Qhuinn pulled the soft weave free, shook it out of its squares, and placed the softness over Blay’s lower body with careful hands. Even as his face lost its color from whatever he was feeling at his wound site, he batted away efforts to help, and covered that which was clearly precious to him.
Abruptly, Blay found himself blinking fast.
There were so many ways that people said I love you.
And sometimes, they did it without speaking a word.
Elle had done something bad last night. And someone had been hurt. In some awful way.
Or at least . . . that was what she had dreamed of.
As her head began to pound again, she tried to stop pushing into the weird void that took over her mind every time she attempted to remember the details of the nightmare she’d had. God knew the straining hadn’t gotten her anywhere. She had nothing but a lingering sense of fear and worry. And the headache.
Still, whatever she had dreamed of was like a mental scab—she just had to pick at it. Then again, her guilty conscience had always been a thing. It was like the time she’d stolen one of Uncle Tommy’s cigarettes and tried it out behind the garage. She’d felt awful afterward, and not just because she’d coughed her lungs up by the recycling bin.
Taking her father’s car out last night with her sister in the passenger seat and absolutely no legal driver’s license in her pocket had been a really stupid move. Especially when she was supposed to have been in charge.
So of course her subconscious would hurl something over her mental fence while she was sleeping.
Rubbing her eyes, she attempted to focus on where she was, what time it was, and what she was waiting for. At least she was clear on the first one: She was sitting at the breakfast table in her father’s kitchen. She was also certain that it was a little before 6:30 a.m. And as for the third thing on that list? She was dressed for school, with her homework in her backpack, her hair brushed, and her parka over her lap.
Like being all organized and ready for the bus this early could somehow make up for breaking her father’s trust.
News flash: She wasn’t actually waiting for the bus.
Glancing around, the weak light of morning made everything seem black and white, the pale green cabinets and cheery ivy wallpaper dimmed down to shades of gray, the throw rug under her chair nothing but a shadow, the spines of the cookbooks on the shelves altogether without color. The only light that glowed was the one out by the front door at the base of the stairs, but the illumination didn’t go far, a mere patch of false sunshine.
Picking up her phone, she signed in, but then just flipped through her screens.
She had been compulsively checking the local news station’s website since four in the morning. There was nothing. No reports of any . . . anything.
But like her little joyride mattered? Like there was some kind of factory-installed tracer on the BMW that notified the police whenever someone with a learner’s permit took the thing out alone?
She just needed to get over herself. Yes, she had taken her father’s car out when she hadn’t had permission and without a valid full driver’s license. Yes, her sister had been with her. Yes, that had been dangerous. But they’d made it back here fine, the car was still safe in the garage, and she and Terrie had been in bed like the good little children they hadn’t been before their father had come home with that THOT.
End of story.
Right?
Elle went back to the local CBS news channel. Impending snowstorm. Missing dog found safe. Budget cuts coming in the new year. No one hit by a car by a teenage girl driving illegally or anybody stabbed—
As the pain ramped up behind her eyebrows, she looked out to the hall light and the front door. She kept feeling like the police were going to show up at any moment and she was going to be arrested for obstructing justice because she hadn’t come forward right away about—
“Stoooooooooooooop,” she groaned.
Police did not come after people for dreams. She was being insane.
Dropping her phone, she put her head in her hands. Her mind was like an amusement ride, going up and around and upside down.
She hated amusement rides.
On that note, she stared across at the refrigerator. Front and center, on the freezer side, was the school calendar for December. The sheet of blue paper with its squares full of stuff was held in place by two Disney magnets that had pictures from the trip last spring break. Herself, Terrie, and Dad. All smiles.
So the photographs were kind of like this house. Everything but Mom.
And what a lie those smiles were. Their dad had intended for the vacation to lift everybody’s spirits. Instead, Elle had been miserable on all the rides, Terrie had complained about the food, and their father had spent a lot of time staring off into space.
Even though she tried not to reimagine the night before as if the divorce hadn’t happened, it was hard not to conclude that if her parents were still together, she’d still be asleep right now.
Antsy and achy, she compared the kitchen she was in to the one she’d grown up with—because even though the past made her sad, it was better than diving back into her phone. Here, the furniture was new, and the room was in a different layout. Terrie’s backpack was on the counter in the corner by the landline that no one used and probably wasn’t even turned on. There was a pair of running shoes—man-sized—next to some snow boots—little-girl-sized—over by the door out to the garage. The cereal boxes were all kid kinds like Cap’n Crunch and Frosted Mini-Wheats, and there were avocados mixed up with the apples in the fruit bowl and whole-grain bagels with everything spices were left out by the toaster.
If her mom had lived here, the clutter would have been cleaned up, the phone line turned on, and the cereals would have been organic substitutes of brand names that had no sugar added.
Elle and her sister and father had moved into this house, a two-story from the 1990s, about eighteen months ago, and the street had a lot of families on it. Just like at their old address, in the warmer months, bikes sunbathed on front lawns that were mowed by the owners, not fancy lawn services, and now that it was cold and Christmas was coming, there were blankets of red and green lights in all the bushes and twinkling white icicle strings hanging off the gutters.
So it was almost the same.
And completely different.
Funny, she’d always assumed everyone’s life was perfect on their old street. Now, it felt like everybody else’s life was perfect.
Especially after her bad choice last night.
At least Terrie was still asleep in her room upstairs. If Elle had to deal with that mouth this morning? Not going to be good for anyone.
She checked her phone for the time and worried about how much longer her father was going to be working out down in the cellar. She needed to get this conversation over before Terrie woke up. He rode that Peloton bike four times a week—just her luck, to have missed one of his three recovery days.
Tip-tap, tip-tap.
The sound of her short nails on the table made her think about family dinner. Part of the reason their father pedaled his heart out early in the morning in the basement was because he wanted to be home at six every night for family dinner: Unless he had a work function, they ate together at this four-seater table, the one unfilled seat something Elle was beginning to not dwell on so much. The only time he ever missed the meal was once a week when he was at a work-related event.