Chapter 29
— Chapter 29 —
“Aubrey!” I shout as I run to the back of the basement. She’s up on the granite ledge, swaddled in a sleeping bag, lying on a pile of vinyl cushions from lawn chairs we threw away decades ago. She’s using a battered Rayovac lantern as a reading light, holding a composition notebook open against her chest.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I say, climbing the step ladder, crawling over to her. I don’t know if my body hurts. I can’t feel myself. It wouldn’t matter if I could.
“Aunt Frey,” Aubrey says, sobbing.
I see her little-kid face, all the heartbreak rushing out. I pull her into my shoulder. Her ribs shake violently. The last time I hugged her, I could hold all of her in my lap, and now she’s bigger than I am.
“I’m sorry, goose. I’m sorry. You can stay here,” I say. “All the time. Of course you can.” It feels like her tears are running down my face, but they might be my own.
“What about my mom?” she says.
“Who cares what your mom thinks?”
She lets out a sob that almost sounds like a laugh. “Don’t leave again,” she says, leaning back to watch me answer, making sure I tell the truth.
She may as well be four years old, covered in ice cream. She’s a wonder. An earthquake. Every last chunk of plaster in my heart turns to dust.
“I won’t,” I say, and mean it.
I tuck Aubrey into my old bed and bring her a glass of water and a warm washcloth to wipe her face.
“Who took you?” I ask.
“Huh?”
“Bee told me why your mom kicked you out. You didn’t have to go alone, right?”
“I didn’t have an abortion,” she says. “I took the morning-after pill. I asked Kelly if she could get her sister to loan me her ID and drive me to… like, White Plains or Mount Kisco so I could try to get it at a pharmacy where no one knows me. But Kelly wouldn’t even ask her sister, and then she told everyone I had an abortion.”
“Why didn’t you tell your mom the truth?”
Aubrey makes the squinty face she always made as a kid, like she’s reading her thoughts from a page she can see in her mind. “Then she’d know something real about me.” She wipes her cheeks with her clenched fist. Jaw working hard. “Does it even matter if she thinks that? It’s no fucking reason to kick your kid out of the house.”
“You’re right. It is absolutely no fucking reason to kick your kid out of the house.”
She stares at me like she’s trying to read something from my mind now. “I don’t think it’s the real reason. She’s always looking to blow shit up so she doesn’t have to deal with me. If it were Austin in a few years—if he took his girlfriend to get an abortion, she’d give him the money to pay for it. But she loves Austin.”
“Hey,” I say. “I love you.”
She grabs my hand the way she did when she was little, squeezing my fingers together. Her eyelids are heavy. She must be exhausted. I can’t imagine she slept well in the basement.
“You got to the pharmacy, though, right?” I ask. “Are you okay? Do you need to go to Planned Parenthood?”
“That’s what I did,” she says. “My friend who took me said I should see a doctor too, not just get pills.” There’s a funny lilt in her voice when she says friend . I think if Shray took her, she would have said.
“You sure?”
“I got excellent care,” she says, her words slurring into sleep.
I sit on the side of the bed until her grip on my hand loosens and her breathing slips into even measures, then I sneak downstairs, one foot at a time, pressing my weight into each step slowly so it doesn’t squeak. I go outside. But I don’t want her to hear me. The front porch feels too close, then the landing is still too close, and I am down the driveway and walking up the hill when I finally call Jam. It’s almost morning. The cold air makes my lungs itch. The lights are out at all the other houses. Just moon. Clear sky.
Jam picks up the phone this time. “Hey.”
“Hey,” I say, panting hard.
“Where are you?”
“Walking over.”
“I’ll meet you.”
I hang up and keep walking. The asphalt is shining. I wish this town always felt so quiet and clear. When I round the bend, Jam is running toward me. Sneakers on wet asphalt might be my favorite sound. I walk slower and slower. He runs to close our distance.
“You okay?” he asks, wiping my cheeks with his sleeve. “You okay?”
Everything is damp and I felt like I was part of it. I hadn’t even noticed my tears.
“You took my niece to get the morning-after pill.”
“Yeah. She was crying at work because she couldn’t find a ride to White Plains. So I told her I’d drive her after my shift. But on the way, when I asked what street she needed to get to, and she said, ‘Wherever there’s a pharmacy,’ I figured what was up and talked her into Planned Parenthood. I’m sorry I didn’t say anything—it wasn’t mine to tell.”
I say, “Thank you,” but they’re such silly little words. Hardly enough.
“I’d do anything for you,” Jam says. “Even when I thought you were gone for good.”
In the moonlight, he’s shining too—so beautiful—and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to explain the way I love him. I’ve never met another person with a heart as broad and strange and true. We fall in step, our shoes making the same sounds in the same rhythm, and I’m pretty sure Jam is keeping time with me on purpose.
“Did you know Steena kicked her out?” I ask.
Jam shakes his head. “Shit.”
“Shit.”
“So, she lives with you now?
“Yeah. Of course.”
“I won’t let Steena kill you,” Jam says, and he holds my hand and walks me home and sleeps on the couch with me, even though we barely fit.