21. Chapter 21
21
Kelly
A ll I could think about on the rest of the ride was Rose’s fingers brushing against mine and the way she spoke about me when telling me about camp. I wanted to ask more, but I wasn’t even sure what I wanted to ask. I felt so many things when it came to her. Desire, need, affection, guilt, frustration. I hated that she had taken part in lying to me, but I couldn’t brush off the fact that our parents, especially my father had been a big part in it. I knew what he was like. When he wanted something, he usually got it.
After all, there I was, riding back home to try to talk to Lindsey. Just like he wanted. He might not have gotten me quitting my job and moving back home, but I had broken on some level.
Rose pulled the car into the long driveway of our house. It wasn’t exactly a mansion, but it was a fairly well off two story house with five bedrooms, one of those functioning as an office, and had been renovated over and over again over the last forty years.
Despite the fact that my father was barely at home most of the year, spending most of his time in Lansing, the grass was perfectly tended to, and the flowers along the front of the house were fresh and thriving. At least in the spring and summer months. As the fall was wrapping around us, they looked more gray and brown than anything else.
I hadn’t even really noticed myself getting out of the car and heading to the trunk to grab my duffel bag. Rose handed it over to me, and I slug it over my shoulder, my jacket zipped up and my purse over the other.
“Well, here we go I guess,” I mumbled.
Rose looked at me with a wary look on her face. I could see my own mirrored in her eyes. I wasn’t sure what we were going to do about the situation between us. Hell, I wasn’t even sure what to do about Grey and Malak, but, at least I wasn’t going to have to deal with my father and sister alone.
“I texted Joseph that were almost here when we stopped at the rest stop last,” Rose informed me, and then as I took a step forward she put a hand on my shoulder to stop me, “I know you said you would figure out a ride home if I didn’t way to stay the whole time, but, I got the days off work.”
I blinked. “You didn’t need to do that. Lindsey will probably refuse to talk to me the entire time, and who knows how long my father is sticking around,” I insisted.
“Trust me, I need the time off, even if it’s here,” Rose said. She looked over at the house.
I looked down at the small closed box in her arms. I wondered what she had packed to give to Lindsey in that; it didn’t look like much.
The slow steps I started to take towards the house made me realize I was avoiding. I wanted to somehow fix things with Lindsey, but the idea of being in the same room as her and our father was exhausting. I loved my father, but I knew that nothing good could come out of his mouth that day.
Yet, there I was.
I took a deep breath and picked up the pace. A moment later, I was ringing the doorbell and waiting for the door to open. It took longer than I expected, but surprisingly, when the door opened it was my father's face. His neatly trimmed gray beard and typical button up sweater combo attire. He looked more exhausted than the last time I saw him.
Perhaps he was really concerned about Lindsey.
I tried to think the best of him as I stepped into the doorway.
“I’m glad you came,” he told me, but I noticed his eyes barely reach Rose before he spoke again, “I’m not so sure why Rosalinda needed to come.”
There was a long moment of silence.
I cleared my throat before speaking. “She needed to give Lindsey some things, helped get me here, and besides, she cares about Lindsey too,” I insisted.
My father chuckled, “I suppose that’s true, unlike some people.”
I blinked and looked around me, almost as if I was waiting for some specific person who hated Lindsey to come jumping out from the shadows. There was no one. It was me; I realized. My brow furrowed. I thought he’d be more upset with Rose, yet despite the eye contact he was making with me, and not with Rose, his words certainly seemed pointed at me.
“Lindsey is hold up in her old room,” he explained, “I haven’t gotten her to talk to me anymore since she first got here.”
Good, maybe he doesn’t know a lot.
I let go of a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.
“I’ll go try to talk to her,” I said. “I can take the box for you.” I reached my hands out to Rose. She seemed to hesitate for a moment, but then nodded and handed me the box. I slipped off my shoes and then turned to head up the stairs and down the hallway to Lindsey’s old room. It was right across from my old room. I set my duffel bag in front of my door before turning to hers.
My pulse was quick as I stopped in front of the door and knocked lightly. I shifted on my feet.
I could hear the sound of a show on the other side of the door, so I knew she was in there. It was a debate about whether she was asleep. While I couldn’t sleep with the TV on, she always could.
“Lindsey, it’s Kelly,” I said through the door. I knocked again. The floor shifted in that familiar creak I remembered from all the nights sneaking downstairs to get snacks or watch TV when it was too late. I looked towards the floor, struck, as I remembered how neither of us had been allowed to have TVs in our bedroom our entire lives living there. The closest I had gotten was a station on the alarm clock radio that read books out loud.
“Hey, please open the door,” I said again. I wasn’t sure why. My brows furrowed as I remembered I was upset with her. I huffed a little before speaking once more. “Open the fucking door, Lindsey. I didn’t come all this way to talk to wood.”
A second later, the floor was creaking aggressively, and the door was unlatching and swinging open. Lindsey’s reddened face came into view. I eyed over her for just a moment, her mousy brown hair was pulled into a messy bun and she was drowning in Winnie the Pooh over sized pajamas that were most certainly our late mothers.
My stomach tightened in emotion, but I pushed it down.
“I told you to leave me alone,” Lindsey insisted. “What are you doing here?”
“Dad called me,” I said. “You think I’d be here if he hadn’t?”
She groaned. “I told him I didn’t want to talk to you,” she said.
I eyed her and shifted the box in my arms. “Who do you want to talk to then?” I asked her, “How much time did you take off work? Where do you plan on staying?”
“I thought you were mad at me,” Lindsey snapped.
“Yeah, well, I can be mad at you and care about you not fucking your life up,” I told her, my own face pink.
She glared at me. “Oh, you fucked things up for me enough.”
“Me?!” I asked, “What have I done?”
Lindsey all but pouted at me, but didn’t reply.
“Look, okay, Rose drove me here because dad all but told me my life doesn’t matter and to come here and deal with you, because he doesn’t want to. So, take this stupid box, whatever's in it.” I shoved it at her.
Lindsey just barely latched onto it without dropping it.
“Rose is here?” she asked, her eyes widening.
I sighed. “Yes,” I replied.
“I want to talk to her.” Lindsey straightened her shoulders.
“Alright, I’ll go get her,” I mumbled. I turned on my heel, almost slipping on the over polished wooden floor in my socks and caught myself on the nearby wall. I could hear Lindsey stifle a reaction.
My steps were more careful as I went back down the stairs. Rose and my father were no longer where I had left them. I made my way to the living room, not surprised to see them sitting on almost completely opposite ends of the room. My father had a drink in his hand.
“Lindsey want’s to talk to you,” I told Rose.
Rose looked at me like I had said that a ghost wanted to talk to her.
“I’m not interested,” Rose said.
I waved a hand. “Well, if she won’t talk to me, and you won’t talk to her, why are we even here?” I asked, “Other than to give her that box?”
My father sighed from his seat and took a drink. I wondered if it was his first of the day or how many he’d had.
I groaned, and all but matched back upstairs. When I got to Lindsey’s room, the door was still open. She looked up, her face dropped instantly like she’d been expecting it to be Rose.
“I don’t want to talk to you,” Lindsey insisted.
“Good, you don’t have to,” I told her, but reached out and grabbed her by the front of her pajamas. “you can come downstairs and talk to Rose yourself.”
“W-What?” Lindsey asked, as I was all but dragging her with every ounce of strength I had out of her bedroom and to the stairs. It wasn’t all that hard. She was a slight woman, and I was an irritated woman.
“Let go of me!” Lindsey huffed.
I let go of her right as we got to the stairs, but I stood where she would need to go past me to get back to her room.
“You want to talk to Rose? Rose is downstairs,” I told her.
Lindsey eyed me. “Why should I believe you?” she asked.
I scoffed. “Come on, Linds, I’m not the one who lied to you for four years.”
Lindsey blinked, her face flushing, and she turned, stubbornly making her way down the stairs, almost slipping as she went down.
When I reached the bottom of the stairs behind her, she glared at me.
“Living room,” I told her.
Lindsey went stomping off towards the living room and I went following behind her until we were both standing in the entrance of the living room, Lindsey looking pouty and grumpy.
Rose shifted in her seat. “Lindsey,” she mumbled, “Did you get the box?”
Lindsey nodded. “Yes, I didn’t open it, I told you I didn’t want anything else from that stupid condo.”
I sighed. I had a feeling not much constructive conversation was going to get done. Especially not as our father opened his mouth.
“You know Kelly, I love you, but if you’d just gotten your shit together like Lindsey had, you wouldn’t have needed to move in with them and none of this would be happening. So, maybe stop with the sighing,” my father insisted.
My face lit on fire, my hands balled into fists.
“What exactly is that supposed to mean?” I asked, my heart thumping painfully against my ribcage.
“If you hadn't moved in, clearly the unneeded tension wouldn’t have grove these two apart,” my father said.
I nearly huffed. Clearly , whatever Lindsey had told him wasn’t the truth. If he blamed me for everything. Then again, I wouldn’t hold it against him to blame me, anyway.
Guilt crept up my spine. Maybe he was right, maybe Rose’s feelings were my fault and if I hadn’t moved in, they wouldn’t have grown, causing Lindsey and them to grow apart.
“This isn’t my fault,” I said regardless, looking over at Lindsey. Surely she would defend me, right? Even if she was upset at me, she had to know I hadn’t tried to do anything to break them up.
Lindsey stood there, arms folded, quiet.
“Seriously?” I asked.
“Don’t look to Lindsey, she’s heartbroken,” our father insisted. “Whatever drama you stirred up, I’m sure your mother wouldn’t be proud of it.”
My eyes stung with tears. I attempted to swallow the words that wanted to come out of my mouth, but my lips parted anyway. Before I could chew my father out, Rose got up and stepped in front of me. Her brow furrowed.
“This isn’t Kelly’s fault,” Rose said, and took a deep breath. “I don’t know what Lindsey told you, but the reason we’re separating is that I have feelings for Kelly.”
The tension in the room was so thick you’d need a chainsaw to cut it. I avoided Lindsey’s gaze but not my father's and I could see the confused and shocked looked on his face.
“What are you talking about Rosalinda?” he asked, “There’s no need to cover for Kelly she—”
Rose cut him off. “My feelings for Kelly have been growing for several years. I just didn’t realize it, and I’m not willing to put Lindsey through that. I’m not interested in continuing this marriage of convince either.”
“Is this true Lindsey?” our father asked.
My brow knit. “Is Lindsey the only one you believe?” I asked and took a step forward, but Rose put an arm out. When I looked over at Lindsey, the look on her face shifted.
Rose was protecting me , guarding me , not her. Lindsey had never needed the same thing from Rose, not from our father. Lindsey had always been the one he believed, supported, and protected. Not me.
“Lindsey deserves to be with someone who loves her the way she wants to be loved. Someone she loves,” Rose insisted.
Lindsey’s face contorted. “I do love you Rose,” she replied, irritation, jealousy on her face.
“You, of all people, should know what lying gets you,” Rose reminded her.
I blinked and looked over at my father, who didn’t seem to know whose side to choose, but he shifted closer to Lindsey, regardless.
“We could love each other!” Lindsey raised her voice as she stepped closer to Rose, “You could’ve just told me about Kelly, we could get over it, we could learn to—”
“Learn to love each other?” Rose asked. “We’ve been together for over four years, Lindsey. If we were going to fall in love, truly fall in love, it would have happened already. You know that.”
Lindsey huffed and met my eyes angrily.
My stomach dropped.
“Okay, you know what, why don’t we all just calm down,” my father said, putting both his hands up, one of them still with a drink in it, “I have to leave soon to go to Lansing, I don’t want to be worrying about you all here tearing down the house.” He chuckled, like he was part of some situation that was lighter than this was.
I wanted to scream at him, at Lindsey.
“Oh, so you did just want me here to watch over your precious daughter while you’re off somewhere else?” I asked him.
“Now, that’s not fair. You know I have no choice. It’s my job,” he insisted.
“Yeah, your job is the only one that matters,” I replied.
My gaze met his, and I saw the irritation and disappointment here. It made me sick to my stomach.
“Just go then, dad,” I told him, “We wouldn’t want to make you late.”
It was silent for a long moment. My father downed the rest of his drink and brushed past Lindsey, giving her a kiss on the side of her head.
“You figure things out kiddo,” he told her, before he gave me and Rose one last glance and then disappeared out of the living room.
My eyes were burning so much I could barely see through my tears. I wasn’t going to be the first one to start talking again, the lump in my throat made sure of that. I shifted away from Rose and Lindsey and sat down in the nearest chair. My knees felt too weak to continue standing.
Everything was silent from then on, Rose sat and poured herself a drink, Lindsey sat, avoiding eye contact with all of us, and the only sound was that of the fire in the fireplace and our father creaking around the house as he prepared to leave. As if he wasn’t part of the family at all.