“Impaling small feet on long nails aside,” he begins, half lowering himself before he’s maneuvered the stool beneath him. “Cherish never hurt herself much more than a skinned knee or scraped chin.”
He’s got a bottle the size of a nail polish container between his thumb and forefinger, and he’s shaking the thing to mix its contents.
“This stuff still works better than a plain old Band-Aid, and no goopy mess festers underneath.”
“It’s just a couple layers of skin missing,” I say, twisting my arm so I can see the wound myself. Under the kitchen lights, it’s an angrier bright red than it looked by the pool, and there are more abrasions surrounding it like little inflamed satellites.
“It turns out skin is sort of important,” Jerry tells me, setting the bottle down on the island and fiddling with a nail kit I hadn’t noticed before. Opening the clear sleeve, he unsheathes what looks like a set of small pliers. “So we’re just going to give you an artificial layer to stave off infection.”
He catches my eye and then tilts his chin as though he can read my mind, or as though having done so, he won’t embarrass me by divulging what he’s found there.
“No, Fair-bear, this isn’t going to hurt, no need to worry.”
My lips lift while my shoulders dramatically relax so that he knows I trust him. That I have chosen to, and that it means something. It is not an honor given lightly, and in the whole world right now, it’s one only on offer to the occupants of this house.
“Ready?” he asks, his brow high and what must be the cuticle trimmer raised as though for my approval.
“Ready,” I say, and then squeeze my eyes shut playfully, as though afraid to watch.
The trimming end of the instrument is cold against my skin—or the layer below the skin that scraped free on the edge of the swimming pool. The sensation makes me straighten up and open my eyes, and Jerry checks in again.
“Okay?”
“Yes.” I nod and perform calm, glancing absently around the empty kitchen while he works. I don’t ask why he’s trimming the impossibly thin and almost indiscernible frays of skin at the edges of my wound. It’s not something I’d think to do or have ever done before dressing a severe scrape, especially not a tender one, but Jerry Whitman is known for his attention to detail. There is a process for all things, a proper way to prepare, proceed, and complete a task. Even when his renovations threatened unwieldiness and petered close to breaking his intended budget, he always reined them in. He always knew what could be trimmed to salvage a profit.
Cherish had no idea how it worked. When we were in middle school and her dad decided his passionate hobby had run its course, she was completely unimpressed. I asked why he’d lose interest when his last four flips had sold well over his projection, and not only was she unaware; she acted like it was weird that I knew that. She must’ve thought everyone had a head for real estate and renovation. She thought profit was a guarantee—which her parents probably found adorable. Except it meant she couldn’t ever marvel at her father’s prowess. If she couldn’t even witness it, it certainly wasn’t something she could study. Which meant she would never adopt his skill, make it her own, improve upon it and outshine him, the way parents must hope their children will.
My breath clips, a sharp and sudden abbreviation I hear almost before I can process that I made it.
My wound is stinging, hot and angry beneath the hand I’ve protectively shielded it with. I’ve retracted it from Jerry Whitman’s reach, my eyes searching our scene to determine what’s happened in the time I’ve been inside my mind.
He’s still sitting on the stool next to mine, but he’s twisted at the waist, holding a cotton ball to the mouth of a bottle of alcohol that he tilts three times in quick succession before motioning for my arm.
For a moment I have a silly hesitation. I want to keep my arm snug against my torso with the opposite hand guarding it—until I hear Kelly’s crippled laugh. Until I’m behind his eyes and it’s me contorted on the lawn outside the gazebo, my arm pinned to my side because of the bull’s-eye hiding beneath his shirt.
I return my arm to Jerry Whitman before I’ve deduced what happened because of the pressure above his brow. He’s concerned, concentrating on the dressing while I’ve been distracted.
“A little too close,” he says, pressing the damp cotton against what feels like an opening, the acknowledgment serving as an apology. “We just wanted to trim the strays away, not make it worse.”
I make an involuntary sound between wincing at the pain and agreeing with him.
“Maybe we’d better just get on with closing this up,” he says, as though he’ll soon be suturing a gaping wound.
I nod.
“Okay,” he says now that we’re decided, and sets all else down before reaching for the first bottle I saw him shake. “We’re in the home stretch now.”
And then he pauses, holding my gaze in a way that stills the air around me. My hair is still wet, like my suit and the towel I’m sitting on over the stool, but the occasional breeze of conditioned air I’ve been feeling disappears.
“Do you trust me?” he asks, tipping his forehead like he’s preparing to let go of my bicycle for the first time instead of apply some liquid bandage to my hurt arm.
Jerry Whitman’s question is an invitation, not just to trust him, but to entrust myself to him. To his family. To be less strict with my mask when I’m with them.
I may never get this chance again.
Kelly may never be on the grass outside the gazebo again, and I might never get to uncoil myself the way I did with him. I may never get to bring my weight down on the broken side of him, to hear him bark again. But that doesn’t matter anymore.
Jerry Whitman is waiting. He won’t proceed without my go-ahead. My trust.
Fair-bear.
I uncoil a little.
Control is a warning in my mother’s voice now. It’s a strategy in her offensive, to keep me from being truly at home here.
Instead, I uncoil a little more. Not too much, but enough to let them know I’ve decided. Enough to prove to Kelly, and Nichole Turner, and Jerry Whitman that I trust him.
That I choose them.
That this is home.
“Yes, Dad,” I say, and petulantly roll my eyes to match the emphasis I’ve laced around the word—the title. “I trust you.”
XIII
T his isn’t going to hurt.
I’m edging out of sleep, but I don’t want to. My mind is trying desperately to rip me back into consciousness, but I fight. From inside my dream, I try to rein myself in even though the pain is arresting.