The Secrets We Keep(56)

36

Dad was sitting at the kitchen table when I got home, his entire focus on the small cup of coffee he had in front of him. He looked up when he heard me come in and tried for a smile, but it was small and filled with exhaustion. Wherever he was last night, it was obvious he hadn’t slept.

“Hey,” I said. “When did you get home?”

“Couple of hours ago,” he replied. “I had some things to catch up on at work, then I went to your grandmother’s for dinner.”

I’d assumed he’d gone there … was hoping he’d gone there, but the confirmation was still nice.

“Your grandmother sends her love,” Dad said as he pushed the spoon around his coffee. “I wanted to bring you with me. I thought maybe some time away from school and this house would do you good.”

We had spent a lot of time at my grandmother’s growing up. She used to let us eat our dessert before dinner and never worried about the amount of dirt we tracked into the house. Even as a teenager I loved going there, loved the way she doted on me and made my favorite foods.

She used to draw like me, except she was better. She could paint, too. I never seemed to be able to master that—the whole color thing. I still preferred my charcoal pencils to acrylics and oils. It was my grandmother who gave Maddy and me our first sketchbooks. They were actually old ones of hers that she’d tossed aside. Didn’t matter. To us, they were massive sheets of clean paper that we wouldn’t get in trouble for writing on.

“I texted you a few times, but you didn’t respond,” Dad said.

I pulled out my phone and scrolled through my texts. There were three from Dad. I remembered my phone chiming in Spanish class. The teacher gave me a stern glare, and I’d turned it off without checking to see who the text was from. I had no idea it was Dad or I would’ve responded.

“Sorry,” I said, and shoved my phone back into my pocket. “I talked to Josh like you suggested.”

“You find the answers you were looking for?”

“No,” I said. “Just a lot more questions.”

“Any of those questions I can help answer?”

I took a seat across from him and grabbed an orange from the fruit bowl in the center of the table. I wasn’t hungry, but I peeled it anyway. “No.”

“Well, I’m here if you’re looking for someone to talk to.”

“Thanks.”

We sat there in silence—Dad hyperfocused on his coffee, and me on the lack of activity in the house. It was quiet, too quiet. Even Bailey was penned up in his crate, his nose pressed against the door.

“Can I let him out?” I asked, wondering what he’d done to earn time in jail.

Dad shrugged. “Sure, but he’s only going to pace a circle in Ella’s room and whine. It gets irritating after a while.”

I unclicked the latch and tapped my hand against the side of my leg. Bailey edged his way out, his eyes on Dad as if he was waiting to be scolded or locked back up. When Dad stayed silent, Bailey came to me and lay down on my feet.

“Where’s Mom?” I asked. She was the one I was used to seeing when I came home from school.

“Upstairs reading.”


I didn’t ask what she was reading. I didn’t need to. The way his voice dropped off to nothing more than a pained whisper was answer enough. She was reading our journals, the ones I saw in her room the other day, the ones Maddy and I kept as kids.

“She seems different now, sadder than before. It’s been nearly a month since…” I trailed off, unwilling to say the actual words. “Why does she seem more upset now?”

“Because you returned to school.”

Confused as to why that mattered, I said, “But I’ve always gone to school. Me going back—that was always the plan.”

“The entire time you were in the hospital, she was there, talking to the doctors and keeping you company. Then when you were home, she had you to take care of. Doctor’s appointments, prescriptions, watching you, making sure you were comfortable. Now that you’re back at school, she has nothing but her own thoughts to occupy her mind. And right now, well, those thoughts aren’t good.”

I was only home for a little over a week, but Mom spent every one of them hovering over me, asking me what I wanted to eat, kicking Alex out so I could rest, and talking to the teachers about the work I’d missed. It had bothered me back then. I figured her constant prodding was to keep me from losing it, from slipping into the darkness of my own mind. Little did I know, she was doing it to keep herself sane.

“I could stay home tonight if you want.”

Dad shook his head and stood up, poured his full cup of coffee into the sink. “No. Go and be with your friends. Go out with Alex. Don’t worry, I’ll be here. I’ll get her through this.”

I didn’t want to go, not when I was the one who had put her here, in a hell she couldn’t seem to escape. A dark pit of my own making.

“Do you think we will be okay?”

Dad tensed, his hands braced on the edges of the sink. I heard every tick of the clock on the wall, felt every beat of my heart hammering in my head as I waited for him to turn around and answer. When he finally did, I could see the worry etched on his face, the confident, it-will-all-be-okay attitude I’d come to depend on stripped away, replaced with an uncertainty that had me terrified.