The Dark Divine(29)

Temptation bites.





HOME AGAIN




I rode the bus until it pulled into the stop by the school. I used the last of my spare change to call April from a pay phone, but she didn’t answer. It wasn’t too hard to guess who might have been distracting her at the time.

I pulled my coat tight around my body and walked home as quickly as I could in my heels—feeling the whole time like that nasty guy from the party was following me. I slipped into the house and hoped to sneak up to my room without being noticed. Like I could pretend I’d been in bed all along. But Mom must have heard the soft click of the door closing because she called me into the kitchen before I had a chance to disappear up the stairs.

“Where have you been?” she asked, sounding more than a little annoyed. I watched her rip thick slices of bread into chunks to dry overnight for Thanksgiving stuffing. “You were supposed to help serve dinner after the funeral.” Apparently, it wasn’t late enough in the evening for her to be worried about my safety—but plenty late enough for her to be ticked off about my absence.

“I know,” I mumbled. “I’m sorry.”

“First you disappear, and then Jude.” She grabbed another slice of bread and tore into it with her fingers. “Do you know how it looked to have half of our family missing from the dinner? And your father nearly threw out his back putting away chairs while you two were out gallivanting with your friends.”

“I’m sorry. I’ll make it up to you.” I turned to leave the kitchen.

“You’re darn right you will. We’ve got at least twenty people coming for Thanksgiving tomorrow. You’re doing the pies, and then you’ll scrub the floors. Your brother will get his own list of chores.”


For a moment I contemplated bringing up the chem test I needed signed since I was already in trouble—but decided not to push it. Mom can get pretty elaborate with chore assignments when she’s aggravated. “Okay,” I said. “That’s fair.”

“Set your alarm for five forty-five!” Mom called as I headed toward the stairs.

Seriously, like I needed another reason to curse my impulsive decisions at that moment.





CHAPTER NINE

Thanks Giving





ALMOST THREE AND A HALF YEARS AGO




“I could never paint like that,” I said as I looked over the project Daniel had set out to dry on the kitchen counter.

It was a painting of my father’s hands slicing a green apple for Daniel’s birthday cobbler. The hands looked lifelike—gentle, kind, and steady. The self-portrait I’d been working on seemed so flat in comparison.

“Yeah, you can,” Daniel said. “I’ll teach you.”

I crinkled my nose at him. “Like you could teach me anything.”

But I knew he could. This was my first reattempt at oils in almost two years, and I was about ready to give it up all over again.

“Only because you’re so darn stubborn,” Daniel said. “Do you want to learn how to paint better or not?”

“I guess so.”

Daniel pulled a Masonite board from his supply bucket under the kitchen table. The board looked like a mess, smeared with a dozen different colors of oil paint. “Try this,” he said. “The colors come through as you paint. It gives more depth to your work.”

He coached me as I started my self-portrait over again. I couldn’t believe the difference. I loved the way my eyes looked with flecks of green and orange coming through behind the violet irises. They looked more real than anything I had ever painted before.

“Thank you,” I said.

Daniel smiled. “When I get some more, I’ll show you this really great trick with linseed oil and varnish. It gives the most amazing quality to skin tones, and you won’t believe what it does for your brushstrokes.”

“Really?”

Daniel nodded and went back to work on his own portrait. Only, instead of painting himself like Mrs. Miller had assigned, he was painting a tan-and-gray dog, with eyes shaped like a person’s. They were a deep, earthy brown like his.

“Daniel.” Mom stood in the kitchen entryway. Her face was pale. “Someone is here to see you.”

Daniel cocked his head in surprise. I followed him into the foyer, and there she was. Daniel’s mother stood in the doorway. Her hair had gotten a lot longer and blonder in the year and two months since she’d sold their house and left Daniel with us.

“Hi, baby,” she said to him.

“What are you doing here?” His voice crackled like ice. His mother hadn’t called in months—not even for his birthday.

“I’m taking you home,” she said. “I got us a little place in Oak Park. It’s not like the house, but it’s nice and clean, and you can start high school there in the fall.”

“I’m not going with you,” Daniel said, his voice climbing in anger, “and I’m not going to a new school.”

“Daniel, I am your mother. You belong home with me. You need me.”

“No, he doesn’t,” I practically shouted at her. “Daniel doesn’t need you. He needs us.”

“No, I don’t,” Daniel said. “I don’t need you.” He pushed past me, almost knocking me over. “I don’t need anybody!” He ran past his mother and out into the yard.