Chapter 18 Ronan
Eighteen
Ronan
“Fuck.”
I slammed the door to my apartment shut and tore off my jacket that was drenched from the sudden, cold rain.
“Fuck.”
The look on Shiloh’s face when she answered her door was going to stick with me for a long time. Part shock, part anger, part fucking fear.
She thinks you’re a psycho.
I went to the bathroom to shower and warm up, and the reflection in the mirror agreed. Hair sodden, eyes hooded and ringed with dark circles from so many sleepless nights. So many tired hours spent walking away from nightmares that came anyway when I finally collapsed into bed.
“She’s better off,” I told the reflection.
But I’d known that all along. Shiloh was too good, too beautiful, too whole for someone like me—shattered into pieces until there was hardly anything left but this shit apartment, school (when I wasn’t suspended), and odd jobs that didn’t make a future.
I hung out at the beach at night drinking beer, and I walked around town until my old boots were full of holes, for what?
To make up for a day ten years ago that could not be given back.
Shiloh had plans and dreams. She had a future. What did she need with pieces of me?
The next morning, after waking with screams in my throat and the futon sheets soaked with sweat, I dragged myself into the shower again. To get ready for school.
Because I’m trying, Mom. It’s pointless and stupid, but I’m still trying.
I threw on my jacket and was nearly at the door when a knock came. Maryann was there looking unsure and nervous. Not herself. She was dressed for work in a plain brown skirt with a blazer that more or less matched.
“Hi, Ronan, glad I caught you… Oh, but you’re heading to school, right? I don’t want you to be late.”
“It’s fine,” I snapped, last night’s anger and failure still bitter in my mouth. I exhaled. “Everything okay?”
“We can talk about it later. This afternoon.”
I could see whatever she had to say would kill her to keep inside until this afternoon. I opened the door wider and stepped back to let her in.
“Okay, yeah, I should stop acting like a chickenshit and just come out with it.” She huffed a breath and thrust a small envelope at me. “This month’s rent.”
“Oh, right.” I’d forgotten it was the first already, which meant a trip to Nelson’s after school.
“It’s short a couple hundred bucks,” Maryann said in a rush. “I’ll have it later, but I don’t have it now.” Her eyes fell shut. “I’m sorry. I don’t know—”
“Hi, Ronan!”
Cami and Lily rushed in, and both wrapped their arms around me. They were dressed in matching denim skirt overalls, Lily with a yellow shirt, Cami in blue.
“Today is picture day at school!” Lily said.
“Mommy says we’re not allowed to touch anything,” Cami added. “So we don’t mess up our clothes, but that’s the whole reason for overalls.”
Their mom looked sheepish. “I didn’t plan this. A cute offensive.”
“It’s okay,” I said, feeling a little lighter with the girls running around my nearly empty living area.
“It’s not okay.” Maryann blinked back frustrated tears. “God, I hate this.”
“Hate what, Mommy?” Cami asked.
“Being in traffic?” Lily turned to me confidentially. “Mommy says a lot of bad words when we’re in traffic.”
“That’s a pretty necklace, Ronan!” Cami exclaimed. “Let me see.”
She tugged my hand until I squatted down, and then she and Lily took turns examining the pendant Shiloh had given me. Had made for me.
“It’s so pretty!”
“And pointy. Where did you get it?”
“A friend made it for me.”
“Really? That makes me love it more!” Lily said. “Do you love it?”
Fuck.
“I…like it a lot.”
“Okay, girls, we’re going to make Ronan late,” Maryann said, the worry lines rushing back in to crease her face. “Your uncle?”
“I’ll handle him.”
“How? He never lets this stuff slide. Last time, the late fee nearly killed me, and he told me I might not get a second chance if it happened again.”
“Maryann. I’ll handle him.”
Her eyes filled with tears.
“Why are you crying, Mommy?” Cami asked.
“Because it’s not often we get to see true kindness,” she said, not bothering to hide it. “You’re a good man, Ronan. And that pendant is beautiful. Whoever made it for you obviously cares about you. A lot.”
A flare of hope went up in my chest, warm and bright, then flamed out just as fast. Wanting what I couldn’t have never got me anywhere.
“Thank you, Ronan,” Maryann said, herding the girls to the door. “Thank you so much.”
“Don’t mention it.”
They left, the girls waving enthusiastically, and I went to my bedroom. I lifted a loose board in the floor and reached for the small metal lockbox hidden under it. I didn’t have a bank account; I rarely had money long enough to keep one.
The box held a little more than seven hundred dollars, saved up from odd jobs on Craigslist. More than I’d had in a while. I counted out ten twenties, tore open Maryann’s envelope, and put the cash in with her check.
The day dragged until history. Shiloh had finally shown up after three days of absence but didn’t look my way once.
From my vantage four rows behind her, I did enough looking for both of us.
Her eyes had dark circles, and her foot tapped in her sandal nervously all during Baskin’s lecture on the Cold War.
A war without weapons, only tension and silence.
When class got out, I headed straight back to my place, walking over rain-slicked pavement, thinking (hoping) every car on the road was the creaky, chugging Buick, slowing behind me.
None were.
I went to my place, grabbed the rest of the rent checks left in my manager’s box, stuffed them in a manila envelope, and headed back out again.
Somehow, the Bluffs complex looked even more shitty since last I’d seen it. The roof was in worse shape after a rainy winter, and the cheap, dark-green paint was already chipping off in huge chunks.
I knocked on my uncle’s door.
“It’s open.”
I stepped inside, mentally preparing myself for the claustrophobia of his crammed apartment. It was worse.
There was a second small coffee table in his living room with a foldable bed frame stacked on top of it.
A brand-new mattress, still in its plastic, leaned against one wall.
The TV was on—I wondered if it ever got a break—with Nelson parked in front of it.
The scent of microwaved ravioli hung in the air.
I nodded at the furniture. “What’s all this?”
“Tenant eviction,” Nelson said. He was wearing a stained undershirt, boxers that brushed his knees, and black socks pulled up his pale legs that were crisscrossed with bulging veins. “But the mattress is new. Figured you could use it.”
“This is for me?”
“You had a birthday, right?”
My birthday was weeks ago. Usually it came and went, uneventful. Except this year, I’d had Shiloh’s pendant, Holden’s boots, and Miller’s song. And now a real bed instead of that shitty futon.
Maybe I’ll sleep.
“How did you know?” I asked.
“That social worker, Alicia, called me. Made me promise not to forget, but I did. Hey, better late than never, right? She sends her regards.”
Alicia Marquez was one of the few people who’d ever shown me kindness over the years, going above and beyond the duties of her job to make sure I was okay. Hell, even after I turned eighteen, she found Nelson.
Except that didn’t make sense.
I hadn’t thought about it at the time; I was just happy to get the fuck out of Wisconsin and be with family. But Alicia had been searching for a blood relative since I was eight years old, and Nelson showed up after I aged out of the system?
I turned the thought over and over in my mind, like the envelope in my hands.
“That’s the rent?” Nelson held out his hand. I gave it to him. “Any issues?”
“No. What’s our late fee policy again?”
He frowned, peering into the envelope. “Seventy-five dollars for the first week. One fifty for the next. If they’re late more than once, they’re out.”
“Seems kind of rough.”
“Rough? That’s the rules.”
“Do you ever let it slide?”
“Why the hell would I do that?”
I shrugged. “Shit happens. Circumstances.”
“Not my problem. I got my own circumstances. Don’t need to deal with someone else’s.” He narrowed his eyes. “Why?”
I shrugged again, not looking at him.
Nelson snorted and hauled himself out of his recliner to hobble to the kitchen. He didn’t look well. His skin had a yellowish tinge to it, his hair thin and brittle. The strength under his bulk that had reminded me of my father was just bulk now.
“You’re doing a good job,” he said, poking his head inside the fridge so I barely heard him. “Better than I expected.”
“Thanks.”
“Keep it up. Don’t get soft just because you know the tenants now. And their circumstances.”
Too late.
“What about you?” I asked.
“Huh?”
I raised my voice. “How are you?”
His head popped out of the fridge. “What’s it to you?” Nelson emerged from the kitchen with two beers. “Here.” He thrust one at me and clinked his to mine. “Happy birthday.”
We both drank, and then Nelson sank down heavily in his chair. I sat in the other, toying with the bottle. The TV blared a commercial for a local used car dealership.
Maybe it was last night’s fuckup with Shiloh—another good thing in my life that had slipped through my fingers.
Or maybe it was that I knew, even with a decent bed and a real mattress, the nightmares would still find me because they were in my blood.
My blood that was his blood, while hers had been splattered all over the kitchen floor so I was alone for ten fucking years…
I couldn’t let it go.
“Alicia called you?” My voice sounded tight.
“That’s what I said.”
“And she found you last summer? When I was at the farm in Manitowoc?”
He grunted what might’ve been a yes, not looking at me.
“Nelson.”
“What? Christ, I’m trying to watch my show…”
I concentrated on peeling the label off my beer bottle. “Alicia’s job ended when I turned eighteen. But she worked her ass off for ten years before that. Looking for you.”
“Yeah? So?”
“She found you, didn’t she?” I said, peeling. “But you waited until I was eighteen to come forward.”
He shifted in his recliner. “You’re asking this now?”
“I’m asking.”
His eyes went back on the TV, not answering.
The label came off. I crumpled it up in my hand. My voice was low. Stony. “I did ten years in foster care, Nelson.”
“So?”
“So?”
“That’s what I said. We all got tough luck stories. You think you’re special?”
“No, but—”
“Good, ’cause you aren’t. Remember that.”
The old anger boiled up in me and spilled over. I chucked the balled-up label on the floor where it joined the rest of the trash. “I remember. I remember being a scared little kid, shuffled around from house to house. No family. No nothing,” I said, my voice rising. “Just where the fuck were you?”
Nelson’s head jerked back and swiveled to me, his eyes wide. “Beg your pardon? You talk to me like that when I’m trying to do something nice for you? Well, shit, I learned my lesson, didn’t I? Never again. You get nothing else from me if that’s how you’re going to act. Spoiled brat…”
I barely heard him, the bloody memories washing over me. “I was eight years old when he killed her.”
“Here we go again.”
“You knew. You fucking knew what happened, and you stayed away. I was in the system for ten fucking years.”
Ten years of foster life. A soul-crushing weight I carried every day on top of losing my mother.
Abusive guardians or negligent ones that used me for a paycheck.
Beatings, locked closets, hunger, and cold, harsh words and violence.
It all pressed down on me until I couldn’t breathe, until I wanted to hit something until my bones broke. To feel anything that wasn’t that.
“You knew I was out there…and you let me fucking rot until I could be useful to you. Free labor. Not family.”
“Boo-fucking-hoo,” Nelson snapped back. “You look all right. You survived.”
I put the naked beer bottle down before it shattered in my grip.
“Look,” he said into my silence. “I wasn’t ever going to be any kind of a parent. Can you see me with a kid? Doing what…cooking you breakfast? Sack lunches? Making sure you did your homework?”
You could’ve tried, I wanted to say, but I was done asking for anything from anyone. Even if that ask was ten years too late.
“Besides,” Nelson said, turning back to the TV. “We’re here now, aren’t we?”
The anger gusted out of me. That was as good as it was going to get. My hand went to Shiloh’s compass pendant.
For when you feel adrift.
I closed my eyes for a moment, held it tight, inhaled. Then I let go, exhaling. Calmer now.
“Yeah,” I said dully. “I’m still fucking here.”
***
Nelson let me borrow his ancient pickup truck to take the furniture back to my complex. Maryann poked her head out of her unit when I pulled into the parking lot, as if she’d been watching for me.
“Hey,” she said, walking to meet me, her hands twisting. “How’d it go?”
I unlocked the truck bed. “Fine. Nelson said you’re good. He’ll waive the late fee.”
“Really?” Her brow wrinkled. “That doesn’t sound like him.”
I shrugged. “I must’ve caught him in a good mood.” Her eyes narrowed, and I busied myself hefting the mattress onto my shoulders. “I could go back and ask him to reconsider if you want.”
She waved her hands. “Ha, no. Thanks. Thank you, Ronan. It won’t happen again.”
“Yep.”
She said something else, but I pretended not to hear it.
Her gratitude made me sick. Where the fuck were the people who were supposed to take care of her?
They left her so alone…so adrift…that she needed my help?
Was that the point of life? A lucky few would make it unscarred while everyone else was on their fucking own?
Bullshit.
The new coffee table was just as old and plain as the first one—chipped wood and stains on the surface. But my living room looked more like a living room. The bed was a real bed. The futon went straight to the dumpster, and I lay down that night on an actual mattress.
The nightmares came anyway.