Chapter 27
27
The next hour happens like the hazy rush of a dream, vivid and impossible to touch.
Ezra feels all of it like he’s watching through molasses. Jonathan’s arms lock around him like a vise, and he realizes, distantly, that it’s because he’s trying with every fiber of his body to wrench free and run directly into the burning house. His head fills with the sound of screaming, and it takes him too long to realize that it’s his screaming, Becca’s name on repeat.
There are sirens, and people in turnout gear pushing him back. He can’t see Dad or Aaron, doesn’t know if he wants one of them to have run inside where he couldn’t or if he needs them safe out here in the yard. Jonathan keeps trying to stand between him and the fire, using his height as an advantage, as if blocking what he can from Ezra’s sight will somehow make everything okay.
Someone shouts, and Ezra gives one last wrenching jerk of his body and manages to break free of Jonathan’s grasp just as the back door opens and someone sooty and staggering stumbles free. Ezra’s moving before he can comprehend it, ignoring the first responders who yell at him to stop and catching Becca as she falls, her hands scrambling at his clothes and his arms and his face, coughing and crying and choking out his name. He crumples to the damp grass with her, holding her against his chest like he can press his own breath into her rasping throat. She’s here and she’s conscious, alive, alive, alive, and Ezra wants to scream and cry and pray all at once.
They live two streets from a firehouse—one of the neighbors must have called 911. It can’t have been more than six minutes.
An eternity.
She refuses to let go of his hand, so he rides in the ambulance with her, stroking her hair back and murmuring soothing nonsense as the paramedics press an oxygen mask over her face and shine a penlight in her eyes. They’re talking around and over each other, asking questions and noting down numbers, but all Ezra can see are Becca’s glassy, frightened eyes.
“It’s okay,” he tells her, over and over again, until her grip on his hand slowly loosens from bone-crushing to frantic. “It’s going to be okay.”
The story comes out in pieces. She’d gone inside, had decided, on a whim, to take advantage of the empty kitchen to have a sacrificial bonfire of her own. Had piled the contents of her tote bag—family mementos and photos of her and Mom and a cluster of other knickknacks—into the sink, not noticing when her elbow knocked into the loose stovetop knob, the one that Dad’s been meaning to have fixed, the one that turns the gas on if someone so much as looks at it the wrong way, the too-old gas lines decades behind modern safety standards. Becca had been too caught up to notice the smell of gas, her nose soaked with the scent of the vodka she’d grabbed from the freezer and poured over the contents of the sink.
All it took was the spark of the match.
“Am I in trouble?” she says, voice thick and half muffled by the mask.
“No,” Ezra says immediately. He smooths the hair that’s escaped from her braid back from her forehead. It’s burnt at the ends—she’s probably lost a good few inches. Better her hair, he thinks, than the rest of her.
He doesn’t want to think about how lucky she is to be as unscathed as she is, the initial combustion knocking her off her feet and into a cabinet but not catching her in the sudden burst of flame. She looks so young, his baby sister, so scared and hurt, and he feels like a monster, for missing this much of her pain.
“Someone was looking out for you, kiddo,” one of the paramedics says, checking her oxygen monitor and shaking her head.
The air in that house has always been thick with ghosts. Ezra drops his forehead to Becca’s and swallows down a prayer of thanks.
Ezra’s allowed to follow her back into the emergency department, but not to go with her when she’s taken for a scan to make sure her disorientation and nausea aren’t signs of a harder hit to her head than the one she remembers. He slumps back into the chair next to the empty bed, pushing his head into his hands and trying—failing—to get his breathing under control. A peek at his phone shows so many notifications that his heart rate ticks up again, and he shoves it back into his pocket, then pulls it out again when it starts to ring.
“We’re in the waiting room,” Aaron says without preamble when Ezra picks up. “Can you tell us anything?”
“I’ll come out there,” Ezra says, and hauls himself to his feet.
He lets the charge nurse know where he’s going—she gives him a sympathetic smile and promises to send someone out for him when Becca’s back in her room—and follows the signs out to the waiting room.
It’s a weeknight, and not too badly crowded. Ezra scans the room, barely seeing the other people in it—an exhausted-looking young woman holding a miserably crying toddler in her lap, her hand pressed to his forehead; a group of what look like college students clustered around a girl with her ankle propped up on a chair; an older couple reading magazines with no indication as to why they’re there; a middle-aged man and his irritated-looking wife holding a wad of sluggishly reddening paper towels to the man’s head. Someone calls his name, and Ezra forces his body to turn until his eyes land on Aaron, standing at the edge of a clearly rearranged huddle of chairs and waving him over, and Ezra rolls his shoulders to steady himself before making his way down the stairs toward him.
He’d expected Aaron and Dad, but not Jonathan, whose face blooms into visible relief when Ezra approaches, his eyes searching Ezra’s face as if to make sure he’s all in one piece, like Ezra’s the one who wasn’t safe. Someone must have called Mom, too, because she’s in the uncomfortable-looking chair next to Dad, pale-faced and clearly anxious. Judy sits in the chair between her and Jonathan, one hand holding Jonathan’s and the other on the arm of Mom’s chair, not touching her, just hovering close. Dad, his face a mirror of Mom’s wide-eyed worry, seems to be mostly ignoring Judy. To Ezra’s surprise, he and Mom are holding hands, their fingers laced together in a white-knuckle grip.
“She’s okay,” Ezra says when he’s close enough to talk without raising his voice, praying that Mom reins in the impulse to get up and hug him. If someone touches him right now, he thinks he might scream. “They think she might have a concussion, but she’s pretty sure she didn’t lose consciousness. They just took her back to do some scans on her head to make sure there isn’t anything they might have missed in the screening they did in the ambulance. She lost a few inches of hair from the fire and she’s got a few burns, but—” His voice catches in his throat. He swallows what feels like a razor blade. “She’s okay,” he repeats.
Maybe if he says it enough, he’ll believe it.
Dad drops his head into one hand, not letting go of Mom’s. “Thank God,” he says, and Mom curls herself over him in a hug, shoulders shaking. He puts his arm around her, and Ezra thinks, a little distantly, that this might be the first time he’s seen them embrace like that in months. Maybe in years.
“Ezra,” Jonathan says quietly. “Are you okay?”
Ezra blinks at him, trying to process the question. “I’m fine,” he says. “I never got near the fire.” A thought occurs to him, and he startles, his blood running cold. “Wait, fuck—how bad was—”
Jonathan’s on his feet before the words make it all the way out of his mouth, taking him by the arm. “It’s fine,” Jonathan says, low and soothing, and something feral and frantic in Ezra’s chest rears back at the sound. “It’s okay, the fire’s out, your dad called someone to stay and keep an eye on everything, just—”
“Did she say anything?” Mom asks.
Ezra tears his eyes away from Jonathan’s, almost grateful for the excuse to look away from that earnest face, filled with concern Ezra doesn’t deserve. “What?”
Untangling herself from Dad and wiping at her cheeks, Mom looks up at him from her chair. “Becca,” she says. “Did she say what happened? How it started? Was she—” She casts an anxious look at Dad and then lifts her chin back to Ezra, eyes red-rimmed, almost gray within the sclera. Ezra wonders how long she’s been crying, to look that drained. “Was she trying to hurt herself?”
“Of course she wasn’t,” Aaron says, horror in his voice. “What the fuck, Mom. What kind of question is that?”
“I don’t know !” Mom swipes her hands over her eyes again, then pulls her cardigan tight around her. “She’s been so angry, and I haven’t known how to talk to her about any of this. I don’t know if she’s— Has she been like that at home?”
“Wait,” Ezra says. Alarm bells start to ring in the back of his head. “You’ve been talking to her?”
Mom shakes her head. “I’ve been trying,” she says. “She won’t answer my calls, but she’s been texting me, and she’s left a few voicemails. She never picks up when I try to call her back.”
“Why wouldn’t you tell me that?” It comes out angrier than Ezra wants it to. “I could have talked to her.”
“That’s not your job,” Mom says, but something sparks in her eyes, uncertainty, maybe, or regret, and the words are so absurd that Ezra can’t do anything but laugh, high and hysterical and loud enough that a few people look their way.
“Since when ?”
Ezra has spent his entire life being the secret keeper, the confidant, the listener. He knows every wound, every unhealed scar, every place where salt water will sting. He’s always thought that love is knowing all the best ways to hurt someone and never, ever exploiting them.
Maybe he’s not a loving person after all.
“This has always been my job,” he says, and it bursts out of him like the spill of viscera from a gut wound. God, how did he never realize how furious he was? He jabs a finger at his parents, who are no longer holding hands. “You two were so tied up in your own drama, in pretending everything was fine and making it look good to everyone else, as if people drowning in their own grief would ever give a shit about whether your kids looked cute or your marriage was healthy, and what, I’m supposed to believe that you just suddenly tried to start parenting like—like—”
It’s so, so hard not to cry. He feels too hot, heat filling him up like a forest fire, like his body is a blaze of light in a vessel already lined with fractures, waiting for a single iota of pressure to send him scattering through the universe. Crying would make this emotional, would take away the truth of what he’s saying, would take everything he’s bottled up and tucked away and make excuses for it, just like they always have.
Jonathan’s hands are firm on his shoulders. Keeping him in one piece.
He wants, more than anything, to be the one who gets to fall apart.
“That isn’t fair,” Mom says. She’s on her feet, caught halfway between Dad and Judy, like she doesn’t know who to lean on. “None of that is fair, Ezra, you—you’re talking like we neglected you.”
Ezra folds his arms over his chest, a mirror of her posture, each of them hugging their own torso like that’s the embrace that would help. “I didn’t say that. You’re not listening.”
“We’re listening,” Dad says. His tone is careful, like Ezra’s, a spark waiting to go up in flames, and he doesn’t want to fan them. “But I’m not sure what you want us to say.”
Ezra wants to see the wreckage of his own feelings reflected back at him. To know he’s not the only broken person here.
“Aaron,” Mom says, turning to look at him, and Ezra forces himself to do the same. Aaron is as tense as the rest of them, but he looks torn, eyes flashing back and forth between Ezra and their parents. “Is that how you feel, too? Like you couldn’t talk to us?”
Aaron opens his mouth. Hesitates. Ezra knows that look. That fear of being the disappointment, of letting them down.
“It’s okay,” Ezra says. He hopes he sounds like he means it. He thinks that he does. “No one’s pissed at you .”
Aaron’s mouth twists. “You sure about that?”
“Ex cuse me.”
An unfamiliar voice cuts through them like a shock of cold water after a hot bath. Ezra catches his breath and turns to look at the scowling nurse standing a few feet away, her face dark as a thundercloud.
“This is a hospital, ” she says, low and furious, and Ezra becomes suddenly, nauseatingly aware of the people staring at them, the waiting room filled with that anxious, uncomfortable silence of people watching a spectacle of embarrassment with nowhere to go and nowhere else to look. The anger flooding his veins washes away, replaced with something sick and shameful, and he swallows hard.
“I’m sorry,” he says, because no one else seems willing to talk. “It’s—it’s been a long night.”
She looks at him with the absolute lack of pity of someone who has probably been on her feet for twelve hours straight and is having a much longer night than his. “Keep your voices down,” she says. “Or I will call security and have you all escorted out.”
He nods, looking down at the scuffed floor. He feels like a scolded child. The adrenaline flush has faded, leaving behind a shaky shiver of goose bumps over his skin.
The low murmur of voices begins to swell again around them, people returning to their own quiet conversations, their own little hurts and worries.
Aaron breaks first. “Fuck this,” he announces. “I’m going for a walk.”
He turns on his heel and stalks off in the direction of the hospital cafeteria, his shoulders stiff and his arms tight at his sides. Mom sits down heavily next to Judy, who hasn’t said a word but looks shell-shocked as she draws Mom into a tight hug, carefully not meeting anyone else’s eyes.
“Ezra,” Jonathan says.
His hands slip off Ezra’s shoulders, and with them, the weight holding Ezra inside himself, stuck in this moment of space and time, disappears. The world drops away like an exhaled breath.
“Ezra,” Jonathan says again, but it sounds far away now.
“No,” Ezra hears himself say, and starts to walk.
—
“Ezra—Ezra, God, will you wait ?”
Fingers close around his upper arm and drag him back to reality, and Ezra stops walking abruptly, not quite sure if it’s the shock of reorientation or some instinctive decision not to try to haul Jonathan bodily down the hospital halls with him. Ezra doesn’t know how long he’s been walking, whether it’s been five minutes or twenty. The hallway around him is unfamiliar. He pulls against Jonathan’s grip, half-hearted, just to see if he’ll let go.
He doesn’t, taking Ezra’s other shoulder and turning him to look at him instead. “Hey,” he says, and his eyes are wide, big and soft and concerned, and Ezra thinks he might have another breakdown if he’s looked at like that for another second, so he jerks away. This time, Jonathan lets him go, but he stays close, his face unrelenting despite the hurt that flashes over his features. “Why are you running away from me?”
“I’m not,” Ezra snaps. “This isn’t about you.”
“Okay.” Jonathan absolutely doesn’t believe him. He takes a single step back, as if to give Ezra room to breathe, and despite how much Ezra wants to cut and run, something in him wants nothing more than to bring him close again, to crawl into the circle of his arms where it’s quiet and safe, no hurt sisters or loyalty-torn brothers or disappointed parents. “Are you…No. Okay. Dumb question. Of course you’re not okay. Can I do something? What can I do?”
Ezra stares at him.
“Ezra,” Jonathan pleads. “Let me help.”
He says it like he’s offering a blessing. Like Ezra’s a body under his hands, to be cleaned and wrapped into the silent safety of a simple pine box.
“Why are you here ?”
The words echo like a whipcrack through the hallway. It takes a beat for Ezra to realize that they came from him. “Is it because of what Becca said? About me and Ben?”
“No,” Jonathan says, but he tenses. “I—I don’t know what she was talking about, but you said you’d tell me when you’re ready, and I’m not going to be the person who pushes you right now. This isn’t the time to— Your sister could have died, Ezra, I’m not—”
“She could have,” Ezra says. “Your husband did .” Jonathan flinches, and Ezra thinks, with miserable surety, See? I told you, I told you. “Do you think I asked about him just because I wanted to know? He has been literally haunting me, ever since I moved into your house and had his ghost crawling all over my floors.”
Jonathan stares at him, jaw open. Ezra doesn’t think he’s ever shocked him before, but the victory is hollow. “That’s…that’s not possible.”
“Isn’t it?”
Stop talking, something says in his mind. Stop talking.
He doesn’t stop. “I know the secret he was keeping from you when he died,” he says. Jonathan makes an aborted move, like he’s going to reach out for him again, and Ezra strikes out, poison and fang. “I know he was spending half his time at the Chapel because you two barely talked anymore, and he was afraid to talk to you whenever he was actually around because he thought he was going to slip up.” The color is slowly draining from Jonathan’s face. Ezra keeps going. “I know he knew about my mom and his and he was lying to you because he thought you’d leave him if you knew they weren’t perfect. I know he hated the tea you made him when he couldn’t sleep. I know it was driving you crazy that you didn’t know why he was spiraling and it still drives you crazy that you never found out. I know he’s so worried about you ruining your life over him that he can’t stop watching you to make sure you don’t. So what is it? What’s your endgame? I’m not him, Jonathan. Fixing me isn’t going to make you feel better about what happened to him.”
If he were a better person, Ezra knows, the guilt would flood through him now. He’d apologize. Say he didn’t mean any of it. Say he’s just lashing out because it’s so much easier than letting Jonathan any closer than he’s already gotten, letting him see all the cracks in Ezra’s armor where the slightest extra pressure will shatter him for good.
Jonathan says, hoarse, “Ezra,” and then stops. Like he doesn’t know what to say next. Like he doesn’t know if there’s anything worth saying at all.
Ezra forces out, “I can’t,” and then, so robotic the voice doesn’t even feel like his own, “I’m sorry.”
He pushes past him. He doesn’t know where he’s going. Just anywhere other than here. Just away .
A desperate, hopeful piece of him waits to hear if Jonathan will come after him again.
There’s nothing. Jonathan lets him go.