by Aimee Hix
“Thank you, Willa. For being Michael’s friend. For taking care of Seth. My sons have been lucky to have you in their lives.”
“I … I have no response to that.”
He didn’t laugh but only barely, I could tell, as he pressed his lips together tightly.
“Sorry, I just honestly thought you two hated me.”
He looked baffled. At least it wasn’t just me that was confused then.
“Why would you think that? We’ve always loved you.”
I thought about it for a minute. Why had I thought they’d hated me? They’d never said anything overt.
“I really don’t know why. I just always thought that you didn’t approve of Michael spending so much time with me, that his best friend was a girl. And that if you didn’t like me being Michael’s best friend and knew that he didn’t want me and Seth together, that this wouldn’t be something you’d want either.”
He shook his head. “We have always thought of you as a part of our family, just like your parents have thought of Seth and Michael as a part of their family. We’d always hoped you would rub off on Michael, get him to stop feeling like he needed to prove himself to everyone, especially me.”
It was my turn to shake my head. I had to fight back tears and turned away knowing I was going to be unsuccessful. The Colonel didn’t follow me as I moved through the living room and sat on the couch with my back to him. He may not have been good with his own emotions but he was pretty good at recognizing other people’s.
“Sorry, it’s been a really weird year,” I said.
The Colonel came and sat on the other side of the couch, careful not to crumple any of the papers I’d strewn about. Out of the corner of my eye I could see him looking straight ahead, like he was trying to be close but still give me some privacy. It was sweet, and that was a sentiment I had never entertained about the man before. Stupid, really, considering he’d raised two of my favorite people.
“I know we haven’t talked much since … well, ever, but I don’t know much about girls and sometimes that made me nervous around you. I suppose that’s why you felt we never liked you. Barbara and I aren’t the most effusive people, but we do care. I know it’s been really hard on you since even before Michael died. I knew you were unhappy about him joining the Army. Honestly, so was I.”
The man wouldn’t stop surprising me, it seemed. Him telling me he hadn’t wanted Michael to join up was the last thing I would have ever expected to come out of his mouth. I sniffed, embarrassingly, and grabbed a tissue from the box situated on the side table. Seth was a great housekeeper.
“You didn’t? I thought that you wanted them both to join up.”
“I wanted them to do what they wanted. Seth wanted it. Michael didn’t. He thought it was what we expected of him. He was always doing what he thought other people wanted.”
We sat in silence for a few moments before I got up.
“Can I make you some coffee or tea or … um, a sandwich?”
The Colonel smirked at that. “Ben despairs that you’re going to die of scurvy.”
“Ben isn’t that smart if he doesn’t know scurvy has practically been eradicated. At least in the first world.”
He followed me to the kitchen and sat down at our little table, miraculously clean of any crumbs or stickiness. Then again, we had eaten breakfast at my parent’s house so we looked like responsible grownups who could clean up after themselves. Generally, we could but the breakfast table was a bit of a hot zone for fights, so one or both of us usually stomped off before we cleaned up.
Many a night we’d come home after making up via text or a lunchtime detente, only to find bowls of warm milk and cereal bits so mushy you couldn’t tell if they’d started their lives out as Os or umlauts; plates littered with toast crumbs and crusted with egg yolks; sad butter pools on congealed syrup lakes. The breakfast leavings were the reminders of our inability to talk our problems out. The little nit-picky fights were too. Neither of us truly cared about popcorn as much as we’d made out, but it was easier than me telling Seth I knew there was something wrong that he wasn’t admitting to me and, obviously, Ruby Reds were easier than him just telling me what it was.
“He’s different lately. Seth. There’s something bothering him.”
“I know. He is with us too.”
I am sure he meant that to be a comfort to me.
“What does he do when he brings Ben over?” I asked.
“Watches TV, sometimes. Mostly sequesters himself away on his phone claiming work.”
I busied myself with the coffeemaker. During my discharge session at the hospital I had been ordered to cut back on the caffeine. Coffee had been off limits during my stay because something, something about the pain medications being contraindicated. Honestly, I wasn’t paying too much attention due to the fun floaty sensation I got from the pain meds and Seth rubbing circles on the back of my hand. Yes, I remember that distinctly because, frankly, he was a lot better looking than the dour, mean doctor.
It was either the happy, no-pain drugs or coffee. And I wasn’t about to give up the drugs with the broken ribs and bruised everything. Then they were kind enough to let me keep some of the great drugs to take home when I was discharged, bill paid in full by the ATF, but I still wasn’t allowed coffee so my mother plied me with the herbal tea she and Ben loved so much and I was almost willing to give up the medication. Almost. Then Dad got everyone to agree to decaf and I don’t care what anyone says, it’s not as good as the real thing.
I had realized I was rambling, out loud, when the Colonel chuckled.
“You still do that, I see.”
Well, that was mortifying. I’d hazard a guess that mortification was not one of those emotions easily masked. Proven out by his next remark.
“Don’t be embarrassed. It’s one of my favorite things about you. You always say what you mean.”
This day was beyond full of surprises. I surreptitiously pinched my own hand to make sure I wasn’t asleep and dreaming. All I found was that I needed to drink some more water as I was slightly dehydrated, indicated by the skin shrinking back down more slowly than it should have. My mom’s a nurse, remember? We got tons of lectures on hydration. And antibiotic-resistant infections. She’s more fun than she sounds.
“Maybe you and Seth could come over for dinner together. If you came we could all sit together and talk.”
I was a little uncomfortable feeling like I was being used to get his son to come hang out with him. But I considered that it might get me some intel on what the hell had crawled up Seth’s ass, so I nodded.
“Did you want me to help you load those boxes up?”
I’d hoped he’d say no. It seemed pretty crappy of me to not at least offer, but I really didn’t want to haul those boxes down to his car knowing that they contained the last of Michael’s possessions. And I didn’t want to think of those pieces of my life, his life, jammed together, ready to be forgotten. To the Colonel and Barbara, I was sure it was infinitely harder, having lost a child. But I wasn’t them. I was me. And this was the pain I knew.
“No, I think this has been hard enough on you. Both of you.”
And suddenly I wanted nothing more than to have Seth walk in the door. I thought back to the night I’d almost lost him too. The fire of my dream had been nothing like the real fire we’d barely survived. He’d risked his life to save me, to give both of us a chance, no matter how small his chance was. Letting go of his hand as he’d dropped me out of that window had taken every bit of emotional strength I had left in me after Michael’s death. That night I’d gotten as close as possible to a nervous breakdown, losing myself on a knife’s edge of fear and grief, until the firefighters had dragged Seth free of the smoke-filled garage. Until I’d heard his voice again, I wasn’t that far away from giving up entirely. I hadn’t thought about my family, Michael, even myself. My on
ly thought was that if I lost Seth, too, that would be it. I wouldn’t be able to go on. I had thought I hated him. I had spent so much time pretending and that moment when I thought I wouldn’t be able to pretend anymore, I knew I’d always loved him.
“Tell me what is wrong with him, please. Because I think you know.”
The Colonel stared at me, his mouth slightly dropped open. The apartment was so silent I could hear him breathing across the room from me. He knew. His poker face was decent, but it wasn’t as good as my ability to see through it. This had all started after Michael’s death. Seth referring to them by their first names. And as formal as their home had been, this was a father who knew his child well enough to know what was really going on inside Seth’s head.
“Please don’t bullshit me. I need to know.”
His expression had grown mulish. Fine. I knew how to break down walls.
“How much do you know about the night of the fire?”
He shook his head. He didn’t want to hear about the night his son almost died. Losing one was more than he could handle. I had to agree with him.
“Your son put me out a window and held me twenty feet off the ground. With a metal window frame digging into his arms and his lungs full of smoke, he held my dead weight trying to give me as much of his arms so the drop wouldn’t be so bad. I weighed a hundred and forty pounds. Hanging me like that had to have been almost unbearable. He didn’t have enough oxygen and he still held on. I had to pull free from him so I could save both of us.”
He covered his face with his hands.
“He told me it was the only chance for both of us, but he was lying to me. He didn’t think he was getting out alive. His only goal was to save me.”
He opened his mouth and closed it again. I could see him wavering.
“I won’t let go this time. I will do whatever it takes. You need to tell me.”
And I wouldn’t. Whatever shit Seth had put me through, we’d saved each other’s lives. I wasn’t letting go because he acted like an asshole sometimes.
The Colonel stared at me, his eyes shining, and opened his mouth. My phone chirped from the other room. The chirp sounded again. A text. It could wait.
“Seth and Michael aren’t ours.” His voice was quiet and raspy.
Seth and Michael aren’t theirs. I had no idea what that meant. Then it hit me. The eyes, the hands, their builds. Seth and Michael weren’t their biological children.
I drew in a shaky breath. “And Seth knows?”
It was a stupid question. Of course, Seth knew.
“And Seth is mad at you. He’s been avoiding you, avoiding talking about it when he is with you, putting people in between you at every turn.”
My phone beeped again. I went to the other room to quiet it.
Text alert from Seth. I saw a previous one from him. The one I’d ignored. This one was a terse time estimate of his arrival home. He was in a mood. I knew why now. I walked back to the kitchen.
“Let me see what I can do. I’m not making any promises. You know how stubborn he is.”
A half hour later I watched the Colonel put the last box in his car and locked the door behind us.
I decide to go to the dojo. It would be a good way to deal with the nightmare; to literally sweat it out, punch it out of my system, work my lungs until they burned in a good way.
I was four stoplights away—a long one—when my phone chirped in my pocket. I needed a new tone for text alerts. I hadn’t found one that didn’t make me jump. The therapist said it was reaction to external stimuli that reminded my subconscious of being in danger. Whatever the reason, the most recent tone set my teeth on edge.
You said you would help. Did you mean it?
Aja. My stomach dropped. She hadn’t indicated she was in danger, but my instincts screamed at me.
Chapter
7
The light turned green and I eyed the shopping center turn-in two lanes over. I checked my side mirror and saw I barely had enough room to jet over. A horn blared. Maybe barely hadn’t been enough. Whatever. This was a possible emergency. I turned in and slammed the truck into park while calling the number back.
“Willa?” Her voice was shaky but didn’t sound tearful.
“Aja? Are you safe?”
“Um, I don’t know. I think so.” I didn’t hear panic. She probably was safe even if she didn’t feel certain of it.
“Where are you, sweetie?” The term of endearment had been spontaneous and even if I didn’t use them normally, it felt right. She needed reassurance and I was the person she’d turned to.
Aja took a shuddering breath and blew it out. Her breathing sounded steadier. “At home. My parents are out of town.”
What kind of shitty parents left their teen daughter home alone when she was clearly having an issue so obvious a total stranger picked up on it? I shoved down the anger. It wasn’t my job to fix her parents.
“Give me the address and I’ll be right over.”
She rattled off an address I knew wasn’t too far from Ben’s school and after assuring her I would be no more than twenty minutes, I recited it into the map app and floored it back into traffic. Once I got close enough to the address, and the school, buses began to cause the cars to crawl. I knew where I was going and navigated away from the stream of vehicles leaving the school’s parking lot.
I pulled onto the street and my reflexes went on high alert. Aja had told me she was safe, but that was based on what she saw and heard. Danger sometimes lurked just on the edges. I knew that well. If I could, I’d try to make sure she didn’t have to learn that fact today.
The houses in the neighborhood were a good deal bigger than the one I grew up in. Seth and I referred to the ostentatious displays as yuppie trailer parks—all the same houses, all the same people. Was it stereotypical and unfair? Yes. Did we care? No.
I rang the doorbell and the filmy curtain covering the side window pulled back barely an inch. Heavy black eyeliner ringed the eye that only partially showed. I heard at least three locks click before the massive door cracked open. I stood patiently. The teen was well and truly spooked by something. Or someone.
“You came.”
I nodded. “That was the deal, wasn’t it?”
Aja pulled the door open wider, stepping behind it to let me in or hide behind it. It could have gone either way considering the rest of her behavior.
“Did you see him?”
I pushed the door shut, manipulated the locks, and leaned against it. Three barriers between whoever “he” was and the terrified girl who obviously felt she had no one to count on. I stood staring at her, assessing her physical well-being. She didn’t have any apparent injuries. No black eyes or other bruises. There was no blood that I could see. She was folded in on herself but didn’t seem to be babying any limbs. She looked whole and unblemished. She didn’t even have any tracks through her makeup, although that could have been reapplied.
“How long have you been alone here, Aja?”
She shrugged, popping one already-chewed-to-the-quick thumbnail in her mouth. I was sure she knew down to the second how long it had been since her parents had left. She kept her mouth shut. I couldn’t fault her loyalty. I had certainly extended it to enough people who didn’t deserve it, and most hadn’t even been family.
“Sweetie, I’m not going to get your parents in trouble for leaving you alone. All I care about is your safety. You said ‘him.’ There’s a man bothering you?”
Aja nodded. “I mean, he’s just a guy. Not a man, really.”
That was a relief. A teenager was going to be easier to deal with than an adult.
“Wait, weren’t you supposed to be in school when you texted me? Did you leave school because this guy is bothering you?”
Her eyes shifted away from mine. For someone who called me for help, Aja was being a
bit too reticent.
“I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on. Why don’t you tell me what you think I need to know and then we’ll go back and fill in any blanks.”
She shifted from one foot to the other and then led me down a winding staircase to the lower level of the house. There was a door at the bottom of the stairs sitting ajar. She slipped through it without opening it any farther.
I followed her through the door and my eyes widened. The walls and the ceiling were painted black. Even the concrete floor had been painted black. It was impossible to tell how large the room was thanks to the illusion the all black space created. We could have been in a decent-sized room or the entire footprint of the massive house.
“Your parent’s decorator must have pitched a fit when she saw what you wanted to do down here.”
Aja giggled and flopped down on the vast couch. She somehow managed to sprawl gracefully on the modern hybrid between a sofa and an aircraft carrier deck. It had no arms or backs just a flat plane of cushion and enough pillows that no princess would ever feel a pea. Or a boulder.
“There’s a stupid suit of armor in the formal living room,” she said. “Believe it or not, my parents were chill about the basement being mine. My granddad made a shit ton of money in the seventies and eighties, so they can pretty much do whatever they want.”
The smile dropped from her face again. She’d reminded herself that her parents weren’t the people she wanted them to be. I could relate.
“You know, Aja, my mom—my biological mother—is an actress. She never wanted to marry my dad. I was about two when she decided she wanted to take off and she didn’t want to go alone. I spent the next eight years of my life bouncing around bedsits in New York and run-down summer camps taken over by theater people. There were even a few months in Los Angeles when she was cast in a pilot for a TV show.”
