Chapter Twenty-Four
Buttery-gold sunlight streams through the thin floor-length drapes, spearing over the gaudy yellow walls.
I’m sitting across from the air mattress in what was once Harlen’s mother’s art room, staring at the polished wood flooring flecked with rogue splats of colorful paint. Each, a gentle reminder that she had once been here too.
The thought curls my insides, makes my skin prickle.
It should make me feel less alone knowing that loss is something me, Harlen and Rusty now shared—that we were each intimately acquainted with death in a similar, agonizing way—but it doesn’t.
Because living a life without Jade, without my mother, is to live a life without color.
My eyes are burning; my throat is too. The bottle of whiskey beside me is almost empty. I haven’t tried to move. I don’t know if I can. I don't know if I want to either.
My window is cracked open and I listen to tires crunching over rock, the first sound I’ve heard aside from the wind squealing, the trees rustling and a crow squawking. I’ve been here, in this same position, for hours, perhaps days. I wasn’t sure about that either.
There’s a quiet hum of an engine until it’s sharply cut off, followed by a door opening, feet shuffling, then Rusty’s voice.
“Where the fuck have you been?” It isn’t angry, but still, it carries a hint of annoyance.
The clearing of a raspy throat follows, and I let go of my breath when I hear that it’s Chief Wynston.
“Can’t even leave this damn town for a couple days without everything going goddamn belly up,” Wynston’s voice cracks as he speaks, then it becomes low and quiet, casting on a whisper, “Is the boy here?”
I suck on my front teeth and clench my fists, screwing my ears.
Rusty must confirm with a movement.
Wynston’s voice remains quiet, “What happened to his sister, Jade Keller…” he pauses, and I imagine he’s shaking his head, because he doesn’t finish his sentence, instead, shifting quickly to another, “Laiken Campbell is lucky to be alive. No idea how she got away. I visited her this morning; her recollection of the night is harrowing.”
Rusty coughs, spits to the ground. “You reckon he let her go intentionally?”
I steeple my fingers, push against the wood flooring to my feet, then I stumble toward the window, gazing outside from behind the cream drape. Both Chief Wynston and Rusty are standing beside the white sedan painted in the colors of law enforcement.
Wynston takes an intentional step closer to Rusty, speaking beneath his breath, “You and I both know she shouldn’t have survived that.”
Both of my hands press against the wall beside me, taking the weight of my carcass. I can’t feel my heart beating in my chest anymore.
Wynston’s unruly and gray eyebrows are raised. He looks at Rusty who sucks on a cigarette, letting the smoke curl from his nose.
“So, what the fuck are you doing here, hmmm? Shouldn’t you be doing everything to pin this motherfucker?”
Wynston extends his arm in front of him, the light brown of his uniform shuffling with the movement. He sighs with defeat, and at that, I feel the walls of my throat tighten.
Wynston hisses through his teeth, raising his eyebrows. “He leaves nothing behind, Rusty. You know that. You found her, doused and scrubbed with bleach.”
Bile splashes onto my tongue. I squeeze my eyes closed. I didn’t know about that part, a small, but huge detail Harlen and Rusty had both decided to leave out.
I wrap my arms around my stomach. I couldn’t blame them for that.
Not a second stretches between them before Rusty replies, “Well, he did this time.”
Wynston is quick to snort and retort, “You want to tell me what that might be, Officer?” He shakes his balding head and folds his arms across his chest.
Rusty jerks his chin toward the end of the driveway. “Her.”
My stomach burns and the edges of my vision blur, he was talking about Laiken.
I slide down the wall behind me, drawing my legs toward my chest, hanging my trembling arms over my knees and slamming the back of my head against the wall. I squeeze my eyes closed, and begin to draw back breath when I hear Wynston speak again.
“Look, I came out here to tell you that the Keller's home burned down overnight…” he pauses, and I know what he’s about to say before he says it.
“But you already know that, don’t you?” Wynston clears his throat and I imagine him to be raising his white eyebrows again, waiting for a reply from Rusty that was never going to come.
“I’ve put out a statement that the blaze wasn’t connected to what happened to Jade Keller and Laiken Campbell, that it’s believed to have been started by an unattended candle, and Mr. and Mrs. Keller didn’t make it out in time,” he coughs on the lie, beats his chest. “Skinner paid me a visit this morning, and I’m guessing we aren’t going to talk about the bullet holes in their heads? ”
His words make my limbs turn numb.
“Guess not,” Rusty states coolly, and a tortured, yet resigned exhale leaves the cop.
“I thought you might say that.” A drag of a boot over rocks sounds. “Good thing I never liked Jack Keller much. Heather, though, she was a nice woman, deserved much better.”
His words cripple me because he knew. Mom hid her bruises, but sometimes all it took was looking someone in the eyes to know that the facade my father created was not all it seemed to be, especially in a career where you could smell a narcissist from a nose hair away.
I’ve never liked this town, but I liked Jason Wynston.
There’s another throat clearing, and when I peek over the windowsill, I watch Wynston slide his holey handkerchief out of his pocket, dragging it beneath his nose. “I’m getting too old for this shit.”
Rusty taps him on the back, squeezes his shoulder, and when Wynston folds the handkerchief back into a perfect square, the same way his shoulders fold over themselves, returning it to his pocket, he says with resignation, “Look after that boy, tell him that I’m going to do everything to find the person who did this to his sister. ”
And at that, I return to the floor, feeling my bones tightening.
The last thing I hear before I sink my final drop of whiskey is that I got away with killing both of my parents when Chief Wynston’s car starts and disappears in the same direction it arrived.
A knock startles me awake.
My bones creak with the groaning timber beneath. I peel my eyelids back, see that the blades of sunlight are no longer violent, replaced by something ordinary and gray.
A second thud beats at my temples when the same knock comes again. It enters my ears and ricochets between the walls of my skull, demonstrating a reverb of the cruelest kind.
I was used to drinking.
But not like this.
I hadn’t drunk to numb before, to forget.
I don’t hear the door opening around the persistent thumping that has taken residence in my head until arms reach toward me.
There are four, two on either side, but it looks as if there are eight swaying and swarming around me, tentacles guiding me to my feet. I try to blink around what feels like a handful of sand, squeezing my eyelids shut to move the sharp granules, only making it worse.
“Why them,” I mumble, and it isn’t so much a question, but when I start to cry, repeating the same two words, Rusty and Harlen make sure to grip me that little bit tighter, guiding me toward the bathroom.
Rusty takes my entire deadweight when Harlen reaches into the shower and turns it on.
“We got you, son,” Rusty’s voice cracks, and I continue to repeat the same words, why them, over and over again until I’m placed on my ass, beneath the stream of water. My clothes soak through instantly.
Rusty pinches his son’s shoulder and sees himself out, and Harlen takes a seat beneath the towel rail, his legs drawn in front of him.
“You don’t have to…” I try to speak around the water that gurgles through my throat.
“Yeah, yeah, I do, brother,” Harlen’s words are so quiet.
And I feel my throat tightening when I try to whisper but nothing comes out. Rubbing my trembling palms down the length of my now drenched face, I look up at Harlen, find his eyes on the ceiling, the rear of his head pushed back.
“Hurts, man,” I rasp, and it’s the only truth I can get out without crying.
And when Harlen drops his chin, turns and looks at me, I can see it’s hurting him too.
I suck back the lingering steam that melts through the air of the now stuffy bathroom, dropping the towel that hangs low on my waist to my bare feet.
Harlen left a pile of dry clothes for me outside the door, and I step into the gray sweatpants before pulling down the T-shirt, laying the black hoodie over top.
My palms are shaking. I press them to the vanity, stare into the gray raw stone bowl that sits atop the flecked timber. Letting go of my breath, I jerk my neck to the side and the crack that follows behind the movement is loud, bouncing off the misty walls.
I squeeze my eyes closed, do my best to push my next thought away but it’s already reared its ugly head before I conjure up that kind of strength.
Is that what Laiken heard when my sister's neck was snapped? My stomach rolls, bile creeping up the back of my throat. I’m curling over the sink in front of me, retching helplessly down the drain.
Fuck. This.
I raise my chin toward the circle mirror and blink three times, trying to clear the picture staring back at me. The whites of my eyes are stark against the web of broken capillaries from spewing my guts up.
I chew on my bottom lip until it bleeds.
Weak.
Snorting back the shit that drips from my nose, I run the back of my hand across my mouth and shove away from the vanity, turning my back on the brother that couldn’t save his sister; the son…that killed his mother.
I shiver, violently.
Harlen and Rusty’s voices are loud when I start down the hall toward the kitchen. There’s banging and clattering, Rusty is cooking or cleaning up; I don’t pay attention when I slip past and step out onto the deck.
The room falls silent behind me.
A warm draft of wind skitters across my face as I corner the side of the wood-paneled home. I haul open the door of Rusty’s truck and lean in.
“You alright, son?”
Rusty’s voice comes from behind me. I keep my back to him though and reach further across the center console, snatching up the one thing I took with me from the house last night, laying at the dash.
My quivering fingers brush the metal of the binding, drifting along the fake leather as I slam the door closed and start back the same way I came.
Rusty’s wary eyes trail me as I draw closer, landing on the notebook now clasped in the palm of my hand, and when I step up beside him, he grabs the back of my neck and shakes me a little.
It’s his way of showing me that he’s here for me, without telling me.
I stand there for a moment in silence, feeling my stomach knot again, then when he lets go, clears his throat, I start back inside, toward the room they dragged me out of earlier, only to pause when Harlen calls out to me.
Spinning around, I see him snatch the keys to Rusty’s truck from the kitchen counter.
“Nanna June called, said that the doc has discharged Laik.” He pauses when Rusty steps into the room and rests the weight of himself against the wall.
Harlen spins the keys around his pointer finger, catching the metal in the palm of his hand, jerking his chin at me. “You comin?”
My next words feel like a bruise, the colorless ones. The ones that were still yet to surface, and I knew Laiken would feel them the minute Harlen turned up without me.
“I’ll be back tomorrow, okay?”
Her eyes fill with tears again when she nods. “Please.”
Broken promises hurt especially when they came from someone you thought would never break their word.
The truth was, I couldn’t be there for her when I couldn’t be there for myself.
My voice is empty when I tell Harlen, “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
I swallow the leftover poison on the tip of my tongue and turn around, walking back to my room, slamming the door shut behind me.