Chapter 15 #2
His mouth twitched. Shadows lurked beneath those yellow eyes.
My words, it seemed, were not the ones he’d wanted to hear.
“It seems there has been a misunderstanding. You did not give a date as to when the house would not be yours, dearest. And from what I overheard”—he inclined his head in the direction Eleanora had disappeared—“you are in no rush, yes?” His tongue flitted behind his teeth. Crescent moons lined his under eyes.
I settled back on my heels. Waited until I heard Eleanora’s steps move farther away. “Why do you think I was looking for you? Of course I’m in a rush.”
A rumble came from his throat. “I’m afraid you can’t rush these things, Landry.” I could have sworn his form flickered—grayed skin to sun-kissed. “I do not have the ability to show up at every beck and call. I come forward when I am able, so I’m so terribly sorry that I cannot appear like a genie.”
“And this room?” Eleanora called.
I ignored her and grabbed the closet door handle. I opened it an inch farther. That ash and earthy scent filled my nostrils, that familiar thump-thump of his opened chest echoing in the closet. “Hadrian. I’m serious. Go away. We need to talk about this later.”
A strangled chuckle. “Pot to kettle.”
I knew he was needling me. I knew it like I knew the sun would rise in the morning and that my father had an infidelity problem. But still, my tongue started moving before I had a chance to reign it in.
“What happens if she sees you?”
“Ah, by the time she realizes I am here, I will be gone.” His horn scraped the door. Inches separated us. “And she will think you are a loon, talking to an empty closet.”
“I thought you couldn’t control it.”
“It has been easier, the last few days, but I didn’t want to raise your hopes.”
I shot him a glare and exhaled through my nostrils. “Why don’t you stick to—”
“The bathroom could be worse.” Eleanora’s steps started toward me.
I leaned on the door. It didn’t shut.
“Hadrian,” I snapped.
Another laugh. This time when I pushed, the closet door closed. I turned, back pressed to the door, just as Eleanora entered the hall, her finger pressed to the corner of her mouth as if to rub away excess lipstick.
She stared at me. Glanced to the closet. My face flamed.
“That’s great!” I blurted. Too enthusiastic. I snapped a finger. “I actually want your opinion on a few things over here before you go—”
“And upstairs?” Her red nail pointed up the spiral staircase just as I turned to one of the empty bedrooms. It was so much smaller than the main stairwell, spindly and old, like an old man’s spine.
My throat started burning. Hundreds of needles pricking my skin at once. “You mean the attic?”
“What are the plans for it?” She brushed by me so she faced away from the closet. “If there is a closet in it, technically you could call it another bedroom.” Her eyebrows arched and her forehead didn’t crease.
The closet door clicked open behind her. There Hadrian hovered, right over Eleanora’s shoulder.
Dread flooded me. The tiny baby hairs at the crown of her head danced when his mouth curved into a grin.
“I didn’t plan on it. It’s great for storage.” Even to my own ears, my words wobbled a bit.
“Can I take a loo—”
Hadrian’s claws slipped from the shadows. Curled around the edge of the door.
I grabbed her arm. She froze. Stared at my hand. Immediately, I jerked it back. “There are a lot of things up there of my aunt’s. If you don’t mind leaving it, for now.”
She huffed. “All right.”
His claws slipped away, and the door drifted shut. The message was clear: The attic is left alone.
I couldn’t say I blamed him.
If I was a smoking kind of woman, I would have lit up right then.
The air brushed cool against my skin, but not cool enough to warrant the warm coffee mug in my hand.
Tendrils of steam curled up, over, and around the lip.
The only sounds were the hoot owls somewhere from above, the whisper of rustling leaves, and the rocking chair’s legs on the porch concrete.
Every time I rocked forward, I thought of the moment I catapulted over the edge as a kid, right into the bushes. No railing, no soft landing.
Maybe that’s why I wanted to down a mug of stout coffee well after dark.
I needed a reminder that I was alive. That the world didn’t revolve around projects and getting through the day to only repeat it the next.
That Hadrian hadn’t almost blown his cover today, on purpose, or whatever it was he’d planned on doing, if only putting my feet to the fire.
The front door squeaked open.
Emma’s head poked out. A moth flapped around the porch light, its powdered wings whispering low.
“I left you fettuccini alfredo in the fridge if you want it,” she said. Her mouth puckered, half in thought, half-expectant.
“Thanks.” I gave an in-between smile and stopped rocking. “I might get some in a bit.”
Her expression turned thoughtful. We sat in silence for a moment. I couldn’t tell if she caught my lie or not.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “For what I said. All of it.”
I nodded. “Me, too.”
She stepped barefoot out onto the porch and crossed her arms in front of her. Her T-shirt swallowed her to midthigh, bleach splattered and oversized. “I might have to go back home for a bit to finish a few work things. I didn’t want to, you know, vanish. Because we weren’t talking much.”
I shrugged. It was like she stood on one side of the property, and I on the other, while trying to communicate via hand signals. I didn’t like it.
But I didn’t feel like I could help it, either.
“I didn’t help things,” I murmured. I looked back out over the front lawn. Moonlight stitched through blades of grass.
She traced that same patch of skin on top of her hand, brow furrowed. “Can I tell you something? You don’t have to say anything, if you don’t want to. I promise.”
My spine fused. The grip on my mug turned to the point of scalding, I held it so tight. “Sure.”
“I used a lot of laxatives in high school. It happened the summer after junior year. You’d started talking to Ivan about that time, I think?
” Her gaze grew distant. The moth fluttered from the porch light, around the crown of her head, then back again.
“I didn’t have the … restraint, I guess you could say, to not eat.
The laxatives were the easiest thing.” A measured breath. “And the throwing up.”
Crickets.
I didn’t realize I’d stopped rocking. I kept my eyes to my sandals, how my toes brushed the lip of the sole, how the wind had even quieted.
A sudden familiarity overwhelmed me. Anger, at what Emma was admitting to. Not anger for her actions, but anger that her brain had convinced her it was necessary.
“In the spring, one of the guys went around asking the girls how much they weighed because they wanted to stick one of us in that giant tire they used for track. You know the one?”
I nodded absently. “The one the football team used to flip during practice.”
Her throat bobbed. “I remember I said how much I weighed. You wanna know what he told me? He said, ‘That’s not too bad.’ ”
A hot, brittle thing stretched awake inside my gut. It clawed, inch by inch, up my ribs, until it curled against my heart and hissed, vicious. That’s not too bad, as if Emma could have done better. As if she wasn’t enough, just as she was.
“And then you started … changing, too,” she whispered.
The coffee swayed in my mug. I started rocking again. Tipped my head against the wooden rungs as her words washed over me.
“No one noticed,” she murmured. “But I did.”
I shook my head. I wasn’t sure at what—maybe because she hadn’t said anything.
Hadn’t told me sooner. Or it was in disgust and frustration with me—for not wanting people to notice, but feeling almost valuable when they did.
As if they cared enough about me to only say something when I was slowly dying, inside and out.
“But I—I didn’t want you to think you’re alone,” she whispered. Still, eyes forward. When she finally looked to me, I made a point to look away.
The knot next to my heart burned.
Maybe you started it, that little voice said. You made her that way. Look what you did.
“I’m sorry, Emma,” I whispered.
“Why are you sorry?”
I shrugged. “For everything.” Everything, the last few days, for our life. For my choices. For the ones I kept making. Sorry that I’d wanted her to see me as perfect, so I’d never told her. Sorry that, even now, I couldn’t bring myself to be brave like her and talk about it yet.
Her mouth pursed. “I just hope … you know I’m here. If you ever need someone to listen. And not judge you. Because I don’t blame you for your struggles, Lan. I want you to know that.”
Emma slipped back inside. Then it was just me and the crickets.
Well past a quarter after midnight, I walked by the paneled door in the hall, a tugging sensation holding me near. I walked by once. Then again. I sat on my bed. Rustled around in the sheets. Then I got back up, walked to the bathroom and hovered there, unsure.
Open me, the door whispered.
Still, my heart raced at the thought. What would I find if I opened it now?
Would another version of Hadrian be in there?
Another memory he’d had? Something that would help me?
The thought made me consider it. I hung on that precipice, holding the doorknob, so close to letting go.
Would it swallow me whole and get rid of these emotions twirling in my chest?
Would it momentarily take away Emma’s words and quiet my mind?
That gritty, heavy feeling had been festering since she’d left me on the front porch.
How had I been so narrow-minded? For years, all I’d seen were my issues.
She had noticed my struggles, but I’d never once noticed hers. I’d assumed she was perfect. All smooth edges and polished finishes, while I’d crumbled in a corner, but I was wrong.
My sister had been hurting.
And I’d turned a blind eye without meaning to.
That gritty lump in the back of my mind turned into a burning ember. Then, slowly, a fire—crackling and spitting and hurt.
I padded back to my bed and curled on my side. Tonight, the trees were still while the TV murmured.
A squeak spiked my attention. I squinted in the low light, at first thinking Emma had opened my bedroom door—when I saw the closet. The door was ajar, only a crack. No more than what Hadrian had peeked out of before.
I rubbed my eyes. “Hadrian?”
I waited for two yellow eyes to appear, maybe his rows of serrated teeth and stretched lips, but nothing did.
I couldn’t help it. Maybe it was the silence that lured me in, spurred the worry in my mind like stoking a flame. Maybe it was because I couldn’t see him, if he was there, that encouraged me a little.
I needed him.
“Hadrian, I messed up,” I whispered. It was easier, in the dark with my eyes to the wall, to talk as if he were listening.
The pressure of his attention, the shifting of expressions, no longer applied.
It was just me and the shadows and my trembling words.
“I didn’t know. All this time, I didn’t know Emma was struggling.
I ignored it because I was only worried about me. Why was I so selfish?”
Words began to tumble out. I told him about how my mother found out my father was cheating, and walking home in tears because I’d been bullied off the bus.
I told him about the ants in the kitchen cabinets and the fear of food because eating the food meant it was gone, and once it was gone I couldn’t control it—and somehow, even now with a job and money, I couldn’t find a way to jump the hurdle.
I told him about the nights I used to sit in my apartment and watch the cars drive by until the early morning hours while I picked at scabs along my arms.
I told him about the struggle of keeping friends because everyone wanted to know each other, but the last time I let someone know me, he used my own bones as picks and slowly, slowly removed the thick skin I’d carefully crafted.
Until I was nothing but a raw, sensitive woman who had to figure out how to put herself back together, because people hurt people. I’d hurt people.
“And I ignored her. My own sister, I ignored her, Hadrian.” I cried into my pillow, eyes squeezed shut. “And I have this … this ugly thing in my chest that I can’t get rid of.”
So ugly, it was only a matter of time before Emma saw it, too.
Before she left me, just like everyone else had.