The Invited(87)

And he laughs. He laughs a bitter, mirthless laugh, and his hot bourbon-fueled breath fills the kitchen, turns the air into a dangerous, combustible thing. All we’d need is a match and we’d all go up with a bang.

He staggers out of the kitchen, bumping against a chair, hitting the wall as he careens around the corner toward our bedroom. I hear him in there, opening drawers. Maybe he’s putting on his pajamas. Maybe he’s tired and sick and sick and tired and just wants to lie down, wants the day to be over, mercifully over.

But then I hear his footsteps move into the living room.

And Jason, he says, “Daddy, what’re you doing with Sweet Melissa?”

And there’s that laugh again, that empty haunting laugh that fills the hall as I start to run, run from the kitchen toward the living room, over the carpet; I’m going faster than I ever have in my life, past the door to the cellar, the bedrooms, the bathroom with the leaking faucet, and into the living room, where Sam is standing by the mantel, holding his little silver pistol. His laugh turns into a hum, a little song, and at last I can make out the words:

“Finished,” he says. “We’re all finished.”

I step toward him, hands outstretched. “Sam,” I say. “My darling.”

And he raises the gun and fires.





CHAPTER 28



Olive





AUGUST 23, 2015

“Dad,” Olive said through the dust mask she was wearing. They were tearing down the old plaster and lath wall in her bedroom, and the air was thick with dust. It was funny, because she’d spent all day yesterday helping Helen and Nate finish putting up new drywall in their house. Today they were starting the process of taping and compounding. And here she was, tearing down an old, perfectly good wall. It was the one they’d thought they were keeping, but Daddy insisted they redo it anyway—that it would look funny to have smooth, new drywall on three walls and bumpy old plaster on the other. She’d told him it was fine, preferable even, to keep the old wall (she even suggested accentuating the difference by painting it a different color), but he insisted. “Your mama always says ‘No point doing a job if you’re not going to do it right.’?”

And who was she to argue with Mama?

Olive was determined to work quickly, to hurry up and get her room taken apart so they could put it back together. It was taking forever. They’d had to put her room on hold while they tore out the bathroom wall and redid the plumbing, which had begun to leak. Then her dad decided they really needed to paint the living room, and they’d gotten two coats done before he announced that the color was all wrong and Mama wouldn’t like it at all, so they’d tried a paler shade of blue, which he said wasn’t right, either. Olive put her foot down, insisting that they had to leave the living room and go back to working on her bedroom. If her dad wouldn’t help, and just abandoned the work like he had with so many other rooms before they were done, she’d finish it herself. She’d been camping out on the lumpy living room couch since before school ended and needed the sanctuary of her own room back. She could live inside a house that was a construction zone if she just had one finished place to take refuge in, one room where everything was in its place. An eye in the center of the storm.

    “What’s up, Ollie?”

“I’ve been thinking. You know, about—” She hesitated, not sure she could go on. Knowing this was the one subject she wasn’t supposed to bring up, the thing that hurt her father the most. But she had to. She needed to know. “About Mom. About how things were just before she left.”

He clenched his jaw. He did not wear a mask when he worked, so she could see the muscles working under his taut, unshaven skin that was now coated with a thin layer of plaster dust. He looked like a ghost.

“Yeah?” he said, holding the sledgehammer, ready to swing again, but waiting now.

“I remember how she was gone a lot. Did she ever tell you where she was going, who she was spending time with?”

“No, Ollie, she didn’t. And when she did tell me, it was real vague. ‘Out with Riley’ or ‘friends,’ that sort of thing.” He paused. “Part of me knew she was lying. But I didn’t want to face the truth.”

“What truth is that, Dad?”

He scowled, shook his head. He wasn’t going to say it out loud.

“But what if that wasn’t the truth? What if that was all just rumors?”

“Drop it,” he said.

“But, Dad, what if that’s not what happened? What if she—”

“She would go out with one set of clothes on and come back in another!” Daddy’s eyes blazed. “She’d tell me she was with Riley when I knew damn well she hadn’t been because Riley called the house looking for her, wondering if she wanted to go out. There were nights she didn’t even bother to come home at all, Ollie. I’d catch her sneaking in at dawn. How else do you explain it?” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Ollie. I’m really sorry, but it’s the truth.”

“I talked to Sylvia—you know, Mom’s friend who tends bar over at Rosy’s—and I know Mama spent at least one night over at her place.”

He turned back to the wall, ripped off a chunk of loose plaster with his hand. “Is that right?”