Watch Over Me

by Christa Parrish

  Not that she hadn’t eaten from the trash before.

  They were getting shorter, though, those obsessive times, and fewer. Most days she didn’t let the internal arguments go on for more than a few minutes without turning to prayer, but it was nowhere near automatic yet. She trusted it would become easier, as she reached upward for help first, not into the refrigerator.

  The announcements were over when she and Benjamin slipped through the church door, he easing it closed so it wouldn’t slam accusatorily behind them, and they took their seats in the back row. Benjamin sang and prayed and nudged her with his elbow when she stared out the window. When the Communion tray came around, he didn’t partake, but they stood together at the benediction, arms around each other’s waists. Benjamin started it, as a reminder to go out as one, and work to stay one during the week.

  After the service, they chatted for a while, people asking how they were managing without Silvia. Except for that afternoon with Janet McGee, no one had made any direct references to the past year, and that was fine by Abbi. She wasn’t looking for anything other than what was already happening—the congregation folding in around her and Benjamin, making it easy for them to reattach to the body without fanfare or guilt. They followed the Yates family home for lunch, but before getting out of the Durango, Abbi reached across the armrest and touched the corduroy cuff of Benjamin’s jacket. “Hey, you good?” she asked.

  He nodded. “I didn’t feel ready today. I’m still a lot more angry than I’m willing to admit.”

  “The table is for sinners, you know.”

  “I know. And I don’t. If that makes any sense.”

  “Perfectly, and not at all,” she told him, and laughed.

  “I love you,” he said.

  At home, Benjamin paced the house. He opened all the kitchen cabinets, organizing measuring cups and colanders, washed down the stove. “The hinge is broken in the pantry.”

  “It’s only been like that for five months,” Abbi said, embroidering a napkin on the couch. She’d found a set of the cutest vintage Swiss-dotted cloth napkins at the Baptist church’s white elephant sale, and planned to give them to Janet for Christmas after she stitched teapots on each of them.

  “Hyperbole.”

  “Nope. It happened the day after my birthday.” She stuck her needle into the fabric and went to him. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Right. You always rearrange cabinets and wander aimlessly in eight hundred square feet for hours on end.”

  “I think we should ask Matt to come live with us.”

  “Well, maybe that would work if we weren’t both—um, what’s the word?—completely avoiding him. And he avoiding us, it would seem.”

  He burnished the crown of his skull with his palm, like a child rubbing a balloon on his hair, trying to make it stick to the wall. “I’ve been planning to go over there.”

  “You said that three weeks ago. Anyway, he’s still staying with the Larsens.”

  “Why should he be there when he could be here?”

  “Why should he be here when he could be there?”

  “You don’t want him to come?”

  “I didn’t say that.” She opened the bread box, snagged a slice of raisin bread. She thought about taking a bite, stopped. Stop me, Lord. I’m not hungry. Instead of eating it, she plucked out each raisin, crushing it against the butcher-block counter with her thumb. Benjamin covered her hand. “He’s not a replacement part, Ben.”

  “I can’t believe you’d even think I’d be thinking that.”

  “Then what are you thinking? I mean, where is this even coming from?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “You’re right. I haven’t been able to go see him. I’ve tried. I’ve driven past the Larsen place every day since we first talked about it. But I can’t stop. I don’t want him to think I blame him at all, but I’m still worried about what I might say to him, how I might look at him. Which is why I don’t think this is my idea. No matter how I try to shake it off, it won’t leave.”

  “He might just come because he thinks he owes us something. The kid is already pulled in a thousand directions. I don’t want us to add to that.”

  “Maybe, then, we could pray about it.”

  She balled up the tattered bread and pitched it into the trash. “I can do that.”

  “Together. Now.”

  Benjamin kneeled in the middle of the kitchen floor, holding out his hands to her, and she took them, crouched down so their kneecaps touched. And as he made his request known, by prayer and supplication, Abbi’s eyes filled with tears and ran over with thanksgiving. She had her husband back.

  Chapter FORTY

  Ellie’s mother wouldn’t let her drive all the way to Lester, so Matthew decided to take the bus. He could have asked Jaylyn, or Pastor Larsen, or anyone else at the church, but he wanted the time alone. It had nothing to do with burdening someone. He didn’t have use for the money now anyway. He wouldn’t be traveling to New York to see his father.

  He wasn’t playing the martyr, still wanted the transplant. But right now he wanted it more than his father’s love. He wouldn’t go there feeling the way he did. So he prayed, waiting for God to change his heart.

  At the bus station, Ellie hugged him and asked, “Are you sure you don’t want me to go? I will.”

  He shook his head.

  “Well, okay. Have someone call me before you leave, and I’ll be here to pick you up.”

  I will.

  “Promise me, Matthew Savoie. I know you. I don’t want you hitchhiking back. I mean it.”

  Yes, Mom.

  “Promise.”

  I promise.

  She took both his hands in hers, their fingers interlaced. “Promise again, now, so I know your fingers aren’t crossed.”

  “I promise,” he said.

  “Okay, I believe you. Matt, I . . . I think Skye will be glad to see you.”

  We’ll see.

  He found a window seat, waved to her from the bus.

  She signed, I love you.

  He rubbed the glass with his sleeve, but Ellie disappeared into the building.

  He tried to count cottonwoods on the ride, mostly scraggly clusters of no more than ten, all gnarly and half naked. They looked ancient, but the trees only lived sixty or seventy years. He couldn’t seem to keep the numbers in his head, though, because of Ellie, and her sign.

  Did she mean it, mean it?

  Taxis waited outside the bus station in Lester. Matthew chose the plainest cabbie, the one without tattoos or turbans or feathers hanging from his rearview mirror, and showed him the back cover of his pad. Then he scrawled Central South Dakota Juvenile Service Center on an inside page.

  Nine minutes later, Matthew stood on the concrete sidewalk, staring at a choppy brick building, juts and boxes stacked together at various heights and depths. He asked the driver to wait.

  “It’s forty cents a minute,” the cabbie told him.

  Matthew nodded and walked to the door, counting each line he stepped over. The guard might turn him away; visitors under eighteen needed to be accompanied by an adult. Matthew had snuck into the high school office and stole a blank ID card, and at home he altered his birth date to add a couple of years and laminated the card with another photo using clear packing tape. He prayed quickly that the guard would be too lazy to press for more information, though he figured God wouldn’t hear any prayer involving lies and fraud.

  He was on his own for this one.

  I’m here to see Skye Becker.

  The guard reached for his pad, but Matthew shook his head and turned it over.

  “Brother?” he asked.

  Cousin. But I have permission from the caseworker.

  “Got ID?”

  He searched through his backpack, untangling his card from a nest of tens and twenties, dropping several coins on the floor. The guard gave a disinterested glance at Matthew’s photo and typed his name into the computer. “Okay, sig
n here,” he said, pushing a clipboard across the counter. Matthew did, and clipped on his plastic visitor badge. “Bag in the coatroom, then step over here.”

  After dropping two quarters in a locker, Matthew took the key and stepped through the metal detector. Another officer pat-searched him, and he was led into the visitation room—white cinder-block walls, round white tables, white floor—sterile and clean, as if the center were trying to wash away the crimes of those inside. The chairs were gray plastic with fat legs. Matthew sat with his back against a wall. Several teens in blue scrub-like outfits shared low conversations with family.

  A guard escorted Skye into the room. She looked thinner, her hair pulled back into a rubber band.

  “You came.”

  Matthew tried to smile. Jaylyn said she thought you wanted me to.

  “I did. I do. I just wasn’t sure if you would.”

  Why wouldn’t I?

  “I figured you’d be home torturing yourself over all this.”

  I’m okay.

  “I bet. Anyone with you?”

  He shook his head. How are you?

  “Okay, really.”

  Five months in here. Not too bad.

  “Better than a year, in some ways. In others, it seems like it should be a whole lot more.”

  You’re just as good at torture as I am.

  She dragged her middle finger on the table, toward her. “I told Ma none of this was your fault. She’d just rather blame someone else than her own sorry self for her part.”

  It’s fine.

  “You ever gonna go back there? To live, I mean.”

  I don’t know.

  “Maybe you could move in with Ellie.”

  He rolled his eyes, crumpled a page from his notepad and threw it at her.

  “I forgot. Good boys like you don’t do things like that.”

  Skye.

  “Oh, stop. I’m just messing with you.” She scratched at a scab on her elbow. “It’s weird. There really is something sorta . . . clean about the truth. I don’t think I would have been able to stay quiet forever. Then again, maybe I would have. I don’t know.”

  Matthew bumped her hand with his. I don’t think you would have.

  “You have a better opinion of me than I probably deserve.”

  They talked for a while, her about the daily routine, about some of the other girls, him about school. About Ellie. Finally, he wrote, I should go, jerking his head toward the clock on the wall. I took the bus. Last one back is in forty minutes.

  “Okay. It was good seeing you.”

  You too.

  “You’ll come again, right?”

  Yeah.

  “My caseworker will wonder if you don’t. I told her you were practically my brother and integral to my recovery process. Pretty good, huh?”

  I’m impressed.

  “Yeah, well, I didn’t come up with it on my own. Hey, Matt?” She lifted her hips off the chair to reach into her pocket, pulled out a wrinkled square of lined paper. Pressed it into his hand.

  “These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world.”

  Matthew hugged her, hard. See you soon.

  He gathered his things from the locker and took the cab back to the station. He asked the woman at the ticket window to call Ellie for him, and she clenched her jaw but did it. When the bus pulled into Hollings, Ellie was there, waiting outside with her coat zipped up over her nose. She held his hand, and they walked to her mother’s minivan. As the engine idled, she asked, “Did it go okay?”

  He nodded.

  “Good. That’s . . . good.” She played with the buttons on the dashboard, turning on the heat, the front and rear defroster as the windows clouded with their breath. She scratched her fingernails over her tights. Striped today. Gray and pink and purple and red. She jiggled her leg. “I’m glad.”

  Question?

  “Okay.”

  Do you know what this means? He copied the sign she made earlier.

  She nodded.

  What?

  “I love you.”

  Do you?

  “That was really stupid of me.”

  Do you?????

  “Yes.”

  I do too.

  Ellie smiled, ever so slightly. “Do what?”

  Clever girl, he wrote.

  “You already knew that, and you’re not getting out of answering.”

  Matthew looked at her. “I love you,” he said.

  “I guess we’re even now,” she said, and then turned her head away. He saw her reflection in the dark window. She grinned, her hand covering half of her face.

  He tapped her knee with his pad. Both of us, even?

  “Matthew Savoie, if you make a math joke right now, I’ll punch you. I mean it.”

  I wouldn’t dream of telling you that the derivative of an even function would just make us . . . odd.

  She swung at him, and as her momentum carried her forward, he kissed her, only their second kiss—not the quick, puckery kiss she gave him walking home a few weeks ago, but the sweetest, softest kiss he ever dared imagine. Finally, Ellie sat back and said, “I guess there are worse things than being odd.”

  Like, without you, Matthew wrote.

  “Yeah. That,” Ellie said, and kissed him again.

  Still aglow with Ellie’s declaration the day before, he ran the twenty yards from Pastor Larsen’s house to the church for Sunday service. He sat in the third pew from the front, closest to the wall so he could see Mrs. Healen. Not that she helped much.

  He closed his eyes, breathed in the old wood smell, musty and pious, and he thanked God for Ellie once more, as he did almost every time he thought of her. He prayed for Skye, for all his cousins. And for Silvia.

  And Abbi and the deputy.

  I miss them, Lord. Please, please let them forgive me.

  Someone brushed past his knees, stepping on his feet despite his tucking them under the seat. The person settled next to him, close enough he felt the heat radiating off the person’s leg onto his own. The entire pew had been empty when Matthew came in five minutes ago. Why can’t they move down?

  And then the someone squeezed his arm.

  His eyes popped open; from the paisley-clad thigh he knew who it was, but he turned his head anyway to see Abbi, and Benjamin beside her. She enclosed him in her arms and, clasping her hands against his shoulder, drew him against her, the top of her head crushing his ear, hurting him.

  He didn’t care.

  Chapter FORTY-ONE

  “Okay,” Benjamin said. “Everyone out. You’ll need boots.”

  In the back seat of the Volvo, Matthew and Ellie zipped their coats and wiggled on their mittens. He jammed a knit hat over his hair while she untied her ponytail and ran a brush through hers. They laughed as they tumbled from the car and jogged along the guardrail, then over it, tromping through long locks of dead, brown grass and snow on the side of the road.

  Benjamin opened the door for Abbi. “It’s freezing,” she said.

  “Come on. This is the last one.”

  “They better not want to do this on the way back.”

  The teenagers had already slid down the embankment and stood together in front of the Welcome to New York sign, inside arms around each other, outside arms pointing up at the lettering above their heads. Benjamin snapped a photo. “Wait. One more,” he said.

  It felt good to be standing, to be out of the cramped car. Benjamin pushed his chest forward and his shoulders back, waggling his head from side to side until his neck popped. Twenty hours of driving, no matter how it was broken up, did a number on a man’s bones.

  “Your turn,” Ellie said, climbing up the small hill. It had been her idea to stop and take a picture at each state line, and she hadn’t had to do much to persuade Matthew—smile and ask. She lost her footing, and Matthew, walking behind her, instinctively flattened his hands against her rear to stop her from sli
pping.

  “Hey now,” Benjamin said. “No getting fresh. I’ve sworn on my life to Ellie’s parents I’d return her exactly the way she was when we took her.”

  Matthew buried his hands in his coat, face blazing red, and Abbi gave Benjamin a small punch in the arm. “Oh, stop. Leave the boy alone.”

  Benjamin laughed. “He knows I’m joking. Right, Matt?”

  The boy shook with an embarrassed shrug and reached for the camera. Benjamin handed it to him and jumped down into the ditch. Abbi followed, and they posed in front of the sign. “Okay, got it,”

  Ellie said.

  As he walked back to the car, a lump of cold thudded against the back of Benjamin’s head, and then wetness in his collar, trickling down his back. He spun, and another snowball hit him in the side of the face. All three of them—Abbi, Ellie, and Matthew—stood with misshapen hunks of snow in their gloved hands. His hands were bare, and his fingers froze before he could properly pack the snow; his projectiles fell to dust as he flung them toward his attackers.

  And then they all dropped their snowballs. “Uh, Ben. Turn around,” Abbi said.

  A state police car pulled in behind the Volvo, lights spinning silently. Benjamin took out his badge and approached the trooper, who glanced at it, saying, “Someone’s going to get themselves killed out here, fooling around like that.”

  “I’m sorry, Officer. We’re all just a bit rowdy from being cooped up in the car for the last twelve hundred miles.”

  “How far you heading?”

  “Buffalo.”

  “Well, that’s only ’bout an hour and a half drive from here. I think you rowdy folks can handle that.”

  The trooper waited until they all strapped back into the car, and Benjamin steered out into the oncoming traffic. After the trooper

  car passed them, Matthew passed his notepad up to Benjamin. I don’t think Ellie’s parents would appreciate her coming home with a police record.

  “Ha, ha.” Benjamin tossed the pad over his shoulder.