Chapter 4 Darla
Darla
The Maple house never slept, even at midnight.
When I let myself in, it was like stepping onto the set of a haunted sitcom; every board creaked at a pitch and frequency only my father could hear.
The air was a stale soup of lemon Pledge, candle wax, and the lingering ghost of my mother’s White Shoulders perfume.
Even after all these years, it stuck to the drapes and carpets, impossible to wash out. Maybe he kept it there on purpose.
I slipped off my shoes in the foyer, tiptoed past the umbrella stand, and held my breath as I inched the coat closet shut.
I could hear the muted oooh-oooh of church choir practice drifting from somewhere down the hall, the sopranos shrieking the high notes like they were calling for help.
Probably a recording; Dad used them for meditation or punishment, depending on his mood.
The living room was black except for the interrogation lamp over his favorite chair.
Reverend Archie Maple, The Shepherd, the man who could silence a megachurch by raising one eyebrow, sat in the recliner with a Bible on his lap and a glass of rye at his elbow.
His white dress shirt glowed like a warning flare against the dark.
He didn’t look up when I entered, but I could feel his eyes tracking me through the reflection in the TV screen.
I made a show of hanging my coat. The cross necklace, his cross, glinted at my throat.
I caught my own reflection in the entryway mirror—hair loose, eyes rimmed in shadow, lips berry-stained and smudged.
I looked like the poster child for an anti-drinking PSA.
Perfect. I fixed my skirt, straightened the neckline, and waited for the cross-examination.
He waited a full thirty seconds before speaking, just to let me sweat. “Did you enjoy your study group?”
I shrugged, giving him the innocent routine. “It was fine. A little boring, honestly.”
He closed the Bible without a sound, the tissue-thin pages barely whispering. “You work so hard. I worry about you, Darla.”
I could see the set-up coming, but I played along. “You don’t have to. I’m not the one with a whole flock to tend.”
His mouth twitched, not quite a smile. “That’s true. And yet, I find myself more concerned with your soul than with theirs.”
It was almost impressive how he could slide in a guilt trip without breaking stride. I sat on the sofa, careful to fold my hands in my lap, church-girl style. The plastic on the throw pillows stuck to the backs of my thighs, and I pictured the couch swallowing me whole.
He steepled his fingers, the gold signet ring catching the lamp’s light. “Did you know Sister Evelyn called me tonight? She said she saw you leaving the Pink Beaver with some… unsavory company.”
That was new. Usually, he skipped the sources and went straight to the sermon. “Sister Evelyn needs a hobby.”
“She’s a concerned member of the congregation,” he said, voice measured and warm as a snake’s hug. “And you know how people love to talk.”
I snorted. “Since when do you listen to gossip?”
He gave me the look—equal parts disappointment and challenge. “When the reputation of this family is on the line? Always.”
I wanted to say, maybe the family should try having a reputation worth saving, but I bit it back. Instead, I studied the carpet, which was so spotless you could eat off it.
He let the silence build again, the room thick with everything he wasn’t saying. Then, he reached into his shirt pocket and produced a crumpled matchbook. The Pink Beaver logo—two neon legs and a cherry—stared up at me like a mugshot. He set it down on the coffee table, dead center, between us.
I felt the heat crawl up my neck. “You been going through my stuff now?”
His tone never changed. “You left it in your coat. I was looking for your gloves.”
Bullshit. He was looking for ammo. And he’d found it.
He kept going, relentless but so fucking calm. “Darla, do you know how much damage a rumor like this can do? Our church is—”
“I know, Dad,” I snapped, “it’s always about the church.”
His eyes narrowed, but he didn’t raise his voice. “Without this church, we have nothing. You have nothing.”
I flinched. He saw it, of course. “That’s not fair.”
He leaned forward, Bible in one hand, the other tracing the rim of his glass. “Nothing in this life is fair. We all make sacrifices for the things we love.”
The lamp made his face into a mask of light and shadow, lines etched deeper than I remembered. For a second, I saw the man behind the curtain—tired, desperate, afraid.
He tapped the matchbook. “What were you doing there?”
I gave him the flattest stare I could manage. “Getting a drink. Maybe blowing off some steam.”
He didn’t believe it for a second, but he wanted me to say more.
He always did. I could’ve told him about Tyler, about the vodka, about the godawful furniture, and the way my body buzzed when I let someone else take control for once.
I could’ve told him that I hated choir, and that I only volunteered at the food bank because the old ladies there let me sneak cigarettes out back. But what was the point?
He went full preacher. “You are my daughter. People look up to you. They expect better.”
I barked a laugh. “They expect perfect. There’s a difference.”
He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I just want you to be happy.”
I stood, fixing my eyes on the cluster of family photos over the mantle. My mother, frozen at age thirty, her smile too big for the frame. Me at six, clutching a stuffed rabbit. All those years of staged happiness, staring down at us like judgment.
“You want me to be useful,” I said. “You want me to be a billboard for your church.”
He stood, too, the chair groaning under his weight. “Is that so terrible?”
I shook my head. “No, Dad. It’s just… not me.”
We stared each other down. The matchbook sat between us, radioactive.
His face softened, just a little. “Go to bed, Darla.”
I hesitated. Then, on pure impulse, I grabbed the matchbook and flicked it into the fireplace. The plastic log caught with a dull whump, sending up a twist of blue smoke and burnt cherry. He watched it burn, saying nothing.
As I climbed the stairs, the choir practice tape faded into static, and I could hear him in the living room, pouring another finger of rye.
I paused at the top step and looked back through the bannister.
He was hunched forward, shoulders slumped, hand over his eyes.
For once, I felt a flicker of guilt. Maybe even regret.
But only for a second. I had my own life to burn.
Up in my room, I peeled off the blouse and skirt, wiped away the lipstick, and stared at myself in the vanity mirror. The girl looking back was still me, but different. A little older, a little meaner, a lot less afraid.
I crawled into bed and lay there, listening to the house settle. Dad’s footsteps never came up the stairs. The choir tape wound down, and the only thing left was the ticking of the old grandfather clock in the hall.
I thought about the Pink Beaver, about Tyler’s stunned face, about the way my body had hummed with power and shame. I thought about the way Dad’s eyes had looked—lost, for a moment, like a little kid who’d wandered too far from home.
I thought about tomorrow and how easy it would be to start all over again. I closed my eyes and tried to dream of anything but this house. Instead, I dreamed about Mom.
This time she was lying in a hospital bed, the blue-and-white checkered curtain drawn halfway around her like the world’s saddest magic trick.
We’d spent the last hour before she died talking about hair.
Not heaven, not regrets—just the science of split ends and why Kentucky humidity turned us into human Brillo pads come June.
“You’ll get my old curl,” she’d said, twirling my hair between her fingers, the IV shivering in her wrist like a rumor. “Don’t fight it, baby. Some things you gotta let change you.”
She pulled my head down onto her chest, and we lay there tangled, two bodies and the ghost of a third.
I remember her smell, lemon lotion and antiseptic, and the heat of her skin even as her insides were already turning against her.
She pressed my ear right up to her breastbone and told me, “Listen. If you breathe here, you can always hear a little ocean.”
She was right. It was soft, a hollow rush under the rib.
I was too old to be a kid, too young to be orphaned, but for that hour I forgot both.
We don’t get to pick our inheritance. Hers was dying slow and mine was pretending not to.
I knew then, the way you know rain is coming before the thunder, that neither of us would win.
She died with her hair wild, all the ends splayed out on the flat white hospital pillow.
After they let me back in, I ran my fingers through it, braiding and unbraiding the strands until a nurse came and gently told me it was time to go.
Dad wasn’t there—he was home, I think, or at the church, hands deep in some committee meeting that, even now, I can’t forgive.
I woke up the way I always did after those dreams, my heart running a relay, mouth dry as communion wafers, pillowcase still damp from whatever tears had leaked out in my sleep.
I lay there, clutching the cross at my throat, and inventoried the usual damage.
No missed texts. No angry footsteps in the hall.
Just the faint, radioactive glow of five A.M. and the distant, mechanical whoosh of Dad on the treadmill—his only vice besides rye and carrying entire congregations on a backbone built for saints.I tried to drift off again, but my brain had already entered the Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride phase, where every mistake you’ve ever made gets queued up for a director’s cut.
Tyler’s open-mouthed awe, the weight of Dad’s stare, Mom’s finger letting go of my hair.
I rolled out of bed and checked my phone. A push notification from the Bible app. Verse of the day: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” The algorithm was getting smug.
I showered, scrubbed off the hangover and whatever funk the dream left behind.
Stared too long at my own body in the mirror, tracing the constellation of small bruises—two fresh on the thigh, one older, fading yellow, from a run-in with the kitchen table.
I ran my fingers through my hair. The curl was winning.
By the time I hit the kitchen, Dad was already on his second bowl of Grape-Nuts, sweat darkening the collar of his undershirt. The treadmill still blinked in the corner, displaying his daily mileage in sanctimonious neon.He didn’t look up. “You’re up early.”
“Couldn’t sleep.” I set the coffee to drip and pulled a banana from the fruit bowl, which was always perfectly arranged, even though nobody in the house actually ate fruit.
He grunted. “Busy day. Women’s shelter fundraiser, then choir, then I’m with the deacons until eight.”
“Don’t forget the bake sale,” I said, because I knew he would. Schedule management was my price of rent.
He nodded, scribbling in his planner. “And you?”
I unpeeled the banana with short, angry tugs. “School. Library. Dinner at Heather’s.”
“Church group starts at seven. You’ll be home by then?”
It wasn’t a question, and we both knew it, but I drew it out anyway. “If Heather doesn’t keep me too late.”
He caught my eye, and there it was again—the twitchy, careful scan, like I was a puzzle he couldn’t finish.