Hold Me Close(69)

She calls Heath, but his father answers, drunk. He doesn’t know where his son is. Effie’s sure he doesn’t care.

She needs to get out of this house.

The only way to do it is by sneaking. Mom will flip her shit if she knows Effie wants to go running out in the night, along dark streets, alone. If nothing had ever happened to her, Effie knows her mother would still cling too hard, but now there is no way for her mom to let her go and do normal things, no matter how much she claims she wants Effie to be normal. Everything is f*cked up. It will never get better.

So she sneaks out, careful on the creaking stairs, inching past the door to the family room, where her parents sit in silence on separate sides of the couch and stare at the television. Through the kitchen and out the garage door, then out into the cool and misty autumn air. She breathes it in, shivering, and runs.

It starts to rain. She keeps running. Feet slapping the pavement. Fists pumping. She will never be caught again, never.

She can run fast, or she can run far, but she can’t do both. Not with a stomach that’s been near to empty for days. She’s weak, and Effie lets out a curse as she bends over, mouth open, waiting to see if she’s going to heave. The rain is turning to speckles of ice. She’s not wearing gloves.


The car that pulls up beside her does not have flashing red and blue lights, but it’s still a cop car. Effie straightens. She’s out past curfew. She has a story, or she’ll think of one, but when the window rolls down and she sees that familiar face, she doesn’t have to say a word.

“Get in,” Officer Schmidt says.

“Did my mother call you?”

“No. Get in.”

She gets in the front seat next to him, warming her hands on the air blowing from the vents. She’s not soaked through, but she would’ve been in a few minutes. She should be grateful for him. For saving her again.

They drive, but he doesn’t take her home. Officer Schmidt pulls into the hardware store parking lot, but around the back where the deliveries are made. He parks in a patch of darkness. He sits with his hands on the wheel, facing forward, not looking at her.

“You shouldn’t be out past curfew,” he says. “Running alone in the dark is a good way to get yourself in trouble.”

“I had to get out of the house. I was going to go crazy.” Effie’s voice cracks. She leans into the warmth, bathing her face. Closing her eyes. When she opens them, he’s looking at her.

Oh, there’s a look she understands.

She is kissing him before she can think to stop herself. This, kissing him, is saving of a different sort. She thinks he will push her off him—he has to, doesn’t he? He’s an adult, she’s only seventeen, he’s a police officer, she’s a f*cked-up mess, but all she can think of right then is the sight of that blue uniform when he came through that doorway into the basement with his gun drawn. How he lowered the weapon at the sight of them, she and Heath, both of them still so stunned by Sheila’s drunken intrusion and her screaming that neither of them had moved.

All she can hear is his voice, saying over and over, “It’s going to be okay. It’s all going to be okay.”

So she kisses him, and he does not push her away. His mouth opens. Their tongues stroke. His hand goes up to the back of her neck, holding her off him but not pushing her away. She can feel the battle in him, and it’s one Effie intends to win.

“Not here,” he says. And later, when she’s on top of him in his bed with the plain white sheets and lumpy pillows, “Call me Bill. My name’s Bill.”





chapter thirty

The trip to Philadelphia was, on a good day, a two-hour drive. That is if you could avoid traffic on the Schuylkill, and honestly, that was an impossible dream. Still, Effie had made it in just under three hours and didn’t have to be home at any certain time because she’d made arrangements for Heath to be there when Polly got off the bus. It had been an olive branch from her to him, and he’d taken it, but she wasn’t sure it had made much of a difference, overall.

She didn’t want to think about that now.

“Effie! Hi.” Elisabeth had worked with Naveen as long as Effie had been selling her art to him, though it had been only in the past few years that she’d taken over acquiring pieces on her own. “Can I get you something? Coffee, tea, soda? I have a bottle of wine somewhere around here, if you want a glass of that.”

“It’s a little early, even for an artist.” Effie laughed and hung her coat on Elisabeth’s rack, then took a seat on the plush red couch. “Your office looks amazing. Wow.”

“I told Naveen that if we wanted to get to the next level with clients, we had to show ourselves off as being worth the time. He was happy with bare-bones spaces, but I had to convince him that, sure, they like to go look at the pieces hung in the gallery, where they look spectacular, but they’re only going to buy what they can imagine will look fantastic hanging in their homes.” Elisabeth poured herself a mug of coffee from the maker on the small stand next to her desk and held up the carafe with a raised brow.

“Yeah, thanks. Black is fine.” Effie took the mug the other woman offered and sipped the strong, hot coffee hesitantly at first. It was fine, of course. She took another drink.

“So,” Elisabeth continued, “I redid my office here to have this little area that’s set up like a living room. Even if the clients don’t have the same decor, at the very least, they can picture the piece in a living room or foyer, not simply hanging in perfect lighting with neutral backgrounds. It’s been working out really well. I move so many more pieces since I did it. But, hey, tell me what’s up with you. I saw the piece you sent to the New York gallery. My God, Effie, it was amazing.”