12. I Could, but I Won’t
I Could, but I Won’t
Melody
“Shit,” I muttered as we went up the drive.
Marcus was at the door, appalled as he watched us park. I didn’t know why. I didn’t want to know, either.
“He looks pissed,” Greg casually said.
“He does, doesn’t he?”
“Anything I can help with?” An interesting thing to say. He didn’t ask why; he asked how he could help.
“No,” I whispered. “It just…is what it is.”
“That’s pretty nihilistic.”
I shrugged as I unbuckled the seatbelt and started taking his jacket from my shoulders.
“Nah.” He tugged the collar up again. “Keep it.”
Then he jumped from the driver’s seat, walked around, and opened the passenger door.
“You know, I can open my own door.” But please don’t stop doing it.
“And I could let you. But I won’t.” His voice dipped, and he winked at me.
I blushed. Really, really blushed. Face heating, heart fluttering, butterflies in my stomach kind of blushing. I giggled. Laughed. I must have sounded like a maniac! But he stood there, hand held out to me, patient and quiet as always.
“I can’t believe you made me laugh after a day like today. Thank you…and I’m sorry about your truck,” I murmured as I let him help me down.
“It’s just a car.” He shrugged. “I’ll get it fixed or buy another one.”
I snorted, assuming that he was making a joke, but when I turned to look at him, I could tell that he meant it. He really wasn’t concerned at all. Last Christmas, when my spark plug went out, I’d been devastated and on the brink of tears. Him? He always had a ready solution to everything.
“I feel like you’re the kind of man who would walk someone to the door,” I mused, cutting a sideways glance at my waiting brother.
Why do I care so much if he walks me to the damn door?
It wasn’t like he’d kiss me…right? We’d just been shot at, after all!
This was not a date.
“I am,” Greg confirmed.
“I think maybe you shouldn’t.” I couldn’t keep the reluctance out of my voice. “I should…”
I let out a long sigh, expelling the delusion of romance and moving on to the task at hand.
“I have to tell them about their dad.”
“Hmm.” He smoothed the hair on his chin with the back of his thumb. Did he realize I’d called him their dad, and not my dad?
Would he suspect me? Was that why his green eyes scanned my face so intently?
“Alright,” he finally said. “Call me. Anytime. Whenever you need something.”
He bit his lip, and I thought he would kiss me. Instead, he stepped out of my way, walking around me to close the truck’s door.
“Thanks again,” I whispered, wanting him to stay a little longer.
He nodded.
“Get on in there, now,” he drawled. “Before that young man grabs a shot gun and comes out to defend your honor.”
I looked back at Marcus scowling with his arms crossed, face red with rage. What the hell was his problem?
“I’ll drive off when you’re inside,” Greg explained. “Just for my own sanity, alright? Today was…rough. I’ll feel better seeing you close and lock the door on me. Lock all the windows and maybe set up a go bag for everyone in case you have to evacuate.”
I huffed a laugh. “We have nowhere to go if we—”
“You let me worry about that.” He turned, returning to the driver side and stepping onto the floor of the cab, hoisting himself up to watch me from above the roof of the black SUV. “Survive long enough to call me. I’ll take care of the rest.”
I waved at him with a little smile.
But I felt it in my body—in the way my stomach dropped—that he was right. I needed to be ready to bolt with Miriam and Marcus at any time. He was nice, but the only person I could really rely on was me.
Greg didn’t know me; he knew I was the girl next door who was the guardian of her little brother and sister. In his eyes, I could have fit as the heroine of a Hallmark movie who met the gruff out-of-towner and fell in love under green and brown leaves as we waited for the beauty of snow…
But what would Greg think if he knew why I was so fucked up?
The way he had affected me. Had ruined all of my firsts, poisoning every memory.
Even at my happiest, his filthy fingerprints were my skin, in my subconscious, and ready to spoil anything beautiful on the vine.
Starting anything with Greg would be like planting anything in soil full of fungus. A waste of time.
“You’re thinking too hard, darling. Head on in, now.” He nodded at the house behind me, and I did as he said, pulling his jacket close and surrounding myself in the comfort of his sandalwood scent
I turned around. My shoulders slumped.
It was time to face the music. To tell them the consequences of what I had done a year ago.
I walked up the creaky steps and over the noisy floorboards, almost stumbling on the one barely nailed to anything anymore, past my brother who fumed as he watched.
I closed the door, I heard the SUV start and drive away.
“Miriam?” I called. “Where are you?”
“What was that?” Marcus demanded. I ignored him.
I did not have the bandwidth to deal with him. It was better if I simply didn’t react to whatever teenage bullshit would spew from his mouth.
“You worked overtime just to go on a date with the out-of-towner?” Marcus went on.
“I’m here,” Miriam said, her light footsteps coming down the stairs. “Everything okay?”
“Can I get you both at the kitchen table, please?”
“Why? You gonna move in with your new boyfriend? The homeless guy from the barn next door?” Marcus said.
Again, I ignored him. So did Miriam.
She walked into the kitchen and sat down, her sock-covered feet barely making any noise compared to her brother’s stomping.
I took the other seat at the breakfast table, hands clasped in front of me as I took a shuddering breath. I didn’t know how to get it out, so I wouldn’t try to walk around it. I wouldn’t try to soften the blow or prime them for what came next. I’d just say it.
When all my feelings warred inside me, when the day had too much going on, instead of being full of ambivalence, I was full of…nothing. Empty.
Hollow.
“I am not letting that fucking bum move in!” Marcus yelled. “Who the hell is he anyway? God!” He was trying to act like he was the guardian.
I took in a shuddering breath, and quietly said, “Marcus, please sit down.”
He didn’t make things easy. From the day he was born, he’d been difficult. Miriam and I were born in four hours. Mom said she recovered in days and had felt healthy the whole time. But with Marcus? Mom was sick the whole time. All nine months! And she was in labor for twenty-three agonizing hours.
It was a trait he’d had his entire life. There was no simple task he couldn’t turn into a fucking Odyssey.
I started again. “Please, sit down.”
Marcus glared at me. “This is embarrassing!”
I swallowed my sigh. But he kept going. Of course, he did.
“This is exactly what Uncle Turner said would happen. Instead of sticking it out, or just asking him for help, you’d rather shack up with some low-class, unemployed, poor bastard.
You run to him like a lovesick teenager all because he looked at you!
No wonder you ran off to Colombia! It was to find a husband, right? Just like Mom. Just like—”
“Marcus, just sit down!” I slammed my fist and screamed so loud, I was surprised the windows didn’t shake in their frames.
He didn’t shrink in fear, but I was glad he didn’t…not the way I used to.
But his words. Those horrific accusations, the words whispered too loudly at family dinners when they compared my low-class heritage with Miriam’s and Marcus’s. I was obviously less than they’d ever be, because I didn’t have any Gray blood.
I was just a person.
My veins were green, and my skin was russet. My eyes were too narrow; my face was too flat. My lips were brown. My eyes were brown.
I had nothing they wanted. Nothing they valued. Not like Marcus, who was blond with those blue eyes. Not like Miriam, who had brown hair that streaked gold in the summer and shone green.
The weight of the Grays’ disappointment and disapproval always weighed me down. I was free of it in undergrad, where no one had heard of Mourningkill or the Gray family, and I was seen simply as myself. A girl, like many others, leaving a less-than-ideal home.
Marcus finally sat when the silence lasted too long.
“Do you remember when Sheriff Whitlaw came here?” I asked, losing steam now that I was faced with telling them the news.
Miriam nodded. Marcus crossed his arms.
“They found Luke’s body in the lake. He…he was dead. This morning, I went to identify his body.”
“What?” Marcus’s eyes widened.
He looked from me to his sister. She stared at her hands.
“What happened?”
“As far as they can tell, he went boating, got drunk, and drowned the morning he disappeared.”
“No.” Marcus shook his head. Slowly at first, then faster and faster.
I felt awful for him. I did. If nothing else, he loved Luke. Looked up to him. Wanted to be like him.
Which made me glad he was dead.
“No! That…No!” He rose to his feet, his chair scraping back and falling to the floor. “He can’t be! Grays can’t drown! Grays know how to swim. We’re boat people.”
“But that Gray did,” I said quietly.
Good riddance.
“No! It can’t be true. You’re lying!” Every emotion crossed his face. Denial. Anger. Fear. Disbelief. Finally, it morphed into…hatred.
Of me.
“This is your fault,” he said. I flinched.
Like his father, he had the ability to cut like a knife with a single look.
“He was distraught when you left. He kept paying your bills, your school, your dorm, and you never said a kind word to him. You just left! What did you say to him? He wouldn’t have gotten drunk if you hadn’t said something. What did you say to him!”
He was red-faced, fists shaking. Ready to strike me.
All I could do was stare at him, my heart breaking for how little he resembled our mother.
He was Luke, through and through. But also, not.
Marcus could be the greatness Luke wasn’t.
He could achieve the potential my mother had seen in Luke, if it hadn’t been for the corruption of privilege and prestige.