What Doesn't Kill You

by Aimee Hix

  He’d slipped out of the house, grabbing his jacket from the kitchen, before I’d finished feeling fuzzy-stomached at his soon and often comment. Smiling like the idiot I clearly was, I grabbed the beers and dumped the almost-full bottles down the drain. Flipping the kitchen lights off, I went around the house making sure the doors were locked.

  I headed down to my bedroom, looking forward to going to bed for a change. Even if I couldn’t sleep I had something nice to analyze for a change. I brushed my teeth and got undressed, then remembered that I needed to write up my visit to Killian’s. I’d leave out the parts I knew would hurt Dad’s heart, but it was important to get even the few details about the case into a proper report.

  I pulled on a pair of running shorts over my underwear and didn’t bother with a cover up over my tank top. Ben was likely not coming out of his room again for the night but I still wasn’t tempting fate and possibly emotionally scarring the kid. I shook my head to settle down the voices in my head giving me conflicting opinions on getting physical with Seth again. It had been easy, one voice argued. Its counter provided that it had been too easy. The fact was I’d known him more than half my life—all my important years—and I trusted him as much as I trusted anyone. He’d never knowingly hurt me, but neither one of us were ever going to be easy-going enough to let it be anything other than it’s complicated. The families would be over the moon if they found out we were involved, which was why they couldn’t find out. Hence trying to hide him from Ben earlier.

  In the dark and in my distracted state, I bumped into a dining room chair, stubbing my toe. My quiet cussing and hopping around didn’t fully mask the sound of something off. I felt my whole system slam into alert despite my throbbing toe. My eyes flew to the interior door. Someone was in Dad’s office. It could have been Ben, but he wouldn’t have left the light off.

  I crept through the rest of the dining room and pressed myself up against wall next to the mostly closed door into the office. Seth had definitely left that open when he came out. There weren’t any valuables beside the laptop, and the only weapon in there was in a lockbox. A lockbox that was about as secure as a hammer, screwdriver, and a swift whack would take to overcome. I had no weapons handy and I was not about to go in there unarmed and braless. It just didn’t feel particularly authoritative, and my unsecured boobs were not enough to distract anyone sufficiently.

  I heard the rustle of papers. Whoever was in there was either

  fascinated by Dad’s stacks of papers and folders or he was looking for information. It wasn’t unheard of for someone to try to get over on the PI that had been hired to catch them doing whatever they were doing, but Dad hadn’t left any open cases before he and Mom went on vacation. The problem was that someone was messing with my business, and that wasn’t okay. Unarmed and braless was going to have to do.

  I reached in and flipped on the light, pushing the door open and stepping into it, hoping the surprise was enough to scare the intruder.

  Seth stared back at me. “Shit.”

  I had no idea what to say. He looked down at my chest and then back up to my face, his cheeks bright pink.

  The little voice in my head, the one that had reminded me it had been too easy, laughed at me. That pissed me off more than Seth standing in my dad’s office, going through my files and ogling me.

  “Looking for some light reading before bed, Seth?”

  He opened his mouth and closed it again. “I said ‘shit’ already, didn’t I?”

  I pushed the office door shut again so Ben didn’t hear us. I was going to start out civil, but I was sure this was going to become a heated discussion quickly.

  “Do you want to tell me what the hell you’re doing here, in my office, going through private business files?”

  “Can’t.”

  I nodded, my lips a tight line. “Can’t?”

  “Nice unicorn jammies.”

  I tried to stay calm. Anger forced you to negotiate from a position of weakness.

  His eyes flicked back to my chest again as my breasts pressed up higher and perkier than before by my arms crossed tightly over them.

  “If you look at my boobs again, Seth, I will become extremely violent. What are you doing, and don’t say you can’t tell me.”

  He sighed. He showed me the file in his hand—Joe Reagan. “This is why I’m here.”

  I took a second to breathe in and out a few times. Calming, deep breaths. It didn’t work. “That is a what, not a why.” I’d said it in a nice reasonable tone instead of the sarcastic, bitchy tone I really wanted to use. I was proud of myself.

  “What were you doing at Killian’s earlier?”

  More sidestepping. I was getting whiplash from the way this night was yanking me back and forth. “That’s not an answer to why you are sneaking in and reading that file.”

  “Quit being stubborn, Will. Why were you at Killian’s? It’s a simple question.”

  He’d gotten the hard set to his jaw that always made me clench my fists. I was not going to explode at him. I still wanted to believe he had a reasonable explanation. If he gave it to me, I’d believe him. “So is that why you’re here reading my business files in the dark.”

  He dropped the file on the desk. “It appears we’re at a stalemate.”

  I laughed. It was actually funny. He was talking like we were in some movie, business rivals after the same account, talking tough, wearing fancy business suits in a penthouse office.

  “A stalemate? Like a Mexican standoff? Except, you broke into my goddamned house less than a half hour after I watched you walk out. We generally call that breaking and entering.”

  He shrugged. “I’m a family friend checking on you and your little brother while your parents are out of town. I found a door open. I was concerned.”

  Obnoxious, goddamned, overbearing, mother—

  “And because I’m a good guy I, of course, came in to check and scared you. I’m sorry.” He didn’t sound sorry. Not even a little.

  “Nice story. Now tell me the truth. Why are you here reading the file on Joe Reagan’s murder?”

  He looked away, up and to the right, and I knew he was about to lie to me.

  “I was concerned about you when I heard you’d been at Killian’s.”

  Even if he hadn’t looked like a lying liar pants with his shifty lying body language, no one would have bought that story. Not even Ben, who had believed in Santa long after all the other kids and he was a certified, with corroborating test results, genius.

  “You were concerned about my safety because I was at a dive bar earlier so you rushed off only to come back after I went to bed and then broke in to snoop? Really? You’re really trying to sell me that line of bullshit?”

  He shrugged, all studied casualness. “It’s the truth, Sunshine.”

  “You’re just concerned for my well-being?”

  He nodded. “You shouldn’t be looking into a murder. You could jeopardize your license application.”

  “I’m doing a favor for a family friend. And it’s none of your damn business. If you’re done shining me, you know where the door is.”

  “You’re mad at me.”

  I nodded. “And I was worried I was being too subtle.”

  He started to walk to the exterior office door I was now sure he’d unlocked when he’d been in here earlier.

  I hadn’t yet blurted out the question my brain was screaming at me—was that what he’d really been after earlier on the couch? I had my pride.

  “Is this what you meant by soon, Seth? I’m interested to see what often will be.”

  Okay, I didn’t have my pride. I was hurt and confused. And embarrassed.

  He turned back to me, his hand on the knob. “I would never lie to you about that, Willa. I thought you knew me better.”

  I watched him walk out the outer office door and then
down the stairs to the driveway. I locked it again and didn’t take my eyes off him until I was sure he was really gone. I thought I had known him better too. I didn’t understand what I knew anymore.

  Chapter

  6

  I hated running. The feeling of sweat rolling down my spine, the end of my ponytail brushing against my neck irregularly until I could get in a good rythym, the way my shorts would bunch up in the back because I hadn’t bought any new ones since the academy and the ones they gave out were cheap and mine had been too big. But it was free and it exhausted me and sometimes I didn’t hate it. Sometimes I could even stop thinking and things would get quiet in my head.

  The nights I was able to sleep took exhaustion or alcohol, and I knew I couldn’t solve missing Michael by drinking. I was barely hanging on. Something had to give and I was afraid it was going to be me. I knew how easy it would be to sink into oblivion, to give up on everything. Michael would have hated that but he didn’t really get a vote anymore.

  I felt like stubbornness was the only thing holding me up at this point. Like if I refused to give in, eventually the darkness would give up, stop circling, looking for the crack it needed to get inside and go away. That I’d wake up one morning and it wouldn’t hurt so damn much. And I wouldn’t feel so damn guilty. And I could take a deep breath again without feeling like I was breathing in glass and razor blades and gasoline. All I had to do was survive until that day.

  That’s why I usually ran at night. After Seth left, after I tossed and turned all night, after I’d beaten myself up for hours, after I couldn’t stand it anymore, I threw on my running clothes and slid out of the house before Ben’s alarm even went off. I needed to run off the confusion and anger. The pain. I needed to run myself empty again.

  I ran the several blocks from our house to Michael’s parents’ house slowly, trying to get a good pace, trying to ensure I didn’t wind myself by starting too hard, too fast. I needed to make sure I could push myself a little more on this run. I had no idea how far it was to the old house anymore. I had driven there the past few times and those had been years ago, before Michael joined the Army. I should probably let it go. I was a grown-up and it was a stupid thing we did when we were kids. But I just needed to see it once more. I needed to escape into the past for just a little bit.

  The Anderson house was perfect, as always. The solar-powered lights were still on as dawn was barely breaking and there was enough light to see the precision lines that edged the lawn. The bushes against the house had been cut into perfect rectangles, like coffins settled under the kitchen windows. God, where had that morbid thought come from? I shouldn’t have been surprised. I had always liked the Andersons in a formal, at-arm’s-length kind of way, but they were rather rigid. They’d mellowed some after the Colonel retired, but we all still called him the Colonel so that was a hint right there. They were loving, if not excessively warm. I hadn’t ever really gotten my head around how my dad and the Colonel were best friends. They were so different but Dad had been thrilled that they decided to move a few blocks away when the Colonel’s last assignment was at the Pentagon. Michael and I had been twelve, instant friends despite our genders and puberty. He knew every single thing about me from awkward preteen to high school girl searching for her identity through college and then the academy. We shared everything, even his brother—as long as it was just sharing him as a brother. Seth had been fifteen, older and more exotic, but I’d felt an instant pull with him. All the closeness I had with Michael—more, actually—but none of the calm, and after all the turmoil with Leila, I craved calm. Seth scared me emotionally before I understood what there was to be afraid of, while Michael had been the human equivalent of a blanket fort. When Seth went away to college, Michael and I spent most of our time just the two of us, and we both stayed home for college. Never more than two blocks away from each other as we grew from young teens to adults. Until the day he told me, casually, that he was leaving for Georgia, for Officer Candidate School.

  I could see Barbara through the window in her robe. She was making the Colonel coffee and breakfast, of course. I didn’t need to look at the watch I didn’t wear to know the time. Food was on the Anderson table the same time every morning and every night, rain or shine, winter or summer, dead child or live one. That was just the way they did things. A time for everything under the sun, a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to kill, and a time to heal. And a time to eat.

  Staring at the Colonel and Barbara while they ate breakfast without their sons wouldn’t make me feel better. Watching the people who’d raised the men I was trying to get out of my head wouldn’t make me empty. I started to run again. Seeing the house I had avoided for so long, despite how close it was, stirred up feelings I didn’t want to feel. Looking at them, seeing them the same as they had always been. Like Michael’s death had changed nothing for them. Not one damned thing. Except a new arrangement on the mantel to make room for an urn full of ashes that once upon a time had been the best person I had ever known.

  I shut it all down and just ran. The houses were getting farther apart. The trees closer together, standing taller, older. This was the oldest part of the neighborhood. A few more minutes and I’d see the marker. The sweat began to run down my back, making the sweatshirt humid and heavy, weighing on me, dragging me down. I slowed long enough to strip it off my body and over my head, almost missing the sign that lead me into the wooded area and over the easement the storm water ran through and then into the woods proper. I tripped over the roots that were higher and knottier than a decade ago. I sidestepped the rocks that had sat so long the dirt crusted up the sides of them, the summer rains sinking them deeper until eventually the earth would reclaim them.

  Young trees had grown up in the years that had passed and their sprouting limbs whipped me as I ran, forcing me to slow down. It was even darker here in the trees, much darker. There would be no light to guide me. My eyes adjusted to the deep bruising dark of the trees, away from the lights on the neighborhood streets. I knew I should turn on my phone’s flashlight app, but I was afraid it would break the spell I wanted to evoke in these woods. Time travel. Back to the past for a few moments. Where Michael’s spirit might still be for a flicker of a breath.

  I finally cleared the deepest part of the woods and skirted over to the lane that barely showed anymore. We never figured out what the lane was for since it started in the woods, which were hundreds of years older than the house. There was no driveway. There may have been a path for a horse and cart once upon a time. Michael and I had run through possibilities reasonable and absurd. A hermit, a deaf couple, a witch. Whoever had lived there had abandoned their home long before we’d found it as gangly, coltish young teens. That had been part of the game. Who and why.

  The first of the day’s weak light crept through the tree line, gray and pale orange, like the dying remains of a campfire. I rounded the last corner at a slow jog.

  And there was nothing. The house was gone.

  I turned and looked back the way I’d come, confused, wondering if maybe I’d gone the wrong way. Turned left instead of right. But the view behind me was just as I remembered.

  There was a raw wound in the trees to the left of where the house had been. I walked slowly over. I felt my stomach start to churn, a sour taste under my tongue. I took a deep breath and quickened my pace. I could see a sign at the start of the new path, muddy and churned with tracks. They had ripped down our house and were putting in thirteen luxury homes. More trees would soon be gone. They would gut the woods for a pool. The old was discarded for the new and improved, shinier and better than an old house tucked into a defensive ring of towering old oaks. A little voice inside me marveled at how long it had lasted, how long those trees had hidden its existence, keeping our secrets.

  I stared at the yellow construction trucks neat in their row waiting to eat more dirt, more trees, more memories. My chest squeezed a little bit as I tr
ied to catch my breath from the run and the loss of our special place.

  I turned and ran. There was nothing left here for me. Another change. Another loss. Doors closing, windows opening they had said to me. It was all so much bullshit. Life just pounded you. Bad things happened to you not because you were bad but because random bad things happened to people. Like Michael’s Humvee hitting an IED a week before he was set to come home. One week. He should be safe at home right now, getting ready for his bored stiff federal contracting desk job. Instead he was in an urn on his parents’ mantel next to his picture and a folded American flag. The other guys in the truck had survived. One goddamned week.

  I didn’t know what was worse, the anger or the helplessness. The grief hit me whenever it wanted, punishing blows to my heart, sucking my equalibrium from me. Nothing I had tried made it stop. I barely slept. The nighttime was the worst. I had no one to pretend for in the darkness. It was just me and the rage. Six days and he would have been safe. And he should never have been there to begin with. If he hadn’t listened to all that hooah bullshit his dad and his brother had spouted. Family tradition, they talked about. The Colonel came back from Vietnam and the Gulf Wars fine. One hundred forty-four more hours. Seth came back from two tours in Afghanistan without even having caught a cold. Just another hundred and forty-four hours and Michael would have been on that plane back home. I could picture it so clearly. I could see his face light up when he saw us standing there. And I could hear the applause as the people in the airport saw returning service members. Just eight thousand six hundred forty minutes more and my best friend wouldn’t be dead.

  I hated that everyone around me said they understood what I was feeling, because no one really did. Dad had missed the Vietnam War by two years. He was out of the military by the time the Gulf War hit. Mom made me see a therapist. She said that grief counseling wasn’t anything to be ashamed of. She said many police officers sought assistance to deal with the heightened day-to-day tension and uncertainty. The therapist had talked about PTSD and that any traumatic event could cause it. She talked about me having PTSD like I’d had to live inside the horror that Michael had endured. I couldn’t even imagine what that had been like. I picked at the pain like a scab, trying to get under and over and through to it, and I never could. And every moment of every day, under my breath, I prayed to gods I didn’t even believe in that his death had been instant. That he hadn’t suffered. That he hadn’t been afraid. That his final thoughts had been of hope and soaring wings of freedom. Like we had talked about those summer nights in that old house, with candlelight making shadows on our faces and it was safe to talk about our secrets.