I turned the key again, pumped the gas.
“You’ll flood the engine,” my dad said unhelpfully. “Give it a minute. It’ll start.”
I leaned back and sighed. I was a wreck. The blows I took were all aching hot patches of pain. Nothing broken. There’s a sharp, breathless, nauseating pain that comes with a break or a fracture. And I didn’t have that, which was not surprising since I had taken far worse blows. Either the guys who jumped me were weak, or they were taking it easy because I’m small and a girl. But broken or not, my ribs, my jaw, and my hip (I guess where I first hit the ground) were all a dark purple and aching in a kind of unpleasant misery chorus. Probably someone else would have been out of commission, but I was used to discomfort from years of sparring.
“Pain is just an inconvenience,” Mike always said. “Unless it doubles you over or you pass out, just try to ignore it.”
He’d been calling since last night, and I’d been sending his calls to voicemail. I didn’t want to listen to the voice of reason. The time for lessons was over.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but he was right—when I killed Didion, I’d tipped a domino, one that had been poised and waiting for more than a decade. The energy that had been gathering since my parents’ murder had shifted from stasis to kinesis. Now was the time to follow the trail to its conclusion, no matter how ugly. You could not reverse the fall of dominos.
How often had I wished that I had died with them that night? There was a part of me that thinks I should have, or that maybe in some real sense I did. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t muster any real gratitude for Seth. If not for him, I’d be where I belonged.
“She wanted you to live,” said my dad. “More than anything, that’s what she wanted. She lived her whole life for you. She wouldn’t be happy with the choices you’ve made.”
I tried the engine again, there was a loud coughing grind that echoed off the concrete of the parking garage walls.
“Where are you going anyway?” asked my father, frowning.
Somewhere between the information I’d gathered last night, the beating I took on the street where I lost the key Paul had given me, and the dreams that colored my fitful sleep, I decided it was time to go back to the house and search the basement. I needed to go through what, if anything, was still left of my parents. I had no reason to believe that it wasn’t all long gone. I hadn’t set foot on the property since my last time there with Paul. But I’d read on that blog that the basement was largely untouched and filled with boxes. And I wanted to try to find what my father brought down there that night.
“What did you bring down there?” I asked him. But of course he was gone. He never gave me any new information. He only told me what I already knew or echoed my fears and insecurities.
Finally, finally, with my last attempt, the engine barked to life.
I had no idea how I was going to get into that house. But I had to try.
twenty-seven
The good thing about Rhett was that he was predictable. By the time Josh had finished up the chair, his brother was passed out hard on the couch. Rhett could ingest more alcohol than anyone Josh knew; he’d never show it except to get meaner, darker the more he took in. He never lost control, never got sloppy. But at a certain point, he’d just crash and be out of commission for hours. There would be no rousing him.
Josh stood in the kitchen looking at Rhett, his brother’s mouth agape, one leg sprawled wide, his breathing deep. Maybe he’ll die, thought Josh. Maybe he’ll choke on his own vomit. But no, that was never going to happen. People like Rhett never had the courtesy to die young. They stayed around creating damage as long as they could.
“I thought he was supposed to be helping you,” said Jane.
She was rinsing off Mom’s breakfast plates and loading them carefully in the dishwasher. Medicare paid for part of Jane’s salary; Josh paid part. And part, he thought, was just Jane looking out for Mom because they’d been friends since childhood. Jane’s kids were grown and scattered across the country. She liked coming here and helping with meals and such, Josh thought. He was grateful to her, though he wasn’t sure he ever said as much. Words didn’t come easily to him. They got jammed up inside, never came out right.
“Yeah,” said Josh. “I thought so, too.”
“Your mama’s blind when it comes to that boy,” said Jane, casting a disapproving glance at Rhett. From the couch, Rhett let out a long, grunting snore. Josh bit back a flood of hatred for his brother, walked over to help Jane finish up. It wasn’t really her job to clean up, but she always did.
Jane’s glasses gleamed gold in the light that washed through the window. “He was always bad.”
No one knew what they had done, of course. Not really. But there was talk. There was always talk.
“But you’re a good boy, Josh,” said Jane. “Don’t forget that. You’re all she has, your momma. She needs you.”
Jane used to be the nurse at the high school and everyone was afraid of her. Unless you were really sick, and then she was an angel. Her hair had gone snow-white since then, but her face had hardly aged. To Josh, she looked exactly the same as she always had. Her dark eyes glittered with intelligence and something else, a kind of hard seeing.
“Don’t let him drag you into whatever trouble he’s got brewing,” she said. “You worked hard to get yourself right. You stay in touch with Lee.”
Jane’s husband, Ray, who was a master carpenter and helped Josh now and again on various jobs, was also in the program. Jane knew well the demon of substance abuse, how it could tear through your life if you let it.
“Can you stay awhile?” he asked. She only worked a half day on the weekends. “I have to go out, and I don’t want to leave her alone with him. Not like this.”
She looked at her watch, at Rhett, her face turning into a hard scowl. “I can stay till two if you need me.”
“I’ll pay you time and a half.”
She waved him away.
“Just text me if he wakes up?” said Josh.
She nodded. “You heard what I said, right? About not letting him drag you into anything.”
“I heard you, Miss Jane,” he said. “Thank you.”