A Lily in the Light(22)

“Take a shower,” he said. “Then go to bed. Don’t let your mother see that yet.”

They’d been out all night. Her father’s hair stuck up in spikes, and the bottoms of his jeans were black with dirt. So were Nick’s. Where did people go when they stayed out all night? Where was there to go that wasn’t home? Esme’s head pounded. Their normal world was hiding here somewhere, a lost sock in the dryer. Things didn’t just change this fast.

“Dad?” He should know about the birds. It seemed important somehow, but Andre looked so tired. The half-moons under his fingernails were black. The flickering candles on the table woke him up momentarily, long enough for him to cross the room with purpose and blow out the flames. A thin line of smoke traveled toward the ceiling. A puddle of wax sat in its place.

“But she said—”

“Get rid of this shit,” he said. “And wake me up when your mother gets home. Don’t let me sleep for more than an hour.”

Nick slumped on the couch, his reflection shadowy in the dark TV. Water rolled from the corner of his eye down his cheek, but Nick wasn’t crying. There were traces of blood on his hands and face, brown and dry in the early-morning light. The candle smoke roiled Esme’s stomach. Her knuckles ached where the red, cracked bruises on Nick’s hand must have burned. Where was their brother who threw LEGO houses down the stairs to see how strong he’d built them? Esme swallowed, chasing the bitter taste away.

“Hey.” Andre picked Nick up by his armpits and stood him on his feet. “Come on—let’s clean up.”

The tenderness in Andre’s voice surprised her. She thought he’d be in trouble for whatever he’d done, but instead, something had shifted between Nick and Andre. Andre helped Nick to the bathroom. The water started. They were both too big to be in that small room together. Water splashed over the sink. She heard soap between their hands. They were washing something away, a secret only the two of them understood.

“Get some ice on that.” The bathroom was a mess of dirty clothes and black city dirt on the sink. Esme waited until they’d split off from one another, each finding his room, before scooping their clothes into the hamper. She wiped away the dirt from the sink and put their toothbrushes back in the cup with the others, minus the Little Mermaid toothbrush that was somewhere else now.

Then she filled a pot with icy water and carried it to Nick’s room.

He was lying on his back. The swelling made it hard to tell if his eyes were open or shut. She sat beside him, careful not to rattle the ice cubes as she set the pot down on the floor, plunging her hand into the freezing water and bringing the washcloth up with it. It stung her hands. She shivered as water dripped down her sleeves but folded the cloth neatly and set it over Nick’s face. It felt good to do something nice, to feel important.

Nick flinched. Esme pulled a blanket over him, the blue-and-white quilt Cerise had made when he was born. In sleep, Nick looked too young to be her older brother. It was strange to see Madeline and Nick look as young as they actually were, even rarer for her to help them instead of the other way around.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” Nick mumbled.

Not Mom, Esme, she wanted to say. Mom is sitting in a church pew praying to stupid statues and lighting squatty red candles for a dollar over and over again. Esme wrung the washcloth, dabbing his eyes and wiping away the drops that ran down his face to his pillow. Their mom was supposed to do things like this. If she’d been home on Thursday night instead of at church, maybe this wouldn’t have happened. And how could God let something bad happen while Cerise was at church, actual church, his house? If God rewarded good people and punished bad ones, then maybe something was wrong with her mother . . .

It was the first time she’d ever thought such a thing, and the hostility surprised her. It felt as wrong as drinking spoiled milk.

“It’s Esme,” she whispered finally.

Nick nodded. He smelled like damp earth, smoky and burnt. It made her nose tingle. She ran the washcloth over his knuckles and stopped only when she realized the water in the pot had turned a rusty brown.

She assumed he’d been hurt, but what if he’d hurt someone else too? The thought of her brother’s fist hitting someone’s face hard enough to rip their skin and make them bleed disgusted Esme.

“I’ll get more water.” The mattress sprang up without her weight, filling the space where she’d been.

Nick opened his eyes for the first time, flinching against the sunlight trickling through the blinds. “Stay.”

Esme blinked, not sure she’d heard him right. She hesitated by the door.

“Just stay,” he said again. She put the pot down and found a place next to his bed, resting her head on her arm. Nick put his hand near hers. It was weird to touch her brother.

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” he whispered. Esme stared at the things in her brother’s room, things that belonged only to him: sweatshirts and baseball mitts, aluminum bats with missing paint chips, a bottle of Barbasol. She was jealous of the empty space on his walls.

“I thought I was helping.” Nick’s hand throbbed against hers like a beating heart.

“Where’d you go?”

“The depot.” He coughed. “And a few other places with pictures of Lily.”

Esme cringed at the thought of Lily in the depot. It was an old trolley barn. Sometimes Nick threw rocks at the windows. They all did. Only the highest ones were still in one piece, and kids got as close as they could, picking through the chain-link fence, stepping over old mattresses and torn trash bags. Homeless people lived inside with thrown-away things. The police had found Denny there once after he’d been missing for a while. Esme was too afraid to ask what it was like inside.