The Push(68)

“I’m glad you went to visit him,” you said, crouching down to touch my hair.

I turned away from you on the floor. I could only think of the last thing my father said that night, staring at the bottom of his glass. We’d been talking and drinking for hours.

I would look at you and say to Cecilia, “Aren’t we lucky.” But she couldn’t see—

He’d caught himself midsentence and left the table without saying anything else. He’d been telling me about the days after I was born. I’d hung on his every word.

Now I realized my mother and I had broken his heart.



* * *



? ? ?

    I went home to organize the funeral and approached the house cautiously. Mrs. Ellington had a spare key and had cleaned up before I got there. I knew right away because the house smelled of lemons and she always cleaned with lemon oil. His bedding was different. I recognized the clean sheets from the spare bed in the Ellingtons’ house.

Mrs. Ellington came by in the afternoon to keep me company. Daniel and Thomas helped me clear out the house the day before the funeral and I gave it all away—I wanted it empty. I wanted everything gone.



* * *



? ? ?

I listed the house I grew up in the following season for a price below market value. I felt nothing to see it go. Mrs. Ellington came over the day I signed the papers.

“He was very proud of you. You made him very happy.”

I touched her hand. She was kind to lie to me.





78





Three days after the pleasant visit with Violet, Gemma called. I could tell by the pitch of her voice that she was upset.

She’d found Jet in the laundry room that morning playing with a sharp blade. He’d been just about to cut through the jeans he was wearing when she walked in.

“Is it yours?”

“What do you mean?” I had been walking home from the pool. I’d gone to see Sam’s tiles. I hadn’t yet processed what she’d said—I was still surprised to have seen her name on my phone.

“Did the blade come from your house?”

I thought of the one I’d taken from Fox’s tin four years ago, tucked at the back of my dresser drawer, wrapped in a scarf. I hadn’t touched it since. Violet. I wondered if that’s why she had gone into my room. If she’d somehow known it was there.

“I can’t think of where else it would have come from. Fox doesn’t keep them here. Violet said you still have his old modeling tools in the basement, lying around in the open. Near where her laundry was.”

“That’s absurd,” I said, starting to feel warm. I imagined her giving the blade to Jet while Gemma was downstairs and then walking away to wait for his scream. My face grew hotter.

“You should know better, Blythe. One of them could have been hurt.”

She huffed and hung up. She’d become mean. She used to just pity me. Now, she didn’t like me.

I swore under my breath and hustled home. I pulled off my boots and ran upstairs to my room and opened the drawer. The scarf was there but the blade was gone.





79





I stopped sleeping for weeks after that. When I did, I dreamed of Sam. His fingers were sliced one by one as he wriggled in my arms, screaming. I don’t know who was doing the cutting. Violet, I suppose. And then I could feel the ends of his fingers rolling around my tongue as I sucked and chewed them. Like a mouthful of jelly beans. I spit in the sink when I woke up, expecting I would see blood. That’s how real it felt to me.

Violet came over the following month. We were quieter this time, less pleasant to each other. The coldness was back. She knew Gemma had called me. I knew she’d taken the blade, but I didn’t know if I should confront her about it. I didn’t know what to do. I was exhausted from not sleeping and it was easier not to think about it.

I decided to let it go, until one day she asked me a question. I was bleaching the bathroom mat in the laundry tub downstairs. She pointed to the poison symbol on the bottle of bleach and opened her mouth for a moment before she let the words out: “That means someone could die if they drank even a bit of it, right?” She paused again. “Why do you have something so dangerous down here?”

“Why are you asking?”

She shrugged. She wasn’t looking for an answer—she left the laundry room and I heard her phone you to pick her up early. The anxiety crawled up my spine, that familiar, crippling panic that nearly closed my throat. I had been there before. I had barely survived it.

I put the bottle back in the cupboard where I kept the other cleaning supplies. I scanned the shelf. I made a mental note of what was there.

I called Gemma again and again that afternoon as my chest pounded. She answered in the evening.

I told her what Violet had said about the poison. I told her about the blade missing from my drawer.

I told her I was only looking out for her and her family. That I was worried about Jet. That we had to think about Violet differently. That I was afraid something was going to happen again—that I had an instinct. I put my head on the table while I waited for her to speak. I was so tired of thinking about Violet. I didn’t want her to be my problem anymore. My fear.

Gemma was quiet. And then she spoke calmly: