Never Did Say

by C. M. Stunich

  “Just let me explain, okay?” Hannah says, her weird green-blue eyes too pale in her face, like some sort of husky dog gone wrong. “Hear me out.”

  “Did you touch my sister?” I ask, voice like ice, slithering from my lips like a snake. If looks, words, if they could kill, mine would be doing exactly that now, sinking their teeth into this bitch's throat and injecting enough venom to drop an elephant.

  “No!” Hannah looks around like she's afraid someone might overhear. Guess what? I give zero fucks about that. I reach out and shove her forward, hard. She stumbles, but not for long enough, grabbing onto the car door to stay upright. “Listen to me!” Hannah is screaming, but I don't care what she has to say. There aren't words to explain away what she's done. She can tell her story to the cops.

  “Careful, Never,” Ty says, grabbing my upper arm, making me look at him. “She isn't worth it. She's not.”

  I stare at him, and I know he's right. Right now, my only mission is to get Darla and call the cops. That's it. Our current justice system doesn't allow for me to put a knife to this woman's throat – although I'd like to. Oh God, I'd like to.

  “Back the fuck up, Hannah,” Ty says, releasing my arm and shouldering past her. She stumbles away and comes around behind him, her eyes narrowed on me, hands shaking. She looks so innocent in her blue baby doll dress, almost pretty. Just more proof that monsters come in all shapes and sizes. Never judge a book by its cover has never seemed so accurate. A beautiful demon is still a demon, and I won't let her hurt my family anymore.

  Ty unlocks the doors and in a one, short beautiful second, Darla is in his arms. She looks okay, a little confused maybe, but happy to see us. I don't see any visible bruises or cuts, but I know best that sometimes the worst scars run deepest. God help Hannah if she touched my little sister like she did Ty. Then, then not even the threat of jail will keep me from putting her six feet under, I swear it.

  “Are you okay, honey?” I ask, brushing back her hair, feeling tears prick my eyes. She's okay. I can't believe she's okay. But why? Why take Darla? And how? How did this bitch even get a hold of her in the first place?

  “Hannah, um, Hannah said we could do marshmallows,” Darla says, twisting her hands in Ty's black T-shirt. I press my cheek to hers, say a quick prayer of thanks to the universe, and pull out my cell to call the cops. And then Beth. Oh God, Beth.

  “Please wait,” Hannah says as I turn to look at her. “Let me explain things before you call the police.”

  “You're so lucky I'm holding a baby right now,” Ty says, voice cold and dark. “Maybe we both are? I wouldn't want to go to prison for you.”

  I start dialing the cops when Hannah reaches out and snatches my wrist, makes me drop the phone. Ty immediately goes to set Darla down and come to my rescue, but he should know better. I know how to take care of myself. I hit Hannah right in her piggy little nose with the heel of my hand and feel a sharp crack in response. She takes a defensive swing at my face and misses, giving me the chance to step in and grab a handful of her perfect fucking hair and shove her to her knees where she belongs. A quick punch up hits me right in the stomach and I feel my entire body go numb.

  “Never!”

  Ty is pulling me back, catching me in his arms as I wilt, like a flower with too little water and too much sun, but Hannah is already standing up and taking off down the road like the rogue fugitive little bitch that she is.

  “Get her, Ty!” I screech, but he won't let go of me, swinging me up into his arms like I weigh nothing. “Ty, get her!” I yell, hitting him in the chest while pain flashes white behind my eyelids. In that moment, I'm mad at him for not taking off, beating the shit out of Hannah. Later, I'll realize that his restraint is his true strength.

  He sets me down on the hood of Hannah's car and my mind flashes back to that day so long ago outside the convenience store, when he picked me up out of that broken glass like a true prince.

  Ty brackets my face between his hands, looking into my eyes with a bead of sweat clinging to the tip of his nose. I've scared the crap out of him – again.

  “Baby, are you okay?”

  I have my arms wrapped around my body like a coat, struggling against the sudden rush of nausea.

  “I'm fine. Call the police.”

  “I'm calling a fucking ambulance,” he says, bending down to grab my phone and put an arm around Darla. Ty lifts her up and holds her tight while he dials, leaning his forehead against mine. “You are so strong and so stubborn and so perfect, but fuck. You're going to give me a heart attack one of these days.”

  I smile, even through the pain.

  If the blood on my hand is any indication, Hannah got at least a little bit of the karma that's due her. And we have Darla back, seemingly whole and unscathed.

  If I had sneakers with me, I'd put them on because, maybe, just maybe, it might be time for me to start climbing out of this valley.

  26

  I have never seen a reunion like the one that happens on our front porch, a burst of life and love and brightness, relief and even a little bit of fear. Beth is so relieved that Darla is still alive that she collapses to her knees at the foot of the steps, falls to the icy ground in nothing but a peach colored shift, her copper tangle of hair twisted on her head like a nest. She doesn't look disheveled in that moment though, just beautiful, like an ancient earth goddess come home to rest.

  Darla seems a little confused, unsure as to why everyone is so excited to see her but happy nonetheless. Well, for the first five minutes or so she's happy and then she just seems done with the whole hugging and kissing and crying thing. Then she goes right back to asking for toasted marshmallows. Makes me wonder exactly what Hannah told her.

  “You're okay?” Beth asks after the police have gone and the house seems almost … normal again. I know that's not true, that my mother's absence although not immediately obvious will undoubtedly leave some sort of scar. “The baby?”

  She licks her lips and straightens her shoulders, regaining some of that essential Beth-ness that has been missing along with Darla.

  “We're fine,” I say, because we are. The doctor even said so. Mini McCabe Two is still only a cluster of cells and already she can take a punch. Yup, this is definitely Ty's kid. “You?”

  “I'm concerned,” Beth says, but I can see her relief is so great it's hard to focus on any of that right now. Darla's return has swept even my mother's death from her mind. At least for the moment anyway. “But I'm glad, glad that Darla is back, glad that woman got caught. So glad.” She tears up again and turns away, waving me off when I try to step closer to her. “I'm fine. Really.” Beth sniffles a little and glances back over at us, at Ty McCabe whose face is tilted up to the stars.

  I don't like his expression; it's too far away.

  “Give us a minute,” I tell her and we exchange a soft smile, packed with more words and emotions than anyone could ever understand – not unless they have a sister, too.

  “Sure thing, hon. Just don't stay out here too long. You'll catch your death.” Beth squeezes my shoulder and turns away, moving up the steps and into the house. The moment feels so hush-hush, like the world is just waiting to breathe. It's a trick of the winter wind and the cold, the gentle cloud cover that mutes the stars.

  I step over to the love of my life, my very own bad boy, and I curl myself around his arm. Ty starts like he didn't even know I was there and smiles softly. No dimples though, damn it.

  “This isn't your fault,” I say and his breath catches sharply. I keep going before he can fill the air with profane words of wisdom, cloud my mind from what I need to say. “You heard the cops. My mom dropped Darla off here and left her. She left a fucking four year old alone with Netflix and a bowl of microwave popcorn. If she hadn't done that, Hannah never would've had a chance to pick her up. Besides, they fucking arrested her bitch ass, so who cares?” I poke Ty in the chest, but he doesn't budge.

  “Hannah is only here because of me,” Ty whispers, breath fog
ging in the cool air. He keeps his gaze on the stars and won't look at me. “She's only in your life, your family's life, your son's life because I fucked up once upon a time.” He drops his eyes down to mine and I see that shimmer of blackness there that delves right down into his soul, into his horrible past, a past that's ten times worse than mine. A hundred. A thousand. “I let her hit you. I failed you, Never, as a man.”

  I snort and reach up to tug on Ty's nose ring.

  “Are you kidding me? The measure of a man isn't if he can throw the first punch. It's in how well he supports his woman when she does.” Ty's mouth twitches, but there are still no dimples. “A real man loves like there's no tomorrow, cares for his kids as if there's always one, and kisses like yesterday never happened.”

  A soft chuckles escapes his throat as he turns to me, putting his hands on either side of my waist.

  “You made that up just now, didn't you?”

  I quirk a brow at him.

  “Of course I did. Can't you tell it doesn't make any real sense?”

  “It makes perfect sense,” Ty says, moving his ringed fingers to my chin and tilting my face up. “Because you said it. Everything you say makes sense to me.” He leans in like he's going to kiss me and then just stops. “But I still wish I would've backhanded the bitch.”

  “You punched Luis for me, remember? So we're even. You took out my past; I gave a smack down to yours.”

  Ty wrinkles his brow for a moment and then nods.

  “I suppose I can live with that.”

  And then he really does kiss me like yesterday never happened, like this is our first kiss all over again. I feel the same butterflies in my belly, the fireworks behind my eyelids, the fire in my veins.

  I kiss him and I know that this is what a soul mate tastes like.

  27

  “I've never seen so many nude photos in one place,” Ty says with a slight wrinkle of his nose. He sets aside another stack of pictures, nestling them carefully into a shoe box marked Not For Human Consumption. I wrote that as a joke and then felt guilty afterward. Thing is, I don't know how to feel about finding naked photos of my dead mother. It's weird and awful in so many ways. “Only place that rivals this porn palace is the Internet.”

  I give a sad smile and shuffle through some more shots of my mother dancing. Sitting here, doing this, it's hard but I know I have to do it. Beth had to take Darla to a psychologist, one that specializes in child abuse, to attempt to get the full story and determine if Hannah did anything inappropriate to her. Apparently we're all going to have to go in at some point and give interviews. Fine by me. I've already had a few with the police anyway – we all have. Well, except for Ty. He made an appointment with one of the detectives to go down tomorrow and give a statement. I know that in this statement, he's going to tell them everything. Everything. He's going to implicate himself and although his only sin is that he ran away, kept his mouth shut all these years, I'm still scared. I don't know shit about the justice system or how any of that works. Is Ty an accessory to murder?

  I take a shuddering breath and watch as his face lifts to mine.

  “There are so many pictures of Angelica in here,” I say, dropping my pile to my lap and rubbing my temples with fingernails dipped in black. I painted them for her. It was all I could do really. I can't make myself cry for her anymore, miss her, care that she's gone. It sounds horrible, I know, and I don't want to be a horrible, numb useless sort of person. I want to weep like Jade, to be like India and cry when nobody's looking. Now that Darla's back, it's finally started to settle on the house that my mother is really and truly gone. The fear for our sister, the overwhelming emotions we had for her, they've settled back down like a dust cloud and now, now we can see my mother's metaphorical casket, shining black and lined with roses.

  Only, I'm not missing her, not sad for her, only for the idea of what should've been. I'm mourning a caricature of a person that I've drawn up inside my head, an ideal of what a mother should be.

  “She has pictures of herself laughing and dancing and drinking and fucking.” I sigh and drag another box over towards my knee. Chuck Norris lounges on the bed, his eyes narrowing on me like he knows something I don't. He's a brave cat, really, the only person that will dare to sleep on that bed. Even Jade, missing our momma like there's no tomorrow, she won't come in here and touch it. “There are no pictures of her kids in here.” I pause and feel my mouth tighten. “No pictures of us. There are no pictures of her lovers or even that yellow lab she had all those years ago. Pretty sure she loved her more than me and yet, there are no pictures of the fucking dog.”

  Ty scoots closer and bumps his knee into mine. The motion soothes some of my ire, just enough that I can think clearly.

  “At least your mom had pictures of you,” I say, “and she didn't throw away a single thing that used to be yours.” Ty leans into me and sighs.

  “Nor did she throw away all those bottles of her own piss. Besides, your mom left your room locked up like a museum. If we're exchanging fucked up mommy stories, I think you'll find us tied for first.” Ty curls his left hand around mine, bandage still firmly in place. I wonder if his burn will leave a scar and decide that I don't care either way – Ty and I are already scarred and we're all the more beautiful for it. “I think in her own way, she really did love you.” I snort, but Ty shushes me by turning and placing his lips against my ear. “You're pretty easy to love, you know, even for someone like her.”

  I ignore his words because I'm not sure how comfortable I am with them. Maybe, by believing she didn't love me at all, it's easier for me to let her go?

  I reach into the box at my left and pull out some crumpled papers. Past due bills abound, mixed in with receipts galore, a few shopping lists. What I want to find, but that I doubt I ever will, is some proof, some answer to the whole Luis story. Why did he kill Dad? And why, why did she marry him? I hate thinking that I might have to live the rest of my life not knowing. I want this story wrapped up in a perfect, little bow. I want to know, want to shelve it, want to forget about it.

  But life doesn't usually offer up those sorts of things, does it? It's ambiguous at best, an enigma at worst.

  “Hey,” Ty says, just as I'm about to mark the entire box for the burn pile. “What's this?”

  He leans over me and shoves some of the crap aside, retrieving a small, colorful sheet of paper in his ringed hand. On second look, it's actually a napkin, crinkled and old, stained with a bit of something that looks like coffee. My husband hands it to me with a raised brow, asking without words if I know what this is.

  The strangest thing is, I do.

  There's a picture on the napkin, a few garbled stick figures drawn in thick crayon. Me, Beth, Zella, Jade, Dad, Mom. In her flowery, loose handed writing style, Angelica has written the names of each person above their lopsided heads.

  “Hey you,” my momma says as she sips her coffee and reaches out to ruffle my hair. She was supposed to come home last night and read me a story, but she didn't. Papa says Momma gets confused sometimes and forgets how much she likes being with her family. “You okay?”

  I nod and fidget in my seat. I like comin' to the cafe because it smells good and the lady behind the counter always gives me a chocolate chip cookie when her boss isn't lookin'. But I am a little bored. I wish I had one of those fancy video game systems like Noah's got.

  Momma looks over at me, her curls piled up on her head, her neck decorated with a necklace draped in silver coins.

  “Here,” she says, reaching into her purse and grabbing a box of crayons. I take them from her fingers and open the lid carefully, like I ain't never had a present from anybody before. Momma rarely gives presents and she rarely takes us kids anywhere. But I'm here now, with her, just the two of us.

  The crayons are half-broke and there's no yellow, but I don't care. I'm too happy to care.

  I smile up at her, beaming like an angel – until I realize there's no paper.

  I frown and open m
y mouth to speak, but Momma's already got that part covered.

  “Use this,” she says, pushing her napkin over to my side of the table. “Draw me the thing you love most in the world, and I'll get you a hot cocoa.”

  I grin excitedly and start to draw. I'm good at assignments – teacher even said so at the last report card meetin' – but since Momma wasn't there, I'll have to prove it to her now. Besides, this is a real easy one for me. I know exactly what to draw without even having to think twice about it.

  Momma goes to stand up and then pauses, glancing over at me with a weird lookin' expression on her face. I glance up at her, and she softens her face into a smile.

  “I love you, baby girl, even if I'm no good at showing it.”

  “Never?” Ty's voice wakes me from the memory at the same moment his thumb brushes across my cheek, coming away wet and glistening. His beautiful lips curve into the most perfect smile. “See,” he says, dropping his voice to a suggestive whisper. “Even when you think all hope's gone out the window, it always finds a way to come back.”

  “Like a butterfly,” I say, sniffling and letting the tears fall like raindrops.

  “Exactly like a butterfly.”

  28

  Darla is not just home, but she's safe. She has no injuries, physical ones anyway. As far as her mental state goes, she's exactly like normal, too young to comprehend our mother's death and too detached from the woman to even notice she's missing. See, one of grief's worst attributes is that it likes to cling to the everyday, remind you how different life is. A person who was always there, a smiling face that always held a grin, the bright ring of laughter, if it's always around then you notice when it's missing. But if it's not? Imagine getting rid of your favorite shirt, your go-to, something you wore on a regular basis. Now imagine climbing into the basement or the attic or a spare bedroom and getting rid of some random thing that's been stored in there. Sure, it might mean something to you, might even be an heirloom or something, but you didn't see it everyday and so you can't miss it everyday.