by Jolene Perry
“I’d never . . .” I shook my head, but Eamon had already started his bike and took off down the road.
I heard Tobin blare the horn on his truck just before he pulled into the driveway.
His smile at seeing me dropped every bit of tension Eamon just added on.
“There’s my girl!”
And I jumped into his arms.
***
“Delia!” Dad’s voice almost catapults me out of my chair on the porch. “What on earth were you thinking?”
“What?” I didn’t realize so much time had passed and that Dad and Weston were back already.
“Don’t what me.” Dad sits on a chair next to me, and leans in my direction.
I want to set my jaw and look him straight in the eye, but instead I shrink back into the seat and stare at my hands. I’m really starting to hate this side of me. Emails asking my friends for time are one thing. Facing my father is another. Just his tone makes my body shake.
“Where’s Weston?” Anyone to save me from whatever Dad has to say.
“He’s getting ready. Which you should be doing, too. You look like damn hippie in that blouse.” He scowls.
I glance down at the silk. This blouse cost my dad over three hundred dollars at Neiman Marcus, and I want to laugh.
“Weston told me about last night.”
My stomach turns over, and I pull in a slow, deep breath to try and keep from shaking. I finger the hem of my blouse and wonder if there’s anything I could say to get me out of this.
“I thought we’d left this alone, Delia. If what you had to do didn’t teach you to stay away from that boy, I don’t know what to do for you.” There’s a hardness, and a mean, almost sarcastic edge to his voice. “Or if anything can be done.”
“But—” Dad needs to know how it all happened.
“Keep your mouth shut when I’m talking, Delia.” His steely eyes don’t leave mine.
I’m blinking back tears, and biting my lip, trying to just wait it out.
“Weston is the best kind of boy. He loves you more than you’ll ever find from anyone else. His dad has all but sealed up my election this fall, and if he’s ready to forgive you for not only your past, but your damn little stunt last night, then you better grab him while you can, because not many decent boys would want someone who—”
“Dad, I don’t think you understand what happened. I just went for a walk. I didn’t think I’d run into anyone! It’s that—”
“Delia!” He barks, silencing me and spilling the tears down my cheeks. “Let’s not add liar to the long list of sins stacked against you. This is my final warning to you. Understand?”
I clutch my stomach and nod.
“Now.” He stands up, a painted smile on his face. “Let’s get prettied up, and put on our best smiles, okay?”
“Okay,” I say, hating myself a little more than I thought possible.
“Delia, I’m sorry,” Weston whispers as I knot up my hair.
His face is pleading as he stands just outside my bathroom. My bedroom door is politely open.
“It’s fine.” I take another breath and blink away a few more tears as I stare at my reflection in the mirror. I pull up another strand of hair and grab a bobby pin. “It’s not like I was going to escape today without crying.”
As I look at my face in the mirror, I know that Eamon would give me shit over how my hair was pulled up too tight, and he’d hate that Weston is here. Right now I hate that
Weston is here. Sending a text to Tobin was a stupid coward move, but better than him not know Weston’s coming at all.
There’s no way to tell Weston not to come now. How do I say that I can’t hurt the brother of the deceased?
Screw it. Dad’s already pissed. I jerk out the pins and let my hair fall.
Weston sighs. “He asked about the car because he heard me either leave or come back in, or—”
Wait. At first I was mad just because he told Dad I rescued Tobin. My chest drops.
“Oh no, you didn’t get in trouble, too, did you?”
He looks away, like he doesn’t want to say.
I stand and face Weston, suddenly tense and wondering what happened between them. “What did he say?”
Weston’s eyes come back to mine. “He gave me a wink and said something about you and I taking off together. I didn’t want him to think that of me.” His voice falters. “Of us, I mean, so I told him that you’d gone for a walk and needed to be picked up.” He runs his hands over the front of his black suit a few times.
So, that’s how Dad got the whole story. “And I imagine he knows why and where, and . . .” everything. I’m nodding without meaning to, feeling sick that Dad will be thinking—typical Tobin, even though he just lost his brother. I know Tobin partied less when he and I were together. He was careful. Always careful with me until the end. I’d been around enough to know that. Dad just never gave him the chance.
And now Weston covered for himself by using Tobin, which was all true, so it’s not fair of me to pin that on him, either.
“I’m sorry, Delia. I really am.” His whole face and body and everything is so pleading.
I sigh and turn away. “Damn hypocrite.” I say under my breath as I turn toward the mirror, my hair falling around my face. I’ve put on makeup, but just a touch. Almost nothing. And my hair’s staying down.
“Delia?”
“My father, not you.”
I open my mouth to tell him that I’d just gotten a lecture on what a sinner I am, but Dad’s apparently winking at Weston over his own daughter. The thing is—Weston and I haven’t talked about my past. I dumped everything from the old Delia and left it in Crawford. The problem is that now I’m back, and the two parts of my life don’t seem as compatible as I thought they might be.
“I shouldn’t have said anything, Delia. I’m really sorry.”
“It’s not you.” I sigh. It’s my dad. It’s me. It’s Tobin.
Weston steps close to me and slides his arms around my waist. “It’ll get better.”
I lean in and let him think he’s comforting me, but my dad isn’t getting better, he’s getting worse, and I don’t know how much more stress I can take.
Seventeen
Tobin
The church is still decorated from a wedding the night before. I find this both completely appalling and amusing. The guy who was always most likely to never get married had ended up in a church full of carnations, bows and baby’s breath.
“Tobin,” Dad nudges me. Shit, they’re all waiting on me to speak. I don’t even have to look over my shoulder to know that everyone in the church is staring. I can feel their empathetic eyes trained on me.
I make my way to the pulpit. I button my suit jacket and straighten my tie. I had a time trying to get it just right this morning. Whenever we had a wedding or other event to go to, Delia always did that for me.
***
She stood back to look at me in my suit.
“I sort of like seeing you dressed up like this.” Delia smiled wide.
“Yeah, well, don’t get used to it. I feel like a freak in this thing,” I said. “Tell me again why we have to go to this?”
She frowned.
“Tobin, you promised. If I went to your family’s Cochon de Lait last weekend, you’d come to my dad’s fundraiser with me. Now, let me fix your tie. I think a half-Windsor will look better with this collar than a Four-in-Hand.”
I rolled my eyes because I had no idea what the difference was.
“That’s different. Roasted pig is good. Hanging out with a bunch of suits is bad.” I tried to laugh so she’d take it as sarcasm, but I was pretty serious. Going to these country club functions was my least favorite thing about being with Delia. I didn’t fit in. I had nothing to offer in conversations, and I actually had to buy a suit for the first time in my life.
“Besides, your dad doesn’t want me there.” I waited a brief moment for her to deny that, but she didn’t.
“That’s true,” she said. She untied my tie and then worked to perfect the knot, her brows pulled together in concentration. “But, he thinks I won’t put on a happy face if he doesn’t let you come, so he’s bending his own rules for tonight. There.” She smoothed the tie down and stood back to admire her work. “It looks much better like that, right?”
“Right,” I agreed. I honestly couldn’t tell the difference between the two.
“All right, we’d better get going,” she said, checking her watch.
“Sure I can’t entice you into getting out of that dress and staying in?” I asked. I pulled her in by her waist, my thumbs finding her hip bones that I loved so much. I pressed my mouth to her neck and she let out a content sigh. My lips moved across her chest and I picked up her dainty arm and kissed the length of it. By the way she was responding to me, I thought for a second she might actually agree to stay home. But she swatted my hand away just as I reached around to the back of her form fitting, sparkling black dress and gave the zipper a light tug.
“Come on, you know we can’t do this right now. My dad will go crazy if I don’t show up!”
“I’m about to go crazy,” I said. “I need you.” I let out an involuntary growl and tried to shake it off.
“What you need is a cold shower,” she joked.
“I’ll settle for a swim after we get this over with,” I told her.
“Deal.” She reached out and shook my hand in agreement.
***
Always a trade. Always a compromise. Until there wasn’t anything left to bargain with, because neither one us had any clue what to do. If it had been just the move, we might have been able to deal.
I shake the memory. It wasn’t the place to be thinking about that night.
I sort of fucked up, because I don’t have anything written down. Not a single word. I tried several times this morning, sitting in Eamon’s jeep outside of the church. I just couldn’t put what Eamon was and what he meant to me in words that these people sitting here would understand. All while keeping the swearing to a minimum. It was too much to ask of anyone, and for a second, I’m angry at my mom for making me do this.
I lean onto the podium and sigh. The entire church is full. Each seat occupied with some dark dress or suit, and several people standing against the back wall. I clear my throat. I’ve never liked talking in front of people, and with Eamon’s flower-draped casket next to me, I like it even less. My nerves are so shot that I can’t even make out people’s faces. I guess that makes the fact that I have no clue what I’m going to say a little easier. I open my mouth, and then shut it again, reasoning that no one here cares that Eamon’s favorite food was rice pudding, or that he could drink any person here under the table.
I stare into the rows of people one last time, and that’s when I see her. In a sea of faceless blurs, Delia is there. She nods at me encouragingly. She believes in me. That simple nod brings the words up through my throat.
“When I was seven and Eamon was ten, we decided we wanted to run away and live out in the woods. I don’t really remember why we thought to do that. Mom and Dad weren’t so bad, so it wasn’t anything like that.” I let out a small, stiff laugh and a few others in the church follow suit.
“We got a big backpack and stockpiled bottles of water and food for weeks. We’d take little things here and there so that Mom and Dad wouldn’t notice. We must have had four gallons of water in that damn—err, darn pack.” I don’t exactly know where to go with this story, but for whatever reason, of all of the ridiculous stunts Eamon and I pulled over the years, this was the first one to pop into my head. I wipe my sweaty palms on my slacks and start again. “We waited until Mom and Dad had both left for work and then ran into the woods. We set up a makeshift camp. We pitched our small tent, started a little fire and spent the day wandering the banks of the creek. I decided to climb some trees and somehow, I lost sight of Eamon along the creek. It got dark shortly after and I knew that I needed to get back to our camp. I didn’t have any water, or a jacket or anything. It didn’t take me long to realize that I was lost. I don’t know how long I walked in circles before Eamon found me.
“I knew he was going to be mad. He had told me to stay right by him. I heard him running up behind me, yelling my name and I thought for sure he was going to give me a beating, but instead, he hugged me. I know kids, especially boys don’t do that, but Eamon did. He never had any trouble letting people know how he really felt. I asked him why he came looking for me, why he didn’t just go and get Mom and Dad. He told me, “Because I’m your brother. Brothers don’t leave each other wandering around in the dark alone, Tobin.”
I finally blink and break Delia’s stare.
“And you know what? He proved that to me over and over again. He was always there for me. He was there for all of us. It might never have been his official job to protect me, or any of us, but it was one he never slacked on, and I was proud to be his brother.
“He taught me important things, like how to build the best possible fort in the attic, using every blanket and sheet in the house. He taught me how to clean a gun, how to change the oil in the car, and more importantly, how to take care of the people that you love.
“When he got older, he was the definition of work hard, play hard. He’d go out with you boys and cause all sorts of mayhem,” I said, pointing at Traive, Nelson and Eamon’s other group of friends. They all nodded and smiled.
“He’d play as hard as he could, filling his nights with laughter and good friends. And after three hours of sleep, he’d leave you all sprawled out, and go to work, or help my parents around the house.
“A few years ago, when Dad got hurt at work, Eamon didn’t give it a second thought that he’d pick up some extra shifts to help out. It was just never a question. That’s what you did for family.
“And last year, when I had my first lesson in having my heart trampled on.” I don’t dare look up and see Delia’s reaction. “He was there. He was there when I didn’t know what to do, how to get out of bed in the morning and move on, or how to make sense of any of it.
He was always there.
“I’ve never had anyone this close to me die before.” The tightness in my throat is growing, burning. “The last few days have been really freaking hard. Really dark and confusing and lonely for me. I don’t know how to process all that’s happened, how to accept that Eamon isn’t going to pop into my room in the morning with some new scheme that he wants me in on. Losing him has really made me take stock in my life, to take measure of who I am, and who I want to become. I haven’t figured all of those things out just yet, but I know that I’m not alone while I do. I know that Eamon is right here alongside me. Because brothers don’t let each other wander in the dark alone.”
I lower my eyes to the emerald green carpet and make my way back to my seat.
It’s over.
Eighteen
Delia
My heart aches, breaks, and then does it all over again. Like there is a fault line right down the center. A fracture that can’t be healed. Because of Tobin. Because of Eamon. Because of everything and everyone that was lost. I wish I had some power to make Tobin feel better instead of worse. Thank God that Tobin had Eamon when we split. Got his heart trampled on. Sounds about right. Both of us. I never would have thought that either of us would have it in us to let each other go the way we did.
Part of me wants to be mad at Tobin. Mad at him for bringing me into this, but most of me just breaks. The church is filled with quiet, polite conversation. I’m still stunned into silence.
“Delia?” Weston whispers behind me.
Regret claws at my chest for a million things. For letting Weston come here with me. For letting Tobin go the way I did, because there’s no fixing us now. That Eamon died, even though I couldn’t have prevented that.
I glance around at the people I grew up with. The people who spread any news through town like their life depended on it. I smile as I wonder how many people discu
ssed my coffee at the diner with Tobin and wonder who will challenge me next at shuffleboard bowling.
Weston’s finger touches my cheek. “You’re smiling and all teary. You okay?”
It takes everything in me not to jerk away from him. Something different starts to pour through me as I scan Weston’s face. Nothing but concern on his features, in his eyes. I can’t keep doing this, being with Weston, but I don’t know how to stop. The thing is—I don’t know how much comfort I get from him touching me anymore, and that’s not a good sign. Or maybe it’s just the day and the surroundings.
