He was going to, but I haven’t heard from him,” he said, cutting his eyes to me. “So do me a favor and pull all the furniture you can away from the walls. I’ll handle the bigger pieces. Go get the plastic sheets out of the trunk.”
He went back to spraying the house. We were really doing this. Selling the house. Getting it ready. Going about our lives. Moving on.
“Nic,” he said. “Trunk. Go.”
I felt ungrounded as I walked to his car, as if in a daze. Sleep had been hard to come by the last few nights, and it was doing something to my head—like there was too much space to sort through and I couldn’t get a grip on any one solid thing. I pulled the sheets of plastic from the trunk, the smell slightly nauseating, held them against my chest so they billowed up in front of my face. I imagined suffocating inside them, draping them across crime scenes. My mother used to lay plastic sheets across the floor so Daniel and I could paint on easels in the kitchen, and after, they’d be covered in spills and drips, speckles of colors—a beautiful accident.
I couldn’t breathe. I dropped them at the bottom of the porch steps, and Daniel turned to look at me. “Nic, really,” he said, like I was the colossal disappointment of his life.
“I don’t feel good.”
He turned off the machine, walked down the ladder. “Well, if you’re not gonna help here,” he said, “then get to the church and help there.”
I nodded. “I’ll probably be back late. I have plans after.”
“You have plans after?”
“Yes,” I said. “I have plans.” Plans that consisted of wanting to be anywhere but here.
“You can stay with me and Laura tonight. The paint fumes. I wouldn’t want to breathe them in, either.”
“Maybe,” I said.
He nodded. “Good. See you later, then.”
* * *
MAYBE IT WAS THE church’s proximity to the police station, or maybe it was the graveyard behind it, where my mother was buried beside my grandparents, but there was something unsettling about this place, with the wooden pews smelling like earth, and the way you had to walk down the narrow aisle and over the altar to get to the basement steps beyond. I’d spent every Sunday here as a kid, but I’d stopped attending after my mom died, as did Daniel. My dad wasn’t usually there, either. Too busy sleeping off the Saturday binge—or just sleeping. And Tyler went only if I asked him to go with me. There was nothing for me under this steepled roof anymore.
Church was just another part of my life here. The thing you did on Sunday mornings, followed by snacks from CVS with Corinne and Bailey and whoever else was hanging out with us at the time. We’d sit on the top of car hoods in the summer, or huddle inside the store when the weather turned, Luke Aberdeen usually behind the cash register, keeping an extra-close eye on us, for good reason.
The last time I’d been to church here was for Daniel and Laura’s wedding, three years ago. I had that unsettled feeling back then, too. Standing up beside the altar in a watermelon-pink dress Laura had picked out and guessed my measurements on, because I’d never sent them to her. It was a little too long—hitting at shin level instead of just below the knee—too tight across the top, and gaped at the armholes. I felt out of place. I looked out of place.
I’d sneaked into this basement after, waiting out the crowd. Tyler had found me playing darts by myself in the rec room. I’d heard his footsteps rounding the corner, heard him toss his blazer on the nearest chair, while I took aim at the target with one eye closed. “Nice dress,” he’d said.
“Shut up.”
“Want to get out of here?” He showed me a secret way out—a set of steps through a closet in the back, a storm shutter, a chain with a master lock holding it closed. But Tyler had the code from when he worked down here after a flood. He had a way out of everything.
Daniel did not forgive me for missing the reception.
* * *
“NIC!” LAURA SQUEALED WHEN she saw me, waddling away from her older sister and mother, who were hanging decorations.
I smiled. “Daniel said you could use some help here.”
“Oh my God, yes,” she said. She leaned in closer. “My mother is crazy. Katie’s trying to keep her occupied, but she’s