Regretting You(42)

Here I go again.

I kind of wish Elijah were still here. He kept my mind preoccupied. I didn’t have to think about what Jenny and Chris did when every minute was consumed by Elijah. Jonah is lucky in that regard. Elijah will probably keep him so busy and exhausted that his brain will have time for little else.

I’ll pour myself some wine. Maybe take a bubble bath. That might help.

Clara stormed out of here a good thirty seconds ago, but the kitchen door is still swinging back and forth. I hold it with my hand, then stare at the back of my hand, my palm pressed flat against the door. I fixate on my wedding ring. Chris gave me this one for our tenth wedding anniversary. It replaced the gold band he bought me when we were teenagers.

Jenny helped Chris pick this one out.

Was their affair happening way back then?

For the first time since the day I put on this ring, I feel the urge to get it off me. I slip it off my finger and throw it at the door. I don’t know where it lands, and I don’t care.

I push the kitchen door open and go to the garage in search of something that can take care of at least one problem in my life.

I really want a machete, or an ax, but all I find is a hammer. I take it back to the kitchen with me to take care of this damn door once and for all.

I swing the hammer at the door. It makes a nice dent.

I swing at it again, wondering why I didn’t just try to take the door off the hinges. Maybe I just really needed something to take out my aggression on.

I hit the door in the same spot, over and over, until the wood begins to chip. Eventually, a hole begins to form, and I can see from the kitchen into the living room. It feels good. That kind of worries me.

I keep hacking away, though. Every time I swing at the door, the door swings away from me. I swing again when it comes back. My hammer and I fall into a rhythm with the door until there’s at least a twelve-inch hole.

I put all my strength behind the next swing, but the hammer gets stuck in the wood and slips out of my hands. When the door swings back toward me, I stop it with my foot. I can see Clara through the hole in the door. She’s standing in the living room, staring at me.

She looks bewildered.

My hands are on my hips now. I’m breathing heavily from the physical exertion this hole took to make. I wipe sweat from my forehead.

“You have officially lost your mind,” Clara says. “I’d be better off as a homeless runaway.”

I push at the door, holding it open with my hand. If she really thinks it’s so bad, being here with me . . . “Run away, then, Clara,” I say flatly.

She shakes her head, as if I’m the disappointing one, then walks back to her bedroom.

“That’s not the way to the front door!” I yell.

She slams her bedroom door, and it only takes three seconds for me to regret yelling at her. If she’s anything like I was at that age—which she is—she’s probably packing a bag and is about to climb out her window.

I wasn’t serious. I’m just frustrated. I need to stop taking it out on her, but her attitude with me is making her an easy target.

I go to her bedroom and open her door. She’s not packing a bag. She’s just lying on her bed, staring up at the ceiling. Crying.

My heart clenches with guilt. I feel terrible for snapping at her. I sit down on her bed and run an apologetic hand over her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t really want you to run away.”

Clara rolls over dramatically and faces the other direction. She pulls a pillow to her chest. “Get some sleep, Mom. Please.”





CHAPTER FOURTEEN





CLARA


I finished my first-ever full cup of coffee about two weeks ago, the morning after my mother knocked a random hole in our kitchen door. Since then, I’ve discovered the one thing that just might save me from my monthlong depression.

Starbucks.

Not that I’ve never been to a Starbucks before. I’ve just always been that teenager who orders tea at coffee shops. But now that I know what it’s like to be sleep deprived, I’ve been through almost every drink on the menu and know exactly which one is my favorite. The classic Venti Caramel Macchiato, no substitutions.

I take my drink to an empty corner table, one that I’ve sat at almost daily for the last two weeks. When I’m not at Lexie’s house after school, I’m here. Things have gotten so tense at home I don’t even want to be there. My curfew on school nights is ten, as long as I don’t have homework. My curfew on weekends is midnight. Suffice it to say, I haven’t been home before ten p.m. since the last argument my mother and I got into.

If she’s not demanding to know where I am and who I’m with or sniffing me for signs of drug use, she’s moping around the house, knocking random holes in the doors.

And then there’s everything we haven’t talked about. The fact that I was texting Jenny when they died. And I know where she and Jonah went when they left the house together—the Langford. I saw it on the app. I asked her that night where they’d gone, but she wouldn’t tell me. If I brought it up to her now, I have a feeling she’d lie to me.

Things just feel uneven with her. We aren’t on the same page. We don’t know how to talk to each other now that Dad and Jenny are gone.

Or maybe it’s me. I don’t know. I just know I can’t take being in our house right now. I hate the feeling I get when I’m there. It feels weird without my father there, and I’m scared it’ll never go back to the way it used to be. It used to feel like home. Now it feels like an institution, and my mom and I are the only patients.