We’re taking him to a show and then his favorite restaurant for a late dinner.
He pulls back his sleeve and checks his watch. “Do we have a timeframe or something? I’ve... Ahhh... Got a couple of things I need to do. I wasn’t expecting you, so...” he trails off, and I wonder what he could be up to.
Colt shovels chocolate cake into his mouth and mumbles, “Okay. Sure. We have some time before we have to leave.”
“Great.” Mr. James rubs his hands together and clears his throat. “I’ll take a quick shower and get out of here then.” He averts his gaze as he speaks, and it only makes me more suspicious that he’s hiding something.
After Mr. James disappears upstairs, Colt clears the dishes and hoists himself up on the counter. “What are we doing for the next few hours?”
I purse my lips, contemplating whether I should mention to Colt my suspicions about his dad. But I can’t pinpoint what it is I’m suspicious about, so I leave it and answer his question instead.
“I want to go next door,” I mumble.
“What the fuck for?” Colt’s jaw tenses and his eyes turn black.
I shrug. “I don’t know. I... Can you come with me?”
“I’m sure as hell not letting you go in there by yourself.”
I can’t explain why I want to go back there when I could barely stand to see the house. Some sick fascination? I’m not sure. I think I’m curious to see their reaction. I haven’t heard from them once since I left. Not once. As far as they’re concerned, I’m dead. They’d like that.
“We go for five minutes. That’s it. I don’t want you spending any more time in that hell hole than necessary.” Colt jumps off the counter and drags me with him up the stairs to his old room.
It hasn’t changed at all, except for a few extra trophies and awards, some newspaper clippings, too. Mr. James has always been Colt’s biggest supporter. He doesn’t get out to the games often, but if they’re televised, he never misses one. Then he stalks the papers for the next week for any mention of Colt. He buys every paper he can find during the season and it becomes his art project. It’s sweet.
To someone else, it might appear to be a little obsessive. Colt’s room is like a shrine. To me, it shows me Mr. James’s proud. And that’s all Colt wants. To make him proud. I envy their relationship and wish I had a parent that cared or showed the slightest interest in me.
I glance around Colt’s room. Mr. James’s pride is obvious. It’s palpable, like I can reach out and touch it. My eyes land on a section of the wall full of drawings and paintings. My artwork.
There is a lifetime of my artwork on the wall.
“Where did this come from?” I ask Colt, running my hand over the papers pinned to the wall. There are drawings from when I was a kid, right through to a piece I did last year for a final assignment.
“I saved everything.” Colt kneels in front of his bed, reaches underneath and drags out a case. Opening the lid, I gasp in surprise. There are stacks upon stacks of my artwork carefully stored and wrapped in my old pink blanket. “From the very first stick figure drawing you gave me; it’s all in here.”
“Why didn’t I know about this?”
“I never told you.”
“But, this...” I wave my hand at his wall.
He shrugs and slides the case back under his bed. “Dad must have found them when we left. He’s proud of you, too. You know?”
My eyes fill with tears, but I refuse to cry. I will not get emotional over some old drawings. At least that’s what I tell myself. But it’s a lie. He wraps his arms around me and whispers. “He loves you, too.”
My chest aches. All I’ve ever wanted was to be loved, to have someone be proud of me, support me, and I had it all along. In Colt and Mr. James.
“Ready to go see your parents?”
I smile at Colt and shake my head. “No.”
He opens his mouth to say something and closes it again, confused by my change of mind.
“I don’t need to.”
It became suddenly clear the moment I saw my artwork on Colt’s wall why I wanted to see my parents. It wasn’t about a sick fascination, or morbid curiosity. It wasn’t because I like to torture myself and force myself into unpleasant situations. I wanted their approval. I wanted them to see I was doing well for myself, that I was putting myself through college and making a life. I wanted them to be proud.
That’s what I thought I wanted.
But I couldn’t be more wrong.
I have everything I need. Colt. Mr. James. If I make them proud, then I’m happy. My parents mean nothing to me, but the James men mean the world to me.
I have everything I need right in this house. Not next door.
“So.” Colt bites his bottom lip and sweeps his gaze over my body before pushing me onto his bed and climbing over me. “Want to get frisky in my old room?”
I laugh and hook my legs around his waist, pulling him down to me. “We do have some time to kill, I guess.”
17
Colt
Four words and I can’t understand how we got here. One minute we’re laughing and having fun, celebrating Dad’s fiftieth birthday, the next minute the table falls silent as he drops the bombshell.
“She died saving you.”
Em’s fork clatters to her plate. “What?”
Dad wipes his mouth with his napkin and places it on the table. Wiping his weary face, he reaches across the table and places his hand on Em’s arm. “It will come as no surprise that your dad is an asshole. He’s abusive and a vile excuse for a human.”
Em sniffs, and I reach under the table to hold her other hand, but I’m as scared as she is to listen to what he has to say. My mom died in a car accident, but I never learned the details. There was no point. She wasn’t ever coming back.
“It was a cold, wet night. Kate had come home from work at the hospital, and she found you and your mom huddled under that tree that you two used to climb in each other’s windows. You were soaked to the bone. Your lips were blue, and you were shivering. Your mom was bleeding.” He takes a breath and continues, “Colt and I weren’t home, otherwise we’d have helped sooner. Anyway, Kate rushed to help. We’d been trying for years to get your mom to press charges, but she never would. Seeing you there like that, trying to comfort your mom, Kate did something about it. She got you both in the car and was taking you to the police to press charges. Only...” he chokes back tears and clears his throat.
“They didn’t make it?” I ask. My jaw is set, and I’m breathing through my nose, not willing to open my mouth again in case I say something I’ll regret. Or worse, something that will hurt Em.
He squeezes Em’s hand. “Your father saw you leave. He had been drinking but decided he wouldn’t let either of you go. So, he followed. He chased Kate’s car for miles until he finally caught up and ran her off the road.”
My heart stops in my chest and Emerson squeezes my fingers so tight I think they might break.
“It was a miracle you weren’t hurt. Your mom went to hospital with whiplash, but Kate. She... She took the brunt of it. Head injury. Hours later she was gone, and you were back home with that piece of shit.”