Burn Down the Night (Everything I Left Unsaid #3)- Molly O'Keefe Page 0,100

I don’t have a whole lot of experience with that, but we felt loved. When I got old enough, I kind of…did the stuff parents are supposed to do, that he never thought of. Registering for school. Getting vaccinations. Making sure Jennifer did her homework. Buying vegetables. Making us food for dinner and not just chips or donuts.”

I wondered if she saw the picture she was painting. I mean, it’s not like I could objectively look at my childhood. But she was painting a rosy picture with some pretty dark fucking colors.

“What happened to him?”

“I was fourteen. Jennifer would have been twelve and it was October. The end of the month and it was so cold. Really cold. And Dad decided he wanted to go ice fishing out on the lake. He did this a lot. He’d go for a few nights and come back with a ton of fish for the freezer. Jennifer and I got so sick of fish in the winter. Anyway, it didn’t seem any different than any other time. He packed up his stuff and headed out before me and Jennifer even got up. He just…he never came back.”

“Oh Jesus. Joan—”

“When he had been gone for over two days, I hiked out to the lake he usually fished on and the ice had cracked. Even his little hut thing he fished in was gone. The ice must not have been thick enough.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“I try not to think about it too much. Him being scared—” She stopped and shook her head as if shaking off the memories.

“That’s when you came down here?”

Joan took a deep breath. “No. Not for a year, really. We kept my dad’s death a secret. And Jennifer and I just kept going like everything was normal. School. The scrap yard—”

“Wait…what?”

“It’s not that big a deal. You practically did the same thing, right? Raised your brother since you were kids?”

“Yeah, but I wasn’t all alone in the woods of Wisconsin! In winter!”

“It was cold,” she said as if it were a fond memory, but then the smile slowly drained from her face and she scooped up all the little pieces of the coaster and put them in her empty wineglass and then shoved the glass away. Almost across the bar. I saw what she wasn’t saying. Like she was covered in graffiti, I saw it. Yeah, it had been cold.

And it had been scary.

The kind of scary that years later came up out of nowhere to make you feel unsafe—even in the safest places. The kind of scary that carved its mark on your bones.

I knew that kind of scary.

I knew how it put up walls you didn’t even see half the time.

“I tried to get her into a fancy gifted school and that’s how we got found out and ended up with Fern.”

The waitress was back with our dinners. I had the shrimp po’boy and she had the mahimahi special and we tucked into our food like it would save our lives. We ate to keep our mouths full. Or I did anyway. Because I knew the shit I wanted to say to her—that she was brave and tough and loyal and smart—she’d tear up all those words and put them into a wineglass so she could push it far away.

And I knew, somehow, that it wasn’t because she didn’t want to hear it. But because she didn’t know what to do with it.

We ate like it was our last meal.

Joan

I had forgotten how sexy it was to eat and drink with someone you wanted to have sex with. How it made me feel sleepy and turned on all at once. Like I’d been cared for. Like I was a pampered pet.

And the way Max watched me eat, it was like it was his job to make sure I got every bit I needed. Everything I wanted. If I’d demanded another meal—he’d lift his hand and make it happen. He would have fed me his dinner. With his fingers.

No wonder dates always happened at restaurants. I had forgotten that it was all just foreplay.

In an indigo twilight, we walked back to the condo, carefully not touching. I wasn’t sure why he wasn’t touching me. But my reasons for not touching him were purely for self-preservation. I needed closed doors for what I wanted to do. I needed darkness and quiet for the things I wanted to say.

I was lush and exposed and ready. On the very edge of a cliff I’d