The Rattled Bones(57)
“I’m good with the you and me part, but I won’t talk fishing.”
He shoves his hands in his front pockets. The motion tugs his jeans lower, showing the lip of his lean, tan stomach. “I think that has to change.”
“Why?”
“Because I think we should buy the co-op.”
“The co-op? I didn’t realize Hoopah was selling.”
“He’s not. Not now, but he will, Rill. He’s got to retire, and you know his kids don’t want it. We could buy it.”
“With what money?”
“If you stay, we can fish together, save up money. You don’t need school when you’ve got a future right here.”
I feel heat build at the base of my neck. This is why he pulled me off Malaga? This is why he interrupted my conversation with Sam? So we could fight about school? Again.
“It’ll be our family business, Rill. Something to pass on to our kids.”
“Reed, the conversation you’re trying to have is for, like, ten years from now.”
“I want to take care of you.”
How has Reed become a person who thinks I need someone to take care of me? It sounds like he’s saying I’m not strong enough to fish alone and it feels too much like his grandfather’s thinking. I stand to pace, my room suddenly feeling too small.
“Don’t you love me, Rill?”
“Of course.”
“Then stay. If you really loved me, you’d stay for me.”
I stop, search his eyes. “You don’t really think that?”
“I do.”
“It’s the opposite of the truth. I’m leaving because I love you. If I stay I’ll regret it, and I don’t want regrets.”
“So now I’m a regret?”
“You know what I mean.”
“No, I don’t. I feel like I don’t even know you anymore. Like you’re gonna go to Rhode Island and not come back.”
“I’m coming back.”
“What if I don’t trust you to come back?”
What? “You don’t trust me to come home to the only family I have left?”
Something snaps in him. Something buried too long. “No. I don’t trust you, okay?”
“Um, no. Nothing about that is okay.”
The lines in his face grow deeper as they gather anger. Or suspicion. Maybe both. “I don’t trust you with Sam”—he slurs his name—“or with remembering any of us after you go away and fill your head thinking you’re better than the people you left behind. You’re not better than me, Rill. You don’t get to judge me because I didn’t finish school. So what if I chose work instead? So what if I like to get high?”
“Where is this coming from? I don’t think I’m better than you.”
“Bullshit.” Reed paces now. “You’ve always thought you were smarter than everyone on this peninsula, with college and your scholarship.” He spits these words like they’re terrible things. “But you’re the one with the crazy in your family, Rill. Not me. I’m offering to take care of you. I’m telling you not to run off the way your fucked-up mother did. Stay here. Where you belong.”
I take a big step back. “My fucked-up mother?” Anger rises. Is this for real?
“You know what I mean, Rill. Come on. She’s in a nuthouse. Or she was anyway.”
“Reed, you need to go.”
“If I leave now, I’m gone for good.” He’s making me a promise now, this boy built of anger and fear and something else. A need to control? This boy has a part of him that hates me. Has it always been this way? I scrub at my arms, rubbing off the sting of his callousness.
“If that’s what you have to do.” I move to the door.
“So you’re just off to Rhode Island, then, no matter what I want? You’ll just run away. Fuck, Rill, you’re as nuts as she is. How did I not see it before now?” He shakes his head at me. Like I’m ridiculous. Like I’m missing the obvious thing right in front of me.
And maybe I am. Because Reed’s anger toward me can’t be new.
“Whatever.” He huffs, climbs out the window, his sneaker stepping right over my shirt and the words etched into the wooden sill.
Gone, just like that.
I text Hattie: I think Reed and I broke up Hattie: For reals? hides smile
Me: Think so. He stormed off hating me so . . .
Hattie: So he’s an ass
Hattie: I’m coming over
Me: Maybe not tonight
Hattie: You okay?
Me: Think so
Hattie: You’re better without him
Maybe she’s right. Because everything Reed said tonight feels too wrong.
When I hear Reed’s boat fade into the distance, I need air. I leave my room and see Gram sitting on the bottom step of the attic stairway, the door wide open. The perfume of oil on canvas mixes with the salt air that always lurks close to my home. The paint smell is as familiar as my childhood, the way I’d find its echo on Gram’s fingers. The oils are heavier here. Concentrated. I steal a look up the plain wood stairs, so steep and narrow. The room upstairs is as magical as Narnia to me, and my curiosity about the space is as strong today as it was when I was little. I catch only a glimpse of a canvas, its visible edges darkened with greens and blues. It is the sea in our attic.