Just Like Home(68)
She crossed the room with long, angry strides, approaching her brass bed like it was an old enemy and she had a score to settle. She reached out with half-numb hands to grab the edge of the mattress and, without waiting, without bracing herself, without giving herself time to be afraid, she yanked it off the bedframe and dragged it halfway across the room.
It landed on the floor beside the new bed with a whumpf. A plume of dust flew up, scattering static through the sunbeams that streamed through the windows. Vera stood beside the felled mattress, panting, and glared hard at the naked bedframe.
The bedskirt was still stretched across the frame. It was a thin expanse of rough linen that had spent years sitting between the old mattress and the skinny slats of metal that supported it. It had been dragged with the mattress a little, and now it sat at an angle, the edge puddling on the wood of the floor.
It didn’t move.
Vera stalked back to the bed. She grabbed the bedskirt in one fist and whipped it away viciously, throwing it behind her without looking. Her heartbeat thudded in her skull.
There was nothing there but the bed. Between the slats, she could see the floor, the deep gouges in the wood, the exposed peephole that looked into the basement.
But there was nothing else. No staring eyes or clutching hands. No wadded-up rope of quilt.
No answer to the terror that made the inside of her belly feel slick with hot grease.
There was a scream inside Vera, one that she’d been swallowing since the moment she’d first felt the pop of stitches under her fingers. But if she screamed, Duvall would surely hear it and come running. And besides—more importantly, she insisted to herself—she’d spent too much time screaming since coming home, too much time letting animal fear tenderize her in the night, and she would not do it again. She was standing in a room that was full of daylight, a room that belonged to her, in a house that had been built by her father’s hands for her breath and skin and laughter to fill, and she was goddamned if she was going to scream inside that house even one more time.
So she didn’t scream. Instead, she gripped the brass bedknobs at the foot of the bedframe and heaved with all her might, dragging it toward the door.
The sound it made was awful, a squeal of metal and a scrape of wood. She was ruining the floors. She didn’t care. Fuck the floor. Fuck the bed. Something low in her back protested, but she ignored it, letting that suppressed scream fill her arms with strength, letting rage plump her muscles.
She didn’t stop until the bed was on the front lawn.
It looked obscene, tilted askew on the pillowy grass, bright brass gleaming against a riot of greenery. She stood there panting, slick with sweat, staring at the bed the same way she would have stared at a spit-out tooth. There. She’d done it, she was free of that old thing. She had a dinner and a hot shower ahead of her, and a good night’s sleep, and then tomorrow, she’d call someone to pick the old bedframe up. And tomorrow, she’d read those letters.
As she caught her breath, she heard footsteps coming up the sidewalk.
Vera’s head snapped up as she braced herself for a flood of hatred from one of their neighbors. It would be one of the people who had told Hammett Duvall about how they’d never trusted her father, one of the people who had stapled those awful letters to their door for the first year or so after his arrest. Or one of the people who had sold photos of Vera and Brandon to the publisher for that photo-insert.
But then the earth fell out from beneath her, because it wasn’t any of those people. It was him again. It was Brandon.
Long limbs, salt-and-pepper hair. The curve of his spine spoke to a life spent trying not to be noticed by anyone. He looked nothing like the boy she’d known. He looked everything like the boy she hadn’t.
“Hey,” she said, taking a step toward him.
His head snapped up. “Vee.” It sounded like the word was knocked out of him.
“I saw you downtown when I was driving through before,” she said pointlessly. There was no reason he needed to know that. There was no reason she needed to say it. “Were you—oh.” The realization struck her and she wished she could vomit it up and rid herself of it. “You were waiting for me to be inside, weren’t you? You were waiting me out.”
He shrugged, not meeting her eyes. “I didn’t want to make you have to see me.”
“But I want to see you,” she said, not caring if she sounded desperate. “Brandon, please, please just let me explain.”
He shook his head. “I don’t need an explanation.”
“Can I at least apologize?”
He sighed, then looked up at her, and him looking at her was so much worse than him not looking at her. She’d imagined this conversation a thousand times, and she’d never imagined the look that was on his face, not once. He didn’t seem angry about what had happened all those years ago. He didn’t seem confused and he didn’t seem hurt.
He just seemed tired.
“I know you’re sorry, Vee,” he said softly. “I know you didn’t mean for anything bad to happen.”
“It wasn’t my fault,” she whispered. She took another couple of steps toward him, but froze when he took a slow step back, his eyes sliding away from hers.
“I know. And I’ve never told anyone otherwise. But … it doesn’t matter. Not really. Whether it’s your fault or not, it happened. And I can’t know you anymore. Not after that.” His neck twisted a little, like he was suppressing a shudder. “Maybe if your mother wasn’t bringing people around all the time to stare at it. Maybe if she didn’t lean so hard into the haunting thing. I don’t know.”