“You are such an idiot, Ravenna,” I mumble, running back down the hallway and up the stairs.
Shooting a dirty look at my father’s closed office door as I move past it, I scoop up the bent hanger that I left on the floor right outside the spare bedroom where Nolan tossed it there the other day. Heading back downstairs to the basement door, I slide to a stop across the hardwood in my stocking feet. Squatting down, I shove the end of the hanger into the keyhole and jiggle it around just like I saw Nolan do. I poke and jab, turning the hanger this way and that, quickly growing frustrated that picking a skeleton-key lock isn’t as easy as Nolan made it look. I keep working but after a few minutes, my fingers start to cramp from holding the piece of wire and trying to force it in the right spot.
Blowing my hair out of my eyes, I move the hanger into my left hand, shaking out the right to give it a little break before going right back to work. I’m pushing so hard in every direction in the tiny hole that the hanger starts to bend and still the door remains locked.
I need to get in that basement. I have to go down there. I don’t need to make sense of the things my mother told me. I don’t need to get into my father’s office. All the answers are down there—I know they are.
“Don’t go down there. You’ll never come up if you go down there.”
I quickly jump up away from the door guiltily, the wire hanger falling from my hands and clattering on the floor.
My father leans against the banister of the stairs, still wearing the same dark blue suit pants and white button-down from the day the coroner came to take my mother’s body away. After a week of wearing and sleeping in the same clothes, they’re now wrinkled, stained, and disheveled. One end of his shirt has come un-tucked from his pants and it hangs down over his belt and his short dark hair stands on end all around his head like he’s been constantly tugging on clumps of it.
I notice a half-empty bottle of whiskey dangles between two of his fingers down by his thigh and I roll my eyes. It’s a wonder he hasn’t drunk himself to death yet.
“Did you hear me, little girl? Don’t go down those stairs,” he slurs, swaying away from the banister.
I ignore his warning and shake my head at him. “You might want to try sobering up and taking a shower. The grounds crew hasn’t been here in days because they don’t know what they’re supposed to do and people keep calling about when we’re opening back up for tours.”
He stares at me without blinking, bringing the bottle up to his lips, tipping it back, and taking a huge swallow.
“You killed her,” he whispers as he takes the bottle away from his mouth.
“I didn’t kill her. She stuck the gun in her mouth all by herself,” I remind him.
He shakes his head and his face scrunches up in misery. “No, no, no. It was your fault. You killed her. Oh God, what am I going to do? It will kill her if she finds out. I have to hide it—I can’t let her know.”
Has everyone around me gone mad?
He stumbles forward, his feet shuffling across the floor until he’s standing right in front of me. He smells of sweat, whiskey, and vomit, and I scrunch up my nose in disgust as I look up at him.
I used to think he was such a strong, powerful man. I would have done anything to make him love me. Now he’s just a sorry excuse for a human being, blaming everyone else for his problems.
His hand suddenly comes up and he cups my cheek in his palm, moving his thumb back and forth softly against my face.
“I’m sorry this happened to you. Come back to me. Please come back to me,” he sobs.
Smacking his hand away in frustration and tired of listening to the drunken nonsense coming out of his mouth, I move around him and head toward the door.
“Where are you going? You can’t leave. Don’t leave me!” he shouts.
“Clean yourself up for God’s sake,” I yell back, opening the front door.
Hurling his words at my back, he yells, “You’re going to see that good-for-nothing boy, aren’t you? Did he tell you? I knew he wouldn’t be able to keep his mouth shut.”
I pause with my hand on the door, turning back around.
“What in the hell are you talking about?” I ask through clenched teeth.
“I’ve seen you sneaking around with him. I know you’ve been talking. I should have known better than to trust him with a secret like that, good-for-nothing piece of trash.”
He brings the whiskey up to his lips and gulps it down while he moves around the banister and clumsily makes his way back upstairs.
“Tell him he’s fired,” my father yells down to me. “And tell him he should have minded his own business and stayed out of the woods that night.”
Chapter 15