Something to tie me to the outside, a reminder that I had moved on from Cooley Ridge.
I tackled the sink and the counters, vaguely satisfied with myself, meticulously scrubbing and buffing it all to a shine. The ringing phone was a welcome relief. My eyes had started to go blurry, and I wiped my arm against my forehead to brush the hair back, pulled one of the gloves off my hand. “Hello?”
“Hey. Sorry I’m calling back so late,” Everett said.
I sank into the kitchen chair, pulling off the other glove with my teeth. “No worries. I know you’re busy.”
“So, you made it.”
“I made it,” I said.
“How’s it going so far?” he asked.
“Pretty much as expected. Dad’s the same, Daniel’s the same. Dropped off the paperwork for the doctor. I’m tackling the house already.” I stood, doing a quick tidying up before heading upstairs.
“How long until you can list it?”
“Not sure. I don’t want to list it until everything’s fixed. First impressions are everything.” I saw that it was almost midnight and yawned.
“Get some sleep,” he said.
“I’m about to.” I turned off the downstairs light, backing out of the room. Turned to face the window, to see the trees and mountains illuminated in the moonlight as I stood in the dark. Goodbye, I thought.
And thought for a moment that I saw a flicker of light between the trees.
“I’m going to try to get my dad to sign the papers on his own. Doesn’t feel right, taking it out from under him,” I said.
“Well,” Everett said, his own yawn making me smile, “do what you need to do.”
“I always do,” I said.
* * *
TEN YEARS AGO, I’D stumbled through these woods, trying to get back home. Desperate for the safety of the walls—just make it home. As if that could prevent the inevitable. Dad’s car and Daniel’s car were gone, and I sprinted across the yard, holding my arm to my stomach, pain shooting through both. The porch light swinging, and the screen door creaking, and me gasping, alone in the house.
I was alone.
The rest of the night I can handle only in flashes. I’m not sure what that says, that I can stare back at Corinne for minutes on end but not at this. I have to come at it from the side, grazing pieces here and there. Not looking it directly in the eye. I’ve never told it before. This is the only way I know how.
I’m getting there.
* * *
STRIPPING OFF MY CLOTHES in the bathroom in a wild panic, trying to stop something I had no control over—furious that I could not—and the fury giving way to something quiet and hollow the moment I surrendered. When I remembered that the world would not bend to my will, that it never had, and it certainly wasn’t about to start now.
Turning the water on hot, leaving the clothes on the floor, folding up my knees and sitting in the tub, my head resting on my arms, my eyes squeezed shut, letting the water hit me everywhere.
Two days. It had been a hypothetical two days ago in Corinne’s bathroom, had just barely morphed into something real and hopeful in my mind, and now it was gone. Like it had never truly existed.
* * *
DANIEL, KNOCKING ON THE door a while later. “Nic? Are you okay?” More knocking. “I can hear you.”
Holding my breath so I’d stop crying.
“Answer me or I’m coming in.”
The door handle turning, and a cold gust of air, and Daniel sucking in his breath as his shadow stood beside my clothes in a heap on the floor.
“Are you okay?”
Letting out the breath along with a sob. “No, I’m not okay.”
“Tell me what to do. Tell me how I can help.” Tyler had told Daniel I was pregnant after hitting him. I knew from the way Daniel had looked at me with so much regret.
“It’s too late.”
“Get out of the tub, Nic. I can’t help you unless you get out of the tub.”
“I don’t want your help.”
And him: “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
His shadow retreating. The door closing.
The water eventually running cold, pulling myself up, grabbing a towel from the bar.
My clothes off the floor and the laundry running downstairs. Wrapping myself in the fleece pajamas I used in the winter, sinking into the center of my bed, hearing Daniel on the phone in his room. “No, Tyler, you don’t understand. You have to come.”
Me calling back through the bathroom between our rooms: “He can’t.”