I miss having a home. A for-real home.

I miss Mom.

No, I don’t. I don’t miss Mom. She’s a liar and she left and I’m not going to cry about it, because crying doesn’t fix things, it just makes a mess. Dad said that to me once, and like some of what he told me, it’s even true.

I’m glad Lanny was doing something that made her feel better. My minutes I spend on that phone don’t make me happy, exactly; they make me feel something, but it isn’t that. I’m just less alone. Less confused.

Maybe I’m not built to be happy. Like Dad isn’t. I want to ask Lanny about Dad, but I know she’ll just yell at me and tell me Dad’s a monster.

“Come on,” Lanny tells me, and I follow her to the steps and up into the house. Boot follows us inside and runs to jump into his fleece bed next to the fireplace. I pat him on the head, and he gives me a lick before sitting up to look out the window.

Javier isn’t inside. Well, he isn’t anywhere I can see him, which isn’t the same thing, I guess, but it feels weird. I go into my room and look out the window, and I see him out by the barn, pacing. He’s talking on the phone. It seems kind of intense.

I feel like a ghost. Like nobody sees me anymore. Mom did, once. But Lanny just mostly sees me as someone who takes up space, I think. She still sometimes calls me ALB, Annoying Little Brother. Sometimes she means it.

I matter to Dad, though.

And though it isn’t smart, I keep taking the phone out of my pocket, wondering what it would be like to hear his voice.

 

It’s after dinner, and I’m in my room reading, when I overhear Lanny talking to Javier. It’s not like she’s particularly loud, and normally I wouldn’t pay attention anyway, but she’s talking about Dad. I guess Javier and Kezia are still trying to do therapy for us. I hate to tell them how long my sister resisted saying anything to anybody the last time she was seeing a counselor. She doesn’t share.

Well, that’s not really true. She doesn’t share about herself. But she’s sharing about me.

“. . . not really a big deal for me,” she’s saying when I start listening and put my book facedown on my chest. “Dad, I mean. He never really scared me, exactly. He never cared much about me. It was always Connor more than anything else. He babied him, when he paid attention to anybody at all.”

Liar, I think. The idea of Dad scares her a lot. And the rest, about me? That’s kind of a lie, isn’t it? I’m not sure. My memories of Dad all have a weird flexibility to them, like I might have made them up.

Maybe Lanny’s are like that, too.

I can’t make out what Javier says. He’s farther away, and his voice is too low. But I can hear my sister’s reply.

“He’s always quiet, but since we left our house, it’s been way worse. He’s being weird. Maybe it’s just that he’s still dealing with being scared so bad, or maybe being in a strange place. I don’t know. Connor never says what he feels. He can be kind of sneaky.” She laughs a little, but it sounds flat.

Sneaky. She means like Dad.

I hate her in that instant. Pure, white hatred that makes me feel like I’m suffocating. You’re the sneak. You snuck out over the fence today. Don’t you dare say that.

I don’t like being angry. It makes me cold again, and shaky, and I wish she’d stop talking.

But she goes on and says, “It’s not Connor’s fault. He always thought Dad was okay. Probably because Mom was always too worried to tell him the truth, all the truth. He’s old enough now to know it. Dad’s a monster. I’m never letting Connor go near him.”

She says that like she’s in charge.

She’s not in charge.

As long as I have this phone, I’m in charge.

 

 

19

GWEN

I feel naked without my phone, small comfort though it is. The motel room feels cold and empty and generic, and Sam’s gone too long. Way too long. I try watching TV, but everything irritates me. People treat life and death as entertainment, serial killers as a delicious Halloween joke, and it disgusts me. I watch part of a horror movie and feel dirty, and finally I end up staring blankly at the news, watching the slow disintegration of the world I used to know.

Sam finally calls me on the hotel phone. It’s near midnight. I’m aching with exhaustion but too tense to sleep; I feel breathless as I grab the heavy receiver and lift it to my ear. It’s old-style, tethered to the phone by the coiled cord, and I almost immediately pull the whole assembly off the table and onto the floor with a clang. “Hello? Shit! Sorry. Hello?”

There’s static for a second, and I think that I’ve broken the damned thing, but then I hear Sam’s voice. “Hey. I thought I’d better call.”

He sounds odd. Maybe that’s the poor connection, but I go still, as if I’m waiting for the hammer to fall. “What’s wrong?”

“Weather’s way worse now,” he says. “I had to pull off the freeway, it’s an ice rink. It might take me hours to get back. I just wanted you to know . . .”

“Know . . . ?” It feels like there’s more there. More than he’s saying.

“Not to expect me back until the morning,” he says then. “I’m going to get a room here, try once the sun burns some of this mess off. Okay?”

“Does it matter?” I ask. “You don’t have a choice, then I don’t, either.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Sorry, Gwen. I’m really sorry.”

I wonder, then, if he’s really never coming back. I can’t blame him if he’s not, if he’s changed his mind with a little distance and time. I’m a black hole of trouble and pain and need, and just being around me has to be agony for him right now. He deserves better than to be dragged into the hell I live in.

It doesn’t really matter, I tell myself. I intended to go on with or without him.

“Okay,” I say. I don’t sound right, either. “It’s fine. I’m fine. Thanks, Sam. For everything.”

That’s final. I hear the ending in the words, and it makes me catch my breath because though I hadn’t believed anything else could ever touch me, this hurts. This time it leaves a scar.

“Gwen . . .” There’s something in his voice, and I can feel him wanting to tell me—and then the silence stretches, rattled with static. “See you soon.”