Credence

by Penelope Douglas

  Mirai’s eyes met mine, the always-present pity still there, and then she cast a regretful look at my parents before she left the room quietly.

  “Congratulations,” I said as I approached, keeping the smile on my face.

  But my mom already moved away. “Alright, let’s get to Jane’s office,” she told my dad. “I’ll need to put in a statement.”

  “I’m so proud of you, honey,” he said.

  And they both left, taking the noise and excitement with them. Like I was a shadow. A ghost who walked their halls but wasn’t seen or heard.

  I stood there, watching them as they tread down the hall and disappeared around a corner. I clasped my hands in front of me, trying to push away the lump that lodged in my throat.

  I was happy for her. I wanted her to know that she was stunning, and I loved her movies.

  I wanted her to know that.

  Why did she never want to share the wonderful things that happened in her life with me, because she was the first place I wanted to run to as a child to tell her when a wonderful thing had happened to me.

  Before I stopped trying.

  I stood there, staring off. It’s okay.

  It wasn’t about me. This was her day. I had no right to demand attention.

  I heard the front door slam closed, the house, and everything in it, going still and silent.

  Like nothing lived here.

  Like, when they left, nothing did.

  I blink my eyes awake, already blurry with tears. I sit up and swing my legs over the side, bowing my head and taking some deep breaths.

  It’s early morning. I can tell by the blue hue of the light coming in through my balcony doors.

  A tear catches on my lip, and I wipe it off with my hand. I still remember so many little things, growing up with them, that would never seem terrible on their own, but after years of conversations I felt like I was interrupting, occasions I wasn’t invited or welcome to, and affection that was so easily doled out between them that didn’t stretch to me… It all hurt. Everything hurt, and it kept piling up year after year until I stopped letting myself care anymore.

  Or stopped showing that I cared.

  I let out a sigh, tilting my head back, but then something catches my eye, and I look over, seeing a white bag on top of my bedside table. I narrow my eyes and reach over, picking up the worn paper sack that no longer felt crisp and new.

  Is this…?

  The bundle at the bottom of the bag fits in the palm of my hand, and I can smell the cinnamon bears before I even open it.

  How did this get back in here? I threw the whole bag of candy out.

  But now, black writing covers the front, and slowly, I unfold the bag and find a ray of light near me, reading the words.

  Your parents never gave you anything sweet. That’s why you’re not.

  I look over to my bedroom door, noticing it’s opened a crack. I’d closed and locked it when I went to bed.

  Thoughts wash over me, but my heart isn’t beating fast. I should be mad. Someone came in here while I was asleep. Someone went through my trash.

  Someone is trolling me on a paper bag.

  But he’s not wrong. I rub my thumb over the letters.

  The way it’s written. That’s why you’re not. It’s so childish but simple.

  Standing up, I dump the contents back into the trash, but I save the bag, flattening it out and laying it on my chest of drawers. I don’t know if blaming my parents is a good enough reason for being such a miserable fucking person, but someone in this world gets me, and I’m not even offended they said I wasn’t sweet. I know I’m not, and someone understands why.

  Leaving the room, I head downstairs, the wind in the trees surrounding the house like a perpetual waterfall in the background. I veer into the kitchen, quietly stepping to the sink to fill up a glass of water.

  I stare out the window, the feathers on the chickens in the coop fluttering in the morning breeze.

  I don’t want to go home. But I don’t want to stay here and be noticed, either, because their world is just a little worse with me in it. I’m not Jake Van der Berg’s problem.

  I don’t even realize I’ve started to put the coffee filter in the machine until a hand reaches out and gently takes the package from me.

  Looking up, I see my uncle. He stands next to me, emptying coffee grounds into the filter, and I expect him to still be tense. Fuming. In a bad mood, at least, because I’m too much trouble.

  But he’s calm. And quiet. He scoops the coffee out of the bag and empties it into the machine, quietly closes the lid, and turns on the pot.

  A gurgling sound starts as it begins to brew, and he picks up a coffee mug from the rack and sets it in front of himself.

  “I’m going to go home,” I say quietly.

  “You are home.” He sets a mug in front of me.

  My chin trembles a little.

  I turn my head away, not wanting him to see me cry again, but then I feel his fingers brush my hair behind my ear, and the gesture makes my eyes fall closed. It feels so good I want to fucking cry again.

  Without waiting another second, he pulls me into him, wrapping his arms around me and holds my head to his chest.

  I empty my lungs, my arms hanging limply at my sides, because I can’t bring myself to return the embrace, but I don’t pull away either. His T-shirt-clad chest is warm against my cheek, and his familiar smell drifts into my head, lulling my tears to a calm.

  I’ve been hugged a lot. More than I like, actually. It seems to be a thing now. Females—complete strangers—come in for hugs as a greeting. Acquaintances embrace. People you run into on the street dive in all the fucking time like we’re all oh-so-close besties, even though they’re barely touching you.

  I hate the fake affection.

  But this is different.

  He’s holding onto me. Like, if he doesn’t, I might fall.

  Muscles I didn’t know I had start to relax, and his lips touch the top of my head, a warm tingle spreading over my body. It’s warm, like something I’m dying to crawl inside and just go to sleep.

  Why was this so hard for my parents? It wasn’t unnatural for me to want this from them. It wasn’t. To want to share my life with people who love me. To laugh and cry and make memories together.

  Because life is only happy when it’s shared.

  Tears hang on my lashes, and the sudden urge to hold onto him starts to wind through me.

  I don’t want to be alone anymore.

  I don’t want to go home where I’m alone.

  His whisper tickles my scalp. “Everyone’s going through shit, Tiernan.” He pauses as the steady rise and fall of his chest lulls me. “You’re not alone. Do you understand that?”

  He tips my chin up, and I look up at him, nearly losing my breath at his warm eyes that stare right through me.

  “You’re not alone,” he whispers again.

  My eyes drop to his lips, and for a moment, I’m with him, breathing with him and my blood coursing hot under my skin as I take in his tanned face, smooth mouth, and the rugged scruff along his jaw.

  I have a sudden urge to wrap my arms around him and hide in his neck, but he runs his thumb over my jaw. The heat under my skin spreads lower, and the small smile he had on his lips fades as he stares down at me.

  Finally he blinks, breaking the spell as he drops his hand. “Get dressed, okay?” he asks. “Pants and a long-sleeved shirt. You’re with me this morning.”

  Releasing me, he pours the coffee while the morning chill hits me, and all I can wish is that he was still holding me.

  But my heart warms anyway. I’m with him this morning. I tread upstairs and pull on a pair of clean jeans and some socks.

  After pulling my hair up, I hesitate for a moment and then knock on Noah’s door. The last time he spoke to me he threatened to spank me.

  After a few knocks I hear his hard footfalls on the floor.

  He swings open the door, looking hungover and prop
ping one hand on the doorframe, the other on the door like he’s trying to hold himself up.

  I’m not apologizing. But I don’t really expect one from him, either.

  “May I borrow a long-sleeved shirt?” I ask.

  He nods and turns around, closing his eyes as he yawns. “Yeah, go for it.”

  I walk in and find his closet, the door hanging open and a flannel already there in front of me.

  “Fuckin’ early,” he gripes. “Does he want me up yet?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  “Cool,” he mumbles and crashes back down on his bed, face first.

  He’s still wearing his jeans from yesterday, and I look around his room, seeing an array of discarded clothes, shoes, and other odds and ends strewn about. Messy but not really dirty.

  Taking the shirt, I leave the room, closing the door behind me, and wrap it around my waist, tying it. Turning to walk down the stairs, I hear something behind me, and look over to see Kaleb coming down the third-floor staircase.

  He veers for the bathroom, and even though I’m less than six feet away, he pretends he doesn’t notice me and disappears into the room, slamming the door behind him.

  I linger a moment. I could barely see the cuts on his face from yesterday in the dark hallway, but I could definitely see the one on his lip.

  It’s not my fault he got into a fight. But still…

  Walking over to the door, I raise my hand to knock but then stop myself. I lean my ear in, but I don’t hear anything, and I struggle to walk away.

  I have ointment…for his cuts…if he wants.

  I…

  Oh, never mind. I close my fist and finally drop my hand, turning to leave.

  I head downstairs, spotting Jake outside on the deck, and walk out, joining him. He hands me a mug of coffee and stares out at the forest and the mist that hangs around the trunks.

  “I like getting up early,” he tells me. “It’s the only time the house and land are quiet, and I have the energy to enjoy it.”

  I look up at him. Me, too. Taking a sip of my coffee, I force the words out, even though my instinct tells me to be quiet. I want to make an effort.

  “I like that you all work at home,” I tell him, seeing him look at me out of the corner of my eye. “There’s always people here.”

  People who are a little abrasive, rude, and over-bearing, but I have a couple of those undesirable qualities myself.

  He half-smiles down at me, and I drink some more of my coffee before setting the mug down on the railing.

  “Come on,” he says, setting his down, too.

  Walking around me, he leads me down the stairs and toward the barn, picking up a tool belt from the worktable in the shop as we pass by.

  We walk beyond the stable to the paddock where Bernadette and Shawnee are already wandering and getting some fresh air.

  I stare at the back of his head as I follow him and he buckles on his tool belt.

  Questions. He mentioned I never asked them questions.

  It’s not that I don’t have questions, but questions start conversations.

  “Hold this up for me,” he asks, lifting a piece of the fencing around the corral.

  I come in and lean down, lifting up the board so it’s level as he dips through the opening in the fence to the other side. Pulling out a hammer and nail, he bolts the board back in place as I help hold on.

  “Why doesn’t Kaleb talk?” I ask.

  He doesn’t look at me as he pulls out another nail and starts pounding. “I’m not sure I should talk about it, if Kaleb won’t.”

  “Does it have to do with their mother?”

  His eyes shoot up to me. “What do you know about their mother?”

  I shrug. “Nothing, really,” I say. “But the boys obviously came from somewhere and not from the twenty-five-year-olds leaving your room every morning.”

  He chuckles, pounding in the nail. “It’s not every morning, thank you.”

  But she is twenty-five. Or younger, because he didn’t correct me on the age.

  The silence hangs in the air, and his expression grows pensive as he fits another nail.

  “Their mother is in prison,” he states. “Ten to fifteen up in Quintana.”

  Quintana.

  Ten to fifteen…years?

  I stare at my uncle who’s not making eye contact, a whole bundle of questions now ready to pour out. What did she do? Was he involved?

  Do Noah and Kaleb still talk to her?

  He moves down the line, and I follow him, noticing another board kicked off.

  When was she sentenced? How long has he been raising the boys by himself?

  I soften my eyes, watching him. That must’ve been hard. It’s a different pain, I’m sure. Having someone taken away from you versus someone wanting to leave you.

  “You loved her?” I ask.

  But then I drop my eyes, embarrassed. Of course, he loved her.

  “I dove into her,” he explains instead. “Because I couldn’t stop loving someone else.”

  I narrow my eyes.

  He stops and pulls out his wallet, opening it up and taking out a snapshot.

  He hands it to me.

  I look down at it, recognizing him instantly and smiling a little.

  It’s actually not a snapshot. It’s a Polaroid with a sharp crease down the middle and faded faces staring back.

  He lays there, on a picnic blanket, no shirt and long khaki shorts, hugging a dark-eyed girl to his body, her midnight hair splayed out behind her.

  He’s pale and a lot scrawnier than what he is now, but he has that same smile that looks like he’s either laughing at you on the inside or thinking things that are only suitable to do behind closed doors. But with a preppy haircut and baby face that makes him look like he should be the douchebag quarterback on a CW show.

  “You?” I look up at him, trying to hide my amusement.

  He snatches the picture back, frowning at me. “I was quite the belle of the ball back in the day, you know?”

  Was? Seems he still is.

  He grabs a shovel and starts packing dirt back into the hole where the fence post stands.

  “Your grandpa had a house in Napa Valley,” he says as I hold the post upright for him. “We’d go up there in the summer, play golf, get drunk, fuck around…”

  We… My father, too?

  I barely remember my grandfather, since he died when I was six, but I know he divorced his first wife—my dad’s mother—when my dad was about twelve, and chose another Dutch woman for his second wife. She already had a son of her own—Jake.

  “I was eighteen, and I met Flora,” my uncle continues. “God, she was fucking beautiful. Her family worked on a vineyard. Immigrant. Poor….” He glances at me. “And, of course, our families couldn’t have that.”

  I almost have the urge to laugh, not because it’s funny, but because I get it. For the first time, I realize Jake and I are part of the same family, and he knows them as well as I do.

  “She didn’t have a swimsuit,” he mused. “All summer, I remember. It didn’t even occur to me she couldn’t afford one, because I loved that she swam in her underwear and undershirt when we went to the lake. Her body was so beautiful, the way the wet clothes stuck to her.”

  I picture him, his hormones and emotions raging. What’s he like when he’s in love?

  He sighs. “It was sexier than any bikini. I never wanted that summer to end. We couldn’t stay off each other. I was totally gone for her.”

  But she’s not here now.

  “One night your mother…”

  “My mother?” I dart my eyes up to him.

  But he’s avoiding my gaze, and his lips are tight.

  “Your mother was a rising star, and your parents had just started dating,” he explains. “She took Flora out and got her drunk, and when Flora woke up, she was in bed with another man.” He finally looked over at me, pausing in his work. “Another man who wasn’t me.”

  My mother too
k her out, got her drunk, and…

  “My father,” I say, putting the pieces together.

  Jake nods. “Your grandfather knew I wasn’t going to let her go, so your parents helped get rid of her.”

  I blink long and hard. I can’t believe I defended them to my uncle. To him. No wonder he hates them.

  “She felt so guilty, thinking she’d had sex with another man,” Jake continued, leading me into the stable to fill the horses’ food, “it was a piece of cake for the family to convince her our relationship was over unless she wanted me to find out what she’d done. ‘And hey, here’s fifty grand to cover moving expenses. Disappear, kid. Don’t call him.’”

  “You never tried to find her?”

  “I did,” he tells me. “I found her in some apartment in San Francisco.”

  He falls silent for a moment as he pulls on his gloves. “She wouldn’t even let me through the door,” he says. “Couldn’t look me in the eye. Said she couldn’t see me anymore and didn’t want me to call.”

  He cuts open the hay bales, and I take a rake and start to spread it around the stall.

  “When did you find out what they really did to her?” I ask him.

  He remains quiet for a moment, and when he finally speaks, his voice is almost a whisper. “About a week after I left her apartment and her sister called to tell me she’d died.”

  Died?

  I stop. “Suicide?”

  He nods and continues working.

  “Oh, my God.”

  “And six hours after that, I packed a bag and never looked back,” he tells me, giving me a tight smile. “Got on the road, planned to head to Florida, but I got here and…never wanted to leave.” His eyes soften, and things I thought I knew start to melt away as the pieces of the puzzle come together.

  “I moved onto this land with a run-down trailer and no indoor plumbing. Now I have a house, a shop, a business, and my sons. Things turned out far better for me than I deserved.”

  Why would he think he didn’t deserve what he had? It wasn’t his fault. He tried to find her. If they wanted to get to her, they were going to get to her.

  My parents. Would they have intervened like that if I’d fallen in love with someone who didn’t fit the image?

  “I’m sorry,” I rush out. “I’m sorry they did that—”