I opened my eyes at last to see my reflection in the water. It looked so much like my mother’s that my father hadn’t been able to look at me. When my fingers touched the water to disperse the image, a lone tear slipped out of the corner of my eye and created a ring that rippled outward. Before the tears could turn into an unforgiving surge, I heard someone coming.
“Lace…”
I turned and found Nick slowly approaching. For a split-second, it crossed my mind that my father should have been the one who came to comfort me, but I pushed those thoughts away. I would’ve been grateful for anyone who came in his place.
I stared back at him, begging him with my eyes to tell me that I was wrong. That if only I hadn’t run away so swiftly, someone would have told me that. But the tears still flowing from his red, swollen eyes dashed my hopes.
He knelt down and drew me to him. I sagged against his chest, staring at the ground despondently, wishing I were still in my room asleep and dreaming this whole nightmare.
Nick didn’t say anything for the longest time. I’d given up on him speaking when he finally did. “She was on her way home. The other car ran a red light and they collided in the intersection.”
I sucked in a sharp breath. She’d been on her way home for me! If she hadn’t been so worried and preoccupied with me, maybe she could’ve seen the other car in time to avoid being hit. But she was distracted because I was so upset when she left and had asked her to hurry back! How was I supposed to live with that?
With that realization, my urge to cry a relentless flood found me at last, and Nick cupped my cheek against his shoulder while I had my fill of tears.
“I’m here for you, Lace. Your dad, my mom and dad, and… and Kevin too, we’re all here for you. You won’t have to go through this alone.” Just the mention of Kevin made me cry that much harder. I’d never needed him more at any other time in my life, and now he wouldn’t be there.
Just like her.
Nick
Kevin followed me into my room. Our mother lay crying in her bedroom and, thankfully, her sobs were silenced when Kevin closed my door and came to sit at the foot of my bed.
I kicked off my dress shoes and worked loose the tie about my collar. Then I pulled off my suit jacket and tossed it in the chair by my desk across the room. “I thought they were gonna have to drug Jerry. My God, he wasn’t even that bad when his brother Gabriel died.”
“I think I’d feel that way if anything ever happened to Lacy,” Kevin said solemnly. I felt the same. “I’m surprised she didn’t go all to hell too. I thought for sure she was going to lose it when they started lowering the casket and all, but…”
At the joint family cemetery, located in a clearing in the forest behind our houses, Lacy had just stood by her mother’s grave wearing her pretty black dress, staring at the ground in a tear-less daze. She had shaken hands and accepted condolences in a cold, blank detachedness that worried me. Jerry was too distraught to even greet mourners. Her father’s emotional collapse was forcing Lacy to be the strong one when it should have been the other way around.
“You heading back to school now that it’s all over?” Kevin asked.
I sat down and pulled a smoke and a lighter from my nightstand drawer. I handed him one as well. “I haven’t decided yet. I should, but I hate to leave with mom still so upset.”
I pulled two beers from under my bed and gave one to Kevin. We clinked the bottle tops together and simultaneously said, “To Grace,” in honor of the woman who had been like a second mother to both of us for our entire lives.
After a few moments of drinking in silence, Kevin said, “I know she’s going through this horrible thing, Nick, and mom says I need to just give her time because she’s still in shock, but I don’t understand why she won’t talk to me. I feel so guilty about what happened with Claire. I need to be there for her to make up for it now. Why won’t she let me?”
My head snapped up, and I glared at my brother. “I can’t believe you have the gall to use her mother’s death to ease your guilty conscience.”
Kevin stared back at me, shocked, before he stood up and fixed me with his petulant glare. “You’re such an asshole. You said you wouldn’t hold it against me. You said you didn’t care if I did it.”
“I don’t give a shit what you do, Kevin,” I said, closing my eyes, trying to calm my raging temper. “All I know is that we just came home from a funeral for a lady who was like a mother to us. I’m not in the mood to indulge you in your selfish pity party right now.” I opened my eyes to stare up at him pointedly then. “And as for Lace, I think she would rather get through this alone than be used as your penance.”
“Nick!”
I rose from the bed when my father called from downstairs. I brushed past Kevin on my way to the door. “Yeah, Dad.”
“Come on down here, son.”
We both put out our smokes and Kevin followed me downstairs to the living room to find my father with his arm draped over Lacy’s shoulder. When he saw us coming, dad kissed Lacy on the forehead and left the room.
Lacy had changed out of her black mourning dress and into a more comfortable pair of jeans. I recognized the baggy navy sweatshirt as one of Grace’s. Her sad eyes drew dark and cold when they landed on my brother.
“Hi, Lace. You holdin’ up okay?” I asked, giving her a quick, brotherly hug of concern.
“Yes, thank you. I came to ask a favor?”
“Anything.”
Kevin hovered awkwardly by the stairs for a few moments, then moved to stand beside her. She immediately stiffened and started fidgeting with her fingernails.
“I need to go to the market, but daddy’s not really up to it. I just need to run in and grab a few things. I wouldn’t take long, and I’ll give you gas money.”
“Now what makes you think I’d want gas money, silly? Let me run upstairs and grab my shoes.”
“I can take you,” Kevin piped in. Lacy flinched at his voice and took a step of retreat.
“That’s okay,” she said, backing away further until she reached the front door. She cast me a split-second glance that silently begged for my intervention. “I-I’m not quite ready to leave just yet. I still need to make a list. I won’t be long, Nick.”
Before either Kevin or I could stop her, she was out the door and crossing our adjoining front yards. We both watched from our living room window until she disappeared into her own house, then I dared a furtive glance toward Kevin.
His fierce look said more than his words. “You told her!”
I rolled my eyes and shook my head, starting toward the stairs so I could go up to my room and change clothes. Kevin grabbed my arm when I reached the bottom of the staircase. “You told her, didn’t you!”
I turned on him and unleashed my fury. “I didn’t tell Lace anything. If she knows, it’s because she saw it with her own eyes. Ever think of that, little bro?”
His eyes widened from the realization that Lacy had possibly seen him and Claire Friday night. I didn’t give him a chance to recover.
“So now the question is, did she? Or didn’t she? Do you ask her if she saw you? If she didn’t, you’ve screwed yourself because you just told her. If she did see you, you’ve just given her an opportunity to dump your sorry ass, whereas up until now, she’s been too preoccupied to deal with the situation. Either way, I’m thinking you were wrong not to talk to her when you had the chance. It looks like you screwed more than just Claire the other night, dude.”
I turned back toward the stairs when Kevin quietly said, “I fucking hate you.”
I glanced back over my shoulder with a smirk. “I gotta go. Lace asked me to give her a ride.”
Lacy
My father’s ability to cope with the death of my mother left much to be desired. I hoped that after a few days of deep mourning he would return to himself, a little hollowed inside perhaps, but intact.
By Thursday, two days after the funeral, he still hadn’t come out of his room or showere
d. Each day that he sank deeper into his own inner hell I was forced to pick up the slack. Whereas before my mother died, she had done all the cooking, cleaning, and errand-running, I now assumed those duties, which was a challenge because not only had I never lifted a domestic finger in my life, I didn’t have a car. I had a license but never learned how to drive daddy’s stick shift, and momma’s automatic was ruined in the wreck. If I needed groceries or had to run out to pay a bill, I had to depend on Andy or Rhonda, or Nick when he was home. Asking for help was something I soon grew to dread and found so humiliating that I resented my father for putting me in a position where I was forced to do it.
Finally, there came the point on Monday morning, over a week after my mother’s departure, when I could no longer deal with the frustration of being my father’s keeper. I hadn’t been to school since her death and was sick of the lonely seclusion I woke to face each day.
I was also tired of putting Donald off when he called to ask if daddy would be coming into the office each morning. I woke up early to fix breakfast before school, hoping my father would be enticed to follow my lead and go in to work for a change.
I carried a tray of French toast in to my father, and once I had the dark draperies open and sunshine infiltrating his dungeon, he stirred.
“Close ’em,” he muttered, in the monotone I’d grown accustomed to over the past week.
“Good morning, Daddy. I made you some breakfast. Donald called and says he really needs you to come in today,” I lied.
“Git,” was his reply.
“Daddy, you need to eat. Prowling around and snacking after I go to bed isn’t enough. You’ll feel better once you go back to work. It’ll take your mind off everything.”
“Git,” he repeated, more forcefully this time.
I set the tray of food down on the bed beside him, believing the aroma of the cinnamon spiced toast would rouse his interest.
I was wrong.
He sat up and hurled the tray of food across the room. “I. SAID. GIT!”
Startled, I stared back at him as though he were an alien life-form in disguise of the warm, loving father I’d known only a week before. Then he fell back onto his pillow, as if whoever had possessed him only a moment before had left him lifeless in the wake of their exit. “And close the goddamn curtain on your way out.”
Biting back my tears, with trembling hands, I cleaned up the mess and did as he commanded.
It didn’t strike me until I was gathering my things for school that I didn’t have a way to get there. I usually rode with Kevin and hadn’t ridden the bus in years. I knew daddy was waiting to buy me a nice car for a graduation present, something new and shiny and absolutely perfect, which was why I’d never complained about being one of the only seniors at school without a set of wheels. With a sigh of discontent, I resigned myself to hurrying down the long driveway to catch the despicable bus.
Though it was a relief to be out of the house and back at school, I soon tired of all the well-wishes and condolences that seemed endless that first day, appreciated as they were.
“I’m so sorry about your mother,” all my teachers had said. “Take your time catching up, and if you need anything let me know.”
Acquaintances were no different, only they also brought up an equally painful issue. I’d noticed the strange stares all morning, figuring most people didn’t know what to say to me and opted for heart-felt smiles instead. Mark was the first to broach the subject on our way to homeroom, when I grew visibly uncomfortable with the stares and whispering.
“It’s because everyone is wondering about you and Kevin. By now everyone has heard the gossip about you guys having that fight and breaking up last week. Kevin is acting like you’re still together, but you didn’t speak to him at the funeral so everyone’s a little curious and confused.”
When I didn’t offer a confirmation or denial, Mark stopped me at the door to our classroom and quietly asked, “Well? Are you broke up or aren’t you?”
I shook my head and sighed. “I have no idea.”
I couldn’t deny that I missed Kevin. There had never been another time in our lives when I needed his love and support more. I needed to feel his arms around me, his voice full of loving assurances that everything would be okay. Now that momma was gone, and daddy was disappearing inside himself, Kevin was the only person who could ever convince me that the world would be right again someday. As angry as I was with him, and as much as I still hurt, my bitterness subsided a little each day as I starved for the strength and comfort that the simple nearness of him would have provided.
I had actually tried to convince myself that I pushed him to cheat with my prudishness. That he deserved my understanding and forgiveness. I tried to justify his actions by telling myself he’d been on the rebound after one of the worst fights we’d ever had, and that maybe he even thought we were broken up at the time. I’d told myself that Claire was only a means to ease his hurt feelings and sexual frustration. How he’d managed to abstain from Claire and her innuendos for as long as he did was beyond me. That didn’t make me feel any less hurt or disappointed, but I tried to put the situation into perspective so I wouldn’t say something unforgivable when I did finally see him and confront him with my knowledge of what he had done.
The opportunity presented itself during lunch when he found me at my locker.
“Hey there, gorgeous,” he said, coming up behind me. He draped his arm over my shoulder to curl me into an embrace. In spite of myself, I let him, nestling my head in the crook of his neck as he whispered, “God, I’ve missed you.”
Pride forced my tears back, and I steeled myself not to shrug him away. “Daddy and I are still adjusting to the new routine. I just needed some time.”
“I understand.” He pulled me even closer as if to make up for the time we’d lost over the past week. “I know I was a jerk and I’m so sorry, baby. I was so afraid I was losing you. You’ve avoided me all week and I wanted to be there for you. I wanted to talk to you and hold your hand and just be there. It was killing me that you were going through this alone.”
A lump rose in my throat. Instead of responding, I tightened my firm, steady hold around his waist, relishing the feel and smell of him, knowing that when I did speak, it would mark the beginning of the end.
“Lacy, this is all going to be okay. Your mom. Me and you. We’ll figure out a way to get through all of this. We’ll work out whatever we have to work out because nothing is more important than how much we love each other. As long as we’re together.”
“You still want ‘us’?”
He pulled back enough to eye me thoughtfully for a few long moments, and instead of lying, as I expected, he said, “If you’d asked me that last week I wouldn’t have known how to answer. Lacy, I saw you with Mark that night.” When I opened my mouth, he hurried on. “I confronted him about it. He told me I misunderstood what I saw and that nothing happened. But that night after I saw you with him I was angry and hurt. I was still upset about the New York thing. It all made me crazy and I wasn’t thinking straight. I lost sight of the fact that I know you love me and would never hurt me that way,” he explained, giving me the impression that he might be trying to pave the way to confession with justification first. “I just know that I love you. And it’s not like it was before when we were kids. We hurt each other now, when before all we did was get mad at each other and sulk for a few days.”
While I absorbed his words, I backed out of his embrace, holding his hands between us as I tried to formulate my speech.
“Lacy?”
With my gaze trained on the red brick wall behind him, I spoke quickly so tears wouldn’t steal my words. “I love you too, Kevin. I had doubts sometimes too. I didn’t know if what we had was real, or if I just wanted it to be because it was you. Because you’re my best friend and such a huge part of my world. But I know now that the way I loved you was real, and I don’t think I would have figured that out if I hadn’t looked through the window
in Andy’s tool shed last Friday night.”
He stepped back as if I’d slapped him. He shook his head as though to ward off the fact that he’d just lost me. “Oh God, Lacy…” He reached up to touch my face but must have thought better of it and stopped short. “What about now?”
“Can you just give me some time? Let me adjust to what’s happened to daddy and me? Everything has just happened all at once and I’m still reeling. I do know that I don’t trust you anymore and I have too many other things on my mind than to worry about us right now.”
Kevin pulled me close enough to press his lips to my forehead. “I regretted it as soon as it happened. Even if you can’t forgive me enough to want to be with me right now, can you at least forgive me enough to let me be here for you?”
“Kevin, I have to focus on daddy and me right now,” I said truthfully.
Instead of trying to argue or convince me to reconsider, he gave me a weak smile and nodded his understanding. “So, are we broke up?”
I hadn’t considered if we were broken up, but there was no other way to look at it unless I was willing to forgive him and let him back into my world, where until a week ago he had always rightfully belonged. Yet, without knowing if I could forgive him, for his sake, it was best that I not tie him down with hopes that might lead to disappointment.
“I don’t know what I want right now. So, I guess for the time being, yes, I think we should consider us broken up.”
I smiled apologetically and turned away quickly, lest I change my mind and fling myself back into his arms where I wanted to be.
The rest of school passed without incident. I was anxious to get back to work on my music, but without having a ride home, I couldn’t stay to work with Mr. Porter after school. I went to see him after my exchange with Kevin to tell him.
Breaking Lacy (Nick & Lacy Book 1) Page 6
