Chapter Twenty
My silence taunts me. Say something, anything. But a knock at the door forces Laiken to pull back from me.
Too late. I chew on my tongue. The problem was, I was numb. I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t breathe.
Death wasn’t kind.
Death was soulless.
It took my baby sister, and it took Laiken’s mother.
It took the lives of the ones who deserved to live the most. And it renders me speechless.
Because beneath the blanket of one haunted, fucked up night, we’d lost everything.
Including ourselves.
“Sorry to interrupt,” a voice starts. “Laiken, honey, I have your next dose of pain medication.
I don’t look up, but I do watch Laiken out of the corner of my eye.
She doesn’t look at me again, she doesn’t look at the nurse either, walking to the opposite side of the room where she works quickly to flick on the faucet.
She doesn’t wait for the water to run warm, instead cupping both of her quivering hands beneath the stream and splashing it back over her bare face.
She exhales a deep breath that hits my ears even though I’m sitting across the room, then she spins around, her fingers latching to the ceramic sink at her back.
“Thank you,” she croaks, licking a pearled droplet of water from her top lip. “But I’m okay,” she finishes, walking back toward the window bench I’m still seated on and curling herself under the blanket she left beside me.
I drop my head, clench my molars, pop a knuckle.
Take the meds, Laik.
“Are you sure?” the nurse asks, stepping closer, and I lift my chin an inch, watch the wrinkles at the corner of her gray-blue eyes weave fuller webs at each side.
She’s dressed in pink slacks and a white top, her naturally gray hair pulled away from her face and tucked into a low bun. And something tells me this nurse hasn’t encountered many patients that have refused meds before.
“I’m sure.” Laiken breathes. “It makes it worse.”
“We can get you something a little less—”
“Thank you, but I don’t want anything.” Laiken’s voice is stronger now, and when my stomach falls, I realize what she is doing, why she’s refusing.
A sick feeling deep in my gut tells me that she doesn’t want to rely on something to help with the pain. That she wants to face it, the way her mother hadn’t.
“Okay, honey, but if you change your mind—” The nurse starts only for Laiken to cut her off.
“I won’t.”
The nurse's sympathetic eyes flick to me, then to Harlen, who is back on the floor, head reclined and pushed into the wall.
She guides her hands into the front pockets of the white cape draped around her shoulders and bows her pointed chin. Sadness twists her thin eyebrows and the lines at the edge of her wrinkled lips. She looks up and nods at me in reservation before exiting the room.
The moment she is gone, Laik starts to cry again.
“I need my mom. I need my best friend."
“Fuck, Laik,” Harlen is on his feet and across the room in a flash, his knees crunching at the linoleum floor in front of us, pulling her in for a hug.
She weeps into the dip of his broad shoulder, and I catch the orbs of my brother's deep-blue eyes, seeing that he’s drowning in the same agony when Laiken starts to whisper about Jade, who was his best friend too.
His palm is through her hair, at her neck, gripping her, tugging her close, though his other extends toward me, finding the top of my shoulder, squeezing it.
It’s a small gesture to let me know that he’s here for me too.
I look toward my feet when tears prick like pins at the back of my eyes.
Jade bled color into all of our lives.
And I think each of us knew that without her, each day would be a little darker, a little duller.
Forever sixteen.
My hands fist the edge of the seat, and I suck on my front teeth, pushing to my feet.
I walk across the room and lean against the opposite wall.
With quivering fingers, I slide my phone from the front pocket of my ripped jeans and press on my mother’s number.
I rest the phone at my ear, chew on the inside of my cheek, listening to each dial tone fade, choosing to hang up before reaching her voicemail.
Something pricks inside my chest, a thread of urgency, the need to get to her.
I’m shoving my phone back into my pocket when I feel a small, gentle hand wrap delicately around my elbow.
I drop my chin to my side and find Nanna June next to me, stabilizing herself.
I hadn’t heard her creep in. Reaching across my body, I place my hand on top of hers.
We are both watching Harlen and Laiken across the room when I hear movement and voices echoing through the halls.
I ask Nanna June, “Has she spoken to the police yet?” I jerk my chin back toward the door when I see the backs of two uniformed officers pass by the cracked opening.
When Nanna June doesn’t reply, I turn my eyes on her and find her dull-green ones shattered.
“Not yet, darling.” She shakes her head, then wipes her eyes with a handkerchief decorated with small coral tulips. “She asked for a little more time.”
I nod, drop my chin to my chest and clasp her weathered hand a little tighter. “I heard about...”
I swallow my words, I can't say them, because last night I lost a sister, but Nanna June also lost her daughter.
She swallows and croaks, “Chase, sweetheart, I’m ashamed to admit this, but I had prepared for this day, I just hadn’t prepared for…” She pauses and turns to look at me, clenching my arm, shaking with the tears trembling at the rim of her wisdom-filled eyes.
She sucks back a choppy breath. “Your sister was a beautiful, beautiful young lady. I loved that sweet girl like she was my very own granddaughter,” she cries on a whisper. “You should be so incredibly proud of who she was, and everything she wanted to be.” She nods with finality.
One lonely tear falls down my cheek. A crowd of hers follow.
“Th…” My voice breaks and I press my head to the ditch in my elbow, shoveling away the tears. “Thank you.”
Nanna June steps in front of me and reaches for my shoulders, grabbing onto them and guiding me in for a gentle hug. “Oh, sweetheart.”
I hold her for a moment before stepping back, pushing my hands into the front pockets of my jeans and raising my shoulders to my ears.
“I’m going to head home and see—”
“Oh, yes, darling, yes, go.”
Laiken must hear Nan telling me to go because she snaps her head toward us, her almost translucent-white locks slapping across her face with a certain kind of urgency. She tucks the strands behind both ears, her haunted mossy-green eyes latching onto mine.
“You haven’t seen your mo…” Laiken starts, but can’t finish.
I keep my fists in my pockets and my eyes on the girl that has lost way too fucking much, more than any sixteen-year-old ever should have.
And I couldn’t stop any of it from happening.
My jaw flexes. “No, I came straight for you.”
Stepping forward, I close the distance between us and pull her in for one final hug. Burying my face into her small shoulder, I take a deep breath, then I pull back, returning my hands to my pockets.
Laiken’s chin is to her chest and I clench my fists, stopping them from reaching for her again.
“I’ll be back tomorrow, okay?”
Her eyes well with tears again when she nods. “Please.”
Harlen pulls her in for a hug and says his goodbye.
The pale walls close in on me as I step outside of the room and keep my eyes screwed to the scuffed linoleum floors.
I don’t acknowledge the officers sitting in the flimsy burnt-orange bucket chairs a few feet away, especially when I see one of them is Officer James.
Both have their limbs hanging casually over their knees, cardboard coffee cups in the palms of their hands and when they see me, they rise to their feet.
But I move right past them.
“Keller,” Officer James announces.
I keep my back turned.
He clears his throat, croaks, “I’m sorry for your loss, kid.”
I suck the inside of my cheek and come to a stop.
Harlen must feel the rage emanating from me because his arm is quick to reach across my body, palm resting at my chest, halting what I’ll do next.
“Keep moving,” Harlen’s voice is a small, weightless breath.
But he and I both knew I couldn’t—wouldn’t—do that. Sucking on my front teeth, I turn, and Harlen exhales roughly, cussing beneath his breath.
I take the six steps back to Officer James, raise my chin, meet his empty gray stare.
He doesn’t so much as bristle.
He pushes the takeaway coffee cup to his mouth and takes a casual sip.
I scoff, shaking my head. “Are you, though?”
He draws the cup away, swallows, not looking at me.
“Of course, what happened—”
I cut him off, moving one beat closer, growling beneath my breath, “Convenient that you locked me up the night my sister was brutally murdered.”
This time he steps into me, and I don’t step back, and he whispers so coolly it sends the blade of a shiver cutting down my spine.
“Don’t throw knives until you’ve got better aim, Keller.”
I keep my eyes on his, my mouth contorted with rage, then I step back, pointing at him.
“Find out who the fuck did this to my sister, because if you let this case run cold like the last one, I will…”
“You’ll what?” he asks, not letting me finish, crossing his arms at his chest, flexing his biceps, puffing his chest. A dickless move to prove his authority over me, over this whole fucked up blood-drenched town.
“Just do your fucking job!” I spit, looking him up and down, then I spin around.
My palms slam against the exit doors, and the glass flies open, bouncing on its hinges.
Crisp air instantly throws a fist to my face.
“Do you think he had something to do—” Harlen is cut off when the door behind us slams shut with a loud resounding thud.
When it’s echoed off, I tell him, “I have no fucking idea.” Then, I jerk my chin at him and extend my arm, curling my fingers back. “Give ‘em here.”
He sends the keys to my truck airborne.