The Invited(24)

She ditched the metal detector in the toolshed and scrambled to come up with a story to explain why she hadn’t been in school. Saying she’d missed the bus seemed pretty lame. She could tell him she was too upset and freaked-out about the accident, about the dead kids just a little older than her, to get on the bus, go to school. That would work. It would have to. It was the best she had for now.

“Hello?” she called from the kitchen around the growing lump in her throat. She went into the living room to see if he’d started work in there like they’d planned. But she heard telltale banging from upstairs. Was he working in the hallway, which was still bare stud walls, exposed wiring?

“Daddy?” she called.

“Up here,” he yelled back.

She jumped the stairs two at time, and then her chest got tight when she saw he wasn’t in the hallway and that the door to her bedroom was open. This room was her haven—beautiful and pristine, with a neatly made bed and all of her treasures lined up on shelves: stuff she’d found with her metal detector (old buttons, nails, musket balls), the pelt from a fox she’d shot and skinned herself, and her favorite photo of Mama, taken a few weeks before she left. Mama was outside at the picnic table holding a plastic tumbler, grinning into the camera. She had on her lucky necklace, the one she never took off those last weeks before she left—a pattern of a circle, triangle, and square nested inside each other with another circle with an eye at the center. Mama called it her I see all necklace. Olive had taken the picture. It was a warm early-summer night and Daddy was cooking chicken on the grill. The radio was tuned to a classic rock station, and Mom and Dad were drinking rum and Cokes from big plastic tumblers. Olive had been happy because Mama had been home and in a good mood, and she and Daddy had been getting along so well, kissing and calling each other “honey” and “baby” and all those other terms of endearment that used to make Olive roll her eyes and make pretend gagging noises, when secretly she thought it so sweet that they were still so in love. That night, when she saw Mama take Daddy’s hand after he came back from the grill with a plateful of seared chicken legs, Olive really believed they were still in love and that everything was going to be okay.

    Olive walked slowly down the hall, like the way you walk in a creepy haunted house at Halloween when you don’t really want to see what’s going to happen next.

But it was no use. She could shut her eyes and pretend it wasn’t happening, but she knew she had to look eventually. And she knew just what she’d see.

Olive walked into the bedroom to see that the shelves had been taken off the wall, the photo and all of her other things haphazardly shoved into cardboard beer boxes. Her bed had been pushed into the middle of the room and the boxes were piled on top of it. It reminded Olive of a life raft in the center of a turbulent ocean.

Daddy was standing in the back corner of her room, holding a sledgehammer, and he smiled at her. Half of the back wall was already down. He still had on his blue work pants and boots but had taken off his work shirt and was in a white T-shirt that was damp with sweat, stained yellow around the collar and under the arms, so worn it was practically see-through. She could see his wiry chest hair curled underneath it.

She hated him just then. Hated that he was a man who could do something like this. Who could betray her in such a huge, devastating way.

“Hey, Ollie Girl,” he said, smiling at her in an isn’t this a nice surprise sort of way.

All the spit in her mouth dried up. She felt like Daddy had hit her with the sledge, torn her right open and exposed her insides.

“Grab a pry bar and give me a hand,” he said.

She worked to steady her breathing. To not freak out and start screaming or, worse, lose it completely and start bawling like a little kid. The room seemed to tilt and glow, everything growing brighter. She thought of that stupid old expression about being so mad you saw red and understood it now. Understood that fury brought its own fire with it, tinting the world around you.

“But you said we would finish the living room first.” She choked the words out, eyes getting blurry with tears she was trying so hard to keep back. “I told you I didn’t want my room changed! I’m happy with it the way it is.”

    He blinked at her from behind his scratched plastic safety goggles, his blue eyes bloodshot, with dark bags under them. He looked like a man who hadn’t slept in a week, a haunted man.

“I thought it would be a nice surprise. I thought you wanted a nicer room.”

“But I didn’t—”

“Is it so wrong?” Daddy asked. “For me to want my best girl to have the best room?”

She didn’t answer. Didn’t speak. She was afraid if she opened her mouth, she would either yell or start to full-on cry. Why hadn’t he listened to her? Why did he never, ever listen to her?

Was this why Mama had left?

Had he not listened to Mama, either? Just ignored everything she said, everything she asked for?

She rubbed at her eyes, clenched her jaw. Stared at the sledgehammer in her father’s hand, willing him to drop it. Concentrating with all her might. She wanted him to drop it and for it to fall on his toes, crush them, break them maybe. She wanted him to feel pain, to be shocked by it.

Then, as she watched, the heavy hammer slipped out of Daddy’s grasp, dropping to the floor with a thud, just missing the toe of his right work boot. He paid no attention.