Chapter Six
Someone in another room dropped a glass and the sound of it shattering jolted Audrey out of her… temporary absence.
She was in the bathroom, no idea how long she’d been there.
Her phone was in one hand, scrolling aimlessly without really taking any of it in.
And, as she tapped her fingertips against the thumb of her other hand, she registered that her heart was beating too quickly.
Her brain didn’t like the rhythm as she tried to keep time with it.
She tried to block her racing pulse out, slowing her fingers and counting to thirty-two. Pausing and going again.
If she did it enough times, everything would be fine.
Things weren’t better after six rounds, but someone banged on the door so Audrey had no choice but to leave the room.
Her body ached as she headed back towards the kitchen. All she wanted was to go home, but home was very far away indeed, and she’d agreed to be here. She couldn’t leave after just one day. She had to be stronger than that.
The noise when she entered the room was like being beaten with a bat, physical, overwhelming, and painful.
She could handle chaos in her life but she didn’t do well with it at home, and, while this wasn’t her home, her whole family was here, and that was the problem.
Everything was out of place. Disorganized, dirty, messy…
contaminated, and Audrey couldn’t make it right.
The sound was just a representation of the mess, another assault on her senses that made everything hurt.
“There you go,” Cal said, grinning widely at her. “Audrey’s here now. She’ll do the dishes. Might as well make use of that OCD of hers.”
Audrey felt like ice had been dropped directly into her stomach.
She’d explained more than enough times that it didn’t work like that.
While, yes, she needed things to be clean and tidy, she didn’t just enjoy cleaning everyone’s mess up.
But they couldn’t wrap their heads around it, and it always segued into discussing her job and how incompatible it seemed with what she was saying OCD was.
As if OCD had any interest in being logical and making sense.
Her dad shot her a look, stepping away from the sink and drying his hands. He sighed at whatever her expression was doing. “Don’t be stubborn, Audrey.”
“I didn’t say anything,” she replied dryly.
He huffed a laugh. “You think we don’t know that expression? Are you forgetting we raised you? We know you better than you think.”
Every part of her was giving up functioning if the pain in her intercostal muscles as she breathed was anything to go by.
It wasn’t new. Her brain was perfectly aware of all the ways she shut down, all the ways she hurt and ached when she was around her family.
She just hadn’t managed to hit the point where refusing to be around them hurt less than this.
“No,” she said quietly, rolling up her sleeves and heading for the sink.
The cocktail of shame and guilt that shot through her tasted like bile, felt like burning, and had her head spinning unpleasantly.
Shame at not being enough, not being the daughter they wanted, the child and sister they thought they had.
And at not being strong enough to refuse them. And all of that carried guilt too.
What a great gift.
Her mom smiled and patted her shoulder. “Try not to look too excited about the things you love.”
“I don’t actually love cleaning everyone’s plates,” she tried, her voice feeling a million miles from the person her colleagues all thought she was. Would they even recognize this version of her?
“Nobody here loves cleanliness the way you do.”
“And, besides,” Cal added, “if you didn’t love doing dishes, you wouldn’t spend so much time investigating them and washing them again before we use them.”
That wasn’t how it worked either. She didn’t like doing that. She had to do it. Had to check, had to know, couldn’t risk the contamination, the sickness and potential death that would follow using unwashed utensils. It wasn’t something you enjoyed. It was something you did to survive.
“At least, this way,” her dad said, smile audible, “you’re saving time at the next meal. If you’ve washed them, you won’t have to wash them again later.”
That wasn’t necessarily true either. Depending on how… dirty her mind felt the next time she tried to eat, she might still need to sanitize things.
“Yeah, it’s fine,” she said, forcing her voice to sound normal as she fought the urge to smash the dirty dishes.
She’d never do that, of course, but there were so many of them, and they were filled with everyone else’s food scraps, and everything about it felt wrong.
The impulse hammered in her mind, amplifying itself the longer she stood there, begging to be heard, trying to promise her everything would be okay if she just broke them all instead. “I’ve got it.”
And she plunged her hands into the warm water.
She felt like she was going to pass out until the rest of her family left the room. At least, after tonight, it wouldn’t be their job to clean up for a couple of meals. She’d get away from it for a while. Kind of.
Everyone else had already retired to their rooms or to relax elsewhere, and, once her parents and brother finally swept out of the room, breathing came a little easier.
Audrey still felt dizzy but at least she wasn’t having to perform for anyone else.
And she was getting through the dishes. Things were cleaner, tidier.
There was order in the room again. No chaos, no loud noises.
She circled the sponge on each of the dishes seven times. Wiped diagonally seven times. Rinsed. Checked them with her hand as she ran them under clean water. Seven more wipes with the sponge. Rinsed. Checked again. Rinsed. And placed them on the draining board.
Everything was okay. Everything was going to be okay so long as she could do this right.
By the time she’d finished, the entirety of the downstairs had grown quiet and dark. Audrey didn’t mind that. She was safe at night, in the dark, alone.
She climbed the stairs quietly, not looking to see anyone else tonight.
Her room was like a sanctuary. Sure, she’d rather be in her own apartment where she understood everything, controlled everything, but this was her private space, and nobody else was in it.
They had an early morning tomorrow. The annual welcome breakfast. The first morning after everyone was there.
Audrey didn’t want to go. She didn’t want to get up for it.
But she knew she would. She wouldn’t want to seem ungrateful or selfish.
Her feelings were just a temporary thing that would pass and everything would be fine—great, even.
She pulled open the floor-to-ceiling curtains, revealing the door to the balcony. Snow would be along in a few days if the current forecast stood. Tonight, though, it was icy cold. She could already see frost forming on the trees that surrounded the cabin.
Cold was good. Night was good. It was peaceful.
She pulled an extra sweater on over the one she was already wearing and opened the door.
The cold hit her like a wall and actually made her smile. Sometimes, she forgot just how frigid it got here, but she’d never forget how to dress for it. Usually, that entailed more layers than she was currently wearing. When she needed to shock her body out of its painful spiral, it did not.
She leaned against the wooden railing. In the quiet, she could hear the occasional traffic from the nearby highway. Late-night traffic felt soothing. Living in California was like that, she supposed. She was now a tangled mix of empty roads and traffic both feeling comforting.
Her therapist had done a lot of breath work with her, and it was often helpful, but Audrey liked it best in the cold. She did it with cups of ice back home when the weather was too warm—good for bug populations, not great for breathing cold air.
As some of the acute panic slipped from her body, she closed her eyes and concentrated on the cold night raising goosebumps on her exposed skin.
Tracking the air entering her lungs was easy when it was so cold.
Fresh, prickly as it surged down into her chest. Bizarrely soothing, reassuring, exactly what she needed.
She counted, triangle breathing, grounding herself.
Why would she ever fall for someone and bring them here?
If she ever did fall in love with someone, wouldn’t her highest priority be protecting them from everything her family made her feel?
She would need to bring them to Horrocks, though.
Without her family. Of all the things she’d want to share in a relationship, that maple bourbon balsamic was pretty high on the list.
A door opened and she jolted, whipping towards the sound.
It hadn’t really registered that she was on a shared balcony.
For one minute, she wanted to run, to hide, to be completely out of sight.
Then, her eyes met that round face and those icy-blue eyes from earlier and the urge to bolt wasn’t quite as strong.
“Hello,” Hallie said with a smile, voice hushed as she pulled the door to her room shut behind her. “I wasn’t expecting to have to fight for the balcony in the middle of the night.”
Audrey smiled back. Her pulse was still a little too fast but Hallie was one of the easiest people here to be around.
River wasn’t bad, probably her usual favorite, but there was something about how much Hallie hated the family’s comments, how she didn’t want to be part of that, hadn’t ever been conditioned to think like the rest of them that just made her…
gentle in Audrey’s mind, peaceful to be around.
“Of course,” Hallie continued, stepping up beside Audrey and wrapping the wool blankets she’d brought out with her tighter around her body, “I wasn’t expecting it to just be you out here, so maybe I don’t need to fight to the death for balcony rights after all.”