Everything You Are(59)
I’m so sorry I lied to you. I’m sorry I didn’t pick up Trey.
If it helps, I persuaded Dad to get rid of the cello, so neither one of us will be playing anymore.
I love you,
Allie
Phee drops onto the bed with this missive in her hand.
“Oh, Allie,” she whispers. Tears well up and spill down her cheeks, and she wipes them away. This whole situation is even more of a mess than she’d thought, and apparently Braden hasn’t listened to word one of what she’s tried to tell him.
By the time she returns upstairs with her soaking castoffs wrapped in the towel, Allie is ensconced at the kitchen counter with a mug of hot chocolate. Her face has been washed, her hair has been combed. She looks small and waiflike in an overlarge flannel shirt and sweatpants.
“Hey, don’t I get hot chocolate?” Phee asks.
“Soon as you put those wet clothes in the dryer and mop up the floor. A dog that size needs to go to obedience school, Ophelia. I keep telling you.”
“This is delicious,” Allie says. “Mrs. . . . I’m sorry, what do I call you?”
“Mom, this is Allie. Allie, this is my mother, and you might as well just call her Bridgette.”
“Sure enough. Mrs. MacPhee, that was my mother-in-law, and one of her in the world is enough for anybody.”
“Mom . . .”
“You know it’s true, Phee. Now, I was in the middle of making cookies. And since the two of you are here, you can help me.”
Phee groans to herself. She had forgotten about the infernal bake sale. She hates baking. But before she can think of an excuse, Allie says, “My mother never made cookies. My dad used to, when we were little, but then . . .” Her voice trails off.
“Perfect,” Bridgette says. “I need help and you can learn. The batter is already made for the first batch, all you have to do is drop them on the sheets, like this. And then we’ll do the roll-out ones, those are the most fun.”
“Fun” isn’t the word Phee would use for any of it. “Tedious” and “monotonous,” more like it, although there are compensations. All broken or deformed cookies are for the bakers, for one thing. And the reward of hearing Allie actually laugh when Phee deliberately cracks a sugar cookie down the middle and says, “Damn it. Gonna have to eat another one” is even better.
But the whole time she’s itching to get to Braden. To remind him that he cannot, must not, sell the cello. She’s going to have to tell him the full story about what got her started drinking, a story she’s never told anybody, ever, in all the years that have fallen between then and now. And if that doesn’t convince him, then she’s out of ammunition and has no idea what she’s going to do.
Chapter Twenty-Two
PHEE
The door of the house opens before Phee’s car even comes to a stop. She can see Braden standing there, backlit from the lights inside, and guilt smacks her upside the face. She should have called him and let him know she had Allie. He’ll be worried sick. She’d meant to be here sooner, but the cookies had led to a Netflix movie and dinner.
It’s dark already, the streetlights creating little halos in the mist.
“Where the hell have you been?” Braden demands.
Allie shoves past him without answering, and his gaze shifts to Phee.
“I found her in the graveyard.” She tries to signal a warning with her eyes. Go gently. She’s so incredibly fragile. She wants to stomp her foot in frustration when he completely misses the message.
“In this weather?” He turns away from Phee and directs a parental tirade at his daughter, oblivious to the subliminal messages Phee continues to transmit at his back. “Were you thinking at all? You don’t even have a jacket. You could have caught your death of cold!”
Allie turns to face him, a wild creature at bay. “Big loss that would be.”
Phee tries again to intervene, brushing past him into the house without waiting for an invitation. Something is wrong about the house, nagging at her. “I’m sorry, I should have called sooner. I took her to my mother’s and got her warm and dry—”
“It’s eight o’clock! You couldn’t have brought her sooner? You couldn’t have called? For God’s sake, Phee, you’re as bad as she is!”
“I already said I was sorry! She didn’t want to come home.” Phee says this slowly, with emphasis, trying to herd him back from the edge, but he’s already back on Allie’s case.
“I thought you promised you’d go to school.”
“I thought you promised to stop drinking.” Allie’s chin lifts in defiance.
That volley silences him. All three of them stand like chess pieces at an impasse. Allie glaring defiance. Phee with her warning undelivered. Braden still holding the door open as if it takes too much energy to close it.
“This isn’t about me,” Braden finally says. “Just because I fucked up doesn’t mean you have to.”
“I’ll probably fail the semester now, anyway,” Allie says. “What difference does it make if I go to school?”
No music. That’s what’s wrong about the house. The pervasive music from the cello is missing. Oh please. Don’t let that mean what I think it means.
Before Phee has time to ask any questions, to crystalize the fear, Celestine barrels up the steps and barges past her, flinging his wet, muddy body at Braden’s legs, tail wagging up a windstorm. Braden staggers backward, catches his balance, steadies himself with a hand on the shaggy head. That shakes him out of himself, and he turns to Phee, his tone a little stretched and desperate.