5
When I got home an hour later, Si was still working at the house—the lights were on, and the kerosene heater was hissing away on the main floor, and when I got to the stairs at the back, the lights were on in the basement.
“What are you still doing here?” I called down.
No answer.
“You will not believe the fucking night I’ve had. Hold on, let me change.”
I took the stairs two at a time.
Noah and that fucking tone.
Noah and that fucking look.
Noah and that fucking way he had of jumping to conclusions—to the worst fucking one, every single time.
I shucked the Henley and jeans in my bedroom and pulled on my work clothes.
Images flashed through my mind: standing around the tree with Noah’s family, pretending everything was fucking fine, teaching a sixty-year-old man how to hold a fucking saw.
Standing there, my throat so tight I couldn’t talk, as we waited for the fucking tree baler.
Having to spot Marty because the little wiener insisted he could get the tree onto their SUV, and then, of course, he couldn’t.
Headlights spinning across Noah’s face. That fuck-me-or-fight-me look. Yeah, no thanks.
As I dragged on my boots, I caught myself talking out loud.
“This is the whole fucking problem. This is why we got divorced in the first place. Because of his fucking family. Because he lets them treat him like shit, and I’m supposed to run interference like I’m wearing some kind of fucking body armor.
And then he turns around and everything has to be his way. Zero fucking concept of compromise.”
It was silly, talking like that. Saying it out loud. But the words just kept coming as I yanked the laces tight.
“And why the fuck can’t he just act like a normal person?
Why does he have to squeal and jump in the air and—and be like that?
Jesus fucking Christ, it’s like he wants people to see him.
And I’m the bad guy. I’m the bad guy because I just want to do my thing and not have every fucking stranger in a ten-mile radius staring at us.
I’m the piece of shit because I just want to be normal. ”
Nobody said anything back. Maybe that was a good thing. Maybe it was better that Si was downstairs. Because as soon as I finished, the anger drained out of me, and what came after it was the old shittiness.
They were teenagers. Noah was right. Why the fuck did I care so much?
I headed back downstairs. I tried to push Noah out of my mind. I tried to focus on the house, how things were coming along.
It was a beautiful house—or it would be when Si and I were done.
It was an old Craftsman, and Si was the perfect one to help me restore it because she had an old Craftsman of her own.
Pocket doors, the kind you didn’t see anymore.
Crown molding. Original wainscoting. Built-in cabinets.
The kind of stuff that gave the house character. That made it feel like a home.
Jonathan had wanted to buy us a new house when Noah and I got married.
Fuck, Jonathan had wanted to build us a house.
Preferably in California, but if not there, then he’d settle for here.
And instead, Noah and I had talked about our plans.
Things had been going so good with Si. And I wanted to add to it, do my own thing.
Restoring historic homes was something nobody offered in Wahredua.
Sure, there were people who could come in and do the job—people like Si.
But it wasn’t the business. And Wahredua was growing.
People were moving here, and some of them had money.
There were lots of old houses that needed to be touched up, and some of those people with money wanted them to be done right.
And then the divorce.
Or not, as it turned out.
One thing, at least, had come out of this fucking disaster of a night: playing along with Noah wasn’t going to work.
We’d gotten divorced—kind of—for a reason.
And I wasn’t self-destructive enough to put myself through it again.
Maybe if I talked to a lawyer tomorrow, we could get ahead of Noah, find some sort of way to make a claim on the house before Jonathan brought in the heavy hitters.
“Si,” I called as I headed down to the basement. “We’ve got to talk.” My boots thumped on the stairs. The furnace rumbled. “Things are seriously fucked up, and I don’t even know where to start. Remember that phone call I got yesterday—”
As I followed the stairs, the basement opened up in front of me. A tool bag. The work stool. Si.
Si on the floor.
Blood on the floor.
“Si? Si!”
I skipped the last two steps. My knees hit the concrete slab.
She was still breathing. Her eyes were half-closed. Her lips were blue.
I pulled out my phone and called 911.