“I’ll be here.”
“Awesome!” Katie exclaims. “Make sure you take somebody on an adventure!”
Chapter Eleven
BRADEN
Braden stands in the kitchen, summoning up the willpower to make yet another doomed breakfast. It’s both pointless and hopeless, and yet he persists. He’s always believed that good parents make sure their kids are fed, sheltered, educated, and loved. It had never occurred to him that all or any of these offerings could be refused.
Allie has yet to eat a bite of anything in his presence. She must be eating somewhere, because she’s not wasting away, but for seven days now, he has been preparing breakfasts and she has yet to touch one of them. There’s evidence that she’s raiding the refrigerator at night after he goes to bed, heating up leftovers in the microwave and eating them in her room.
Maybe Allie isn’t a breakfast girl, and logic tells him he should abandon his efforts, but he can’t seem to stop. He’s tried scrambled eggs. Omelets. French toast. Pancakes. Cereal. Even chicken-fried steak. Every weekday morning, she stalks into the kitchen, fully dressed, her backpack hanging over one shoulder, as pale and dire and quiet as a vengeful ghost. Every morning, she glances disdainfully at the breakfast, pointedly ignores his “good morning, how did you sleep?” and pours herself a to-go mug of coffee.
Then she slams out of the house, returning late, long after dinner has cooled and been put back in the refrigerator. Her vehement, steadfast rejection is wearing him down, day after day. He reminds himself that he’s here for her, that his own heartbreak is irrelevant, but his resolve is crumbling. He’s so damned thirsty, and not for water. His brain and body hurt in a physical way.
Phee is wrong about sobriety. It sucks.
This morning, he is seriously debating giving up on breakfast. Repeating the same act over and over and expecting a different result is said to be the definition of insanity. Maybe he’ll skip it. Go back to bed. She’ll be relieved not to see him in the kitchen.
A memory hits him.
Allie, tiny, her hair in pigtails so short they stuck straight out of her head, humming happily over a bowl of oatmeal.
“Daddy’s oatmeal is the bestest,” she’d proclaimed.
Braden hunts through the cupboards and finds a carton of oatmeal and prepares it the way she used to like it, with cinnamon and bits of chopped apple. He dishes it up when he hears her bedroom door open. Pours cream over it and sprinkles brown sugar on top. When she appears in the kitchen, he’s standing there holding the bowl in both hands, a supplicant to an exacting goddess.
Allie’s eyes go wide. One hand covers her mouth. She makes a choking noise, like she can’t breathe properly. And then she swivels around and literally runs out of the house, as if the gates of hell have opened and a thousand demons have been unleashed.
“Well, that went well,” he mutters, sinking down onto one of the stools at the counter.
He desperately needs advice but has no idea where to get it. Maybe he should call Alexandra. Maybe he should call social services. Maybe the mysterious Phee knows something about teenagers. Probably he should take Allie to a grief counselor.
Maybe he should call his sister. Jo always knows what to do.
Impossible. He brushes the idea aside, but it refuses to go away. Jo. Practical, capable.
But he can’t, won’t, call his sister for help. He burned that bridge for a very good reason. You don’t call somebody you haven’t spoken to in years at seven o’clock in the morning and ask for help with your teenage daughter. Especially when . . .
Well. You just don’t.
Unless you have hit the absolute end of your rope and have no other options. If helping Allie means calling Jo, then that’s what he’s going to have to do. He stares at the pot of congealing oatmeal on the stove. At the untouched bowl abandoned on the counter.
Braden picks up the house phone. Despite the intervening years, his fingers dial automatically, the number practically part of his DNA. Maybe she won’t answer, it’s early yet. He’ll leave a message. Or he won’t. Even if she answers, he can just—
And then her voice is on the line, clear and vigorous and thoroughly Jo. “Hello? Hello? Listen, Lilian, I don’t know what game—”
“Jo. Hey.” He closes his eyes, resisting the urge to smack himself in the head with the receiver. Of course Jo has caller ID. Of course that’s what she’d think.
“Braden?”
He grips the receiver a little tighter, plastic digging into bone. Waits.
“What the hell are you doing? If you’ve moved back in with that woman—”
“Jo.”
“Six fucking years, Braden. What the hell?”
“She’s dead, Jo. Lilian’s dead, and so is Trey.”
Nice work, he mocks himself. Way to break the news gently.
He hears the little gasp on the other end of the line, the silence that says more than words.
“Braden? Are you there?”
His blood surges loud in his ears; music plays in his head like a movie soundtrack that refuses to be put on mute.
“Here.”
“And Allie?”
“Alive. Unhurt. But she’s . . .” He doesn’t know how to explain Allie.
“I can come, if it would help.”
“I don’t think . . . it’s not like she knows you. Although anybody is probably better than me.”
“Nonsense. You’re her father.”
Laughter is bitter in his mouth. “She hates me. She won’t talk to me, won’t look at me. She explained, very clearly, that I am here as a figurehead adult until her eighteenth birthday, and then I’m out of the picture.”
Jo is so much better at being a human being than he is. She skips the recriminations, the questions, and gets straight to the point.
“She’s an angry, grieving teenager and you’re the perfect target. That’s expected.”
“I don’t know if she’s sleeping, or eating. I don’t know anything. A counselor, maybe?”
“Give her some time.”
“I don’t have much of that.”
“How long do you have?”
He does the math. Allie has an August birthday. Six months. He has half a year to repair a breach that took eleven years to create.
“Just be there,” Jo says. “Don’t let her push you away. My God, Braden, what happened?”
“There was an accident. Lilian was taking Trey to a doctor’s appointment, is what I understand. Police are still investigating, but she might have fallen asleep at the wheel.”
“God.”
“I was supposed to meet Allie that day, but I . . . didn’t. Now she won’t let me near her. Has completely cut me off.”
“Well, that sounds familiar, anyway. She always was like you, I thought.”
This is as close as Jo is going to get to laying on the guilt about the way he’s cut himself off from his own family. “It’s not the same,” he wants to tell her. “It’s not the same at all.”
A silence falls between them, full of years of important things that have never been said.
“How’s Dad?” he finally asks, because it’s the one question he can handle.
“Declining. I’ve moved him in with me.” Jo lets him shift the subject without pushing the issue. For all of her forthrightness, she has always had an incredible awareness of her brother’s more sensitive nature, has sheltered him from their father, who does not.
“Come home, Braden,” she says. “Bring her here. It’s beautiful in the spring.”
He closes his eyes, remembering. Spring in Colville is a slow emergence of leaves and flowers that spans a month or more. The quality of the light, the freshness of the air. It’s winter there yet, but in another month . . .
“I can’t.” His words are strangled in his throat, so quiet he wonders if she can even hear him.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she says. “Nobody blames you.”
“I blame me.”
“Well, then.” She sighs. “
When you think you’ve punished yourself enough for what you haven’t done, come home. And bring your daughter. She needs her family.”
Mitch’s dead face stares up at him, eyes blank and open. “Dare you,” the blue lips say.
Dare me to what? Go home? Remember?
Mitch doesn’t answer.
“Listen, Jo, I have to go—”
“Don’t you vanish on me again, Braden, you hear? Call me.”
He ends the call so she won’t hear him falling apart as memory flashes come at him like a strobe light.
Mitch’s dead face. Snow. Darkness.
A blast of pain as his fist connects with Mitch’s jaw . . .
That staggers him.
In all of his known life, Braden has never engaged in a fistfight. His hands were too important to risk the injury. Besides, he’s always hated violence. This can’t be right, must be a product of a nightmare, not a memory. He feels himself poised on the edge of a dark chasm, about to free fall.
Lilian’s voice, accusing. Jo’s face, stricken.
The doctor, his own hands protected by gloves, gently turns Braden’s this way and that, inspecting the palms, the fingertips.
“They’ll heal, I believe. You’re losing a little skin from the frostbite, but the deeper tissues seem fine. Except for the right—you’ve bruised the knuckles. Some sort of a blow?”
“No,” he says aloud. “No, no, no, no, no.”
He can’t stay here, alone in the house. He has to get out, away. But there’s nowhere to go, nothing to do. There’s a meeting of the Angels today, but not until four. He paces through the house, rebounding off memories whichever way he turns. Something needs to be done about Trey’s room, but he can’t bring himself to touch it.
The cello is a constant demand that he can’t answer, haunting every waking minute and then showing up in his dreams.
He cleans up the kitchen, disposes of the oatmeal, stands with the refrigerator open contemplating options for dinner. The fridge is empty, with the exception of a half bottle of ketchup, a quarter of a jug of milk, four eggs, and the bacon he found in the freezer and set out to defrost. They’ve worked through all of the funeral casseroles dropped off by church members, all of the food that was in the fridge.
His phone pings and he checks the message.
You still living here, or what?
God. His roommate, Charlie. Braden has avoided making any decisions about his living arrangements, just as he avoids so many other things, because he can’t see far enough into the future to know what he’s going to do. He’d left a hastily scribbled note when he packed his suitcase on the day of the funeral.
Rent is paid, right? he texts back, realizing even as he hits send that the calendar has shifted to March and he hasn’t yet paid up.
Super late with that. Got a chick wants to move in.
Shit. Braden’s living situation is based on an informal agreement, nothing in writing. Charlie holds the lease, can evict Braden anytime he wants because he doesn’t officially live there. He pictures his few belongings tumbled out into the street, or just reabsorbed into the life of a new occupant.
Braden: I’ll get you money today. Can you hold it for me?
Charlie: No offense, she’s hot. You’re not.
Braden: Asshole. Come on.
Charlie: Ah, man. Don’t be like that. Chicks first, right?
Charlie: You coming to get your shit?
Braden considers, running through the cramped apartment in his mind. Most of the disability insurance he collects for his hands has gone to Lilian and the kids; he’s held back only enough to secure some sort of shelter and plenty of booze, so his belongings are few. He brought all of his clothes and a toothbrush with him. What’s left? A pillow and bedding. His winter coat and boots. Pots and pans and a set of dishes scored for next to nothing at the Goodwill.
The security bottle of Jack tucked into the closet, just in case. The one on the top shelf of the pantry, behind the cereal, although Charlie has likely discovered and drained that one by now. None of it is worth the hassle of finding transportation.
He texts back: Keep it.
Charlie: You mad?
Braden contemplates the question. No emotion surfaces. He doesn’t care, one way or the other. If he can’t fix things with Allie, nothing will matter. He deletes Charlie from his contacts. Blocks his number, mentally erases him.
The bottle of booze in the closet in his old bedroom is more persistent. He can see it. Feel the weight and heft of it in his hands, the smell of the whiskey as he opens the bottle and . . .
He has got to do something useful. What do normal people do with their time? Cleaning. Cooking.
Groceries.
He latches on to the thought like a life ring tossed to a drowning man. They need groceries. It will give him something to do. Vegetables. Bread. Milk and cereal. Maybe some chicken. Allie used to love a chicken-and-rice casserole when she was little. Just because she’s developed a hatred for oatmeal doesn’t mean she doesn’t still like chicken.
While he’s at it, he’ll buy comfort foods to tempt her out of her shell. Potato chips. Chocolate. Ice cream. Peanut butter. Maybe he’ll make Rice Krispie treats.
Shopping will get him out of the house, away from the cello and his memories.
Maybe you could buy yourself a little something to take the edge off. You deserve it.
He tells himself he’s not listening to that temptation, but it takes up a cadence with his footsteps all the way to the store.
Chapter Twelve
ALLIE
Allie begins the day with good intentions. Monday again. A whole new week. Perfect time to make a new beginning. She’ll go to school, she’ll talk to Steph, she’ll buy a phone so she can stay connected. Maybe she’ll even say good morning to her father and eat some breakfast. After all, she did invite him into the house, and the snacks she’s been eating to keep her going while she punishes him by refusing meals are not really sustaining.
Her stomach growls in harmony with her thoughts, and she thinks of yesterday’s uneaten bacon and eggs with regret, her mouth watering in anticipation. But when she walks into the kitchen, instead of bacon and eggs and perfectly toasted sourdough, she’s assailed by the smell of oatmeal. A memory weakens her knees.
Mom standing at the counter, making sandwiches for school lunches. It’s supposed to be Daddy’s job. Mom sleeps days after working nights at the hospital. The last couple of weeks Allie has made the sandwiches, because Daddy’s hands hurt him. Sometimes he’s still asleep when Allie and Trey leave for school. On those mornings, there is an empty bottle on the table.
This morning, there’s no bottle, and Mom is making sandwiches, and Allie feels in the pit of her stomach that something even more horrible than the accident to Daddy’s hands has happened. Mom’s back looks strange, her whole body stiff and un-bendy, and she doesn’t turn around when she says, “Good morning. How did you sleep?”
“Fine,” Allie says, but it’s a lie. What Daddy calls her spidey senses are all quivering. Her body feels hot. Something is wrong, but she’s learned that asking Mom questions when something is wrong is not a good idea. Trey, shoving past her into the kitchen, has yet to learn this truth. He bounces across the floor, Tigger style, and clatters into a chair.
“Is Daddy sick again? Why aren’t you sleeping? Can I have Frosted Flakes?”
Allie holds her breath, waiting.
Mom doesn’t turn around, nor does she answer the important question.
“No to the Frosted Flakes. I’ve made oatmeal. Allie, would you dish some up for your brother, please?”
Allie stretches up on her tiptoes to reach bowls from the cupboard. Gets a big spoon from the drawer. Mom clatters knives around way too loudly for the requirements of sandwich making. The cheese falls onto the floor—smoosh.
But she doesn’t pick it up, just braces both hands on the countertop, head bent, and stands there. A choking sound comes out of her, and she turns and fast
walks out of the kitchen. She keeps her head down, but Allie sees the tears, anyway.
“Is Mom okay?” Trey asks. “Where’s Daddy?”
Allie doesn’t answer. She carefully spoons the oatmeal into his bowl, and then her own, even though the smell of it makes her throat do little warning spasms. She turns off the stove, something she’s learned to watch for when Daddy is cooking because he forgets, and then carries Trey’s bowl to the table.
He looks down at the thick goop in his bowl, pokes at it with a spoon. “Yuck,” he says.
“Eat it.”
“You eat it.”
“I have to finish our lunches.”
“Can I put sugar on it?”
“I don’t care.” Allie isn’t sure if Mom will care or not, but she thinks it’s more important to keep Trey from throwing a fit. She picks up the cheese and wipes off the bits of dirt and fuzz stuck to it, then slices it and lays it on the bread. The hot, prickly feeling spreads from her belly into the rest of her body.
Mom still hasn’t come back when the sandwiches are done.
The bedroom door is closed. Allie knows not to bother Mom when she’s sleeping. Everything is okay, she tells herself. Mom’s just tired. Maybe Daddy went on a trip. He used to travel lots with the symphony. Maybe this is a good thing. Maybe his hands are better and he’s playing the cello and that will make him happy again . . .
But he wasn’t happy and he wasn’t traveling. He was just . . . gone. Without a word of explanation or a goodbye, and now he’s standing in the kitchen with a bowl of oatmeal. She turns and bolts for the door, away from him, away from the oatmeal, away from her mother’s absence and Trey’s museum of a room and the freaking cello music that haunts her whenever she’s in the house.
She takes her car, driving just below the speed limit, over checking the mirrors, her foot riding the brakes. When she parks outside the coffee shop, she takes a deep breath of relief, waits for her heart rate to settle before going inside. Ethan is there, waiting to meet her, same as he has every day since their trip to Whidbey Island.
“Thought you weren’t coming,” he says with a smile that spins her heart in her chest.
She shrugs, then gets in line and orders a latte with double shots of caramel. Her mother’s voice pops into her head, unwelcome and uninvited.
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