Harder (Caroline & West #2)(18)

I’m tired. I want a hot shower and a warm bed, and I’m going to make West take me to Bo’s tonight. Even if he won’t touch me, I’m sick of sleeping on carpet squares in an attic that makes me sneeze. I don’t want to wake up tomorrow morning with crusty, red-rimmed eyes.

Joan’s Chevy sedan is gone. She must have taken Frankie back to her place.

I walk to the truck and check the door. Unlocked. Once I’m settled into the passenger seat, I text him—Where are you?—then glance at my email.

Tired and lonely, I text my dad.

Just wanted to check in. I’m fine.

I think how lucky I am, how extraordinarily lucky. Being with West’s family, seeing the way they are, helps me remember that my life has basically been amazing in every way that matters. Sure, I lost my mom, but I wasn’t old enough when she died to remember having her. Who I remember is my dad, and he’s always been there for me and my sisters. Crabby and controlling, yes, but I’ve never doubted that he wants the best for me. Not for a second. And whatever minor differences I have with him, they’re always going to be just that: minor.

I send another text. I’m glad you’re my dad. I love you.

I wait a minute, but he doesn’t write back. Neither does West.

I lay my head down on the seat and close my eyes, hoping West will turn up before it gets too chilly. Even in the summer, it’s cold here at night. Something to do with the mountains.

West would know why, if I asked him.

I fish my earbuds out of my purse and put a song I like on repeat at low volume.

Sleep comes down on me slowly, stealing into the song, rocking me to safety.

The next thing I know, I come awake to a thump. My hand clutches closed around my phone; when I sit up and look out the windows, I don’t see anything. It’s completely dark now, the parking lot just a gravel patch with no streetlights to illuminate it.

I hear a woman’s laugh, low and intimate.

There’s another thump—a body making contact with the side panel of the truck.

A quiet squeak against glass, and now I crane my head farther around to see something moving against the narrow window of the back part of the cab. A shadow, fuzzed at the edges. I realize it’s a woman’s hair when she says, “No one can see us out here.”

A cloud of black hair, and the back of a dress that would be purple if it were light enough to tell color from shadow. The woman who hugged him too long beside the coffin. Mrs. Tomlinson.

West’s voice replies, “You’ll have to be quiet.”

“You know I can’t.”

“You need something to shove in your mouth?”

She laughs.

“Turn around,” he says.

A clack against the window. Her wedding ring.

It’s the ring that makes it real. The white streak of her teeth. I’m dizzy. So disoriented, I close my eyes.

That makes it worse.

For a long moment, I’m falling, stuck inside a pocket of time, drenched in violent revulsion as though it’s been dropped on me from above. A bucketload of antipathy, a full-body no.

No, this can’t be happening.

Her ring taps against the glass again. “Yeah. Yeah, I missed that mouth.”

I don’t hear what West says. I can’t see him.

I can’t see him because he’s down on his knees with his face between her legs.

I turn away from them, blinking into darkness.

When I was three, I fell into a lake in the winter. We went to a dock where you could throw bread crusts to ducks and geese—me and my two older sisters with my dad—and I think Dad must have taken his eyes off me for a second too long.

I remember fear when I backed away from something that scared me.

I remember surprise when I fell.

I don’t remember being afraid in the water. Only sinking into a cold so absolute, a descent so inevitable, that I accepted it.

That’s what this is like. I know it’s happening. I know I’m angry. I know my hands are shaking, and I’m nauseated. But all of that is as unimportant as the frantic shouting of my sisters muffled by the water.

I’m cold.

Encased.

Sinking.

I drift without moving as the sounds she makes become more frantic.

We could compare notes.

Is he doing that thing with his tongue, Mrs. Tomlinson?

Oh, he must have just scissored his fingers. That gets me, too.

How many times have you done this? Did it start when he was your caddy?

How old was he then? How many different ways did you use him?

He’s using you now.

They aren’t my thoughts.

It’s not my own ironic detachment, it’s just a random defense. A mouthy guard at the door. The real me is awash in rage and shame and sorrow so deep I’m not even allowed access to it.

I have to sink away. Let the water take me.

I’m annoyed when my phone vibrates in my hand. I glance at the screen and see that I have new texts from my dad and West.

In funeral home office, West’s first text says.

I’m going to be a few minutes still.

Wrapping things up w/ director.

If we were inside the funeral home, I’d have to feel something right now. That’s what they’re for, these places we create to receive grief, to allow it and mute it at the same time.