Unspeakable Things(50)

eeeeeeeEEEEEEEEE

The pricks of the rose grew hot, and the flower melded with my hand. I risked a glance inside Connelly’s window even though I was so exposed, even though I had to perch on my tippy-toes to see in and it would slow down my escape. I’m not sure what made me do it. Maybe some movement on the inside caught my attention, or my curiosity was simply too loud, or I wanted more to embellish my story with.

I expected to see Connelly dipping into his fridge, wearing a robe.

Or sitting at the kitchen table with his dad, talking about his mom recently home from the hospital, because hadn’t Mrs. Puglisi said she’d had a heart attack?

That would have made sense.

But Clam inside that house, Mr. Connelly’s hands on his shoulders?

That didn’t fit in my head.

I blinked at it once, twice.

I couldn’t see either of their faces, not clearly, at least, that’s what I told myself.

Then I turned and ran back to the lilac bush, the siren a magnetic force that pushed me toward safety. All four girls patted me on the back when I reached them, invited me into their exultant bubble, and we ran as one back to Lynn’s house, hot blood dripping from my fingertips and onto the rosebud.





CHAPTER 31

I didn’t tell.

I couldn’t, not on Mr. Connelly.

When they asked, I said I hadn’t seen anyone in the kitchen.

Not a single person.

I’d kept my hand mostly hidden at the party, rinsing it off as soon as we made it back to Lynn’s. I had to wash the blood off the rose stem, too. The puncture marks were deep, so they didn’t bleed much after the first spurt. Mom spotted them as soon she picked me up in the morning.

“What happened?”

“I plucked a rose,” I said, cradling my hand to my chest. “Thought it was a peony.”

She studied me for a moment, her tired eyes darting to the Strahan house and then back to me. She’d dropped Sephie off at summer school before swinging by to pick me up. She sighed and then put the van into first gear. We didn’t talk until we reached home, where she marched me to the bathroom and pulled a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and a pot of homemade salve out of the cupboard.

“Not a good week for my girls.”

I didn’t cry when she doused the three perfect circles in my palm with the peroxide, not even when it sank deep into my bones, jarring them, before bubbling back to the surface, pink from my marrow. I didn’t flinch when she grabbed my fingers, gently, and held them under a stream of warm water that pooled in the holes. I did sigh when she opened the pot of salve, the texture of Vaseline, a murky amber color that smelled like road tar and herbs.

She filled in the holes with the salve and it healed me, hunting the pain up my arm, herding it back toward the openings and out of my body. She wrapped gauze three times around my hand and patted me on the arm. I wanted to tell her so bad what I’d seen last night. She’d know what to do. I had my mouth open to rat out Mr. Connelly when she surprised me.

“The trick of life,” she said, “is that you can’t hold the pain for too long. The magic, either.”

It was the first time she’d reminded me of Jin, and I hugged her then, snuggling into the warm crook of her neck like I used to do when I was little. Mom stiffened, but she didn’t push me away.

That’s how Dad found us.

He was in a mood. It preceded him into a room, liquid and dangerous. “I suppose this means we’re not butchering the rest of the chickens today.”

I kept my groan to myself. There shouldn’t be any more chickens to butcher, not this season, but sometimes after a party, Dad needed to clear things out. More paths in the woods, farm cats driven up the road and dropped off, bags of garbage hauled to the dump, the laying hens culled.

Mom’s voice sounded strained. “Her hand has to heal before she can get it wet.”

Dad frowned. He’d brought the hatchet with him into the house, and it looked angry and out of place. “I’ll find dry work for her, then. Come on, Cassie. We’ll clear a trail.”

I glanced at Mom, hoping she’d volunteer to join us or, better yet, stand up for me and tell him I needed to rest for a day. She turned away. I trudged upstairs to change into work clothes before heading into the muggy morning. All evidence of Saturday’s party was gone. I wanted to ask Dad what sort of mood Sephie had been in before she left for summer school this morning, but he and I didn’t talk like that. He jabbed his finger toward a mound of sticks. He wanted it brought to the burn pile.

I obeyed, hauling the twigs and then returning for more, gathering the oak and elm branches he was hacking off a copse of old trees, enough so he could take a chain saw to their bases without being poked. Lugging branches was slow going with only one hand, but I warmed to the work as the lemon sun stretched across the sky. It was way better than butchering, even if Dad smelled like chicken soup when he perspired. He’d removed his shirt, and I could see rivulets of sweat rolling off him. The blue bandanna tied around his head kept it from dripping in his eyes, but it coursed down his back, hanging in droplets from his armpit hair when he hefted logs as big as his torso.

We worked as the sun crawled its hot eye to the top of the world and poured lava down upon us. He finally let me break for water at eleven. I drank from the hose, not minding the gassy flavor. I ran it over my head, down my back, swallowed icy liquid the color of quicksilver. When I was cooled off, I returned to our work site but couldn’t find Dad. He wasn’t on the back trail, either.