Everything You Are(53)

“I was thinking you could text me.”

“Oh please. Ethan says all cell phones are just tracking devices.”

Braden bites off a retort, shifts the weight of the cello case to his other hand. Choose your battles, Healey. School today. With any luck, Ethan didn’t get bailed out last night. Ordering Allie to stay away from him will push her into mutiny.

“Look. I don’t want to track you. I want you to let me know when you’re going to be home late. I’d like to trust you. I worry.”

“You are so full of shit!”

“Elaborate.”

Allie stops walking and turns to face him. “What’s so different now? I mean, you’re fine going for, what, eleven years at a time without knowing where I am, and now you want to know every single minute?”

“I always wanted to know where you were, Allie. I just—”

She starts walking. “Right. I know. You were drunk. Forget it.”

There’s an opportunity here, of some sort, to teach her about addiction, but he doesn’t have the heart for it, and they walk in silence until they’re a block from the school. Allie stops walking.

“You can leave me here.”

Braden keeps right on moving. After a minute, she runs to catch up with him, stage-whispering furiously. “You are not walking me in the door like I’m in kindergarten!”

“I am walking you in the door.”

“I said I’d go! You don’t trust me.”

“Should I?”

“All right. You’ve made your point.”

“What’s your first class?” he asks.

“You are fucking kidding me.”

“Not remotely. First class.”

“It’s English. And you are not walking me to my classroom. You’re not even allowed in the school without a pass. I’ll go to English if you just leave me the hell alone. And get rid of the cello.”

Braden can feel the waves of fury wafting off her. God, he’s bad at this. Doing everything wrong.

“I take your word as a contract,” he says. “Have a good day, Allie. I’ll pick you up after school.”

Curious stares and whispers follow them to the front door, and when he opens it for her, Allie stalks away from him without a backward glance.

Braden wants to stand on guard at the door, but he knows he can’t push it that far. Also, there’s no point. There are other doors. Not a thing prevents her from walking through the school and out the back. He has no power, no leverage. He’s barely her father, certainly not her jailer, and the time for enforcing parental control is long past.

The cello by now weighs a ton, and the music in Braden’s head has switched from Bach to dirges. By the time he makes his way to Ballard Avenue, his arms are aching and the blister that started on his heel yesterday has worked its way into a full-on throbbing pain. He deserves it, of course, every bit as much as he deserves his headache and the way the light spikes into his skull.

When he sees Allie’s car, still parked in front of the coffee shop, relief and resolve join forces. He loads the cello into the hatch, wishing it was an honest-to-God old-fashioned trunk he could lock her into, like a mobster hiding a body. What he’s about to do is going to be hard enough without listening to her pleading.

He slides in behind the wheel, adjusts the seat. It’s been years since he actually drove. Hasn’t owned a car since he moved out of Lilian’s house. It’s been buses and taxis and the occasional Uber.

Like riding a bicycle, he tells himself as he shifts into reverse and eases out of the parking space. You never forget.

From the back, the cello ratchets the music up a notch, a funeral dirge.

There is no curse, he chants to himself. The cello is inanimate. Allie comes first. He switches on the radio and scans through the channels for classic rock, turning up the volume until it thumps in his ears.

Morning rush-hour traffic occupies his full attention. He wants to put distance between home and the scene of his upcoming crime. It takes him over an hour to get to Everett, and longer to find the Amtrak station. He pays for parking. The cello case feels like it’s been loaded with rocks when he goes to lift it out of the hatch, but the music has gone silent.

Braden lugs the case into the station, then stands there for a few minutes, long enough for any bystanders to have moved on. Then he steps back outside and sets the cello down next to the front doors. He fakes a call on his phone, wandering away from the cello as if deep in conversation, then quickens his steps and almost runs back to the parking lot.

It feels like abandoning a baby outside a church. Surely somebody will find her and sell her. She’ll be played. If he sells her himself, he’ll always know where she is, be tempted to go back for her. This is the only way he can think of, short of destroying her, to remove her from his life forever.

Music swells in his head.

Allie’s song, this time. The one he wrote when she was a baby and played for her every night after he’d tucked her into bed and given her a kiss. The song that started every practice session for him, the one that steadied his nerves and transitioned him into his best mind-set for practice. He needs to make it stop, but it follows him all the way home, and after he parks the car, it drives him back out onto the street, onto a bus, and into the nearest bar.