Lock and Key(83)

Just like that, his face changed, and I knew he knew— either by this last sentence, or the look on my face—that I’d been there. “Oh,” he said, this one word flat, toneless. “Right.”

I came closer and, after a moment, bent down beside him and started to pick up pieces of glass. The air felt strange all around me, like just after or before a thunderstorm when the very ions have been shifted, resettled. I knew that feeling. I hadn’t experienced it in a while, but I knew it.

“So,” I said carefully, my voice low, “what just happened here? ”

“Nothing.” Now he glanced at me, but only for a second. “It’s fine.”

“That looked like more than nothing.”

“It’s just my dad blowing off steam. No big deal. The shelf took the brunt of it.”

I swallowed, taking in a breath. Out on the street, beyond the open garage door, an older couple in windsuits walked by, arms swinging in tandem. “So . . . does he do that a lot?”

“Pull down shelves?” he asked, brushing his hands off over the trash can.

“Talk to you like that.”

“Nah,” he said.

I watched him as he stood, shaking his hair out of his face. “You know,” I said slowly, “my mom used to slap us around sometimes. When we were younger. Cora more than me, but I still caught it occasionally.”

“Yeah?” He wasn’t looking at me.

“You never knew when to expect it. I hated that.”

Nate was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “Look, my dad’s just . . . he’s got a temper. Always has. He blows up, he throws stuff. It’s all hot air.”

“Has he ever hit you, though?”

He shrugged. “A couple of times when he’s really lost it. It’s rare, though.”

I watched as he reached down, picking up the shelf and pushing it back up against the wall. “Still,” I said, “it sounds like he’s awfully hard on you. That stuff about you disgusting him—”

“Please,” he replied, stacking the paint cans on the bottom shelf. “That’s nothing. You should have heard him at my swim meets. He was the only parent to get banned from the deck entirely, for life. Not that it stopped him. He just yelled from behind the fence.”

I thought back to that day in the parking lot, the guy who had called after him. “Is that why you quit?”

“One reason.” He picked up the Windex. “Look, like I said, it’s no big deal. I’m fine.”

Fine. I’d thought the same thing. “Does your mom know about this?”

“She’s aware that he’s a disciplinarian,” he said, drawing out this last word in such a way that it was clear he’d heard it a lot, said in a certain way. “She tends to be a bit selective in how she processes information. And anyway, in her mind, when she sent me back here, that was just what I needed.”

“Nobody needs that,” I said.

“Maybe not. But it’s what I’ve got.”

He headed for the door, pulling it open. I followed him inside, watching as he went to the island, picking up the key that I’d been holding earlier. I could remember so clearly turning it in my palm, the way he’d taken it from me—putting it back on the island but not on the ring—and suddenly I felt culpable, even more a part of this than I already was.

“You could tell someone, you know,” I said as he slid it into his pocket. “Even if he’s not always hitting you, it’s not right.”

“What, and get put into social services? Or shipped off to live with my mom, who doesn’t want me there? No thanks.”

“So you have thought about it,” I said.

“Heather did. A lot,” he said, reaching up to rub his face. “It freaked her out. But she just didn’t understand. My mom kicked me out, and at least he took me in. It’s not like I have a lot of options here.”

I thought of Heather, that day at the pond place. I’m glad you and Nate are friends, she’d said. “She was worried about you,” I said.

“I’m fine.” I couldn’t help notice each time he said this. “At this point, I’ve only got six months until graduation. After that, I’m coaching a swim camp up north, and as long as I get into school somewhere, I’m gone.”

“Gone,” I repeated.

“Yeah,” he said. “To college, or wherever. Anyplace but here.”

“Free and clear.”

“Exactly.” He looked up at me, and I thought of us standing in this same spot earlier as he took that key from my hand. I’d felt so close to something then—something that, back at the yellow house or even in my first days at Cora’s, I never would have imagined. “I mean, you stayed with your mom, stuck it out even though it was bad. You understand, right?”

I did. But it was more than that. Sure, being free and clear had been just what I’d wanted, so recently that it should have been easy to agree with it. But if it was still true, I wouldn’t have even been there. I’d have left when I’d had the chance earlier, staying out of this, of everything.

But I hadn’t. Because I wasn’t the same girl who’d run to that fence the first night, thinking only of jumping over it and getting away. Somewhere, something had changed.