The Reckless Oath We Made - Bryn Greenwood Page 0,48
call the police,” Grammy said. She came up behind Aunt Zee on the sidewalk next to the house. I stuck my tongue out at her and pressed it on the screen.
“I’m going. But don’t kid yourself. You’re not a good person. Or at least you’re not any better than I am,” Aunt Zee said.
I don’t know why Grammy said she wasn’t a good person. Aunt Zee was my favorite person after Mommy.
“You need to go home and not come back here. If I see you again, I’ll call the police.” Grammy looked at me. “Stop licking the screen and go inside the house.”
I licked the screen again anyway.
CHAPTER 19
Zee
I didn’t have anywhere else to go, so Gentry took me to his parents’ house, where his family treated me like an invalid. I wasn’t doing a good job of pretending to be okay, because they acted like I was made out of glass. Charlene did my laundry, while I took a shower to get the dirt from Mom’s house off me. Then Elana braided my hair while Gentry packed. There was packing required to go to Bryn Carreg, which was Gentry’s keep. His house actually had a name, and that was where we were going. If it had been up to me, I would have gone to bed and stayed there, but I was a guest. So I sat on the front porch with my backpack, while Gentry worked.
It made me nervous watching him load things into his truck. There were Rubbermaid tubs, some kind of tent, and an ice chest. It felt very end-times.
“It’s only an hour away,” Bill said. “If you decide you’d rather come back to town, Gentry can bring you.”
“I think you understand that now, don’t you?” Charlene said. “He’ll do whatever he can for you.” It sounded like a warning, and I could see how with someone as good as Gentry, she’d be worried about him.
They stood out on the porch, waving as we drove away, which made me feel like crying. Sometimes nice people are too nice. It reminded me of this whole fantasy I had when I was younger. Dad would come home from prison and Mom would get better, and we’d be a normal family, like Emma’s family. Right up until Uncle Tim died, the three of them went on vacations together and bowled together. At Aunt Shelly’s house, she had a whole wall of pictures of them together, like Gentry’s family had. The hours I wasted on that fantasy as a kid. Imagining exactly what we’d talk about at dinner. What kind of sheets I would have on my bed when Mom tucked me in at night. How I would have sleepovers with the girls at school. The ones who wouldn’t even sit with me at lunch.
Things had gone so sideways, I didn’t even have a fantasy life anymore.
I wasn’t going to cry. Especially because we drove in total silence. It weirded me out a little, so I worked up my nerve to ask if I could turn on the radio. Gentry said yes, but there weren’t any stations programmed. I hit the SEEK button and it spun through until we got a station playing eighties music.
Bill had said Bryn Carreg was an hour away, but by my phone, it was closer to an hour and a half. We passed through a tiny town called Cedar Vale and, somewhere on the other side, we left the highway and drove north on a county road. Further on, we turned off onto a dirt road and then another, and at that point, the only reason I knew which direction we were going was that the sun was starting to set in the west. When we finally pulled up and parked, it was where the road dead-ended in a bunch of woods and hills. There was a metal garage and a carport, with a little Toyota truck parked under it.
Maybe some other time I would have been nervous about the whole thing, but I was too tired to care. It reminded me of that first day when Gentry gave me a ride home from physical therapy. Sure, maybe he was driving me out into the country to murder me, but his family was so nice, and getting murdered would solve a lot of my problems.
I got out of the truck and pulled my backpack on, while he went around to drop the tailgate and open the topper glass. I watched him pull out all the