Just Like Home(36)

A bead of moisture dripped slowly toward the stem. She tracked the path of the droplets as they rolled together to keep herself from looking at the bartender’s pale, bare wrists.

Never worth it.

She left the right amount of cash tucked under the bottom of the untouched glass of wine. Hopefully the condensation from the glass would soak the paper, hopefully the money would be cold and clammy in the bartender’s hand, hopefully he would shiver when he felt it—

Vera stood up fast and walked out of the bar without looking at anything but the door. The inside of the car was stifling. She sealed herself in with the stale air, tremors flooding her body, something in her shaking free that was never, ever supposed to be released.

It was plenty dark by the time Vera stopped trembling. She turned her headlights on and drove home slow, the twin smells of night air and sweet wine invading her brain. Halfway home, she noticed a smear on her arm, something dark and sticky. She scrubbed it on the inside of her shirt until it felt like her skin was coming loose.

Maybe by the time she got back, Daphne would be asleep. Maybe by the time she got back, Daphne would be dead. Vera drummed her fingers on the steering wheel and let herself chew on that combination of hope and dread, let herself chew on it all the way home, all the way until she was in front of the house her father had built.

She parked and got out of the car and stood there with her back braced against the driver’s side door, trying to convince herself to go inside.

“Vera?”

She looked up wearily, ill prepared for any kind of interaction with any person, only to see the person she was least prepared for.

“Brandon,” she breathed. “Hi. Are you—do you still live around here?”

He looked around, shoved his hands deep into his pockets. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m still at my mom’s. I was just walking home.” He looked away from her as if he was considering walking away already.

There was so much to say that there was nothing to say, so much between them that it all fell away flat. “You look good,” Vera lied. He didn’t look good. He looked a decade older than her. He looked like he hadn’t slept in seventeen years.

“I should go,” he said.

Vera took a halting step toward him. He flinched at the movement. “Please,” she said. “Please talk to me. I’m so sorry about—”

“I can’t. I’m sorry, I can’t.” He shook his head, but he didn’t leave.

“Please,” she said again, and then she said something she never would have imagined herself saying to Brandon Gregson, something she hadn’t let herself so much as think since the last time she’d seen him. “Please. You were my only friend.”

“No, Vee,” he said with a smile that Vera couldn’t quite read. “I think we both know you had another friend.”

Vera let out a low laugh. “I really didn’t. Not a real one.”

Brandon shook his head. “I should go,” he said again. “Sorry about your mom. I hope … I hope she goes easy.”

And then he was leaving, and Vera couldn’t make herself call after him. She couldn’t quite dodge an awful thrill of hope that maybe they’d be able to make things right, to be friends again, to fix what had been so broken all those years before. She couldn’t dodge it so she didn’t—but she also didn’t linger there, leaning against her car and letting that hope linger on her tongue. Instead, she swallowed it whole, like a cherry pit, and she walked up the front steps without pausing, without feeling the weight of the house, without snapping her fingers. She walked right in and she let the house close around her like it always did.

She exhaled and the Crowder House sucked up the air that left her. She took her shoes off and the warmth of her feet went into the cold floorboards. She brushed her teeth and when she spat into the sink, whatever had been in her mouth coated the insides of the drain like plaque lining an artery. The skin that fell from her body and the hair that dropped from her scalp drifted into corners and under furniture, a soft lining for every gap and every edge in the house.

Going out, she saw now, had been a mistake. This house, the house her father built, the house where her mother would die—this place was safe. This place knew her.

This place was where she belonged.





CHAPTER THIRTEEN


Vera is twelve years old and her lip is bleeding. It’s bleeding a lot. She has her hands cupped under her chin, but blood is running between her fingers anyway, dripping onto the cement of the curb between her knees.

If Vera were at home, she would imagine having a friend nearby to say oh no, what happened? They would have a kind warm voice and they’d wrap Vera up in a hug that would smell like dust and old pennies.

Brandon is what happened. This is all Brandon’s fault. It started when he stopped his bike under the big larch tree with the lightning-strike scar down the middle, the tree Vera thinks of as dead but it still grows out tiny new leaves on some of the branches, so it can’t be dead really.

“What?” she’d said, almost mad at him for making them stop riding just when she had really been building up a good head of speed. But she didn’t stay almost-mad, because his face was so serious that worry flashed through her with a sharp snap.

She feels small and foolish, later, for having been worried about him.