19. Admissions
Admissions
My mood is still bitterly foul a week later, a week of my clothes not fitting right, the fabric too itchy, too tight where it had never been before. A week of shutting myself in my house and even painting not taking the edge off.
Gideon got under my skin.
I scoff at myself; he never left it.
I am still passed out in bed, determined to sleep until the last possible second, when a knock at the door jerks me awake, bright and early at six in the morning.
It’s Mr. Lindsay’s boy; I can never remember the name of his pudgy face turned down in an annoyed scowl as he shoves a bundle of mail in my hands, letting me know the mailbox is full.
The mailbox just down my driveway, across the road, shares a post with Bell Funeral Home’s.
He curses under his breath, something about a road being blocked off as he stomps down to his mail truck pulled up a little too close to my front porch.
I mumble out a barely civil apology, glaring at the sweepstakes, advanced loan offers, and free medicinal supplements promising to make me look like Julia Roberts.
Junk mail. Mom never knew a sign-up she wouldn’t enter, and even years later, the shit keeps coming in.
Being chastised by a jerk I only barely know isn’t on my to-do list today.
I don’t even bother looking up at him, aside from long enough to confirm who was at the door.
It’s ignorant, and technically, my refusal to get the mail is making his job harder.
I heave a loaded sigh at myself. I’m being rude, but I can’t seem to shake off the desire to continue.
I toss it all on the overly full coffee table before jerking my hoodie off the hook by the door. My sleep shorts are pulled up high on my stomach, ensuring the world’s most unholy wedgie, but if I go get the mail, I can ignore life for another three hours before my shift at the alterations shop.
This time, it’s the final fittings for all twenty bridesmaids in the Kessler party.
I can’t even fathom having two people I’m close enough to be a bridesmaid, let alone twenty.
The wedding is just a mere two months away now; the accounts are paid up, all decisions finalized, and I’m actually a little excited to see it all come together.
The dresses are stunning, all the same deep shade of garnet, paired with dark teal ribbons in their hair to match the men’s ties.
Perfect for a December wedding. Ally swore up and down that if it didn’t snow on her big day, she’d make her dad cut up tissue paper for the pictures.
He’d do it too.
The sad little knot that builds in my throat has me shoving my feet into my slippers harder than I need to, my eyes stinging as I wrench open the door, pushing all thoughts of my dad—
Red and blue fill my vision as I step over the threshold.
And the road most certainly is blocked off.
Wrecks on this road aren’t too uncommon. If you’re coming down from the highway on the left, there’s a tricky twist that always puts at least one person in the ditch every year, despite the signs the town installed warning everyone to slow down.
But this is on the right, over the bridge, on the straight stretch heading right into town. The pink morning sky and crisp fall air paint a pretty picture as a flurry of activity turns downright chaotic.
“Found him!”
It’s faint, so faint from so far down the road I almost don’t think I heard it right.
Movement in front of me, across the street, snags my attention.
Gideon is standing, already dressed for the day on his porch, a steaming mug in his hand.
His eyes are not on the scene just down the road, but on me.
My house shoes scuffle on the gravel as I make my way down the drive, just as one of the officers, whom I can’t tell yet, starts to unroll a line of yellow tape between the trees.
It’s not until I hit the road that separates our homes that a warm hand snags my elbow, pulling me out of the way just as one officer directs a car away from the mess.
I pull my arm from Gideon, not roughly, just… away.
Even with the dread building deep in my gut, I wish he’d grab me again.
He doesn’t.
He’s silent as we walk toward the scene, and with my heart pounding in my chest, I’m grateful to have him here.
The red and blue lights flash off the dark bark on the trees, and suddenly, it looks a lot like the scene from my nightmares.
Uncle Rodney’s neck stretched weirdly as he dangled from the tree in the wooded backyard of my old house.
That house was smaller than this one, not as nice.
Not even enough rooms for me to have my own when he’d moved in straight out of the hospital.
I had thought he was just sick, like with a cold, when I was that little.
But no, he had something worse, but a sickness all the same.
Addiction is ugly and doesn’t hold back, twisting the people you love until they melt into something, someone you’ve never met before.
Sure, you learn to love the new version too, but it’s a different love, less easy, more painful.
Mom hadn’t handled it well, having to take him on. She said he looked too much like grandpa, that it made her sad. But I’d always loved Uncle Rodney, especially when he taught me to draw, when he’d lie with me in the backyard for hours, and we’d match the colors in his case to the world around us.
I’ll never forget the dark color of the bottle at his feet when I found him hanging by his neck in the yard.
How less than a month later, Mom had started drinking from bottles that looked the same.
She never stopped.
Not until she found her replacement family and loved them enough to stop.
I’m so lost in my own thoughts, the sound of my pounding heart in my ears, and the jarring flash of lights, I barely notice when Officer Braylon approaches us, holding out his hand in the universal stop gesture.
My eyes finally leave the forest, my chest tight as Gideon’s warmth presses into my back.
When he reaches out, snagging me around the waist to tug me deeper into his side, my brain screams to move.
To shove him away, I don’t. Instead, I watch as Officer Braylon tracks the movement, his dark, bushy brows furrow.
“You gotta head back up to the house, kiddo.”
Kiddo.
He's called me that since Dad died, always checking in and lingering year after year. Like he’d hoped he could take me in, like he’d meant to make me one of his own, but the connection never quite formed.
Good intentions be dammed, all it did was deepen the wound, watching his face age.
Wondering why the universe didn’t think my dad’s face deserved to.
Wondering if they’d still go out for coffee on their days off if he were here, if Dad would’ve been one of the officers called down the street to help.
Finally gathering myself, I manage to muster up a voice, even if it is quiet and small. “What’s going on? You found somebody?”
“Audrey, you know I can’t—"
“Officer Braylon, if you don’t tell me, I’m just going to be anxious all day and find out later anyhow.” I cut him off. “Lenard’s would tell me, is he over there? I can call him at the station—"
His face pitches into a deeper frown, his finger jutting out to point wildly. “Lenard’s is a foul-mouthed idiot, and you stay away from him.”
I almost crack a smile. It’s something Dad would’ve said, something they bonded over is their shared dislike of the cocksure younger man.
Gideon stiffens further at my side, his eyes glued to the officer currently gearing up to tell me exactly what we both know he shouldn’t.
There are no secrets in a town like ours.
None.
At least he knows when someone inevitably catches wind from someone else, who tells their mom, who tells her sister, who tells their cousin’s husband, that the leaked information won’t have originated from me.
“Squirrel hunters found a body this morning.”
The slight smile that had snuck onto my face vanishes, my heart dropping to my feet as I try to move away from Gideon.
His grip tightens, his fingers pinching the skin on my side in warning. I nearly wince as I open my mouth only to be pinched harder and shut it again. The response is familiar, automatic, ingrained so damn deep to give Gideon what he wants.
“Did you ID them yet?” Gideon asks, his voice the perfect example of neutrality despite the fact that he’s currently bruising me.
I don’t miss the hardened look in Officer Braylon’s eyes as he meets the wire-rimmed ones above me.
It’s nothing new, the same way most everyone has always looked at Gideon.
I don’t know why it only adds to the growing imbalance in my chest. “We were fixing to send someone down to get you. Looks to be accident—"
“Who is it?” I cut him off, my palms getting sweaty despite the chill.
“Kiddo—“ he starts.
“It’s a local, though. If you need Gideon’s help, it’s a local, right? So who—"
“Gideon, take her home,” he orders, but Gideon doesn’t move, not yet. Not on his command, at least.
Gideon’s velvet voice soothes my nerves. He’s still holding me, so tight it aches. “I’ll find out more and meet you back at the house, okay?”
At the house.
The house.
Not mine, not his… the.
Officer Braylon reaches out, patting me on the head like I’m a child, uncaring when his fingers brush Gideon’s chest in the process. “It’ll be okay. Hang in there.”
His words are meant to be comforting. But all they tell me is soon, I, in fact, will not be okay.
I let Gideon lead me back to my house, my thoughts blurred and mushy, my heart still pounding.
I sit numbly on the porch swing, huddled under the blankets he brought outside since I refused to go in.
My eyes on the unfolding chaos as if somehow, I’ll see a sign of the body in the woods, like somehow in all the moving parts I’ll know.
My pulse is deafening in my own head, stomach twisting in rough knots.