Just Like Home(70)
She stopped then, stopped for long enough that Vera could feel the question of who would speak next filling up the room like mustard gas in a trench. Across from her, Duvall drew a breath, as if it was going to be him.
“I loved you too,” Vera whispered quickly, unwilling to let Duvall into the conversation she’d wanted to have with her mother for as long as she could remember. “And I hated you. I’ve always hated you.”
Daphne smiled, a slow, soft smile that Vera had never once seen on her face before. She straightened her neck just as a gray, clotted tear slipped from her eye. It left an uneven trail on the loose skin of her cheek. “I wish I knew how to separate the two out for you,” she said. “Do you remember when you learned to separate eggs? In the kitchen, Francis showed you how to cup the yolk in your palm and let the white run between your fingers, and you let the white slip down into the drain, warm from your skin.”
Vera nodded, her face numb at the memory of her father’s patience as he showed her how to break an egg without smashing it. How did Daphne know about that?
“I wish I could tell you the one without the other. The love, without the hate. But if I tried, you wouldn’t believe me anyway, would you, Vera-baby?”
Against her own will, Vera leaned forward. She tried not to take up too much room, not to make too much noise, not to break the surface tension of this bubble they were both in. She just wanted to be in it a little longer, a little deeper.
But then Duvall broke it for her.
“That’s a theme in much of my work,” he said. “The love-aspect. Duality.”
Vera closed her eyes, clamped her teeth shut tight around the urge that rose in her like a flash flood.
“Yes,” Daphne said, and when Vera opened her eyes again, Daphne was still staring at her. There was a new, tight urgency in her gaze. All the languorous, long-winded ease was gone from her voice. “Yes, I know. You’ve found quite a lot of that here, haven’t you, James? Harvested quite a lot of the love-aspect.”
Duvall grinned, lifting a forkful of congealing macaroni toward Daphne in a toast. “And I’m just getting started.”
Daphne’s breathing was fast and shallow. “Do you hear that, Vera? He’s just getting started.”
Vera looked between the two of them, feeling like she was failing a test she hadn’t known to study for. “Well,” she said. “Well. That’s fascinating.”
He tucked his bite of pasta into one cheek, so his reply was thick and muffled. “I couldn’t agree more.” He gave Vera a conspiratorial smile, as though they were in on something together. “Now, about those letters—when would be a good time for me to take a look?”
Vera shook her head. “I don’t think so, James. I’ve given enough information to Duvall men. You’ll just have to commune with the spirits on your own.” She pushed her own macaroni around the cardboard tray it called home, trying not to let the tines of her fork slide into the soft noodles.
Duvall reached across the table, touched the back of Vera’s arm. “Think about it? For me. It’s what Francis would have wanted.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Vera was sure that the new bed would fix things.
She nestled the bed into one corner of the room, flush against two walls. She tucked the bedsheet and a clean comforter, fresh from the linen closet, tight under the mattress. She moved the dresser in front of the closet door so that nothing could pry it open in the night. Everything was quiet. There was no place for anything to hide.
The long, splintered grooves in the floor didn’t even bother her. Whatever they were from, she’d defeated them already. Now they were nothing more than the mark of a fight that the other side had lost.
She was too tired to confront the question of what else might have been waging that battle. All that mattered was that it was over.
She opened the windows so she could breathe in the smell of the night. The air was cool and heavy with the weight of a thunderstorm that would come later, that would batter the outside of the house with fat raindrops while the inside of the house stayed dry. There wasn’t even a trace of smoke in the air. Vera thought of Duvall in the tin-roofed shed, thought of the way the sound of the rain would fill it up until he couldn’t think of anything but noise.
He’d said that he heard her pacing at night sometimes. She wondered if he would come into the house in the night, seeking respite from the rain, hoping to hear her discomfort. She wondered how quietly he could move. She wondered if he’d ever been inside her bedroom.
Vera padded through the dark dining room, past her mother’s silent bed. The air around her echoed. I’ll always love you, but I hated you, too.
In the kitchen, she bolted the back door. Once she made it back to her bedroom, she smiled at the silence, at those thick warm walls that could keep anything out and anything in. There could be no question that it would be better inside than outside that night. She sank into that feeling of peaceful anticipation, her arms and legs heavy, her breath already coming slow and sweet even as she turned off the bedroom lights.
She crossed the room in the dark, slid herself between those tight-tucked covers, and slept with the bottomless intensity of true exhaustion. Sleep slipped over her mind like an opera glove enrobing an elbow and even in unconsciousness she recognized the luxury of it, the decadence of true rest. Her sleep wasn’t precisely dreamless, but her dreams were simple visions of endless, satiny blackness, perfect and unbroken.