same way. I don’t need too many reminders. Except I’d like to have one of you.”

  She walked over to the table by her bed and picked up the geode she’d found the first time we went to Mohosh Pond together. “There’s this,” she said. “Would you like to take it?”

  “We should break it open,” I said. “So we can both take it with us.” I looked around for anything that might help me crack the rock.

  “Outside the window,” she said. “There are some tools by the stack of wood. We used them for the fort.” She pushed the bottom of the frame and then lifted the screen.

  I found a rusted sledgehammer and ax, but was worried they’d splinter the thing into shards. A little farther back, half-hidden by a stack of broken crates, there was a pipe splitter, tossed as if no one ever had any use for it. It took some work, and my hands ached from the pressure, but I managed to break the rock into halves, with only a few slivers falling from each part.

  Tennessee sat on the edge of the bed and leaned over her knees, staring into space, when I came back through the window. She jostled when she saw me stand in front of her, like I’d pulled her back into the room with me from someplace else.

  Without looking at them closely yet, I handed both pieces to her.

  “Amethyst,” she said, running her fingers along the crystals. “Look at that.”

  “Do you think we changed it that day at Mohosh?” I sat down on the bed beside her.