Lock and Key(63)

“You can tell them he got his shots and the vet said everything’s fine,” Nate said, reaching into the backseat for Roscoe’s leash. Seeing it, the dog leaped up again, moving closer, and he clipped it on his collar. “And if they want to pursue behavioral training for the anxiety thing, she has a couple of names she can give them.”

“Right,” I said. He handed the leash to me, and I took it, picking up my bag with the other hand as I slowly slid out of the car. Roscoe, of course, followed with total eagerness, stretching the leash taut as he pulled me to the house. “Thanks.”

Nate nodded, not saying anything, and I shut the door. Just as I started up the walk, though, I heard the whirring of a window lowering. When I turned around, he said, “Hey, and for what it’s worth? Friends don’t leave you alone in the woods. Friends are the ones who come and take you out.”

I just looked at him. At my feet, Roscoe was straining at his leash, wanting to go home.

“At least,” Nate said, “that’s been my experience. I’ll see you, okay?”

I nodded, and then his window slid back up, and he was pulling away.

As I watched him go, Roscoe was still tugging, trying to pull me closer to the house. My instinct was to do the total opposite, even though by now I’d left, and been left, enough times to know that neither of them was good, or easy, or even preferable. Still, it wasn’t until we started up the walk to those waiting bright lights that I realized this— coming back—was the hardest of all.

“Where the hell have you been?”

It was Cora I was braced for, Cora I was expecting to be waiting when I pushed open the door. Instead, the first thing I saw was Jamie. And he was pissed.

“Jamie,” I heard Cora say. She was at the end of the hall, standing in the doorway to the kitchen. Roscoe, who had bolted the minute I dropped his leash, was already circling her feet, sniffling wildly. “At least let her get inside.”

“Do you have any idea how worried we’ve been? ” Jamie demanded.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Do you even care?” he said.

I looked down the hallway at my sister, who had picked Roscoe up and was now watching me. Her eyes were red, a tissue in her hand, and as I realized she, like Jamie, was still in the clothes she’d had on that morning, I suddenly remembered their doctor’s appointment.

“Are you drunk?” Jamie said. I looked at the mirror by the stairs, finally seeing myself: I looked terrible—in Nate’s baggy sweatshirt—and clearly, I stank of booze and who knew what else. I looked tired and faded and so familiar, suddenly, that I had to turn away, sinking down onto the bottom stair behind me. “This is what you do, after we take you in, put you in a great school, give you everything you need? You just run off and get wasted?”

I shook my head, a lump rising in my throat. It had been such a long, terrible day that it felt like years ago, entire lifetimes, since I’d been in this same place arguing with Cora that morning.

“We gave you the benefit of the doubt,” Jamie was saying. “We gave you everything. And this is how you thank us?”

“Jamie,” Cora said again, louder this time. “Stop it.”

“We don’t need this,” he said, coming closer. I pulled my knees to my chest, trying to make myself smaller. I deserved this, I knew it, and I just wanted it to be over. “Your sister, who fought to bring you here, even when you were stupid and resisted? She doesn’t need this.”

I felt tears fill my eyes, blurring everything again, and this time I was glad, grateful for it. But even so, I covered my face with my hand, just to make sure.

“I mean,” Jamie continued, his voice bouncing off the walls, rising up to the high ceiling above us, “what kind of person just takes off, disappears, no phone call, not even caring that someone might be wondering where they are? Who does that?”

In the silence following this, no one said a word. But I knew the answer.

More than anyone in that room, I was aware of exactly the sort of person who did such a thing. What I hadn’t realized until that very moment, though, was that it wasn’t just my mother who was guilty of all these offenses. I’d told myself that everything I’d done in the weeks before and since she left was to make sure I would never be like her. But it was too late. All I had to do was look at the way I’d reacted to what Cora had told me that morning—taking off, getting wasted, letting myself be left alone in a strange place—to know I already was.

It was almost a relief, this specific truth. I wanted to say it out loud—to him, to Cora, to Nate, to everyone—so they would know not to keep trying to save me or make me better somehow. What was the point, when the pattern was already repeating? It was too late.

But as I dropped my hand from my eyes to say this to Jamie, I realized I couldn’t see him anymore. My view was blocked by my sister, who had moved to stand between us, one hand stretched out behind her, toward me. Seeing her, I remembered a thousand nights in another house: the two of us together, another part of a pattern, just one I’d thought had long ago been broken, never to be repeated.

Perhaps I was just like my mother. But looking up at Cora’s hand, I had to wonder whether it was possible that this wasn’t already decided for me, and if maybe, just maybe, this was my one last chance to try and prove it. There was no way to know. There never is. But I reached out and took it anyway.