by Lindy Zart
My eyes dart around the now empty room. “Did you see that? Where did it come from? How did it get in here?”
“The front door wasn’t shut all the way. It must have snuck in when we weren’t looking. I don’t know where it came from.” His eyes twinkle. “Want a pet?”
“Not that one,” I state. “It threw something in the tub and rammed me with its head like it wanted me to fall. You saw it; you know this time I’m not lying.”
He narrows his eyes and looks toward the bathtub. Dropping his hands from me, he approaches the tub as he says over his shoulder, “By the way, those were some impressive dance moves.”
“I call that one ‘Trying Not to Die.’ It’s going to be a hit.”
Blake smirks at me before turning his attention to whatever is floating in the bathwater. I hang back, not really wanting to come face to face with some rodent or whatever is in there. I grab a towel and wrap it around my body, forgetting to breathe as I watch Blake. When he puts his hand in the water, I wince, waiting for his arm to come away with a bloody nub where his hand is supposed to be. Instead, his hand comes out whole and intact, holding something. I expel a loud breath.
“It’s a sock,” he announces.
“A sock?” I sound dubious. I am dubious.
Blake stands and shows me the sodden garment. “Yeah. I don’t know whose sock it is, but that’s what it is.”
“And the cat?” I nervously eye the doorway, waiting for the bringer of death to appear once more.
“I’ll make sure it’s gone.”
“Okay. I’m just going to…” I move for the door and grip the doorknob in my hand. “Wait in here, until I know it’s for sure gone.”
Blake’s eyebrows lower. “Sure.” He pauses as he’s about to pass me. “Are you okay?”
“Yes,” I say in a super peppy voice, even adding a nod to authenticate it. And then I shut the door after him and keep my back to it, just in case.
It’s close to ten minutes until I hear from Blake again. “The house is clear.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. It’s on the porch right now eating bread and drinking milk.”
I jerk away from the door and fling it open. “Blake!”
He’s all innocent eyes. “What? It was hungry. And you should see it—it’s got its arms around the sock like it’s hugging it. Cutest thing ever.”
Glaring at him, I follow him into the living room, and keeping a good distance between the window and me, look out and down. Dark has claimed the night, but the porch light shines bright and strong. Sure enough, the cat is lying on the porch with the sock between its arms as it drinks milk from an old sour cream container.
“I guess it just hates you,” he says cheerfully.
As if sensing its nemesis, the cat looks up and stares at me, like it’s waiting for me to remove myself from its presence before it will return to its meal.
Without a word, I turn to make my way up the stairs to get dressed.
I dress in panties and one of Blake’s T-shirts—it’s purple with a picture of Prince on it, and ends at my knees. I’m hit by the need to sleep and fight a yawn. There are different ways to be tired—some from pure exhaustion, and others with fullness. I am the latter. I’m not ignorant enough to think that my past won’t eventually catch up with me, or that any of this is lasting beyond tomorrow, but for now, things are good. For tonight, I am exactly where I want to be—as long as that cat goes away.
I search the downstairs for Blake, and not finding him, I take the brown throw from the back of the couch and wrap it around my shoulders before heading out into the night. The temperature outside is nice—a little cooler when the wind blows, but not enough that I’m uncomfortable.
“Where’s the cat?” I ask cautiously.
“Gone. Must have known you were coming.”
“Ha ha.”
A low chuckle reaches me.
Blake sits on the rickety porch swing with its peeling white paint. My eyes move to the shed, thinking of all the projects it would entail to get it up to snuff. It would keep me busy for months. My gaze travels over the land, seeing everything it could be. This place needs life. Laughter. This place needs people to make more memories.
I glance at Blake. He stares back. Or just two people. Two people could make lots of memories. I think of sledding in the winter, ice skating on the pond. Building snowmen. I could plant a garden in the spring. Swim in the pond on the warmer days. Draw Blake. Kiss Blake. Spend my nights with Blake.
I give myself an internal shake. Stop it, Opal. You need to be free. No ties. And anyway, he’s probably leaving the country. And you have someone in Montana you need to see, and others you hopefully don’t see. No point in thinking of possibilities with something that will never happen.
“What is it with you and my T-shirts?”
I glance down at Prince and grin. “You have great taste in T-shirts.”
Blake scoots over to make room for me. I sit down before my tired legs give out, making sure the blanket blocks my bare skin from the cool wood. The sky is studded with white stars, and I watch the tree limbs move with the wind, the music of the leaves beautiful. Blake doesn’t say anything, and I try not to. It lasts for about thirty seconds.
“Are you going to repaint this?” I touch the arm of the swing and my finger comes away flecked in white.
Blake shifts on the seat, his arm now resting against mine. His warmth seeps through the blanket, making a hot spot on my arm. “Maybe. If I stay.”
I push with my legs, and the swing creaks as it slowly moves forward and back. “What’s the deciding factor on whether or not you stay?”
Blake’s arm shifts up and down as he shrugs. “I don’t know. I guess I’m waiting for a sign.” He glances at me, his eyebrows lifted as if to say he knows how silly his words sound.
I smile at him before turning my focus to the sky. Vast, dark, and endless—that’s the night sky. Full of dreams and opportunities. Everything seems possible under a star-filled sky. “Maybe if you wish on a shooting star, you’ll get your answer.”
“And maybe I’ll just feel lame.”
“That too.” I grin and push at the floor with my foot, causing the swing to move faster.
“Where are you going from here? Tomorrow, when we get to Bismarck, where will you go?” His eyes are serious.
“I don’t know,” I answer truthfully, unable to hold his stare for long. “I mean, I have one place I have to stop, but after that? Wherever sounds good, I guess. I’ll just close my eyes, put my finger on a map, and pick my next destination.”
“And you’re okay with that? Just—jumping around from place to place. That’s okay to you? That’s how you want to live?” A hint of scorn darkens his voice.
I hop down from the swing, not liking his tone. Not liking the judgment, and definitely not liking how I care what he thinks. “What about you? It isn’t like you have your whole life mapped out either. And you have more choices than me. You have options. I don’t have anything.”
I shake my head at how self-pitying that sounds, and hurry to alter my words. “I just want somewhere to belong. If you don’t belong with someone, at least you belong here, right? You have a place to call yours, Blake, and you don’t even know if you want it.”
The injustice of it pricks my skin like the bites of hundreds of bugs. People take what they have for granted, all the time. I didn’t have anything growing up, and I’m not complaining about that. But I see how wasteful people are with things that a lot of people don’t ever have. This place—this place could be so much. I don’t know the circumstances of Blake’s childhood. I can tell it was bad. If nothing else, he had a grandfather who loved him. A man who loved him enough to leave him his legacy. The ungrateful shit can’t be happy with that? Oh no, he has to go off to some other country to find out the true meaning of life.
My face burns; my hands fist.
Blake carefully stands. He doesn’t try to come closer, wariness stitched to his posture. “You’re right. I’m as clueless as they come.”
“Why can’t you be happy with what you have?” A crack sounds in the middle of the sentence. I really want to know. What is it about Blake that can never be satisfied? And maybe if I understand what drives him, I’ll understand what drives me. But I’ll never tell him that.
His jaw turns to stone, his eyes like lightning bolts in the dark. “I grew up with my dad telling me I was a waste of space and my mom pretending it didn’t happen. My mom was into her prescription drugs, choosing not to notice when he hit me, or screamed at me, or locked me in my room for hours. There was a special closet, just for me. It was dark, and tiny, and smelled like mothballs. I used to have nightmares about it.”
“Blake,” I whisper.
He looks away, his stiff stance warning me to not talk. “My dad wanted to control me, and I became out of control. My mom has mental issues, and I inherited some of them. It wasn’t all my parents’ fault. I had problems on my own, but it got worse after my grandpa died. He was a stable rock, and then he was gone, and I was lost. I want to finish everything he started, but I’m worried I can’t. I’m worried I’ll screw it up. I don’t want to let him down, not over this.”
The ravaged expression on his face shreds my heart. I unconsciously step closer, and he purposely steps back.
His voice is thick when he asks, “Do you know what it’s like to be suicidal, to have depression?”
I shake my head, my throat closing.
“I’ve tried to kill myself. I overdosed on drugs. Once on purpose, and the other time—the other time I don’t know. It was years ago, but I did. And I’ll never try it again, but the depression stays. That never goes away. Because of my addictive personality, I refuse all medication. The only one who can help me is me, and every day is a fight.” His voice is bleak, broken.
My fingers curl, wanting to reach for him. Just as I’m about to give in, he turns from me. Like he has to hide, like he is ashamed.
“What’s it like, having depression?” I ask quietly.
“It makes it hard to get out of bed some days. It makes it seem like giving up is the only thing that makes sense. There are some days when I feel so lost that I’m surprised I even know who I am. It makes me never satisfied, because I always feel like there’s a hole in me. There is something missing that I can never find.”
Blake shakes his head as he turns to face me, running a hand through his hair. “My grandpa saw that. He tried to help. And then he wasn’t there, and I turned to drugs to fill the void.”
He takes a step toward me, a hint of desperation in his next words. “I could have everything, and I would still feel incomplete. Something in me isn’t right, something that can’t be fixed. I don’t try to replace what I’m missing anymore. I just try to live with it. But I’m always searching, even when I tell myself to stop. I’m always looking.”
“I understand.”
His eyebrows lower. “Do you? You lie, Opal.” Blake laughs abruptly. “You lie about everything. You could be lying now.” His eyes are dark and somber, begging for me to be telling the truth, to comprehend what it’s like for him.
“I don’t lie about important things, Blake. I’m not lying about understanding. I don’t know how it feels to have depression, but I understand what you’re telling me.” I close the distance between us, my chest tight, and I touch his soft hair, brushing it back from his forehead. My eyes lift to his. “I don’t lie about my feelings.”
“What are your feelings?” he asks in a low voice, holding my gaze prisoner with his.
I can’t tell him. I’m not even sure what they are. But I can tell him about me, and maybe he’ll understand what I’m giving him. I reach for Blake’s hand. It’s cool and dry, and I squeeze his fingers.
“Less than three weeks ago, I was living in Illinois with my boyfriend Jonesy,” I say.
“What the hell kind of a name is Jonesy?”
I smile faintly. “It’s a nickname. He’s over six-and-a-half feet tall, and he’s a beast of a man. His first name is Jonathan, but no one calls him that.”
“Do you love him?”
I look at Blake as I let go of his hand. If he’s asking that, it means my answer matters to him. “No. Once, I think I did, but it was so long ago that I’m not sure. He was…exciting. I liked that.” For a while.
“What happened?” A breeze fills the silence, playing with Blake’s hair.
I scratch at the side of my nose, wondering how best to explain. I drop my hand and decide I might as well just say it. “Jonesy is a robber.”
He blinks. “I’m sorry, what?”
Shifting my feet, I meet his gaze. “You know, like…as a job? Jonesy robs places. For money…and other stuff. Say he filled out an application; in the job spot, he would put ‘robber.’ I mean, not that he ever would do that, but if he did, that’s what it would say.”
“What does he rob?” Blake asks quietly.
“Mostly grocery stores.”
His head jerks back. “Okay, now I know you’re lying.”
I chew on my lower lip, wishing this time I really was. “It’s a tribute…to me. Because I like food a lot. He always takes my favorite snacks.”
“He robs grocery stores for food?”
“Yeah. I mean, no one could ever accuse Jonesy of being a genius. And hey, if you’re going to rob a place for food, you might as well make it a grocery store. They do have the best selections of fresh meat and produce.” It’s a poor joke, and my shoulders slump as I wait for a reaction.
Blake makes a sound and then walks to the other end of the porch. With the length of the porch between us, he turns back toward me. “Do you rob them with him?”
“No,” I answer forcefully. “Of course not.”
His eyes are hot on my face. “But you know about it, and you don’t do anything.”
“At first.”
Guilt scorches my skin. It sounds terrible, but initially, it didn’t bother me all that much. But then Jonesy got involved with a rougher crowd, and he evolved from grocery store food robberies to things that included stealing money and other valuables, from businesses and homes. His new friends insisted Jonesy carry a weapon—thankfully, he refused. And then, to highlight the wrongness of it all, there was a little girl to consider. Everything changed when I met that little girl.
“Is that why you left?”
“No,” I whisper. My throat aches, burns with what I’m about to say. “I left because I turned in him and his accomplices. I made an anonymous call about a home robbery taking place.”
My biggest truth. The reason I put states between me and Illinois. Some of the gang is in jail, but the rest haven’t yet been caught. “I don’t know if they’re looking for me or not, but I didn’t want to hang around in case they were.”
Blake doesn’t say anything, and I can’t tell what he’s thinking.
“Jonesy is harmless,” I continue. Blake’s expression blackens. “What he does is wrong,” I retract, “but he’s harmless—he never brought a gun to the robberies, or any other weapon—even when the gang got on his case about it. He wouldn’t hurt anyone, not intentionally.”
My tone begs Blake to understand. “He has a daughter. Her name is Paisley, and she’s seven.” Tears form in my eyes. “I set them up—I did it for her.”
He blinks, a crack of emotion flittering across his face before disappearing.
The pain in my heart is debilitating. I can scarcely breathe around it. “The last time he robbed a store, someone got hurt, and I just…I just kept thinking about Paisley. Jonesy was getting in deep with these guys, and he wouldn’t listen to me when I told him they were bad news. I pictured the life he was giving his daughter, and the life she m
ight end up with, and I—I put in an anonymous phone call to the police, and he and three others were arrested. There are still two unaccounted for.”
Blake says nothing.
I swallow thickly. “I did it for Paisley. She lost her mom, and all she had was Jonesy…and me.”
Paisley Jordan’s mom died when she was six, and she was put in her dad’s care not soon after Jonesy and I started dating. I wasn’t aware he had a daughter until he got the phone call saying her mother died. Jonesy never talked about Paisley, and I don’t know if it was his decision, or Paisley’s mom’s, but he never saw her either. Not until she came to live with him.
“I love Paisley,” I whisper.
Another crack forms in Blake’s face, and this one stays. His eyes tell me what his mouth won’t. I take an unsteady breath, wiping at my leaking eyes.
It isn’t that Jonesy is unkind to her. He’s not. Jonesy is more absentminded than anything, like he forgets she’s around. He doesn’t have any basic knowledge of kids, and although I know he cares for her, he can’t give Paisley what she needs—not now anyway. Jonesy is a man who thinks he’s invincible and above the law. I was about to call things off with him when he suddenly had a daughter to raise. I couldn’t leave her, not right away. She’d just lost her mom, and she had a felon for a dad, and then her criminal dad got involved with worse ones.
And then I fell in love with her, and I didn’t want to leave.
I tried to tell Jonesy that Paisley needed him to be her dad. I tried to get him to stop robbing places and get a legitimate job. And he wouldn’t. He said he was providing for her in the only way he knew how. He said after a few more jobs, his cohorts assured him they would be making big money, and eventually, it would be enough to retire and live on. I’m not the best person, but even I could see what he was doing was wrong.
“She was sent to live with her uncle and aunt—her mom’s sister—in another state. She was taken from everything she knew. I feel terrible about it, about all of it. That she has Jonesy for a dad, that she lost her mom.” I shrug. “That I was what she was left with to try to decide what was best for her.
