Ripple

by Heather Smith Meloche

  Panic sweeps through me. Mom’s decided to come over and finally meet her neighbors.

  Willow runs toward the door with Tessa right behind her. “Wait,” I say, stopping them. “Just wait. Let me look in first.”

  “Our dad’s in there.” Tessa’s eyes plead. “And maybe our mom.”

  “Call the fire department,” I tell her.

  Slowly, Tessa nods. Willow folds against her sister. They probably think I want to be the tough guy, see the carnage first and spare them any pain. But really, I want to spare myself. And Mom from others seeing her this way.

  I approach the doorway and hear Mom say, “I told you to stay still.”

  The stacked wood is wet with gasoline. Mom stands just beyond the doorway holding a long piece of kindling burning at one end. In her other hand, she clutches a large cross, the one that used to hang on the wall in my grandma’s house. She waves it at Tessa’s stepdad. The floor between them is wet. She’s covered it in fuel and trapped him against the far wall.

  My fear surges. This is so beyond anything I can handle. I should have called Dr. Surrey. I shouldn’t have let it get this far.

  I take a deep breath, steady myself so I can try to talk her down. “Mom. Hi. What’s going on?”

  “Jackie!” Her gaze snaps to me, and I see her eyes aren’t glassy. She’s sober. Sober and absolutely, clearly insane.

  She steps toward me. The burning chunk of wood in her hand get dangerously close to the gasoline-soaked wood in the doorway.

  “I thought he took you.” She waves the cross toward Tessa’s very tense stepdad.

  “Why do you keep saying that?” He sounds exasperated. “Why would I take him?”

  “Shut up!” Mom sweeps her flame close to the floor.

  Tessa’s stepdad looks at me like I need to do something. Right now.

  I reach over the wood and put a hand against Mom’s shoulder. “Hey, look. I’m safe. See? No one took me.” I shake my head.

  I can help her out of this. I can. I can talk her down and run her out and hide her so that this night ends here. And we can keep going.

  She points behind her. “It’s all coming from this room.” She nods, certain. “We need to stop it. And we need to stop him.” She jabs her torch toward Tessa’s stepdad. “Or he’ll take us.”

  I grip Mom’s elbow. “We can run, you know. We can leave right now and get out of this town and go far away and be perfectly safe.”

  She shakes her head, strands of her hair flapping spastically. “No. He’ll find us. He won’t ever stop. He’ll keep coming after us.”

  I tighten my hold on her. “Okay. Then let me stop him. I can stop him. Please, Mom. Come out of there. So you don’t get hurt.”

  She pulls away from me. “No! Jackie, I’m so close. If this house burns, all of it, then the evil can’t escape.”

  “Mom—” I thrust both arms through the opening, toppling a layer of the wood wall to reach her. I grab her upper arms, just wanting to pull her out.

  But she wrenches free.

  “No, Jackie.” And she cracks the cross against my mouth. I fall to the side, stunned. My mind reeling. She hit me. Me.

  Without a second of hesitation.

  Her love for me no match for how strong her delusions have become.

  Tessa

  Jack falls to the ground, blood running from his lip where his mom struck him. I crouch down next to him. “Are you okay?”

  He looks at me dazed and hurt beyond the cut on his lip. Headlights streak across his stricken face. Two cars pull up.

  Mom jumps out of the first one. “Oh my God, girls, what’s going on?”

  The police officer who took Jack from Pineville High’s lunchroom gets out of the second car, a police cruiser. He rushes up to us, his badge glinting, his hand on his firearm. His eyes dart from the fire in the yard to our barricaded front door to Jack’s bloody lip.

  “We got a call about a fire and a hostage situation,” he says. “What the hell is going on, Dalton?” But Jack just shakes his head.

  The officer steps up to the front door, his fingers tightening on his firearm.

  “Fogerty,” Jack blurts, like he wants to stop the officer. But then his face crumples, glowing orange from the firelight.

  Officer Fogerty nods. He peers into my living room. “Ms. Dalton? Alice? Looks like you’ve got a situation here.”

  Jack’s mom moves toward the door. Her eyes darting in all directions. The angry flame in her hand echoes the one in the yard.

  Just like with the chimney fire, I think of how a single spark could take everything, including my stepdad.

  “Hell rose here,” Jack’s mom says to Officer Fogerty as she points her cross at the living room floor. Then she jabs it toward my stepdad. “He knows. He’s a demon. He was going to come after Jackie and me. He knows.”

  “She’s insane,” my stepdad says.

  “I said shut up!” she screams, waving her torch so that sparks float from the tip but go out before they reach the floor.

  “I woke up to being covered in gasoline by this bat-shit crazy woman,” my stepdad explains.

  “We need to get rid of him. And all the evil coming up into this house. It’s the only way.”

  “I wonder,” the officer says to her, “if he and that”—he points to the center of my living room floor—“had anything to do with Ryan’s death.”

  Jack

  With the mention of Ryan’s name, Mom looks like someone just threw water in her face. “Do you think?” she asks.

  “Might be.” Officer Fogerty digs into Mom’s past as he pulls several pieces of chopped wood off the barricade and tosses them aside. “Do you want me to help you?”

  She nods, eyeing him. “Do you have a weapon?”

  He pats his gun, then pulls down another layer of wood from the wall between them. “I’m coming in.”

  My whole body tenses.

  “All right. Come in.” Mom lifts her flame higher and pushes it toward Tessa’s stepdad. “I’ll cover you while you get through the barricade.”

  Officer Fogerty topples the rest of the wood from the door frame. “A friend of mine is a priest,” he tells her. “He says that to cage evil, you need to hold the cross up high with both hands and say the Hail Mary.”

  Mom looks at him, staring really hard like I’ve seen her do at witnesses during cross-examination in a trial. Assessing their character. Finding the truth.

  And then she nods, raising the large cross with one hand.

  “Here,” the officer says. “I’ll hold this for you.” His fingers wrap around the burning kindling. Mom raises her other hand above her head, holding the cross straight and strong in front of her.

  “Hail Mary—” Mom begins.

  Officer Fogerty whips the lit kindling out the front door and onto grass clean of gasoline.

  “—full of grace—”

  And handcuffs close around Mom’s wrists, the cross still hovering above her.

  Mom gasps. “No!” she cries.

  I keep my eyes closed as Officer Fogerty walks Mom to his police car. I can’t watch her scream. Kick. Swear the devil is in all of us. I can’t look at her when she tells me I’m doomed.

  • • •

  Officer Fogerty didn’t tell me I did a thing wrong. In fact, he didn’t say much of anything. He just listened. Then he set things in motion, calling Mayor Kearns, who scrambled on the weekend to secure Mom one of the best defense attorneys in the county, who agreed to defend her pro bono.

  Then Officer Fogerty called Dr. Surrey, who submitted her paranoid schizophrenia diagnosis as evidence so Mom could plead “not guilty by reason of insanity.” And Dr. Surrey told me I could come talk to her anytime. No charge.

  When I called Nurse Grishelm at Woodside Manor midweek, she said she’d search for the rig
ht group home for Mom. She promised it would be a place both Mom and I would be okay with. “You’ve had one heavy heart all this time, Jack,” she said. “You know, you got to learn to lean on people more.” She’s right.

  So when Dad showed up in the middle of the night after Mom was arrested, I did just that. “Jack,” he said when he met me at the police station. And that was it. I lost it. Just seeing his face made me realize how tired I was, and how relieved I was to see him.

  He didn’t come down on me for not telling him how bad Mom was. He just hugged me for a long time, and then told me he was going to stay in Pineville until stuff was sorted out. Then we’d both go back to his house and start over.

  Now, almost a week after Mom’s arrest, I have one more thing to take care of. I knock on Emma Hadley’s front door. The curtains in the front window pull back. Her dad peeks out, then disappears. And for a long moment, I think they’re ignoring me. I know Officer Fogerty told them Mom was the one who hit Emma, so I don’t blame them for not answering.

  But eventually, the door opens, and Emma, on crutches and her legs still in casts, balances in the doorway.

  “Hey, Em,” I say, happy to see her. “You’re looking exceptionally upright.”

  She gives a weak smile. Then shakes her head. “My parents are pretty upset, Jack. And I sort of am, too.”

  I can barely look her. But I do. Because I need this closure.

  “I’m really sorry, Emma. I didn’t know it was my mom while you and I were hanging in the hospital. And then when I found out—” I shrug. Because I really could have handled things better. Told someone.

  She readjusts on her crutches. “If you knew your mom might be dangerous, you should have said something.”

  All I do is nod, my head bowed.

  “Listen. Even though this is a little bit your fault,” she says, “I actually miss you. I liked your hospital visits, and it’s pretty boring here at home.”

  “Wait.” I grab my cell phone from my pocket. “I have something for boredom.”

  I pull up Topic Buddy, and the black dude stares at me seriously, raising a long finger, and says, “Things you should avoid at all costs. Go!” He points at me.

  “That’s easy,” I say. “Not visiting with Emma Hadley at least once a week.”

  Her cheeks pull up, flushing pink as she smiles. “Thanks, Jack.”

  I shake my head, relieved that we’re still friends. “No, Em. Thank you.”

  Tessa

  The week after the homecoming dance is a goddamn firestorm at school. But I’d prepared myself for that. The looks. The whispers. There are so many rumors, no one knows what to believe. So they just gape. Like I’m covered in flies.

  I did tell the whole truth to Officer Fogerty earlier this week when he pulled me from first hour to ask me questions about Ty, what happened in the bathroom, and what I saw at Simone’s. I answered them. Honestly.

  Jack referred me to Dr. Surrey so I can start dealing with some of my issues, and when she called me this week, she said, “Being honest is how you start to get better.”

  I’ve thought about talking to Seth, just to explain some things, but he and Simone have been doing everything to ignore me. Until this Friday morning, at my locker between first and second hours, when the hall behind me suddenly quiets. I turn to find them. Simone’s hands are wrapped around Seth’s arm. And I have no idea what’s going to spill out of her mouth. In front of everyone. Watching. Soaking it all in.

  I swallow hard.

  She leans in close, and I can see the deep bags beneath her eyes.

  “Tessa.” Simone’s voice is low, steady. “Thank you for talking to the police about Ty.” I look at her grateful expression and know she means it. “Baker thanks you, too,” she says.

  I nod. “You’re welcome.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me what really happened with Ty?” Seth asks, his voice husky and tight. “I would have gone after him. I thought something else happened.” He moves from Simone to grasp my shoulders. “You should have said something.”

  “Maybe.” I step back, and his hands drop. He has no idea the guilt that kept me silent, everything I’ve done. And I decide he doesn’t need to.

  He shifts awkwardly. “So, I heard what happened at your house. It was actually on the news. That’s scary stuff, Tessa. You okay?”

  “I am.” I give him a grateful smile. “Thanks.”

  He nods. “Okay. Well, take care of yourself.”

  My smile is sincere. “I plan on it.”

  • • •

  Two weeks later, I stand in front of Grandma Leighton’s front door, anxious and nervous. And, this time, quarterback-less. The rolling cart next to me is filled with the best ammunition I might have to convince Spencer Diane Leighton I’m not her best choice for Leighton Custom Homes’ next leader.

  The fallout from this conversation could be bad. But I have to try.

  “Tessa,” Grandma says, answering the door personally. She leans in for an air kiss. “Glad you came.”

  I initiated today’s get-together, and she probably thinks it shows “can-do spirit.”

  “So,” she says as I step into the foyer, “have you decided to move in? We could start you as an intern at LCH as soon as this week.”

  “No, I’m here to talk to you about something else.” I say it the way I practiced in front of my mirror, trying not to look too nervous, to seem assertive and strong.

  “Oh.” She’s surprised. “Well, that’s fine.” She clicks her heels to the sitting room, so I follow.

  I don’t waste time. Because I’ve wasted too much time worrying already. From my rolling cart, I pull two photos of her paintings, the ones I found in the storage room upstairs. I cleaned up the pictures I’d taken of them, and then it cost me almost a month’s pay from the diner to have them printed on canvas. Now I hold them up.

  She gasps. “Where did you get those?”

  But I ignore her question. “What are these?” I prop them against the coffee table between us and pull out a third one—my favorite, with a dark-haired woman in a rose-colored dress. A tight bodice. A skirt that flows like water down her legs until it spills onto the dance floor beneath her. She looks off to the side, her hand held out. And, because Grandma Leighton is a true artist, it’s clear that whoever this woman is looking at, she loves him.

  She takes her painting from me. Stares at it, like she’s remembering. Every stroke. What it felt like. Who she used to be. “These are mine.”

  “I know,” I say. “Why did you stop painting?”

  She looks at me, her chin not as high as usual, her wrinkles sagging. “There was no point, I suppose.” She sets the painting in her hands against the coffee table. “My father was very strict. He was a shrewd businessman and a revered public figure, but at home, he wasn’t above locking my brothers and me in our rooms or slapping us as punishment.”

  She nods to her artwork. “That was child’s play to him.” Then she sighs. “And once I started working for the company, I stopped having any time for painting and design.” Her gaunt face swims in her giant glasses. Her earrings and bracelets and necklace with endless gold links all look way too big for her. Her blouse has shoulder pads. Her skirt is double hemmed. But underneath it all, she’s so small. Just draped in who she’s supposed to be.

  From the cart, I pull my own painting—my self-portrait done with a new photograph. After everything that’s happened, I was finally able to finish it. It helped, too, that my stepdad started getting outpatient treatment for his drinking because of how scared he was the night Jack’s mom tried to set him on fire. “I came to, and this crazy woman was in my house, and you all were nowhere. I thought she might have killed you, and I was too fucked up to protect you,” he’d said. But after a couple weeks of being sober, he’s been saying, “This is tough, but everything’s a lot clearer now.”<
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  With things calming down, I’m able to see more clearly, too.

  I hold up my painting. “This is mine,” I say. It took me the past two weeks to finish. I stand, ankle-deep, in a lake of beer, ripples everywhere. Floating by are gold bangles. Empty beer bottles. Mini-mansions. Report cards and broken pencils. But my chin is high. My eyes looking up. The sun rising in the distance behind me.

  “My God, Tessa.” She takes my work into her hands. “You’re really good.”

  “I’m sure I get my talent from you.”

  Her head jerks up. Her face fills with pride and regret. Behind her giant frames, her eyes get glassy.

  “Grandma.” My voice cracks with my own emotion. “The company won’t fail if I’m not there leading it. But I might fail. Because I don’t care. I don’t care about business. In fact, I might actually suck at it since numbers and figures and social situations are not my forte.”

  Her blond brows crinkle as I feel tears pricking my eyes. “And the University of Michigan? It terrifies me. It’s too big. I need to be at a small school, creating art, maybe discovering something else that I’m truly good at. But U of M is ultra-competitive, and I’m worried if I do end up getting in, I’ll just flunk right out.”

  Several tears escape as I shrug. “This is who I am. I’m not anything like what you want me to be. I’m quiet and don’t like being the center of attention. But I do love art and photography. More than anything.”

  Grandma gives me a pained expression.

  I lean toward her and take her hand. She actually startles. “I love you.”

  She cries, and I realize that, like the rest of us, she’s just doing the best she can. And she’s always looking out for me in her own way.

  “So I’m considering going to an art college here in Michigan, but I’d like to live with my parents and go to community college for a couple years first to get my general education classes done. It’ll be cheaper that way.”