Everything You Are(7)
Braden is familiar with pain. He welcomes it in, cherishes it as penance.
“As soon as the funeral is over, I’ll be taking Allie with me to Toronto,” Alexandra says. “She has a passport. We can get her visa taken care of later. I just need you to sign to let me take her across the border for now.”
“Is that what Allie wants? To go to Canada?”
“She can’t possibly know what she wants, she’s just lost her entire family. I will do what is best for her, even if it is difficult.”
“Not her entire family,” Braden whispers.
“I’m sorry? I didn’t catch that.”
“She’s not orphaned quite yet,” Braden says more loudly. “Where is she, Alexandra? At the house? I want to see her.”
“I’ve just told you, she doesn’t want—”
“You also just said she doesn’t know what she wants. I need to see my daughter.”
“Oh please. What use could you be to her? You’ll just muddy the waters. It’s best she doesn’t see you. I’m only contacting you to sign the consent—”
“No.” The word feels round and solid and right. Perfectly tuned.
“Braden. I know it’s too much to expect you to be fully rational, but—”
“I’m coming home. Tell Allie that.”
Braden hangs up before Alexandra can argue. Three incompatible thoughts keep playing on an endless loop in his head.
Lilian and Trey are dead.
Allie doesn’t want to talk to him.
Allie needs him.
It’s the last one that gets him up off the floor, that empowers him to pour the brand-new bottle of Jack down the drain, the contents of the glass behind it, without taking a single taste.
Allie needs me.
He repeats this like an incantation while he uses his phone to search for the time and place of the funeral. Three days away—just enough time to get sober.
One visit to the doctor. One trip to the pharmacy. Three days of Librium. Half a bottle of vitamin B. Another mathematical equation that should add up to Braden sober in time for a Sunday-afternoon funeral.
He tells himself he won’t make a scene. He’ll show up, find an opportunity to talk to Allie. Explain why he didn’t meet her and how it has everything to do with how much he loves her, rather than how little. And then . . .
It depends. If she needs him, then nothing will ever drag him away again. If she doesn’t? He doesn’t dare focus on that. Get sober. Go to the funeral. One day, one breath at a time.
Chapter Four
ALLIE
Allie stares, unblinking, at the two coffins on the platform, stares until her vision blurs and doubles, until her eyes burn and water. And when her eyelids close against her will, she focuses in again, over and over.
I did this. I will not look away.
On her right, Aunt Alexandra sits upright and stiff, as if rigor mortis has reached out tendrils from the coffins to their front-row viewing seat and frozen her still-living muscles. Her brand-new black dress is as stiff as she is and gives off a queasy chemical smell that makes Allie breathe through her mouth and hope to God she doesn’t puke. On the other side, blessedly warm and human and normal, sits Steph, her best friend since forever.
“Death sucks so hard,” Steph murmurs.
Allie doesn’t look away from the coffins. The words make a lump in her throat. Her eyes blur with tears, but she manages to blink them back. She hasn’t cried yet. Not when she first heard the news, not when she watched her brother die, not even when they wouldn’t let her go home. When she starts, which she knows she will eventually, she thinks it might kill her. She’s got no huge objection to dying, she just doesn’t want to explode right here, in front of all of these people.
If she could die quietly, just close her story as if it’s a book she started reading and decided she didn’t like, she would welcome that. But she has to keep turning the pages; she’s not allowed to quit, because this is her fault and it’s the punishment she deserves.
The funeral passes in a blur. Thank God the organist plays Muzak, nothing profound enough to break through the coating of ice and get to her heart. She feels flat and detached, as if the coffins are two big black boxes with nothing inside them. A theatrical staging. A play she’s watching.
Until.
Until it’s all over and they are filing out of the church. Everybody is staring at her, she knows it, even though she keeps her eyes down. One foot in an unfamiliar shiny black shoe setting itself down on carpet, another foot in an unfamiliar shiny black shoe repeating the movement. It’s an ugly carpet. Mustardy, with flecks of blue and green and brown.
At the back of the church, the gauntlet very nearly run, an impulse draws her eyes upward. A gaze meets hers. Eyes like her own, a face both familiar and strange. She feels a jolt of connection and recognition that very nearly trips her. Steph’s hand steadies her, nudges her forward, and she keeps walking, but only as far as the foyer, where she plants her feet and waits.
She watches him walk down the aisle. He’s taller than most of the crowd, so she can study his face. He doesn’t look like the picture she’s kept hidden under her mattress all these years, the way other kids hide contraband magazines or cigarettes or pot. His hair is graying at the temples. His right cheek is marred by a long white scar.