“Nice day, finally,” he said. “We’re all planning on taking a walk later, if you want to come along.”
Avis frowned. So she was free to walk with them, but when it came to conversation, she had yet to win her way in? “Is that what you all were talking about out there?” She flashed him a skeptical glance. “A walk?”
Jeffrey gave her a thoughtful look, as though allowing the knowledge that she’d been spying sink in. He raised his shoulders in an easy shrug. “Something like that.”
“I don’t believe you.” Surprised by how quickly the confession slipped past her lips, she felt her muscles stiffen. Her nerves were suddenly alive, squirming just beneath her skin. For half a second, she was stunned by her own audacity. She’d never had such bravado before. It both energized and terrified her. Finally she had stood up for herself, but it was misguided courage. Jeffrey wasn’t deserving of her rebuttal. It was Avis’s father, Audra’s father, who should have been on the receiving end of her simmering ire.
But it was Jeffrey who was standing in front of her now, not Congressman Snow.
She stared down at the ground, trying to weave an apology earnest enough to keep him from throwing up his hands and calling it all off himself. I’m sorry. I’m just upset. I thought . . .
“There are a lot of people out there that need someone to guide them, Avis,” he said, stalling out her thoughts. She looked up from the floor and searched his face—was he going to let her indiscretion go, or was this the end? Jeffrey’s expression was calm, but the ferocity in his eyes had intensified. “People who are lost,” he continued, even-voiced. “Struggling to navigate through the wasteland that is the world. If you like living among the desolation that has eaten away at society, nobody is asking you to compromise yourself. Nobody is forcing their way into your life.”
Avis opened her mouth to protest. I don’t think you’re forcing your way—but Jeff lifted a hand to silence her. “I’m a patient man, Avis. I’m always watching, always listening. I’m waiting for you to choose the life you want for yourself. But I won’t wait forever. If I did, there would be nobody left to take care of those who can’t take care of themselves. These people . . .” He motioned toward the upstairs hall, the jubilant voices of the group coiling up the staircase and into the room. “They need me. Half of them would be dead of an overdose in the towns they’d grown up in had I not plucked them from the rubble. They had no one, and now they have everything. But it appears that for you, everything may not be enough.”
She shook her head mutely.
No, no, it’s enough . . .
But the words didn’t come. She found herself breathless, unable to find the courage to speak. Too much of what Jeff had said sounded like a good-bye. He was abandoning her. She’d failed him, and now he would leave her to live the lonely life she’d come to know. But the isolation would no longer be a comfort. She’d gotten a taste of companionship. Solitary confinement would be tarnished by the fact that it was no longer self-imposed.
“Is it fair to wait for the reluctant when the eager are struggling to live?” he asked. “The healer has to attend to the willing. If you aren’t willing, Avis, then I’m wasting my time here.”
“I don’t understand.” She spit out the words. “What did I do?”
“What did you do?” Jeffrey canted his head to the right. His mouth quirked up into a ghost of a smile. His expression was tinged with a hint of irritation.
“Yes.” She struggled to swallow, her throat suddenly chokingly dry. “I . . . surrendered.”
“Surrender requires honesty,” Jeff shot back. “And you’ve been lying this entire time.”
Avis gaped at him. Lying? She shook her head again. I haven’t lied about anything. But her silent denial only expounded Jeffrey’s annoyance. He pushed off from the door frame and stepped deeper into the room. Grabbing her by the wrist, he spun her toward the master bathroom with a rough hand. A sickening sense of realization hit her as he pushed her into the tiled room. She stumbled toward the sink, catching her reflection in the mirror that hung above it. She hadn’t slept well since the group had descended upon her home. They kept wild hours, slept in erratic patterns, woke her with their laughter regardless of the hour. The dark circles beneath her eyes were proof of sleep deprivation. She was exhausted; she’d just been too preoccupied to notice until now.
But her lack of sleep wasn’t Jeffrey’s concern. With Avis standing at the sink, he reached out and pulled open the mirrored door of the medicine cabinet. A row of orange prescription bottles winked at her from the middle shelf. Those aren’t mine, she thought. Those belong to Audra, and Audra is gone.
Except that was a lie. Despite the group’s presence, she hadn’t stopped taking her medication. She was afraid that if she went off her meds, the darkness would creep back into her thoughts. Afraid that, despite the company, she’d run off the rails and slit her wrists the moment she was faced with adversity—a quandary just like this one.
Jeff shot his hand across the cabinet’s shelf and sent orange bottles rattling into the sink. “What are these?” he demanded, shaking a bottle of lithium in her face.
Shame.
She stared into the sink’s basin, then burst into tears, not wanting him to know how broken she really was. She was moving away from that hopelessness thanks to the group, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t scared of regressing to her previous state. One day, hopefully soon, she’d feel confident enough to stop taking her pills. But that would come after her initiation period. When she was truly a part of the group. Except that might not happen now. You screwed everything up. Leave it to the useless nobody to destroy her only chance at belonging to something bigger than herself.