Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
Kit
The early afternoon air sits on my skin like a damp washcloth. Sweat pools on my upper lip, my hairline. In the bends of my knees and the hollow of my spinal column. Dad swipes a shop rag across his forehead and grunts in disgust at the wet mark it leaves on the faded red cotton. He and I watch from our place on the rickety front porch as Mom and Tess say their goodbyes, hugging like old friends. Mom tucks her into the passenger seat of my rental, waving at her through the condensation-coated window once the door’s shut.
Dad lets out a gruff laugh. “That woman could make a friend out of a houseplant in about five minutes, I swear.”
I nod, amusement ticking my lips into a smile. “Yeah. Tess, too.”
“She’s a good one, Kit. Lot better than that ex-wife of yours.” Dad rests curled fists against his leather belt. Even in this heat, he’s wearing jeans and a short-sleeve button-down he got at the Walmart in Pascagoula. If he hiked up his pants leg, I bet there’d be tall white socks damp with sweat coating his calves. “How long you two been dating, d’ya say?”
“We aren’t.” Tess and I lock eyes through the windshield, and she lifts a brow. I smile and hold up a finger, letting her know it’ll just be a minute. “We told you guys that when we first arrived. Tess is my friend.”
Dad scoffs. “Poppycock. I know my son.” He claps my shoulder, and when Mom clocks it on her approach, she smiles. Out of the corner of my eye, I note Dad returning the gesture. “You got feelings for that girl. Don’t even try to deny it.”
“Oh, is he still on about that?” Mom chides. Her hair has formed a shape that is neither curly nor straight, just big. She retrieves a claw clip from the hem of her blouse and pins back her bangs. The porch groans beneath her weight, and I glance down at the sagging boards.
“Y’all ought to fix this before it caves in on you.” I kick the nearest board with the toe of my shoe. “You’re getting too old to risk it. Might break a hip.”
Mom swats me on the chest. “You hush with that nonsense.”
Dad’s forehead crumples beneath lifted brows, but he doesn’t glance at me directly. “Sure’d be easier to fix it if my sons came around more often to help.”
My chest throbs like it’s been cut open. I cross my arms over it to stop the bleeding, but all it does is increase the amount of sweat flooding my shirt. “I’m sorry, Dad.”
My thoughts drift to lying next to Tess last night. Beyond the feel of her leg straddling my hip or her breath hot and blustering against my throat. Instead it’s her words that settle over me, cooling me as if they were made from ice water. We’re not the kind of family to talk much about our feelings. There’s no part of me who thinks now, on this front porch, is the time to air all my grievances about Gage, my fears about letting my parents down. But how many times do they have to lament my absence before I accept what Tess implied? That perhaps they aren’t as disappointed in me as I may have led myself to believe.
Mom hooks an arm around my hip and lays her puffball of graying hair on my shoulder. “We just love you, Christopher. I know it’s been hard on you since everything with Courtney, and that you and Gage don’t get along much these days, but is it so bad that we’d love to see you more often?”
“Your mother almost bought plane tickets to see you this coming Christmas,” Dad mutters.
I glance down at her, eyes wide. “You’re terrified of flying.”
She shrugs. “I’m a desperate woman. I’d do it for you.”
My lungs seize, suddenly unable to take on air. I wrap her in my embrace, cradling the woman who once cradled me. “I promise I’ll come down. Don’t waste your money on me. I’ll be here for Christmas, if not sooner.”
Dad pats my back gently, right above where Mom’s palm rests against my spine. “Better get on, son. Even with the AC, that sun’s probably baking your lady.”
I bite back a rebuttal that she isn’t my lady; partly because it’s a wasted argument. Partly because, despite everything, she sure feels like she is.
“Love you both.” I plant a kiss on Mom’s forehead. As she pulls away, I turn to Dad, biting back all the words I should say and instead slapping a hug against his shoulder blades. “I’ll be back soon.”
“Better be. Don’t make me hunt you down,” he warns, but there’s amusement in his dark gaze.
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” I step off the porch, onto the loose dirt of their walkway, and wave once more. That heavy feeling still sits like a pit in my chest, but it’s lighter now, if only infinitesimally so. “Bye, y’all.”
“Bye, baby!” Mom folds into Dad’s side, smiling at me with sun-warmed cheeks and a few tears glistening at the corners of her eyes. It’s an image that burns itself into my brain, a snapshot I’ll hold on to forever. I file it away right next to the one of Tess, laughing freely with white-blonde hair whipping around her face, the whole of the Gulf at our feet.
The air-conditioning fills the car with a dull roar that takes my ears a few seconds to adjust to. By the time it fades, I catch the tail end of Tess’s words. “…was sweet.”
“Yeah.” My voice cracks. I don’t have to hear her entire sentence to guess the sentiment. I shift the car into reverse and clear my throat.
“You’re lucky to have them,” she says pointedly, gaze aimed straight ahead.
I squeeze my eyes shut. When I open them, stars burst across the image of my parents waving to us from the porch. Why is leaving just as hard as arriving? “I know I am.”
She picks absent-mindedly at a loose thread hanging from her shirt hem. All the while, her attention never drifts from Mom and Dad. “You should make an effort to visit them more often, Kit. You can’t take for granted that they’ll always be here.”
I know she’s only speaking from a place of experience, from firsthand knowledge of just how shitty the alternative is, but it adds salt to the wound that makes the pain of driving away especially unbearable. She’s right, of course. I have two wonderful parents and she has none. It feels completely unjust, and yet it doesn’t ease the ache in my chest any more than rubbing my sternum with a balled fist does.
“I’ll do better,” I manage to force out. “I’m trying to do better.”
She nods, a tiny jut of her chin. The only way I know to get out of my own mind is to focus on someone else, and so I zero in on her. The fragile tilt to her neck. The warble of her bottom lip. An inhale that rattles and shakes.
I reach for her hand, stilling it on her shirt hem. “Are you okay?”
Her thin throat works over a hard swallow. I half expect her to be vulnerable with me, considering everything she’s seen over the past twenty-four hours, but after one brief glance in the mirror to check my blind spot, all traces of sadness have been wiped from her expression.
I tighten my grip on the scalding leather surface of the steering wheel. If we’re going to be no-holds-barred honest with each other, then it has to go both ways. “You know you don’t have to do that, right?”
Her gaze cuts to me, eyes green as the trees that pass outside her window, and as innocent as sin. “What?”
I should let it go, but I can’t. Maybe it’s because seeing her bridle that hurt is a bit too much like staring down a mirror. Or perhaps it’s because this is the same woman who let me splinter into a million pieces in front of her and still wanted to be seen with me afterward. Either way, I bite down on the inside of my cheek, realizing it’s too late to backtrack. On any of it.
“You bury your feelings so deep,” I say, then draw a breath in, stretching my aching lungs to max capacity. “Everything negative, you push it away like you’ve somehow convinced yourself you’re not allowed to feel anything but happy. What are you afraid’s going to happen if you let the world see who you really are? If you let me see it?”
Save for the low hum of the engine and the cry of the overworked air vents, silence settles between us. She doesn’t answer, and I’m done pushing. She gave me space when she called me out last night. I can do the same for her now.
I turn up the radio. Something somber, with a plucked-guitar melody and a singer whose voice has been raked over the coals. Tess stares straight ahead, still as stone, as we drive away from my hometown.
* * *
It’s not long before, in true Southern summer fashion, the sky splits in half. In seconds, the blue expanse gives way to black, and then the black gives way to a deluge. Rain pummels the windshield. It falls in thick sheets, blurring the road ahead. I slow to a crawl, and with a quick sidelong glance, I note Tess white-knuckling the armrest on her door.
“Joys of southern living, am I right?” I shout over the cacophony.
Her chin jerks in what I assume is a nod. “I never go out at three p.m. for this exact reason.”
“ What? ” I say, cupping my right ear.
“I said—” she starts but cuts herself off. Her waving hand slices my periphery. “Never mind. Just focus on the road!”
I lean forward and squint into the wall of water. “What road!”
That gets her to laugh, and despite the tension of navigating the storm, it eases something in my chest. Neither of us is any good at staying serious for long. The pressure of it would crumble everything we’ve built up as a testament to the fact that we’re doing fine, thank you for asking. Just fine.
I continue my slow crawl forward, watching for taillights in the rain. The interstate has been largely empty since we got on a few miles back, but tourists who aren’t used to the weather like to flip on their hazards and stop in the middle of the road when faced with a storm like this. I learned that the hard way as a teen, when I nearly rear ended a couple from Minnesota.
The great thing about these storms is that they pass just as quickly as they come on. After a few harrowing minutes, the drumming softens to a dull roar and the charcoal sky takes on a lighter hue, promising the end is near. I relax back into my seat just as Tess’s hand flies across my chest. “Stop!”
I slam down on the brakes. Up ahead, flashing hazard lights blink against the downpour. They sit at an odd angle, a few feet into the margin. I click my tongue. “Looks like an accident.”
Slowly I lift my foot off the brake. With every yard we creep closer, the damage becomes more apparent. They didn’t simply lose control and hydroplane off the asphalt. The back quarter panel on the driver’s side has caved in, drawing the midsize SUV’s hood unnaturally close to its trunk. I turn on my hazards and pull a safe distance off the road, then reach for my buckle.
Tess’s hand meets mine there, and when I glance up, panic flares in her gaze. Her skin has lost all its color, looking far too ashen for my sunshine girl. “You can’t go out there. It’s too dangerous.”
“I have to.” I press my lips together, drawing in deep breaths through my nose to calm my racing heartbeat. Without realizing it, the pounding of the driving rain has been replaced by my pulse in my ears. I shake my head, and it eases ever so slightly. “Someone could be hurt. I need to check on them.”
“Please,” she cries, her hand closing around my forearm. Tears pool in her lower lashline, spilling in mascara-darkened drips onto her cheeks. “Please stay.”
“I will be right back, Tess.” She’s panicking, and while I want nothing more than to stay here with her and comfort her through this, my sense of duty overwhelms even this most demanding of instincts. I pop the seat belt free and lean forward over the center console. Her skin is clammy beneath my lips when I press them first to her forehead and then her nose, drawing her scent in like the anchor it is. “It’ll be okay. You just stay here and call 911.”
Her stricken expression as I pull away will haunt me for far longer than many of the horrors I’ve faced in my career.
I’m soaked to the bone within seconds of exiting the vehicle. While the storm has weakened, the rain still falls in thick rivulets, pouring from the crown of my head and blurring my vision. I curse myself for not at least grabbing a ball cap from the back seat.
Water splashes up my calves as I jog to the driver’s-side window. They’re tinted way darker than they should be, and the rain makes it too hard to see past even with my hands cupped over the glass. I knock, hoping whoever’s inside will let me know they’re fine, just waiting on a tow truck. But when no one responds after about twenty seconds, I suck in a waterlogged breath and yank on the handle.
To my surprise, the door flies open. Airbags fill every corner of empty space. Garish red brushstrokes mar their white surfaces, immediately flooding my nose with the heavy tang of iron. Slumped in the driver’s seat is a woman just a few years older than me, bleeding from her nose and hairline. I duck under the cover of the car as best I can and press two fingers to her throat. Her pulse is weak, but blessedly present.
“Ma’am, I’m Deputy Kit Llewellyn. I’m here to help.”
There’s no flinch in response to my loud voice. Just a muted cry that barely reaches my ears. I narrow my eyes at her slackened jaw, realizing it’s not the woman making the noise. Through a gap in the headrests, which are crumpled far too closely together, I catch a glimpse of a small boy in a booster seat with tears pouring down his reddened face.
Shit. “Hold tight; I’m coming!” I close the door as gently as possible and circle the hood. To my surprise, Tess is already there, opening the child’s door.
“What are you doing?” I shout, covering her hand with mine and curving over her in an effort to shield her from the rain.
When she glances up, her eyes are wide with fear. “I had to—to help. Had to help.”
I reach past her to the boy’s balled fist. He’s no more than six, with a Paw Patrol sticker slowly peeling away from his instantly rain-slicked forearm. He wails earnestly now, calling for his mama. I squeeze his trembling hand in mine. “Mama is resting. She bumped her head. But help is on the way. What’s your name?”
His bottom lip quivers. He has thick black hair that’s plastered to his forehead. Big, blue eyes blink up at me. “Brayden.”
“Hi, Brayden, I’m Deputy Llewellyn. You can call me Kit, though. Like a Kit Kat. Do you like Kit Kats?”
He nods. His gaze cuts briefly to Tess, then back to me.
“Good. Me too.” I offer him what I hope is a reassuring smile. “I’m a policeman, Brayden. That means I’m a good guy. More good guys are going to come, too, and they’ll help you and your mama. I promise.”
Tess’s nails bite into my shoulder. I glance back at her, and she’s white as a sheet. Her hair sticks to her neck in thick, rain-darkened clumps. With her gaze trained on the front seat, she sways on her feet.
I pull her into my side and lean close, so my lips brush her slick ear as I speak. “Get back to the car. I will stay with him. It’s okay, Tess. His mom is alive; she’s just hurt. Did you call 911?”
She retreats enough to face me, pink lips parted. “She’s alive?”
I nod. She’s going into shock, and it’s imperative that I get her out of the rain. “Yes. Did you call 911?”
This time it’s her that nods, a deep wrinkle forming between scrunched-up brows.
“Good. Now go get warm.” I kiss her softly, without thinking. “It won’t be like your parents.”
At that, tears pour from her eyes, blending with the rain. “You promise?”
“Cross my heart.”
I don’t know if she fully believes me, but it’s enough for her to walk away. Or stagger, more accurately. When I turn back to Brayden, he’s staring at his mother. There’s a laceration on his temple, likely from hitting the window. But it’s superficial. As I quickly check over his body for other injuries, I scramble for something to talk about to distract him. “Brayden, are you from here? From Mississippi?”
“No,” he says, and his gaze cuts back to mine. “But I can spell it. Mama taught me how.”
“That’s so impressive,” I say as distant sirens finally reach my ears. “I’ve been struggling with it myself. Would you teach me?”
A missing front tooth splits his hesitant smile in half. He spells it out the way my grandmother taught me, years ago on a sloped front porch with stray kittens curled up in my lap. M-I-crooked letter-crooked letter-I-crooked letter-crooked letter-I-humpback-humpback-I. I hum it with him, replacing that bloody tang with the memory of Grandma’s powdery perfume as he goes.
On the tail end of the final humpback, a fire engine breaks through the wall of water, and I exhale fully for the first time since the rain started falling.