Not What You Seem

by Lena Maye

  I look up to find him watching me, his forehead wrinkled. He takes half a step forward.

  I shake out my hands. “What did you want to show me?”

  He reaches around me to push open the door. “I’ve got those little sailboats that we could do for the kids, but I thought of something else too. The kids could use the same idea to make little kites.”

  The ticket hut is one small room. If I stretched out my arms, I could almost touch each side with my fingertips. The window shutter is only open a few inches, so the little room is dim. A few things clutter the far wall. A red folding chair, a bucket full of fasteners, more paint cans.

  I’m drawn forward into the small space. Like the closets I used to hide in. Small spaces have always made me feel safe. A tray of the ugly green paint sits on the ledge by the slightly open shutter. It doesn’t look so awful in the tray either. It must be something with the light and the backdrop of the ocean that changes it so much.

  The smells of paint and wood light up something familiar. A memory that flits through my mind. Being protected. Arms wrapped around me. But I don’t know what it could be. I’ve never felt that way before. Ever. I’ve never been safe.

  “It’s over here.” Dean’s voice is low in the small room.

  I press against the wall so that he can step around me. His hand falls on my shoulder, so warm and solid.

  He’s touching me.

  Such a silly thought. But I can’t seem to ignore the connection. The sensation lights up my shoulder and darts across my chest, settling in the sudden pounding of my heart. He surrounds me. Lemons and dry cedar and that feeling of being rescued. Like I’m finally safe.

  Before I can think—before I let myself register the risk—I grab his wrist, stopping him from moving past me.

  He stops, turning toward me. His gaze flicks to my hand around his wrist and then up to my face. We stand there for a moment. Nothing but the sound of far-off seagulls and the lap of the water. The sounds are so constant that I usually don’t notice them, but right now they echo all around us. Maybe it’s just because he’s there. Waking me up. Pulling me out of the past and pushing me into the present.

  I let go of him to touch those speckles of green that cover his shoulder. The paint is still slightly wet, and it smears as my fingers brush down those crests and valleys of his shoulder and over his bicep. My fingers spread the paint into green tracks down his tanned skin. Like a claim. Down to his wrist, where the track of paint disappears, leaving nothing but his skin under my fingertips.

  His hand wraps mine, and his thumb smooths over my knuckles. A fluid movement like water flowing over me.

  “I can’t figure you out.” He shifts his weight backward, rocking onto his heels. And then he tips forward again. It’s as if the slow lap of the ocean is pulling him away and back in, but his hand doesn’t leave mine. His thumb makes another arc—across my knuckles and back again.

  I know what’s coming next. I want it.

  Even if it’s wrong for me to want it. I want it so deeply that every cell of my body is aching for it. This warm, sure feeling like I want to push up to my toes and take him.

  My heart beats an uneven rhythm that threatens to drown out everything. I move slowly—taking my hand from his and pressing my palm over his heart. His chest rises and falls. I match the rhythm of his breath. It’s quicker than mine. He’s tense—a tightly wound network of muscles.

  With a track of paint down his arm. So familiar. Color on skin.

  The wooden box. The numbers my mother would draw on skin. The nicks of her knife on a man’s arm.

  Oh…

  I marked him. Just like my mother used to mark men.

  I stumble away, and my back hits the wall. I can’t let myself do this. Where it goes. Where it leads. Not when my mother could make a man cower with a glance. A glance that would inevitably turn into something more. Something the Maine court system says is wrong, wrong, wrong.

  I can’t let myself hear the echo that keeps trying to repeat in my brain. The fantasies I imagine—my lips devouring his, his back to the wall, that mark on his arm that says he’s mine.

  I have to get away from this. I’m detaching and ripping into two. The girl who has control over herself. And the girl who wants it over him. They can’t be the same girl.

  Can they?

  “Hey.” His hand covers mine. He’s so still and steady. So present. And focused on me. As though he’s not thinking of anything else. Just his hand laying over mine and how close we’re standing.

  I pull away from him. “I should get back to my—”

  —self.

  “My job,” I conclude.

  Dean’s nod is barely noticeable. I can’t contemplate what’s going on in his head. His surface seems placid, but he can’t be that way underneath.

  “I-I’m sorry.” I step away from him—toward the door. Still he doesn’t move.

  Then he tilts his head. “You have nothing to be sorry for, Ella.”

  16

  Dean

  She came alive.

  It was only for a minute, but I felt it as clearly as a sharp wind. It was like all of her suddenly vibrated to life right in front of me. As if part of her had been diffused and hidden before that moment.

  She’s been gone for almost an hour, but the adrenaline is still pounding through me. The desire to follow after her is overwhelming. To see her, touch her. Discover what she tastes like. To see that life in her again.

  There’s something holding her back, but now that I see that, I want to figure out how to crush it. That was the first time she didn’t sprint from me. I mean, she still kind of ran. But it was a slow run.

  I can’t believe my progress with a woman is a slow run. But I’ll take it. I’ll take anything I can get.

  I push her from my mind as I walk to my father’s facility. Just thinking of Ella while I’m heading toward my father feels wrong. Having them in the same damn town feels wrong. Maybe I should move him back to Upper Bay. To put some distance between them and make sure that something like the bakery doesn’t happen again.

  With the onset of warmer weather, there are children playing in the yards of the houses I pass. An old couple sits on their porch, and I nod to them. Life’s starting to fill up what used to be empty streets.

  But when I get to the facility, the life fades. The low ceilings feel like they are even lower today. I stride through the building to my father’s room. Instantly, the weight of being in his vicinity stiffens my spine and locks my jaw. He sits on the end of his bed, slippered feet flat on the floor, and not doing much at all. Just sitting there with his hands curled in his lap and his toe sticking out of his slipper.

  His hair is getting shaggy. I suppose it’s my job to provide a barber for him. I’m sure as hell not going to cut it.

  After a few conversations with Paul, I learned that the most difficult time for them to cover is dinner time. The facility has a central cafeteria that has multiple doors—into a courtyard, which is where he escaped from earlier. So the extra personnel coverage is mostly for my father to eat dinner with other people. And I guess it’s some sort of facility policy that all residents eat at least one meal in the common area for the majority of the week.

  So, here I am. To share dinner with my father. Four nights a week.

  Or at least, sit next to him and stare at the door until he’s finished eating.

  “Are you ready?” I ask him, gruffly. I clear my throat. He listens better when I don’t let my anger seep into my voice.

  His head snaps up. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  My back straightens, giving me another inch on him. Fuck. I hate when he’s coherent. It’s so much better when he doesn’t know who I am.

  “I’m here to take you down to dinner,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady. “Are you ready to go?”

  He snorts out some kind of response and stands, looking up at me as he does. “Why are you keeping me here?”

  “This is
where you live.” I start toward the door. “Let’s get dinner over with.”

  He shuffles behind me down the hallway, looking in all the doors as we pass. More like the man I’ve been used to seeing over the past few weeks.

  I don’t really know much about his dementia. I didn’t plan on spending time with him, so I didn’t see the benefit of learning. But if I have to endure these dinners, then maybe I should read a few articles online.

  I help him through the line. Hold his plate of chicken and rice. Putting some vegetables on the side even though he doesn’t ask for them. Get him a clean fork because the first one is dirty.

  Fuck, I hate this. Taking care of him. Standing next to him. Directing him to his seat across the room.

  Each step next to him ratchets my shoulders and back tighter. By the time I step out of here, I’m going to be a solid mass of stone.

  And he eats slowly. I finally sigh and take a seat next to him, realizing that I’m making the rest of his table companions nervous with my looming angrily behind him.

  I push the chair back from the table and set my elbows on my knees, waiting for the man to finish eating.

  After trying his chicken, he turns toward me. “Aren’t you going to eat too?”

  I shake my head. “Not hungry.”

  “Okay.” He pauses, staring at me. “What was your name again?”

  I hesitate, debating. Maybe I should just make up something.

  “Oh, that’s your son, Charles.” Another resident, an older woman dressed entirely in pink, leans over the table toward us. She reminds me of the kind of woman who knows everything about everyone. “Which one are you?”

  “Dean.”

  She nods and points her fork at me. “The son who sails his boat?”

  My elbows dig into my knees, but I try and soften my expression. It’s not her fault my father’s an asshole.

  “It was my mother’s boat,” I say.

  “Rosemary.” My father pushes his chicken around his plate.

  “Yes.”

  “Where is she?” He looks up, glancing around himself for the first time since entering the cafeteria.

  “Not here,” I snap.

  The woman across the tables purses her lips, giving me a look that’s a cross between pity and contempt. Maybe I deserve it. The heat is building in me—threatening to spill over.

  My father turns to look at me. “Is she with Mira?”

  I shake my head. “I don’t know who Mira is.”

  A friend of my mother’s? I had thought it was one of my father’s women. But, if that was the case, then why would he think Mira was with my mother? I shake my head. I don’t really want to think about this shit. It’s bad enough I have to see him. Puzzling out what he did in his younger, asshole years is not how I want to spend my evening.

  The woman keeps glaring at me from across the table, and I push up to my feet. I can watch him just fine from across the room.

  “I deserved it,” my father says.

  I stop. “What did you say?”

  “I said I deserved it.” His eyes narrow on me, a glimpse of the man that I’d grown up with. “What she did to me.”

  “Mira?” My hand doesn’t wrap into a fist, exactly. But my fingers tighten, my nails digging into my palm. “I don’t want to hear about the women you cheated on my mother with. And I’m sure you did deserve it, whatever happened.”

  “Dean.” The woman says my name from across the table again, but I barely hear it. I’m glaring down at my father, waiting for him to answer. My fist clenching and releasing. And…

  Fuck. I take a step back. I’m not that guy.

  My father shakes his head. “I didn’t do it. I didn’t hurt her, Dean. But I still deserved it.” Then he turns back to his rice and scoops up a huge bite.

  I keep staring down at him. “Hurt who?” I finally ask. If there’s one thing I’ll never believe about this man, it’s that he didn’t hurt someone.

  He always hurt someone. Over and over.

  But he doesn’t answer. He stands up and shuffles back to his room without another word.

  17

  Ella

  I open up my post office box to find a thin envelope inside. I stare at it for a moment, not quite willing to reach out and take it. I finally do, holding it between my fingertips.

  I changed my address, like Renee had suggested. I thought it would be better to get the letters here. Alone. Without Renee’s watching eyes. But now I feel so alone in the hallway. Standing here, by myself, staring down at the return address for the court.

  I close the post office box and take a breath, trying to steady my hands. I slip my finger under the flap and pull out a single sheet of paper.

  I don’t know what it is. Some pleading filed in my mother’s case? But it’s been six years since she was sentenced. It doesn’t make sense. I shake my head and shove the paper back into the envelope.

  There’s only one way to find out what that letter said. I need to talk to Carly. So when I get to my apartment, I open my laptop and wait for it to start up, my fingers rattling against the table.

  My apartment is a square filled with other square things. Square bed, square table, square chair. Square laptop. Maybe that’s why I spend so much time sitting in that plastic chair in the backyard. Inside feels like a made-up home—somewhere that looks like a home but doesn’t feel like one.

  When my laptop finally starts, I discover an email from Carly in my inbox. The subject is: CALL ME.

  I open the email to find the same thing repeated inside. My heart stills. It’s not like her to be so vague or to use email, since I hardly check my account. I’ve known Carly since the court appointed her as my lawyer for my mother’s trial. The court appointment ended years ago, but she’s helped me out since then. Besides Renee, she’s the closest thing I have to a friend.

  I send her a quick note, and one minute later, FaceTime dings and Carly’s round face fills the screen. “Hi, Ella.”

  I smile back at her. “It’s good to see you.” It is. It really, really is. I push aside questions about the letter for just a moment. “How’s Lillian and Angeline?”

  Carly nods. “Both fine. Angeline has her kindergarten graduation next week. Lillian and I are so proud of her.”

  “Oh, I’ll send her a celebratory cupcake.” I’ve always made special ones for their little girl—with blue frosted unicorns. Angeline’s favorite ever since she was allowed to have sugar.

  “She would love that. Thank you.” Carly looks down to pull out my file, and brown curls fall onto her forehead. “So, you know why I wanted to talk?”

  “The letter.”

  Her glance up is quick. “And your phone? You haven’t been answering your phone.”

  “I lost it.” I shrug. I sound so silly.

  Carly sighs. “We need to talk about your mother’s trial.”

  “I don’t understand.” My mother’s trial is over. Concluded with a verdict six years ago.

  Carly shuffles some papers, but her gaze locks on mine. “It turns out there was a technicality.”

  My chair creaks when I lean back. “What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know yet. Not exactly. Something within the discovery. How the prosecution dealt with the depositions.” She sets the paper stack aside. “A technicality,” she repeats as if that clarifies everything.

  “I don’t get what that means.” I scratch my frizzy hair, leaning into the monitor like I’ll be able to read the papers on her desk she keeps glancing at.

  “There’s a request for review on her conviction.” She looks at me steadily. “She’s asking for the conviction to be reversed. She’s asking for a retrial.”

  “That can’t happen. Right?” My heart pounds so loud I’m not sure if Carly heard my question.

  “I don’t think it’ll get that far. I really don’t. Right now it’s one request for review. It’s just that…” She smooths back her curls. I’ve never seen her fingers tremble. Not even when the pros
ecutor tried to get me to testify against my mother.

  She keeps shaking her head like something will change in the next minute.

  I lean close to the screen. “Tell me.”

  “The man who came forward to testify against your mother—he might not have been a victim.”

  Carly’s image pixelates as my crappy Internet goes in and out.

  Not a victim. I squeeze my eyes shut. “If he wasn’t a victim—” That word always makes my chest ache. “If he wasn’t a victim, then who was he?”

  I didn’t remember the man who came forward to testify against my mother. But I figured I’d blocked him out—that he lived in some abyss so dark my mind abandoned him.

  “Maybe he was related to a victim,” Carly says. “Or he wasn’t connected at all and wanted publicity. We don’t know anything yet. And all of this might blow over. But I felt like I needed to tell you and—”

  “Carly?” My voice cuts loud and high. See you soon. That’s what my mother wrote. No, this can’t be happening. “My mother has to stay in prison.”

  I want to curl in on myself. I want to forget seeing my mother in that brown uniform a shade lighter than her skin. Her hair yanked back and her high cheekbones sallow.

  Carly shakes her head and leans toward the screen as if I’m not getting the point. “I don’t have control over this.”

  “No, Carly. My mother has to stay in prison.” The tremble starts in my throat and crawls up to behind my eyes. If I let it, it will tear me in two. “If she gets out…”

  Carly sighs. She can’t make the world spin in the way I’m asking, but I don’t know what else to do.

  “You could help,” she says after a long moment.

  The soft strength in her voice makes me sit up. “How?”

  Her gaze skims across the screen. “Can you write a letter? I don’t know if it would do anything. But maybe if we get it in front of the judge, it can help.”

  I shake my head, leaning back in my chair. “I-I don’t…” I swallow and stare down at my palms and the creases that cut across them. My mother believed in fortune tellers who could read those tiny lines. She believed everything is predetermined—all we do is follow the lines, like well-made paths that twist us through life.