chapter twenty-seven

I went for a walk after dinner to try to clear my head, and when I got back home, I noticed my father's car was parked in the driveway, muddied and dusty, with slush embedded in the treads of the tires. It was almost like I could see how unkempt my father had become since he'd left. My father loved his car. He used to spend every Saturday afternoon washing it in the drive- way, waving to dog walkers and gardeners. He even had a strict no-food policy after an incident at a drive-in theater regarding the loud boom of an on-screen explosion and a napkin covered in ketchup landing on the car door. But now there were crumpled bags of fast food and deli sandwich containers lying on the seats, their labels torn. I was just about at the front door when I heard the familiar rumble of an old brown van. Wilson stepped out a few seconds after pulling alongside the curb. His hands were shoved into the pockets of his jeans as he walked across the front lawn, and I could see the prickles of goosebumps protruding on his arms, since he wasn't wearing a coat. He nodded in my direction as he approached me. "You talked to Bex," he said. I nodded, a bit reluctantly, feeling the slight twinge of panic that I had overstepped my bounds, and he responded with silence, looking away from me and tensing his shoulders with the intake of a breath. "I did." "Clara—I don't want to do this." His voice was soft, nothing more than a whisper left to drift through the wind and find me. He looked like a small boy, filled with fear and confusion, and so unlike the person I'd thought he was before. So I reached out to him, my hand gently wrapping around his wrist—his muscles flinching beneath my palm but his arm remaining there, not pulling away—and I felt his pulse throbbing against my fingertips. "Then you don't have to," I said. His blond hair blew in front of his face, his eyes lingering somewhere unfocused and unreachable to me, but he slowly slid his hand out of his pocket and interlocked his fingers with mine, his skin cold. I squeezed them, angling my face to meet his distracted gaze. When he found me, he offered a small but unstable smile. "But I want you to know you can. You can do it, Wilson." His hand remained in mine, clasping it tightly, as if he was hoping it would anchor him to this place, prevent him from drifting away to somewhere unknown and frightening. Wilson looked as if he were about to say something when I heard the front door being thrown open, the doorknob banging against something loudly, and then footsteps rushing down the front steps with an urgency that alarmed me. Wilson's eyes widened as his hand unlatched from mine, and he stepped away from me. "Wilson!" I whirled around as I heard his name being spat, a deep and enraged growl from behind me. My father was charging from the front porch, his face red with resentment, as he sped past me and toward Wilson. My mother followed behind my dad, shouting, "Eric! Eric! Eric, stop!" Before I could realize what was happening, my father's fist slammed into Wilson's mouth with a crunch. He was shouting so hurriedly and so harshly at him that it didn't even sound like words. Wilson stumbled backward while simultaneously bending forward, bringing a hand to his lips, blood painting his fingernails. "Eric!" my mother gasped, covering her own mouth with her hands. My father was reaching for Wilson as he backed away from him, his steps unstable and wobbling. Then his hands struck against Wilson's shoulders, slamming against his collarbone and knocking him down to the ground, his back colliding with the concrete of our driveway. "Dad!" I shrieked, rushing between them and crouching down by Wilson. "Stop! He wasn't doing anything!" "Get away from him!" my father shouted, his hand gripping my shoulder, nearly dragging me back and onto the ground, but then I felt him abruptly let go. "Are you okay?" I asked Wilson, gingerly touching a hand to his chin, his blood warm underneath my fingertips. His eyes had just met mine, bewilderment and shock staring back at me, when I heard my father shouting again. But this time, not at Wilson. "Let me go!" he yelled. "Clara, get away from him! Get off me!" I looked over my shoulder, my jaw falling slack as I took it in. My father, with someone's arms wrapped around his chest, restraining him, holding him back. Brandon Tomlin's arms. "Sir, you need to calm down," Brandon said over my father's irate voice as he demanded to be let go, struggled underneath the weight of his arms, the hands braced against his chest. Brandon pulled him backward and away from us. A few minutes later, after Brandon Tomlin had forced my father to sit down on one of the front porch steps, he had somewhat calmed down, but not before commanding Brandon, "Get that filth off my property." A part of me wanted my mother, standing a few feet away from him, to remind him that this wasn't his property anymore. Brandon came across the driveway toward us—wearing a football jersey and sweatpants, his socks dirtied from the slush as if he'd rushed out here—and said to Wilson, "I got some ice for that mouth over at my place, if you want." Wilson's lips were reddened and swollen, and I could see blood was staining the crevices between his teeth. It was as if he was searching for something as he looked at me and I realized after a beat that he was asking if I was okay with it. And that was how we ended up in the Tomlins' garage, with me wordlessly following them after Brandon had extended his hand and lifted Wilson from the ground. I noticed him giving me a distrustful look before turning around and leading us to the house that was so familiar and yet unfamiliar at the same time. We sat on lawn chairs while Brandon went inside for some ice, my shoulders stiff against the seat. I was almost waiting to see Griffin come through the door Brandon had passed through before I thought of something worse and more probable: one of his parents walking out and finding me sitting on their lawn furniture, as if we were still just neighbors who hadn't accused each other's families of doing awful things. Something nudged me, a gentle touch against my boot. I glanced down, seeing that Wilson had extended his leg out from under his own chair and bumped the edge of his worn and untied shoe against mine. "You okay?" he asked. I nodded, and then Brandon emerged from inside, a package of frozen corn kernels wrapped in a paper towel in his hand. "Sorry," he said, handing it to Wilson. "We didn't have any actual ice after all." Wilson brought it to his mouth nonetheless. "It's all right, man," he said, his voice muffled around the frozen corn. "Thanks." For a moment, Brandon just stood there after nodding in response, leaning against the hood of a riding lawn mower with his arms crossed over his chest, and I realized as I looked at him that I really had no reason to be wary of him. He might have been Griffin Tomlin's brother, but I was Emily Porterfield's sister, and I wanted nothing to do with her or what she'd done. And I knew one of the things she'd done was irrevocably hurt Brandon Tomlin and the rest of his family, and that they didn't deserve it, even if they didn't—or maybe couldn't—believe me. "Brandon," I said after a moment, feeling that I owed him this much. "I'm sorry my sister killed Griffin." He let out a breath. "I'm sorry about what he did to you." "Wait, you—" I hesitated, not totally convinced that I'd heard him right, my heart beginning to hammer in my chest as I looked at him. "You believe me?" "I didn't want to," he admitted quietly, and I heard the corn kernels shifting in the bag as Wilson adjusted it against his chin. "But yeah, I do. Sometimes he just said these things that didn't sound right. Kind of like he was bragging. I didn't really know what to make of it before my mom told me about what you'd said at the party the other night." "She doesn't believe me, though, right?" "No," he told me. "She thinks it's something Emily's defense lawyer came up with and that you're spreading it around to make it seem more believable or something. Is that why she did it? Like, to get revenge on him or something?" "I thought that was why she did it," I said, feeling a little embarrassed as my voice trembled on the words. I cleared my throat, looking down to the concrete. "But now I think she actually was attracted to him because of what he did . . . maybe she killed him because he didn't like her back or she was jealous. I don't know." "She thinks Emily killed that girl they found in her backyard a couple of weeks ago," Wilson mentioned. "I know she did," I replied, looking over my shoulder at him. "I just—I don't really know why she would've. She was a total stranger." Brandon grunted, shaking his head. "I wouldn't go trying to make sense of the stuff your psycho sibling does," he informed me, his voice becoming more somber as he spoke. "None of it's ever going to make any sense. It's just what's left, I guess." "I don't think that's enough for me." "Well," he responded, bracing his palms on either side of the riding lawn mower and pushing himself off the hood, "you have more than what I got." Then he shot us a tight smile that didn't quite reach his eyes and turned away, slipping inside the house a second later and leaving us there in his garage with a bag of melting corn. I was about to get up from the lawn chair when Wilson brought the corn away from his mouth, still swollen and tinged red, and held it in the air, raising his eyebrows. "Am I supposed to just keep this now?"