Chapter 22 Chapter Twenty Two
My mother just stood there stiffly, her fingers twitching with anxiety as she struggled with herself.
“Mom? Aren’t you going to do anything?” I asked.
“I’m… I’m sorry sweetheart. It’s for the best. You’ll see.”
Even as I was pushing myself up off the floor, even as the side of my face throbbed with thrumming heat, she just stood there, her eyes wide and wet and she didn't move.
I looked at her for one long moment.
Then I picked up my bag from the floor, and ran past both of them, up the stairs to my childhood bedroom, locking the door behind me.
It was exactly as I'd left it. I walked through the front door and found everything exactly where it had always been while downstairs our living room had been stripped and rearranged around a stranger.
It was too much.
My bookshelf sat there untouched, with the cracked spine books stacked horizontally on top of each other because I'd run out of vertical space and I was too much of a nerd to stop collecting more books.
The desk where I'd done homework since I was nine had a small framed photo on the nightstand with a picture of me and Dad at the beach, me maybe seven years old, both of us squinting into the sun and laughing at something in the distance.
I collapsed on the edge of the bed, pulled the funeral dress over my head and held it in my hands.
And then I stopped holding it, and the tears started to fall so hard I couldn’t stop them. My shoulders heaved, my lower lip trembling as I sobbed and screamed into a pillow to muffle the sound.
The grave this morning, the earth falling from my open hand and now Gerald coming to break apart whatever was left of my family. “Daddy, I miss you. Please come get me.” I wailed.
I had spent far too long operating on autopilot, keeping it together, trying to be practical and professional, running away from my bullies, juggling my schoolwork and my new job and my mother’s emotions as well as mine.
But at some point, something had to give, and as it turned out, it was all too much for a sixteen-year-old girl to carry alone, no matter how practical she was.
I lay down on my side and pulled my knees up and sobbed into my bedsheets like I was twelve years old.
I cried for my dad, for his brown jacket that wasn't on the hook anymore. For the crossword puzzle that nobody was doing badly at the kitchen table.
I cried because today of all days, the day we'd put him in the ground, my mother had brought home his replacement and stood there limp and silent while the man hit her daughter across the face.
I cried until I couldn't anymore and then I lay there in the quiet with my cheek against the wet pillow and stared blankly at the wall.
A soft knock came at the door a few hours later.
"Lena." My mother's voice, low and careful, just above a whisper. "Baby, I made something to eat. Will you come down?"
I said nothing.
"Please. Just come down for a little while. You need to eat something, you haven't had anything all day and I'm worried about…"
"Go away," I said flatly.
There was a long pause from the other side, so long I’d thought she’d given up and walked away.
"I know you're angry with me." She said eventually.
I looked at the ceiling, angry was too small a word for what I was feeling. More than anything, I was disappointed, but I didn’t say that.
"I know. And I understand. But please just let me explain, if you'll let me…"
"Please go away, Mom.”
"Okay," she said quietly after a much longer pause. "Okay. I'll leave a plate outside the door for you.”
I heard her footsteps move away down the hall, then I heard the low sound of Gerald's voice somewhere below, and then her quieter response, and then nothing.
I lay there, my sadness giving way to fury as I kicked my pillow off the bed and into the wall.
I would rather sleep on the streets! I thought.
I would rather pack a bag right now and walk out of this house and sleep on an actual park bench than sit at a dinner table across from that man and pretend any of this was normal.
Dad had been in the ground for less than twelve hours, for goodness sake. His chair was still warm.
But that fantasy lasted about thirty seconds before the practical part of my brain, the part that never fully switched off no matter how much I wanted it to, cleared its throat and pointed out that I had Martin's assessment to prepare and six subjects of Jace's curriculum to organise, not to mention projects of my own, plus I needed to be at the Dawson house by ten in the morning.
I sat up, wiped my face with the back of my hand and got my bookbag.
I worked until past midnight, which was nothing new. I did Martin's assessment first, going through his responses carefully, noting where he'd rushed and where he'd slowed down, building tomorrow's session around those patterns.
He needed to read more confidently so we would have to start with words he already knew and work our way up from there.
As for Jace's curriculum, I made a few changes to it anyway. Not that he'd cooperate with any of it, but at least having it there gave me something to stand on when he decided to be difficult, which he would, because that was simply what he did.
The work helped as it always did. When everything else was falling apart, there was something calming about a clean fresh page and a problem with an actual answer.
I fell asleep at my desk somewhere around one in the morning with my cheek on Martin's reading comprehension sheets.
When I woke up, grey early light was coming through the curtains and the house was quiet, and for a few seconds I didn't remember any of it.
Until I did.
I sat up and checked the time, it was already eight forty, and I needed to be at the Dawson house by ten.
I listened for some noise inside the house, maybe no one else was awake because I heard nothing from downstairs.
But Gerald could be anywhere down there and I had absolutely no interest in finding out. The thought of walking through that kitchen, sitting at that table, making polite morning conversation with my father's usurper while my mother made coffee and pretended everything was fine, made my stomach turn so completely that I was on my feet and looking for an alternative before I'd fully decided to.
What do I do? What do I do? How do I leave without taking the front door? I thought to myself.
I looked at my bedroom window. Bingo.
I swatted my hand this way and that to send the pigeons flying off my windowsill, then peered down at the drop.
It wasn't that far… right? The porch roof was right there, and from the porch roof it was maybe six feet to the garden, and I'd climbed worse than that.
Actually, scratch that.
I had never climbed anything in my life, nor had I ever once done anything that could be described as sneaking out. I was a good kid and good kids listened to their parents.
Well, to hell with that. The person I was being good for was gone now, so what was the point?
After showering and brushing my teeth, I picked up my bag, checked my uniform, and opened up the window.
The morning air was cold and sharp and the porch roof was slightly damp under my hands but it held, and I went slowly, carefully, one handhold at a time, telling myself not to look down.
Finally, my feet touched the grass and I stood upright and intact and genuinely a little surprised at myself.
I dusted off my knees and turned toward the street.
"Lena." My mother's voice was sharp with alarm, coming from the downstairs window, She’d caught me! "Lena, what are you doing? Wait—"
I gripped my bag tightly, running away faster as soon as I heard her calling my name.
"Lena, please…"
I turned the corner and kept going and didn't look back.
The Dawson house took forty minutes to reach on foot. I arrived with two minutes to spare, slightly out of breath.
I knocked, waited for a bit for an answer, but when no one came, I knocked again.
I had been fully expecting Mrs Dawson to be the one greeting me cheerfully at the door, but that’s not who I saw.
Jace leaned against the frame in grey sweatpants and slides with no shirt and his bed hair going in different directions like he'd been dragging his hands through it all morning.
I braced myself for some insult or harsh word or mocking comment, but none came.
He didn't say anything cutting, in fact, he didn't say anything at all for a moment.
He only studied my face in the morning light, his expression hardening.
Then out of nowhere, he reached out his hand to grip my chin, turning my face this way and that.
"Lena." His voice came out dark and concerned, "Who did this to you?”