Where Silence Gathers (Some Quiet Place #2)(44)
The thought yanks me back to the mines, to Dad. It happened so fast. One moment he was there, looking right at me with his familiar brown eyes, and the next he was gone. Reality is setting in again, and with each passing second I’m more and more convinced that I imagined the entire thing. How could it be real? There’s no such thing as ghosts … is there?
One thing I know with utmost certainty: I have to go back.
“Honey, it’s your turn.” Francis plucks the skirt of her nightgown, studying the pieces on the board closely.
Just then, Elvis’s “Burning Love” comes on. Bill claps his hands and jumps up, startling all of us. His knee knocks the game board and checkers scatter across the floor. Francis jerks back, scowling. “Damn it, Bill!”
Ignoring this, he rushes to the radio and turns the volume knob so loud that Einstein flees the room. Then he returns to his wife—Briana and I scramble out of the way—and holds his hands out to her, grinning. “Come on!” he exclaims, swinging his hips from side to side. “We danced to this at our wedding, remember? Briana, you were there, cooking in the oven. It’s our family song!”
Briana laughs, and I’m smiling. Elvis sings his encouragement. Francis gives Bill another exasperated look, but he just grabs her fingers and hauls her up. Joy is here now, doing an odd little jig that makes the fat in her arms jiggle. Her orange-red hair is a fire that warms us all. Briana shouts encouragement. Francis is worse than Revenge as she dances, her movements uncertain and awkward. She doesn’t stop, though. All too soon the song ends, and a gentler one comes on. Joe introduces it in his familiar drawl. Bill tugs Francis against him, and they sway there together as if Briana and I don’t exist.
Now Love accompanies them. Her palms cup their backs. Their minds will dismiss the sensation as something ordinary; that’s how it always works. Francis closes her eyes, the veins in her eyelids so thick and blue. Like rivers on Saul’s maps. I remember the helplessness in her the last time I came here, when the pot on the sill was still only dirt. It feels so long ago.
Finished with their summons, Joy and Love stand back, whispering to each other and grinning. All of this reminds me of that first afternoon in the attic. The laughter, the warmth, the closeness. I miss Revenge so much it’s an ache in my chest, like he has his fist wrapped around my heart and keeps tightening his hold, no matter how hard I try to be free of him. “Why can’t all love be as easy as that?” I murmur.
My friend sighs. She bumps her shoulder to mine. “Love isn’t complicated, Alex. People are.”
Bill says something in Francis’s ear and she giggles. I watch the two of them, thinking that hope is always found in the places you least expect it.
When I don’t respond, Briana looks at me sidelong. “You say that like you have experience. But so far as I know, you’ve never dated anyone.” There’s a question in the words.
The pause after she speaks is palpable, but without the pressure that usually pounds in from all sides like the storms that frequent this mountain. Here’s my chance. I could be honest with Briana for the first time in my life. Tell her about the other plane and my father and everything else. She would believe me, she would understand. That’s who she is.
But Briana’s world is beautiful, even with its flaws. I don’t want to be the one who puts something ugly in it. So instead I just say, “I messed up, Bri. I don’t think Saul and Missy are going to forgive me.” The image of Saul running after me as I sped away on my bike flashes and fades in my mind’s eye. That ever-present shard of glass in my heart burrows deeper and I actually put a hand to my chest, convinced I’ll feel it there.
Light from the window falls across Briana’s face and dust glints like stars. “Of course they will,” she murmurs. “You just have to earn it.”
She’s not talking about me and Saul anymore. She’s staring up at her mother, Longing and Hurt and Love surrounding her. I wish I knew what was wrong. Suddenly she stands, and every step she takes away sounds like an earthquake. Neither of her parents notices. Slowly, I follow. We reach the hallway and Briana doesn’t say anything; she just focuses on another pot of soil next to the door. Past experience has taught me that she won’t—can’t—talk about her mother. So I touch her arm and say, “I better go. I’m pretty sure Saul has grounded me until graduation.”
“If you graduate.” Briana finally looks at me.
Another pause. The look in her eyes kills me. I feel like I’m running down a road and everyone I love is standing a mile back, calling to me and urging me to stop. To return. “If I graduate,” I echo softly. She expects me to defend myself or offer some kind of explanation. I do neither. “See you later, Bri. Thanks for … for this.” When I leave, she doesn’t try to stop me or say goodbye.
I lift my bike upright and get on, pedal far enough that I’m out of view. Then I stop on the side of the road. Gravel crunches beneath my sandal. I dig my phone out of my pocket and find the number in the RECENTLY CALLED list. Press TALK and hold it to my ear. Just like all the other times, it rings over and over. I have the sound memorized, so much that I know exactly when the voicemail will interrupt.
But this time the accented voice doesn’t drone an apology to me. Every vein in my body twitches when there’s a click and the voice says, “Hello?”