Everything You Are(14)

Braden is too exhausted to move away from the sink. The empty bottle is still in his hand, the intoxicating smell of alcohol filling his sinuses.

“I wish—” Allie begins, then breaks on a sob. Deliberately stepping on the broken glass so it crunches beneath her shoes, she stalks out of the room. He hears footsteps on the stairs, the slamming of a door.

Alexandra switches up her approach. “Look, Braden. I’m not saying you don’t mean well. But surely you can see this isn’t going to work. Walk away. I’ll give you a ride back to your apartment. Allie will be much better off in a structured environment with two adults.”

He weighs the logic of the words against all of his weaknesses.

“And if she runs away?”

“She won’t. You know nothing about teenagers, Braden. She’s just making threats. She has no idea what she wants and certainly doesn’t know what she needs.”

Alexandra is offering him an out. If he takes it, he can tell himself it was all for Allie’s good, that he made a noble sacrifice of his own wants and desires for her best interests. But he’s already told himself that lie once before.

He’s endured half a year of visitation, once a week, on Sundays. Lilian would drop the kids off at McDonald’s after church. Braden would feed them burgers and fries, watch them play in the ball pit, on the slides. And then he’d hug them, kiss them, watch them get into the car, and drive away.

Every time, it broke him. Once, he couldn’t bring himself to do it and stayed home drunk. Twice. And then the phone call from Lilian.

“Let’s just cancel visits, Braden. They’ll be better with a clean break. It’s hard on them, this weekly visit. Allie cries for hours afterward, asks about you all week. And when you missed? Both of them were devastated. Do the right thing. Break it off. If you ever get sober, call me, we’ll rethink it . . .”

Of course, he’d never called. He’d told himself they were better off without him. Maybe that was true, but it wasn’t the reason he’d stayed away. His own pain, the drinking, that’s what stopped him.

Now, though, Allie has asked him to be here. He failed at the last thing she asked of him. Unforgivable. But she still needs him, and if that need makes him a punching bag, a living body on whom she can take out her grief and rage, then he’ll be that for her to the best of his ability.

“I’m staying,” he says.

Alexandra’s face flushes. “You’re a poor excuse for a human, Braden Healey. Always have been.”

“Tell me a thing I don’t already know.”

“You’ll be drunk by the end of the week and I’ll have to come back for her.”

“Possible. I’m still staying. I don’t suppose you have any idea how to get that wine stain out of the carpet?”

“I would have thought you’d be an expert at that.” Her voice drips venom.

“Where I’ve been living, stains didn’t matter very much.” He turns his back and imagines to himself that Alexandra doesn’t exist. Broken glass he can manage. Big pieces first. The vacuum is still in the hall closet where Lil always kept it, though she’s bought a brand-new model. He welcomes the noise, which blocks out both the cello music in his head and further possibility of conversation with Alexandra.

When he glances up, she is no longer standing there.

Once the glass is all vacuumed up, he keeps going, cleaning the rug from one side to the other, welcoming the opportunity to do something, anything, rather than think and feel. Over by the door, he runs up against a pair of sensible shoes.

Alexandra stands there, holding her suitcase in one hand, an oversize purse in the other. He raises his eyebrows in a question.

“Leaving already?”

She shouts to be heard over the humming of the vacuum cleaner. “My flight is in the morning. I’ve arranged a hotel for tonight. In case you change your mind. When everything falls apart, or social services refuses to allow you to stay with her, you can put her on a plane and send her to me.”

“Fly safely,” Braden says, and mostly means it. If there could be airplane fender benders, he might wish that inconvenience upon her, but he can’t summon enough hate to wish her or anybody wiped off the face of the planet.

Her lips purse together, and she gives her head a little shake of disapproval. And then she’s gone.

Braden stares at the closed front door with mingled relief and panic. It’s not too late. He could still run after her. She’d love nothing more than to see him grovel and beg her to take Allie after all. Instead, he puts the vacuum away. Finds a washcloth in the bathroom and uses it to wipe wine splatters off the wall.

An amoeba-shaped blotch remains on the carpet. It looks like blood, and he feels guilty that he’s the one who put it there. If there are ghosts, and if Lilian is one, she will haunt him for this, on top of all of his other sins against her.

His relief at Alexandra leaving dissipates almost immediately. He’s alone with his memories. Alone with the cello. The music is louder now, and is taking on the shape of his name, first calling him, pleading, then summoning.

Braden.

In all of the years since he walked away from his music, his home, and his family, the cello has followed him into his dreams, inhabited all of his waking moments. A phrase of music here, a sensation of strings beneath his fingers there, a phantom bow in his hand when he’s drowning his memories in a bar.