Bright Before Sunrise(59)

“How do you—” I jump when he speaks. He clears his throat and starts again, “How do you handle something like that? I can’t even handle a divorce at eighteen.”

“My mom went to pieces”—I shiver thinking about her days and days in bed, leaving only to go to the bathroom or refill whatever was in her travel mug and throw TV dinners in the microwave for us. “Evy lashed out at everyone: cursing at Mr. Donnelly when he asked how she was; getting a speeding ticket in Dad’s car when she didn’t even have a permit. And that was after she ran over his golf bag, then dumped the whole thing into the lake at the club. I didn’t have a choice. I had to deal with it.

“It was when Evy packed herself a can of beer for lunch instead of a soda that Mom finally snapped out of it and began parenting again.” Spilling confessions to a recently tarred driveway and the sandbox in the next yard is easier than to his face, but I have to see his reaction. I’ve never said any of this out loud before—not even to Amelia, though she was there to see some of it. I look at him and hold my breath while he shakes his head.

“Crap,” Jonah says again. His hand touches my shoulder. Just briefly, lightly, but it keeps me from flying into a million pieces and chases the goosebumps off my arms—replacing them with a flash of heat. “What about you?”

“Me?”

“Yeah. You were, what, twelve? What’d you do?”

I shrug. “Nothing exciting. I turned behaving into a science.” I lean back, rest my head on the step behind me, and list an action on each star that’s visible through the cloudy sky: “I cleaned up and tried to get Mom to eat. I made straight A’s—I worked well with others. I was good enough at it that I convinced everyone I was okay.”

“Brighton …” Jonah shifts to mirror my position. When I turn, his face is only inches from mine.

“I acted nice and lied and said I was fine. I chose kindness as—how’d you put it? Because you were so right—‘my social weapon of choice.’ And I did what I thought he’d want me to do. Signed up for all the clubs he did. Not the sports, though. I’m horrible at golf and basketball. And, for a while, I slept with a copy of his book under my pillow—tried to convince myself that those words on those pages were him speaking to me.

“That was the book I was looking at in your living room, Jonah. It’s one he wrote. I wasn’t snooping, I promise. I just didn’t expect to see it there and was feeling a little lost. I wanted him to give me some answers. But—” I choke on the words “but he can’t” and spit out an automatic—“but I’m fine.”

His forehead is wrinkled. I’m hit by an urge to reach out and trace the creases, so I fold my fingers more tightly into my palm. The pain is a welcome distraction, brings some clarity.

This is insane. I barely know him. My family doesn’t discuss these things. We don’t talk about my dad in public. And if we do, it’s with big smiles, a polite “I miss him very much,” and a quick change of topic. The tears and mourning—Evy and Mom save those for dramatic scenes within the privacy of our house. Usually taking a positive event—Christmas, graduation, prom—and tainting it with tears and “I wish Dad were here. Don’t you wish Dad were here?”

“You’re not fine,” he says, giving me a long, searching look. He turns his face to the stars. “But you will be.”

His fingers flex on the step beside mine. They’re so close I feel their heat in the air around my fist. Lying there, beneath the weight of the whole sky, I feel lighter.

“So will you,” I answer.





33

Jonah

12:43 A.M.


TOO LATE TO GO BACK


She’s trembling slightly, causing her curls to quiver against my shoulder and making me feel even more useless. God, I want to touch her—bury my fingers in her hair, feel the skin of her neck, learn how her hand fits in mine. But I won’t. She clearly didn’t want to be held on the driveway, and instead of accepting the hand I’m holding open, she balls up her fist and moves it farther away.

If I sit next to her any longer thinking of all the ways I can’t touch her, I’ll go insane.

“You’re cold.”

“No, I’m okay—” she protests.

“And we’re pretty much dry. We might as well go.”

It was the wrong thing to say. I can tell as soon as I pull away and push myself off the low step. Her face goes straight to a neutral smile, and she resorts to her old standby of agreement.

“Sure.”

It’s not until we’re back on the sidewalk that I actually pause to look at the house. It’s so small compared to Paul and Mom’s McMansion. It doesn’t have vaulted ceilings or chandeliers. There isn’t even a second floor. It’s a simple two-bedroom ranch, but until Mom and Dad started fighting every night, it had always seemed big enough.

“It’s a nice house,” she says.

I study her face—she means it.

“The shutters used to be green. And Mom had tons of flowerpots everywhere. I was constantly tripping over them when I walked home after Jeff’s parties. I swear she used to place them across the path as a sobriety test.” I turn my back on the house. “It’s hard to imagine someone else living there. It still feels like mine.”