Chapter 7
My brain wasn’t built for idle hours. The guest bedroom’s walls didn’t close in so much as press forward, like the room itself was just as irritated by my loitering laziness as I was.
I lay on top of the blankets, fully dressed, still wearing my Costco blazer, arms folded tight against my chest. The bedside clock ticked, counting out each second of non-productivity.
The ceiling, painted a color I’d have called “long dead bone” or “spite of ghosts,” hovered far above, and yet close enough to make me acutely aware of my own heartbeat, which thumped along at a sullen, resentful pace.
The house was silent, which only served to increase my awareness of the restlessness under my skin.
After an hour of this tedium, I realized the only thing I wanted more than to hide was to distract myself, to move. My body required action so my brain would quiet down. I wished I could pick a fight with someone, but no one was here except Alaric and I didn’t want to fight with him.
At the very least, I could walk the perimeter of the property and get some exercise. Sitting up, I yanked on my sneakers.
While tying the laces, I muttered, “I could be working right now if there were wifi.” The words emerged sounding plaintive, which was too close to whiny for my taste. I rolled my eyes.
Sometimes, like now, I was absolutely insufferable.
Standing, I rolled my shoulders and took a deep breath.
I hesitated leaving the safety of the room, but I wanted less to let inertia calcify me into the mattress while feelings grew bigger and inescapable.
I opened the bedroom door and stepped out into the darkened hallway, allowing the hush of the house to invade my ears.
The boards under my feet gave just the slightest complaint.
The route to the front door required passing through the main room, which was lit only by the moon and the blue-white specter of the LED kitchen clock.
The open-plan living area looked even larger at night, the shadows cast by the tall windows falling over the leather couches and the low wood table.
My footfalls slowed at the edge of the living room when the same sense from earlier—that something in the house was missing—struck me. In the daylight, Alaric’s house had felt almost too unintentional, every item imperfectly placed. But at night, it revealed itself to be something else entirely.
Not un-curated, but deliberately emptied.
I realized, suddenly, that there were no holiday decorations.
No wreath, no lights, no tree, no stockings, no half-hearted string of bulbs around the front porch.
Not even a nutcracker or a bowl of clementines on the kitchen island.
Nothing. For most houses in Texas during the week before Christmas, this would practically be an act of defiance.
The realization distracted me so much that I nearly missed the sound of movement, a soft rustle, barely audible.
I turned and found Alaric standing from the couch, a book in his hand, hair askew.
He wore gray sweatpants and a faded T-shirt that looked older than either of us, but on him it managed to read as “super chill sweet guy at rest” instead of “unemployed.”
He blinked, clearly caught off guard by my arrival. “Couldn’t sleep?”
The question was so gentle and careful, an echo of his earlier display of remorse and guilt, I wanted to hit him with something. I also wanted to ask why he was on the couch with a book when all the lights were off.
Instead, I blurted, “You didn’t decorate for Christmas.”
He set the book on the coffee table and slid his hands into his sweatpants pockets. “The house isn’t currently decorated, that is true.” His gaze returned to me and flicked to my sneakers. “Are you going somewhere?”
I looked down at myself, then back at him. “I thought I’d go for a walk.”
Alaric came around the couch. “I will join you.”
He was already walking toward the door before I could object.
As he unlocked the deadbolt, he added as though to explain his eagerness to join me, “It’s easy to get lost out there after dark. The land looks flat, but there are washouts and a couple old cattle trails that dead-end in barbed wire.”
A chilly gust of wind punched through the threshold, much colder than it had been during the day, and for a moment the two of us stood there, staring out into the darkness beyond the lights of the porch.
I stepped out first and heard him fall into step just behind me, shutting the door with a quiet click.
We started down the driveway, my shoes crunching against the gravel. The stars looked incredibly vibrant, like fireworks frozen in the sky at the apex of their brightness. I stuffed my hands into my jacket sleeves, sensing Alaric’s attention resting on me.
After about thirty seconds, Alaric broke the silence. “I took everything down before you came.”
His words had me turning toward him. “What?”
“The house was decorated. Lights, a tree, all of it. But I took it down last night.”
“But why? Christmas is in a few days.”
He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he veered left, toward a path that ran alongside the property fence. I followed. The ground was more uneven here, tufts of dry grass and bits of old limestone making it impossible to walk without watching your feet.
After a long silence, he said, “I know you don’t like Christmas. And by extension, Christmas decorations.”
Abruptly, he slowed then stopped walking.
I followed suit. The two of us stood shoulder to shoulder, looking out at the moonlit fields while I attempted to process this information.
It had been considerate of him to remove the decorations, but it also seemed overzealously accommodating.
Was he hoping, by removing all signs of Christmas, I would be more likely to embrace the seasonal spirit and modify my sinister plans? That makes no sense.
“I’m really sorry,” he said, breaking into my musings.
I kept my face forward. “For what?”
He audibly exhaled, a long plume of breath. “I’m sorry you grew up like that. I’m sorry you and your mom and your sister were treated that way by Duke and everyone else.”
I finally glanced at him. His expression looked achingly earnest, but there was also the echo of his earlier remorse and guilt.
Frustrated by what he so obviously felt about my childhood, I pointed out the obvious, “It’s not your fault.”
He drifted closer, his shoulder brushing mine in a way that felt intentional but not aggressive. “I honestly didn’t know Duke wasn’t paying child support when we were kids. He always said your mom was bad at managing money and that’s one of the reasons why he left her.”
I rolled my eyes. “No. He dodged child support by hiding his income, by paying you and your brother a salary every year, by making you both employees of the Weston Company when you were five.”
“I found that out when I turned eighteen and realized he’d put all that money in our names.”
The guilt lacing his voice drew a chuckle out of me. “If it weren’t for you testifying for my mom, we never would’ve received the back-child support payments. Thank you for doing that.”
I felt him stiffen beside me just before he whispered, “I can’t believe you just said that.”
“I’m not stupid, Alaric. I know kids aren’t culpable for the sins of their parents. You were not responsible for convincing a grown man to show interest in his daughters.”
His arm grazed mine again. “I thought you blamed me, growing up.”
I hesitated, then redirected my gaze to the moonlit landscape, admitting, “I did blame you. Or, I guess, I wanted to blame you back then. I was jealous of. . . many things you had, that Duke gave you without you asking for them, things I desperately wanted. But I don’t blame you now. You were just a kid, like me.”
Alaric tugged on my jacket sleeve and I glanced at him.
He looked at me with an expression I couldn’t read, something complicated. “I’ve always wanted to make it up to you.”
It was the kind of thing I’d have mocked once. But standing out there, the chilly air stinging my cheeks, the only sound our breath and the hiss of the wind over the grass, I discovered I didn’t want to mock Alaric about this or anything else. Or perhaps I didn’t have the energy to.
“You don’t need to make anything up to me. We are”—I sighed, my thoughts about this subject annoyingly messy—“we no longer have any debts between us.” As an afterthought, I added, “Now that I’ve signed your stupid contract,” but the words were without any real meanness.
The truth was, if there was one thing I’d realized since running into Alaric at that hotel bar in Chicago before Thanksgiving, and therefore allowing myself to revisit the past, it was that I was the one who needed to apologize to Alaric.
I should be the one making things up to him.
I’d been horrible to him for fourteen years while we grew up in Alenbach.
Whereas, he’d been nothing but kind and gracious to me.
Alaric chuckled and tugged on my jacket sleeve again. “That’s right. We better get back, you’ll need plenty of sleep for tomorrow. We’ve got a full day ahead of us.”
I sent him a pointed squint. “Will there be wifi?”
He smiled. “No.”
I cursed.
He turned, tugging me by the jacket sleeve back toward the house and saying over his shoulder, “But if you’re a very good girl, and exhibit excellent participation skills, maybe I can arrange a visit to an internet café with dialup.”
* * *
Once more, hill country scenery flashed by the window of Brad’s SUV, every turn of the old highway, shifting the light and forcing me to recalibrate my sense of direction.
The road rose and fell, flanked on either side by endless scrub brush dotted with a stubborn green cactus here and there.
I entertained myself by musing that the cacti reminded me of me.
Combative and hearty and prone to injure anyone who tried to touch it without permission.