How terrifying, empty and hollow, and then: how absolving.
I brought Tyler outside in the rain once. Asked him, “Do you feel it?” Laced my fingers with his and waited for his whispered “Yes.” He could’ve been talking about anything—the cold on his face, the rainwater in his shoes, the sky whispering to him about love and loneliness and me. But I liked to believe he felt the same. That he was the person who always understood.
I tried to get back to sleep. I lay in bed and closed my eyes, concentrating on the sound of the rain on the roof—hoping it might keep my mind empty, lull me into a gentle oblivion.
But Cooley Ridge was talking to me with each drop, nudging me awake.
Keep your eyes open. Look.
Time can weave around and show you things if you let it. Maybe this was how. Maybe Cooley Ridge was trying to show me. Time was trying to explain things.
Tick-tock.
The Day Before
DAY 7
The house looked brighter, more alive, with the fresh coat of paint that Laura had picked out—pale almond, she’d called it. But the furniture had been pulled away from the walls and sat at unnatural angles, haphazardly covered with sheets of plastic, giving the whole downstairs a fun-house feel. I must’ve grown immune to the smell of paint sometime during the night. It wasn’t until I stepped out to toss the plastic in the trash and went back inside that it hit me—the wall of fumes, sticky and suffocating—that no open windows could alleviate. We needed to run the air, to circulate everything through the filters. We needed the damn air-conditioning.
I positioned Daniel’s box fans throughout the downstairs, turned them on, and left the windows open.
And then I left. An accidental catastrophic electrical fire would not be the worst thing that could happen to this house.
* * *
THERE’S A SUNDAY BRUNCH at Grand Pines that makes it family day. Go to church, then visit the family you’ve sent away. A day of penance. Eat your weight in sins. Guilt by omelet.
It was a buffet, and I was following Dad down the line, my tray sliding along the metal grooves behind his, sounding like nails on a chalkboard.
“Try the bacon,” he said, and I obligingly placed a strip on my plate. “Skip the eggs,” he said from the side of his mouth. “Biscuits. Take two.” I took one—I had no appetite and didn’t want to waste them if they weren’t really that good.
In the bag slung over my shoulder, I carried a paper signed by a doctor that I’d picked up at the front desk. An affidavit attesting to my father’s mental incompetency and his need for a guardian. We needed one more before filing with the court, and the on-site doctor had already gotten me a referral for someone who would visit later this week.
I felt like I was lying to Dad, placing bacon on my plate, taking his advice, acting like I was here for the food, for his company. I wasn’t not here for those things, but they weren’t the primary reason. I wondered if Daniel and Laura made it a habit to meet him here for brunch. Probably. Dad had smiled when I came in, like it was the most natural thing in the world for me to be here, and part of me wondered if the affidavit was wrong. If maybe he was getting better. If this was all reversible—a horrible, temporary thing that would gradually unwind itself. Gosh, Dad, remember that time you couldn’t remember us? Really gave me a scare.
We sat at the table where I’d met him at last week—apparently, his regular spot. “You should see Laura,” I said to him. “I went to her shower yesterday. She looks like she’s about to pop.”
He laughed. “What are they having?”
He knew this. He should’ve known. “A girl.” A slight nod from him. “Shana,” I said, and his eyes locked on mine, then slowly drifted to the side. It was the wrong thing to say; I’d lose him to her now. Watch them both disappear.
“You know, when your mother brought me home the first time, I fell in love.”
Or this time he would take me there with him.
“With Cooley Ridge?” I asked.
“Well, you don’t have to make that face, Nic.” He grinned. “But no. Not Cooley Ridge. I fell in love with her. Because I could see all of her there. She was like a puzzle piece out of context, but when I put her there, where she was from, it was like I understood. She was so beautiful.”
My clearest memories of my mother were the ones where she was fading. Sick. In a wheelchair with a yellow and blue quilt across her legs because she was always cold, Daniel holding a cup with a straw in front of her, both of them getting skinnier, paler, sharper. In pictures, she was beautiful. Before the cancer, she was this perfect mix of sharp and soft, with a genuinely warm smile.
“You really do look like her. You and Daniel both, spitting images of her,” he said.
“Daniel looks like you.” I tried the bacon, but in rolled the nausea. I broke it into smaller pieces so he wouldn’t notice.
“Now, sure, that’s what people say. But when you guys were kids, it was all Shana.” He looked me over. “Imagine if she hadn’t had kids. All of her would be lost now.”
“Okay,” I said. I didn’t like the way he was looking at me, like there was something of her still living—a puzzle piece out of context, part of her stuck over my left eye, to my bottom lip, the ridge of my spine. Concentrating on me like Corinne once had, until she pretended she could find the monster in us.
“We almost didn’t, you know. When her parents died in that accident and she found herself all alone in the world, she told me she would never have just one child. It was none at all or more than one. There was no debating.” He chewed his food, rolled his eyes. “So stubborn. For a long time I thought it would be none. I really did. Daniel caught us by surprise, you know.”
“No, I didn’t know.” My parents were older when they had us, but I assumed that was deliberate: careers first, then family.
“That’s when we moved back. She was desperate to have you as soon as possible. God, she drove me crazy. I really didn’t get why it was such a big deal, but she was determined that what happened to her would never be her child’s fate. Alone with no family. She was adamant that you’d have each other always. Now that she’s gone, I can see she was right, of course. Daniel needed you.”
“I’m sure he wouldn’t agree with that.” I laughed. “I’m a pain in his ass.”
“No, no, Nic. You’re exactly what he needs. He knows it. You know how he is, though.”
There were no safe topics anymore. Doctors sending affidavits to declare my dad incompetent. Missing girls. A house full of secrets. Accidental children. Daniel. And there were eyes everywhere. Not just in the woods. In this place, too. I felt my eyes roaming, my fingers drumming on the table. I could only tap in to subjects with Dad, circling them from far away, grazing off the top. Not getting him worked up. Not pushing things to the surface that needed to remain below. But I needed him to know some things—I needed him to understand.
“Tyler’s been doing some work on the house for us,” I said, picking at the biscuit.
“That’s good. He’s a good man.”
“You never liked him when we were kids,” I teased.
“That’s not true. He worked hard, and he loved you. What’s not to like?”
“I thought fathers of teenagers were supposed to hate their daughter’s boyfriends. It’s a rule.”
“I never read the handbook. Obviously,” he said. Then he pushed himself back in the chair. “I never knew what to do with you, Nic. About you, I mean. You turned out good, though, all on your own.”
“I didn’t turn out good,” I said, half laughing, crumbling the biscuit so it fell into uneaten sections.
“You did, though. Look at you. Look at you now.”
I needed to steer the conversation gently back. Carefully. “Tyler said the house would be worth more if we finished the garage,” I said. “Remember when you and Daniel were going to do it?”