Our Crooked Hearts(45)

That was Wednesday night. Forty-eight hours to go.





CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR



The suburbs

Right now

I stepped inside, dripping. When I walked into the kitchen there was a pop can and a sweating bottle of vodka on the counter, and my dad leaning against the sink gripping one of our dishwasher-scarred plastic tumblers. His face was so tense he looked like a stranger.

“What’s going on with you and Billy?”

I stayed on my side of the room, as far from him as I could get. “Why are you asking me that?”

“Answer me.”

“No,” I said. Starting soft, then rising. “You answer me. What are you and Mom keeping from me?”

He eyed me, head at a tilt. “What are you talking about?”

I heard what he was really asking: What do you know? “I found the safe,” I told him recklessly. “You should hide your passwords better.”

My father crossed the room in two predatory strides, his posture so altered I flinched back against the wall. He saw it and checked himself, freezing in place.

“You opened it?” His voice was strained but steady.

I bobbed my chin. “And you know what I found? Stuff that belonged to me.”

He blinked at me. Then he breathed out slowly.

“Your cigar box,” he said, a little shaky. “Right. Right. We can talk about that. But I need to know why you went snooping in the first place.”

“I’ve got a better question. Where is she, Dad?” My voice wobbled, broke. “Where the hell is Mom?”

His Adam’s apple rose and fell. “I don’t know.”

“This isn’t okay.” I spoke with conviction. “The way she is, the way she just took off like this, it’s not normal.”

“Don’t get hung up on normal. Everyone makes their own normal.”

“We have no fucking normal.” My voice spiraled to a shriek, each inhale was sharp as a pin. He moved in to hold me, but I threw up an arm. “Dad, I need her.” The words burned. I hadn’t meant to say them. “I’m so sick of pretending I don’t need her.”

“I need her, too,” he said levelly. “But she can only do what she can do.”

“That is not acceptable. That is messed up.”

His eyes brightened with tears, but his voice didn’t change. “Your mom is an extraordinary person. She has unusual boundaries. That’s something that predates you. It’s got nothing to do with you.”

“Unusual boundaries? Dad, please. She’s a witch.”

He put a hand over his eyes. When he pulled it away he was older.

“Oh, my god.” I drew back. “Oh, shit.”

Even after everything, I guess I’d still believed he would deny it. The reality of it sank into my skin, scribbled like scrimshaw over my bones.

“She was going to tell you.”

I laughed. “Right.”

He moved closer and this time I let him hold me, keeping my arms at my sides but resting a cheek on his shirt. “I’m worried about her,” I whispered.

“I know, sweetheart. I worry, too. But I promise she can take care of herself.”

“What about us?” I pulled away to look at him. “Someone’s been hanging around the house, looking for her. Messing with her. You saw the rabbit. And they…” I paused, the look on his face making me falter, hedge. “What if they could’ve broken in?”

“What if?” All his quiet sympathy evaporated. “What are you saying? Was someone in the house?”

His alarm infected me, dialing my anxiety up into something frantic. “Not in the house. Near it. This girl, about my age. Blonde hair, really pale.”

“Your age?” he said, almost to himself. “Someone she fired from the shop, maybe?”

“I doubt that’s it,” I said. “She’s the same person who—”

I cut myself off, remembering I hadn’t told him about seeing a girl the night Nate drove off the road.

“The same person who what?”

“Who left the rabbit.” I grabbed his hand, with its flattened nails and dinged-up wedding band. “Mom’s in trouble, Dad. I know she is.”

He squeezed back. “Oh, sweetheart,” he said helplessly. I could see him making his own calculations, trying to hide his own fears.

“Did she tell you anything before she left?”

“She said she had to take care of something. That’s all she said.” His face showed a fleeting stab of fury. “If I’d known she wasn’t coming home last night, I never would’ve left you and your brother alone.”

“What are we supposed to do? Just wait for her?”

“We stay here, together, and we try to trust her. Take her at her word that she’s handling this.”

“Trust her,” I said bitterly, and dropped his hand. “I know about Billy, okay? I know she did something to make me forget him.”

The look on his face was unbearable. If I’d been at all unsure whether he knew, I wasn’t now. “Why, Dad? Why would you do that to me?”

His eyes circled my face. I’d inherited their color, but not their gentleness. There was so little of him in Hank and me, he had to see my mother every time we walked in the room.