by Reiss, CD
She laughed a derisive little laugh. “Had mine with the wrong man, but they turned out all right.” She slid open her phone. “You remember Mitch Whitney?”
“That asshole?”
He wasn’t an asshole. He was a solid guy who’d laugh at being called that.
“He’s my second husband, and the right one. Charles…you remember him?”
I nodded. He was a real asshole.
“He knocked me up in that pool house right over there.” She pointed out the window. The pool house wasn’t visible past the courts, but we both knew where it was. She handed me her phone. The wallpaper was of a family on a boat with fishing poles cutting the sky behind them. Her, a man our age, and two kids. “Figured what the hell, right? Well, he was an a-hole all right. Wouldn’t marry me. Said our son wasn’t his up until the last minute. Took me five years to leave him, and his family made it hard. But I got out.”
“And is this the new Mr. Marsha?”
Her face lit up like a Christmas tree, as if I’d brought up her favorite subject. I handed back her phone. “I met him and it was, like, I don’t know. You ever play piano?”
“No.”
“Well, I don’t know how else to describe it, so you’re going to have to live with it. You fight the metronome and then you get to this point where you feel the rhythm. And it’s easy. The song flows through you like it’s already there. That was what it was like the minute I laid eyes on Mitch. But you don’t play music, so you don’t know what that’s all about.”
“No, actually, I do.”
“You play something else?”
“No. But do you remember Catherine Barrington?”
“I do.”
It was too much to speak about. She’d nod sadly at my loss or we’d laugh about it.
“How is she?” I asked, sticking to the subject while I pretended to change it.
“Still living in that old house. Her dad closed the factory and died, I don’t know, maybe ten and change years ago? Their mother took off and left those girls.”
“What?” I had known the factory closed, but not the ugly personal details.
Marsha nodded. “The girls were of age and they had trust funds, but still. It was a tragedy. Catherine’s like a saint now. Selling everything to keep the people in that town afloat.”
Her letter got taut in my pocket, stretching the fabric to let me know it was there.
Please accept my condolences.
Sincerely,
Catherine
She’d needed me, and I’d let her down. I wasn’t worthy of her or a warm welcome.
“It’s her birthday, did you know?” Marsha said.
Did I? I knew it was in autumn because it was a few months after I left. It had taken me hours to find the right card and I’d skipped a meal to buy it. “I forgot.”
“One of the Barrington guys who fixes the AC mentioned there’s a party. You should show up.” She winked. “Might be like playing music.”
Chapter 19
CATHERINE
One thing you could say about the people of Barrington, they wouldn’t know how to kidnap someone and hold them for ransom. They’d used one of Mrs. Boden’s scarves to blindfold me and I could see right under it.
I was in front, with Juanita and Kyle guiding me down the hall and a crowd just behind them. Harper was up in her room with a headache but wished me a happy birthday from under the covers.
“I remember when this was unveiled the first time,” Mrs. Boden said. She was over ninety and remembered everything from the past sixty years as if it happened at breakfast. “You cried the entire time.”
I remembered too, and they weren’t tears of joy.
“Okay, ready?” Juanita said.
I nodded.
The blindfold dropped, and everyone shouted, “Happy birthday!”
I was in the doorway of the room I’d occupied after Chris left, and it looked so bright and happy I had to squint. Flat cream walls. New moldings. Repaired sconces. Even the doorknobs had been polished. I looked up. The painted tin ceiling was still there, flying monkeys and all.
“Don’t touch the walls,” Kyle called from behind. “Not yet.”
I turned to the crowded hall. “Thank you.”
Two of the children were jumping up and down with tiny-toothed smiles. They didn’t know why this room was significant to me. They only knew how to react to the happiness of others.
I held my hand out to Taylor.
He took it and said, “Let me show you what we did.”
He showed me the new fixtures in the bathroom, the fixed and finished French doors. Mostly though, he proved the ceiling remained untouched. The monkey wings were there.
“That’s all we could do,” he finished. “But the floor needs to be done, and you need new pipes and a rewire.”
“Can I sleep in it?”
“Paint should be dry by tonight.”
My cheeks tingled because I knew they’d fixed it up because Chris was coming. I hadn’t told anyone he wasn’t and I hadn’t told them that I didn’t know if I was staying or going.
But they were happy. The barbecue was smoking, and children were playing in the yard like kittens. The dogs, including old Percy, the runt of the litter and its last survivor, nipped at their heels. The kitchen was a hub of activity with Trudy gossiping and her older sister washing the dishes. The guys joked with Taylor about his proficiency with a nail gun. I watched from the back porch as the town went about its business. It would do the same whether I was here or not.
“You all right?” Johnny asked, tipping his empty beer at me. He was in his biker vest and a long-sleeve shirt that showed the tattoos that snaked over the tops of his hands.
“I’m fine.”
“You looked a little misty.” He leaned into the cooler for another.
“Birthday mist.” I heard the doorbell from the other side of the house. Weird. Everyone was coming around the driveway. “Let me get that.”
Bernard beat me to it, opening the front door to a very tall and handsome man in a black button-front shirt. He had a bottle of champagne in his hand.
“Hello?” I said.
“Friend of Taylor,” Bernard said. “I’ll get him.”
Rather than get him, the stranger took two steps to the base of the stairs and called up, “Hey! Hard-on!”
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” I said to the tall man. “He’s—”
“It’s fine. I’m Keaton, by the way.” He had a British accent. It was nice.
You can go to London.
“I’m Catherine. Come in.”
I could go to London.
Not for long. I didn’t have a ton of money. But they spoke English and I could get a job, or if I could find a buyer for the house, I’d have enough to live on for a while.
Taylor bounded down the stairs to his friend and I went outside. The sun was about half an hour from setting, and all my people had shown up after work or between shifts. They’d stay until the house was clean and the crickets were louder than the children.
I could leave them. They didn’t need me. If that Silicon Valley tycoon came to buy the factory, it would again be the hub of the town. Some would work there, some would be disappointed, but the purpose of the little place would be established without me.
I looked over the family cemetery hiding under the wild thorns. Last week, Harper and Taylor had started cutting through it but stopped halfway through, at our father’s headstone. I couldn’t blame them. The tangle was thick and twisted, dangerous to touch, guarding the history and roots of the Barrington family.
If I left, what would happen to my ancestors?
Standing at the edge of the white fence bordering the thorn bushes, I put my hand on a thick branch. I was immediately stuck by a sharp pain in my palm. I let it cut me.
“Catherine,” Reggie said from beside me, “you ain’t wearing down the points like that.”
“Maybe I don’t want to wear them down.”
&nbs
p; “Maybe you don’t.”
He waited, and I drew my hand along the thorn, opening my skin. The blood falling on the branch looked black in the long shadow of the sun.
“This thorn bush,” I said. “I let it grow to keep Harper from defacing the graves. And because I didn’t want what was in here to be lost.”
“You can talk without cutting yourself open,” he said quietly. He must have thought I was going to slice my wrists on a thorn.
“I want to leave here,” I said. “I want to go far away. But I can’t.”
“Why not? You think this whole town wouldn’t put together the money for you to go where you needed?”
They would. I hadn’t considered taking a penny from them and never would, but I knew they’d support me. Their wishes weren’t the issue.
“And what would happen to this house if I sold it? My family’s graves? My history? Harper’s not going to be here much longer. There’s no one. I’m the last Barrington standing. I’m trapped. I might as well be under these damned bushes. They might as well have grown over me the past thirteen years.
“I don’t know how to get out. I don’t know how to ask for help because it’s not a thing or money in my way. It’s me. I’m in my way. How am I supposed to get out of the bushes if the bushes are me?”
I didn’t realize I was yelling and crying or that I’d attracted an audience.
“I don’t want your pity,” I shouted. “I love you, every one of you, but I want to get out of here now. Right. Now!”
“The bushes ain’t you,” Reggie said. “We’re going to show you.”
He walked off, passing Damon, put his hand on Bernard’s shoulder and said something in his ear. They both sprang into action. Bernard said something to Orrin and Pat, who went to their cars. Damon reached under the barbecue for a can that—logically—could only be one thing.
“Now, here’s what I want to tell you and everyone.” Reggie popped the top off a gas can. “Catherine Barrington, get the fuck out of this shithole town.” He poured gas on the bushes.
“Reggie!”
“What?” he said. “You wanna save this mess?”
Orrin waited with a silver can. Damon had his lighter fluid. Juanita hustled the kids away.
“You’re drunk!” I said, referring to all of them.
“I’m asking you,” he replied. “You wanna get rid of what’s keeping you?”
Damon, a troublemaker since the day he was born, put an unlit cigarette in his lips, watching me like the rest of them. “Whatever, man.” He squeezed a stream of fluid onto the thorns. “These bushes are ugly and you got to go.”
They wanted me to leave.
I felt a little betrayed. I understood that they wanted me to be happy, but I wanted to be wanted more than I wanted happiness.
I was backward, and for the first time, I knew it.
So I nodded to Reg. For the sake of continuing something, anything in a forward direction, I motioned that it was okay to proceed. If I wanted my own life, I had to give up being needed.
I didn’t know who threw the match, but it took all of a second for the entire thing to go up in flames. I got blown back a step by the heat and light, putting my arm over my eyes. It was big. As tall as the house and bright enough to turn off the light sensor bulbs on the porch, it raged so hot that it seemed like the end of everything. Nothing could continue as it was after a fire like this burned in my own yard. No part of my life would remain untouched, unchanged, or unbroken.
I was free.
I’d said it before, but I felt it in my heart when the thorn bushes burned.
I was free.
Was I smiling?
Part of my yard was on fire, Damon was lighting a cigarette in it, and I was smiling as if I had any business doing anything but panicking.
“Stand back!”
The clap of the screen door and the voice behind me were muffled by the roar of the blaze.
Still in a calm, fixated state, I didn’t jump when a man in a jacket and slacks blew past me. He carried a fire extinguisher canister in one hand and held the hose in the other. I had no reason to recognize him. No one in town wore nice clothes to a barbecue, and the smoke and clouds from the fire extinguisher obscured his face.
I didn’t need to see it.
“Chris!”
As if woken by Chris’s command to stand back, Orrin jogged to the shed. Kyle ran for his truck. Taylor turned on the hose and soaked the porch. Four fire extinguishers on the blaze, my house wasn’t going to burn down, and I was free to go anywhere in the world I wanted.
The world had turned upside down. Everything had fallen out. I’d been ready to refill my life with new things.
Then he came back a day early and put out the fire in my house.
He turned to face me, dropping his fire extinguisher with a clonk.
Where was the rest of the world before the moment our eyes met again? Before I saw that boy inside the man? He barely had scruff on his cheek when he left, and now? He had little lines around his eyes and a searing intensity that a boy can emulate, but only a man can achieve.
Missing the muscle and lithe movements that defined the Chris I knew, he’d become something harder, more solid, shaping the space around him instead of bending with it.
And still, he filled me.
Everything clicked into place all over again. I only heard laughter around me, as if every tension in the universe snapped.
I was free of commitments and free of plans. Free of any kind of ambition or hope. He walked right into the space those tiny things had taken up.
Which didn’t mean I wasn’t mad. I balled my fists up and got ready to give him hell, but he spoke first.
“I got your note.”
He came close to me. Close enough for me to smell him past the burning wood and spent lighter fluid. Close enough to see the sweat on his cheeks and the way his lashes were slightly darker than his hair.
“I told you I couldn’t see you.” I must have been out of my mind.
“You made a mistake.” He growled as if we hadn’t spent thirteen years apart. As if I’d just seen him yesterday and he was responding to a text I’d sent an hour ago. As if we even knew each other anymore.
And we didn’t.
But time had folded and bent around my feelings, coming to the other side and wrapping us together again like a twist-tie. It really did feel as though we hadn’t been apart at all. My experiences lied to me, and my feelings were deceptive. My senses fabricated rightness out of nothingness and what little sense I had was spun into a mess of conflicting information.
“Get out,” I said, pointing at the door he’d come through. “Go through the house and out the way you came. Go home.”
He tried to put his hands on me, but I curled inside myself and slunk away. If he touched me, I’d be lost.
“Catherine—”
“You can’t do this, Christopher. You can’t just storm in and act like you’ve been here for me the entire time.”
A waft of leftover smoke blew between us. I blinked hard to keep it out, and so I wouldn’t have to look into the eyes that felt like home.
“That’s the past,” he whispered.
No one came into our space, but I felt them watching. Listening. Making sure I was all right.
I wasn’t all right. I was confused. I had thirteen years of hurt and disappointment built up. Crying myself to sleep had been a completely inadequate valve for what had built inside me. And the sorrow was nothing compared to the love eating it alive.
He was a mistake wrapped in relief tied with a bow shaped like everything I found beautiful.
Calmly, I walked past him, through the house, to the front door, and out to the quiet front yard where he’d stood thirteen years before and thrown a tennis ball at the wall outside my bedroom. When I spun, he was right behind me, and when I opened my mouth to speak, he planted a kiss on it.
I felt a hardness of spirit, a stern resolve against obstacles. A forward
motion that drove his lips into mine, and I felt—from instant to instant—a crumbling in that rigidity. His body curved where it had been angled, his mouth went soft where it had been firm. His fingertips brushed my neck as if asking for things he’d gotten accustomed to demanding.
He was falling apart right in front of me.
We split apart to breathe. I gasped.
“Chris.” I had so much to say, but only his name came out.
“I’m here now.”
“So?”
“It’s all over. I can fix this.”
“Fix…” My face tingled, and I had to hold my hand in front of my mouth. He rubbed my shoulders. It felt so good to be touched like that. I’d been crying alone for so long, I’d forgotten what tender company meant. I swallowed it back to speak. “Fix what?”
He threw his hand out to the dark night. “All of it. I made it, Rin! Do you know what this means? All this is over.”
My body was stiff and my mind stuttered. I didn’t know whether to thank him or slap him, so I did nothing.
“I can tell,” he said. “I can’t believe it, but I feel the same, exactly the same. It’s like a light went on.”
He seemed happy. Relieved even. With the moonlight on his cheek and the stars glinting off the whites of his eyes, cast in darkness, his voice carried happiness and relief. A car came down the driveway, casting his face in harsh, moving lights. He looked like a man coming home after a long journey, and I was locked down inside my new ambition to move along with a life I’d delayed too long.
“I’m still in the dark, Chris. You left me. You left and you never came back.”
“I’m back now. Do you remember? Right here in this front yard? The last time I saw you? It’s like yesterday.”
I was shocked back to life. “It wasn’t.”
His mood came down a notch. “It was the best time of my life.”
“That’s nostalgia. It’s too late. You forgot me.”
“I never—”
My hand shot up and covered his mouth. His face was rough with stubble and his lips were wet from our kiss. He felt more real and concrete than anything I’d ever touched, but he was a fleeting memory, a distraction. He’d hurt me badly enough to make me disavow the reality at my fingertips.
