Chapter 24
I turned my phone off last night, so I don’t see any of Theo’s texts until the next morning.
I came in the back door to avoid my mother spotting my red, tear-streaked face.
She would have immediately gone all PSA on me, assuming that Theo had tried to force me to have sex or something and I would have had to explain to her that I was the problem.
That his hand under my shirt scared me. And before I am willing to talk to her about that, I need to be able to talk to him.
Except I still don’t have any answers, so I’m avoiding Theo, and taking out my stress on my mother.
She’s organizing books onto the shelves set up behind her desk. “So I can copy them if the printer’s down.” She pushes another book into the row level with her face. “Do you know how many times those things have saved my ass?”
“Swell.” I drop down in the chair beside the box and gaze out the window.
Mom’s new office is in Rehoboth College’s Writing Center, which is located on the second floor of the administration building that sits opposite the library.
She has a great view of the quad and a lot of natural light since her office is at the corner of the building.
And that’s about where the positives end.
It’s cramped, with every bit of wall space not obstructed by windows full of filing cabinets or bookcases.
Where you can see the wall color, it’s the kind of white you get after someone’s been smoking in the room for two decades, and the carpet is a musty gray that spits dust every time you step on it.
Yet my mother is smiling as she moves about the space. I swear she’s buoyant, her feet barely touching the floor.
When she sees me sitting idly, she clears her throat. “Put those”—she nods at the box of handouts—“in one of the empty filing cabinets.”
A puff of air leaves my mouth.
Before I can stand, she slams a book down on the desk. “What is up with you today?”
“What?” I snap back.
“You’ve been stomping around all morning like a cat peed in your Cheerios—”
“Ew.”
“Amity.”
I shrug. “I’m fine.”
She folds her arms over her chest. “Did your father talk to you? Is that what this is about?”
Now my heart is slamming in my chest. “What do you mean?”
“Did he finally tell you about the engagement?”
“The what?” I gape at her. I had to have heard her wrong.
My mother takes in my expression, and her face falls. “Shit. He didn’t tell you.”
I continue to stare at her.
She swears under her breath, then sighs roughly. “You know your father has been seeing another woman.”
I shrug.
“Well, it started before we were separated. Over a year, easily.”
“Asshole.”
Her face tightens. “Honey, he’s still your father.”
I ignore her. “Please tell me it’s that lady Carolle from the office? With the red lipstick and the wardrobe she clearly has to travel back in time to the eighties to get?”
Mom shakes her head at me, but a small smile tips up the corner of her lips like she appreciates the salty remark. “No. It’s Brittany, that new real estate agent.”
I grimace. That woman is probably only six or seven years older than me.
Mom sighs again. “Well, they’re getting married.” She reaches across the desk and squeezes my hand. “I know this has to be hard to hear, but remember you’re still his kid. Nothing’s going to change that. Not even a new wife.”
I don’t believe her. Not for a second. My father has done nothing lately to make me feel like he cares about my life, or that I’m gone. “Mom, he doesn’t give a shit about me.”
She stares at me with that stone-faced expression she gets when she’s not planning to put up with whatever I’m doing.
I throw up my hands in frustration, and all the things that I’ve been trying to push down, that I’ve been trying to ignore, come bubbling up and blurt out my mouth.
“I mean, my own father couldn’t be bothered to drop me an emoji to let me know he is starting a whole new family.
The house is never going to get done. And Theo—” I clamp my mouth shut the second I say his name. I can’t think about Theo right now.
“What about him?”
I drag my hands through my hair. “Can I go?” I’m too overwhelmed to try to talk to her right now.
Thankfully she seems to see that. “I need the car,” she says.
“I’ll get a ride from the Dryve app.”
“We’re going to talk about this later,” she tells me.
I shrug, then walk out the door.
The whole way home—while I’m standing outside the main gate to campus, in the car on the way to my house, as I crash through our front door—I can’t think about anything but my father.
At this point, it feels like he’s let me down in every conceivable way, and suddenly all I want is for him to know it.
Still standing in the open doorway, I pull out my phone and find my father’s number in the contacts. It’s eleven in the morning here, which is eight back in California, meaning he should be up, but not at work yet. Perfect timing.
“Amity.” He never says hello. Just my name. And there’s always a twinge of something in his voice: Frustration. Exasperation. “It’s early here.”
“Why didn’t you tell me I’m going to have a stepmother?”
There’s a sharp intake of breath. “Your mother had no business—”
“Were you ever going to tell me?” My free hand claws into my hair as I pace the living room. “Or were you hoping that when you kicked Mom and me out of the house that I’d just disappear?”
“I didn’t kick you out of the house.”
“You didn’t ask us how we felt about selling. Same thing.”
“The timing was too good to pass up. Your mother and I made good money on that sale. Did she tell you that? She bought your new house with cash. No debt. No mortgage.” My phone buzzes with text notifications that I don’t look at.
“I’m still your kid,” I say softly.
“You’re an adult.”
In those three words are everything I’ve feared. He doesn’t care. He’s happy to toss me aside. The rage in my head quiets. It’s a silent storm now.
“I put a roof over your head and food on the table and clothes on your back. I did my job.” I think about Theo’s dad raving about his pizza and never ribbing him for his belief in ghosts.
I think of my mom, who wants to show anyone who will let her my crochet dolls and reads biographies and historical nonfiction to make sure we have stuff to talk about.
Who can look at my face and immediately know what I’m thinking.
“Maybe if I were a dog. But I’m your kid.
And I’m pretty sure that you know nothing about me.
You never came to any of my stuff. You never hung out with me.
” Maybe I was so willing to believe what Marjorie and all the rest of them thought of me because my own father didn’t think I was worth getting to know either.
“I don’t know what you want from me.”
I can’t remember now if he ever once, even when I was a little kid, told me he loved me. There are no pictures of us together that aren’t formal family photos. We have no inside jokes. No favorite foods we share. No formative memories.
If I am being honest, he was there my whole life, but I have no idea what a dad is supposed to be. At least this explains why I barely hear from him. Why he doesn’t ask how I am. He doesn’t need me anymore. I’m an adult.
“Nothing,” I say.
Then I hang up my phone and throw it on the couch.
For a few minutes, I walk in circles. My hands claw deep into my hair. My knees shake. My eyes burn with tears but I’m too angry to cry. My emotions ricochet through me like a tennis ball bouncing off a wall. I don’t know how to release them or how to clamp them back down.
I’m making maybe my twentieth loop around the room when I see the stairs. I should go up there. Look at my new space. Remind myself that I don’t need my father.
I reach the second floor and stride into the big bedroom. The pieces of my craft shelves lean against an interior wall. Next to them are stacked boxes of books. One of them has toppled over and two novels lie on the floor.
Time’s Running Out
Dead Girls Can’t Scream
I pick them up and make my way into the walk-in closet. I take a deep breath as I set them on the first shelf. No matter how slowly I exhale I can’t get my heart to stop its angry drum.
My eyes drift to Mercy’s stoic face. And then suddenly, all I can think of is ripping that frame off the wall. My father doesn’t give a shit about me. This house refuses to be a home. We’re being haunted. Theo’s probably done with me. There’s no doubt I’ve upset my mother too.
I can’t do anything right.
I am the problem.
But so is that damn picture.
I reach up and shove my nails as far behind the picture as I can get them. Maybe I can’t fix anything else right now, but I can get Mercy’s face out of my room.
After taking a deep breath, I yank at the frame as hard as I can.
I’ve tried this before, more than once. Theo, his brother, his dad, and Matt all took various tools to it. A crowbar, a saw, a hammer, you name it. Nothing made it budge.
So imagine my surprise when the frame lifts easily off the wall and I go stumbling back, landing hard on my ass.