“I talked to Ruthie,” he said, glancing down as if he were talking to his étouffée instead of his daughter. “You can manage two shifts a week, can’t you?” He picked up his fork. “Now eat up, food’s getting cold.”
Eureka couldn’t eat. She considered the many sentences forming in her mind: You two sure know how to handle a suicide attempt. Could you possibly make a bad situation any worse? The secretary from Evangeline called to see why I wasn’t in class today, but I already deleted the voice mail. Did I mention I also quit cross-country and don’t plan on returning to school? I’m leaving and I’m never coming back.
But Rhoda’s ears were deaf to uncomfortable honesty. And Dad? Eureka scarcely recognized him. He seemed to have crafted a new identity out of not contradicting his wife. Maybe because he’d never been able to pull that off when he was married to Diana.
Nothing Eureka could say would change the cruel rules of this house, which only ever applied to her. Her mind was on fire, but her eyes stayed downturned. She had better things to do than fight with the monsters across the table.
Fantasies of plans were gathering at the limits of her mind. Maybe she would get a job on a fishing skiff that sailed near where The Book of Love said Atlantis had been. Madame Blavatsky seemed to think the island had really existed. Maybe the old woman would even want to join Eureka. They could save money, buy an old boat, and sail into the brutal ocean that held everything she loved. They could find the Pillars of Hercules and keep going. Maybe then she’d feel at home—not like the alien she was at this dinner table. She moved some peas around with her fork. She stuck a knife in her étouffée to see if it would stand on its own.
“If you’re going to disrespect the food we put on this table,” Rhoda said, “I think you’re excused.”
Dad added, in a softer voice, “Have you had enough to eat?”
It took all Eureka’s strength not to roll her eyes. She stood, pushed in her chair, and tried to imagine how different this scene would look if it were just Eureka and Dad, if she still respected him, if he’d never married Rhoda.
As soon as the thought formed in Eureka’s mind, her eyes found her siblings and she regretted her wish. The twins wore profound frowns. They were silent, as if bracing for Eureka to throw a screaming fit. Their faces, their little hunched shoulders, made her want to swoop them up and take them with her to wherever she escaped. She kissed the tops of their heads before climbing the stairs to her room.
She closed her door and fell onto her bed. She’d showered after her run, and her wet hair had dampened the collar of the flannel pajamas she liked to wear when it was raining. She lay still and tried to translate the code of the rain on the roof.
Hold on, it was saying. Just hold on.
She wondered what Ander was doing, and in what kind of room he might be lying in bed, staring up at the ceiling. She knew he thought about her at least occasionally; it required some foresight to wait for someone in the woods and all the other places he had waited for her. But what did he think about her?
What did she really think about him? She was afraid of him, drawn to him, provoked by him, surprised by him. Thoughts of him lifted her from her depression—and threatened to send her more deeply into it. There was an energy about him that distracted her from grief.
She thought of the thunderstone and Ander’s hypothesis. It was stupid. Trust wasn’t something born from an experiment. She thought of her friendship with Cat. They had earned each other’s trust over time, strengthened it slowly like a muscle, until it contained a power all its own. But sometimes trust struck the intuition like a thunderbolt, fast and deep, the way it had happened between Eureka and Madame Blavatsky. One thing was certain: Trust was mutual, and that was the problem with her and Ander. He held all the cards. Eureka’s role in the relationship seemed to be merely being alarmed.