When I rose over her, she reached for me and I paused, staring into her eyes, and then rocked into her, fully. Her arms surrounded my shoulders, fingers clutching the hair at my nape as she cried out. Sweeping my tongue through her mouth, I kissed her, holding myself still. Mine, I thought. Yours, her body answered. I began to move, and she held tight, humming and moaning, crying and pulling me inside, everywhere I wanted in. She came apart seconds later and I plunged my tongue into her mouth, stroking deeply and swallowing her pleasure, making it mine. I growled her name, shuddering, and dragged her with me as I collapsed at her side.
I love you, I thought, but heard nothing in return.
Her fingers moved over the petals tattooed over my heart.
‘My mother’s name was Rosemary. She went by Rose.’ I stared at the ceiling.
‘You did this in memory of her?’
I nodded against the pillow. ‘Yes. And the poem on my left side. She wrote it – for my dad.’
Her fingers traced the poem, and I shivered. ‘She was a poet?’
‘Sometimes.’ My mother’s face smiled down at me – a memory that I couldn’t place now. I held on to whatever I could of her. ‘Usually, she was a painter.’
Jacqueline made some comment about the artist genes and engineering parts that comprised me, and I laughed at this visual, wondering aloud which were the engineering parts.
She asked if I had any of Mom’s paintings. I told her that some hung in the Hellers’ place, since they used to be so close. I would, perhaps, show her those. Others were in storage in the Hellers’ attic or Dad’s.
She began questioning me about their friendship, and at first I thought she was merely curious about the longstanding relationship between the Hellers and the Maxfields.
‘They were all really close – before.’
Before was an uncomplicated word, and it would never express all I’d lost when my timeline split in two, hurling me into an after I would never escape. I couldn’t reach through that curtain, ever, and see my mother as she was. Touch her. Hear her voice the way it should have been.
‘Lucas, I need to tell you something,’ Jacqueline said, and there was an uneasy tenor to her voice. I turned my head, watching her face as she told me she’d been curious and had searched for my mother’s obituary online.
I knew well enough what she’d found. The nightmare from which I could never wake. My heart went stone cold, and I could barely breathe. ‘Did you find your answer?’
‘Yes,’ she whispered.
Pity. That’s what I saw in her eyes. I lay back, eyes stinging as I thought of the news articles she must have read. I wondered if she’d sifted through the facts to see my part. My guilt.
I braced, trying to come to terms with this. No one outside the Hellers and Dad knew the details. I’d never spoken of them with anyone. I couldn’t bear to even think about it – how could I speak of it?
Then I caught what she’d just said – that she’d talked to Charles.
‘What?’
‘Lucas, I’m sorry if I invaded your privacy –’
‘If? Why would you go talk to him? Weren’t the gory details in the news reports sickening enough for you? Or personal enough?’ I shot off the bed and pulled on my jeans, my voice like ice, like a razor, cutting into my skin. My wrists burned. I don’t know what I said to her and what I didn’t – the details I’d never uttered aloud. It didn’t matter. She knew them all.
I sat, head in my hands, struggling to breathe, reliving it – please, God, no –
A distant noise woke me, but I rolled back over, kicking off the sheet. I was hot, but too lazy to get up and turn on my ceiling fan. I lay on my side, staring out the window to the backyard, thinking about Yesenia, and the coming weekend. I would hold her hand. Kiss her, maybe, if I could get her alone. If she let me.
God, it was hot. I flopped on to my back. To be thirteen was to be a furnace. I burned off food and energy like a flame sucking down oxygen. You will eat us out of house and home by the time you’re fifteen! my mother said while watching me finish off the leftovers she’d intended to reheat for our dinner. We’d ordered takeout instead. She didn’t want all of hers, so I’d finished it, too.
I heard the noise again. Mom was probably up. She prowled around the house sometimes when Dad was gone, missing him. I should check on her … My clock read 4:11. Ugh. Four hours until I would see Yesenia. I could get up early, get to school early. Maybe I would catch her without all her giggling friends, and we could talk about … something. Like my upcoming game. Maybe she’d want to come watch me play sometime.
I turned just as someone leaned over me. Dad? But he was out of town.
Jerked from the bed, I stumbled. Something was stuffed into my mouth as I opened it to scream – I gagged and couldn’t make a sound or spit it out. I thrashed and kicked but couldn’t get loose. Couldn’t move my wrists. I was shoved to my knees at the foot of the bed, and then he was gone. I tried to stand up, run, grab my phone to dial 911, but I was stuck.
My wrists were tied. I strained to scrape the binding loose with my fingernails, but it was too tight. Plastic. It was plastic. I pulled against the restraint, but it didn’t budge. I tried to rotate my hands to see if I could swivel them free, or fold them and twist them free, like Houdini, but the plastic just cut into my wrists. My hands were too big. Mom said my hands and feet were like the big, floppy feet of a puppy that would be a ginormous dog.
From her room down the hall, my mother screamed. I froze. She called my name. ‘Landon!’ There was a crash and a thud and I struggled harder, not caring if it hurt. I couldn’t answer her. I couldn’t tell her I was coming. My tongue shoved against the cloth in my mouth.