“Ames is leaving in the morning,” my mom told me when I opened it. “We just wanted to let you know.”
Another bang. My dad raised his eyebrows. I said, “Is everything okay?”
“Yes,” he told me. “It was a mutual decision.”
The continuing racket of the next hour said otherwise. Every drawer opened was closed with emphasis, the closet door rattling its frame after each use. It was concerning enough that, in the sudden quiet during one of Ames’s smoke breaks, I went over, poking the door open and peering in. I glanced over my shoulder, then went to the bed, where a row of boxes sat waiting. One was filled with books, paperback novels and a couple of titles about recovery and addiction. Another held some linens and towels, a few balled-up socks. The last was odds and ends: coffee cups, lighters, charging cords. In one corner was tucked a stack of pictures.
The one on top was of him and Peyton, standing on a sandy beach, probably during their Jacksonville trip. They had their arms around each other’s shoulders and were smiling. I flipped to the next: my brother again, this time at our kitchen table, a coffee drink at his elbow. He had one eyebrow raised, half-annoyed, waiting for the shutter to click. A shot of Ames and Marla standing in front of a Christmas tree. The last, at the bottom, was from Peyton’s graduation dinner at Luna Blu. I remembered my mom handing the waitress her phone so we could all be in it. My brother was in the middle in a crisp white shirt, my parents on either side of him. I was next to my mom, with Ames beside me, Marla on his other side. We were all smiling, the twinkling lights above us blurring as the flash popped.
Distantly, I heard my phone beep. I dropped the picture back into the box with the others, then went back to my room, where I walked over to my bed to see if the text I’d gotten was the one I’d been waiting for, about the showcase outcome. It wasn’t.
On way to hospital. This time, Mac had written for both of them. My mom. It’s bad.
* * *
There’s a lot you can do with a phone. Send a message or a picture. Get the weather, news, or horoscope. See and talk to someone in real time, play games, pay for parking. One thing technology still hadn’t mastered, though, was the actual act of being there. I’d been all right with settling for distance with the showcase. But not this.
It didn’t even occur to me to ask permission to go to the hospital. It was well past midnight and I’d had enough negative responses to more reasonable requests. Instead, in those panicked minutes after getting that three-sentence text, I put my phone aside, sat down at my desk, and wrote a note.
I wasn’t kidding myself. I knew my mom would probably only get to the second sentence before coming after me, disregarding the rest. It seemed important, though, that for this last argument, I get to have my say. If I was to be sentenced, I wanted the details of my crime, too, to be clear.
Mom,
I’ve gone to U General. Layla and Mac’s mother is there, and I want to be there for them. I never wanted to disobey you, that night in the studio or now. I’m not Peyton. I’m doing this because I’m a good friend, not a bad daughter. I know you might not understand, but I hope you will try.
I left it on the keyboard of my open computer. Then I got my purse and jacket and left, shutting my door behind me. After all these months of watching the clock and biding my time, I knew I only had so long before being found out. I wasn’t the only one who could always hear the garage door opening.
Downstairs, the house was dark, except for one light on in the kitchen. I glanced in: it was empty. But then, when I put my hand on the door to the garage, someone was right behind me.
I felt a presence first, the heaviness of a body. Then heat. Finally, breath, right on the back of my neck. I froze, and a hand appeared right in front of my face, fingers spread across the door.
“And where are you going?”
Instinctively, I gripped the knob, turning it, and pulled hard. The door didn’t budge. I closed my eyes, willing myself to turn around, even though I knew it would mean us being face-to-face, if not nose to nose.
“Leave me alone,” I said to Ames, struggling to keep my voice both low and firm.
“Sydney, it’s midnight.” His voice was high, mocking. Clearly audible. Shit. “I don’t think your parents would like this.”
I turned around. All I could smell was cigarette smoke. We were uncomfortably close. I couldn’t step back, as I was against the door. He chose not to.
“Leave me alone,” I repeated. Instead, he moved in. When I lifted my hands, palms out, to push him back, he grabbed my wrists.
I surprised myself with the sound I made, a gasp, almost a shout. All this time, with him first just around, then living under our roof, I’d considered myself trapped. But I hadn’t been. I saw it clearly, now that I really was.
“Ames,” I said, but now my voice was wavering, “back off.”
Hearing this, he smiled, then tightened his grip on my wrists, pushing them back, back, against my ears. That was when I got scared.
But as he leaned in, closing his eyes, I knew I had to act. I’d been passive for so long. Watching TV all those long, lonely afternoons. At the nearby table, not telling my parents the things that scared me. All around, in this house, there were evidence and symbols of the girl I’d been but no longer wanted to be. Peyton wasn’t the only one locked up inside something.
I tried to turn my head as he put his lips on mine, squeezing my eyes shut, but he grabbed my face, jerking me back to face him. I could feel his fingers digging into my chin. “I want you to look at me,” he said.
I kept my eyes closed. “No.”
“Sydney.” The grip tightened. “Look at me.”
“No.” My voice came out tight, like a scream. It was only when I heard it that I realized my right hand was free.
“Just—” he began, but then my palm was connecting with his face, the sound of skin to skin loud, a smack, and he stumbled backward, bumping into the wall behind him. I reached down for the doorknob, now pressed into my spine, my fingers grappling and sliding, trying to get a grip on it. I’d just twisted it open and turned around, almost free, when he grabbed me around the waist. This time I did scream, and pulled as hard as I could away from him, throwing every bit of my weight in the opposite direction. I wasn’t budging, totally stuck, and then suddenly, in a snap of a moment, I was stumbling forward, loose, down the steps to the garage.
I put out my hand, touching the front fender of my mom’s car to steady myself. Then I turned, expecting him to come at me again. Instead, I saw my dad.
He had one arm hooked around Ames’s neck, tight, the fist clenched, and was pulling him backward down the hallway, away from me. It was all so crazy and quick, and the only thing I could concentrate on was the sound of Ames’s feet jerking across the floor. My father had a look on his face I’d never seen before. I almost didn’t recognize him.
“What were you going to do?” he was saying, the words punctuated with deep, jagged breaths. “What were you going to do?”
“Hey,” Ames squeaked, reaching up to try to free himself. “I can’t—”
“Are you okay?” my dad asked me, ignoring him.
I nodded, mute. Then a light came on behind them, and I heard my mother’s voice. “Peyton? What’s going on down there?”
I looked back at my dad, at Ames’s face, now bright red. There was no way to explain this quickly, and I had little, if any, time left. So as my father pushed Ames into a chair in the kitchen, and my mother’s shadow grew visible, then larger, as she came down the stairs, I slipped into my car.
My wrists ached, and I could still feel his fingers, pressing hard on my chin. But shaken as I was, I knew there were people who needed me, and whatever else happened here would have to wait. As I reached up, hitting the button for the garage door on my visor, it seemed fitting that the same familiar creaking and grinding—just like my father le
aving the night of Peyton’s arrest and my mom arriving home those lonely afternoons—would signal the start to whatever this was, as well. It had become the sound at which our lives in this house briefly revealed themselves to the world before going hidden again. When I backed down the driveway, I didn’t even look to see if anyone had come out to try to stop me—I didn’t want to know. I left the door open behind me.
* * *
At every stoplight on the way across town to the hospital, even as my head swam with everything that had happened, I checked my phone. I knew Mac: he’d tell me not to worry as soon as there was no reason to. No messages.
U General was all lit up and busy. I parked in a nearby lot, then hurried over to the emergency room, which was crowded and loud, like Jackson but with more adults and crying babies. After I waited for a long fifteen minutes, a nurse informed me that Mrs. Chatham had been admitted and wrote a room number on a scrap of paper: 919. In the elevator going up, I kept looking down at it, like it might carry some hint of what I’d find once I got there. Magical thinking, in the most real of times. When the doors slid open, I stuffed it in my pocket.
With each thing I did—pushing the button for nine, watching the floor numbers climb, taking those first steps down the scuffed, worn linoleum of the hallway—I imagined another action happening as well. My mom awakened by the sound of the scuffle downstairs, or our voices. Seeing my father and Ames in the kitchen before spinning to look for me. Going to my room, finding the note. Scrambling into her clothes, then getting in the car to follow me. Two lives moving separately, but about to intersect soon, not unlike Peyton and David Ibarra on another night. In any moment, there were so many chances for paths to cross and people to clash, come together, or do any number of things in between. It was amazing we could live at all, knowing all that could occur purely by chance. But what was the alternative?
It—not living—was close here at the hospital. I could see it in the rooms I passed, with beeping machines, curtains pulled or open, sighs and moans. At the end of a hallway, I saw a sign: FAMILY WAITING. The room, which was filled with couches and recliners, a TV playing on mute in one corner, was empty. But there was a guitar case leaning against one wall, a duffel bag beside it. And on the lone table, a purse I recognized on a pulled-out chair and a bubble gum YumYum, already licked, on a napkin. They had been here, recently. And left in a hurry.
919, I thought, going back out into the hallway. The rooms blurred as I passed them, focused only on the numbers, always the numbers. 927. I pictured my mom at the wheel, driving in the dark. 925. The hospital finally appearing in the distance. 923. That same bright, busy lobby. 921. So little time. And then I was there.
The door was open. I stopped outside, breathing hard. Just over the threshold, his huge, broad back to me, was Irv. Rosie, in a Mariposa jacket and her ponytail, seemed tiny next to him, holding his hand. Grasping her other one was Eric, hat off, his face looking young and scared. Then Layla, hair loose over her shoulders and staring straight ahead, and Mac beside her. Together, they circled the bed where Mrs. Chatham lay, oxygen mask on, eyes closed. Mr. Chatham sat in the only chair, his head in his hands.
In my pocket, my phone buzzed. I knew who it was, and that it would be the first call of many. But I didn’t budge. Instead, it was Mr. Chatham who moved, somehow prompted to spot me, and then Layla turned as well.
As our eyes met, I thought again of that long-ago afternoon in the courthouse. When faced with the scariest of things, all you want is to turn away, hide in your own invisible place. But you can’t. That’s why it’s not only important for us to be seen, but to have someone to look for us, as well.
Layla let go of Mac’s hand, then held her own out to me. As I went to stand between them, closing the circle, I could feel Mac looking at me. But my eyes were only on her. Then I kept them open, wide, as she closed her own.
CHAPTER
25
“FOR YOU.”
Layla sat up in the recliner, wiping a hand across her mouth. Her hair was sticking up on one side, creases from the chair’s corded fabric on one cheek. “What is it?”
“Just look.”
She took the bag from me carefully, so as not to wake her mom, who was sleeping. It was pretty much all she’d done while recovering from the mild heart attack to which the other recent episodes had been leading. During her few waking moments, she asked after Mr. Chatham, whichever of her children weren’t present and accounted for, and occasionally updates from Big New York and Los Angeles. Then, tiring quickly, she’d again drift off, leaving us to wait for the next time to ask our own questions, or be left to pose them to each other.
I sat down in the other chair. The seat was warm, recently vacated by Rosie, who’d gone to get some fresh air and some coffee. Outside, the sun was just setting. It was hard to believe it had been less than a full day since we’d all gathered here on a different night, in another darkness. You always lost track of time in places like this, or so I’d heard. But it wasn’t just the hospital that had made the recent hours seem to me like the longest in a while.
Layla opened the bag, stifling a yawn with her free hand. Seeing the contents, her eyes widened. She looked up at me. “Did you . . . ? You didn’t.”
I smiled. “Special occasion.”
“Are you serious right now?”
“Shhhhhhh!” hissed a passing nurse in the hallway. They moved so quietly, until they were reprimanding you.
Sorry, Layla mouthed, clapping a hand over her mouth. Then, grinning, she dug into the bag, pulling out a box of fries from Littles and putting it on the tray table beside her. She removed a layer of napkins—nodding approvingly at my effort to prevent cross-contamination—then took out one from Bradbury Burger, followed by more napkins and a final order of Pamlico Grill’s, lining them up neatly. Then she sat back, taking them in. “The Trifecta. It’s amazing.”
“I thought you might like it.”
“I’m honored by it.” She sighed happily, then looked into the bag again. “Did you happen to—”
I dug into my purse for the other bag, this one full of ketchups from all three places. Of course there were tiny taste variations. Didn’t you know? “Here.”
She grinned, taking it as well, then pulled her feet up under her as she began her ministrations. As I watched her, Mrs. Chatham sighed in her sleep, shifting her feet one way, then the other.
I was tired, too, more so than I could remember ever being. With everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours, I’d barely slept, other than a couple of hours grabbed that morning between a talk with my parents and returning to the hospital. During that short time, however, I’d still managed to miss the removal of Ames’s belongings from our house. Dozing off, I heard my mom and dad conferring with Sawyer in the War Room while one of his employees took the boxes away. When I awoke, there was only silence. I still went to Peyton’s room, though, to see it empty for myself. The bed was stripped, the windows cracked, the carpet already vacuumed. He was really gone.
In time, I’d have to make some decisions about whether to press charges, as well as see the psychologist my mom insisted I visit, both with her and my dad and alone. It was just the first step in dealing with what had happened that night and the months leading up to it. Because I’d fled to be with Layla and Mac, I’d never know the words that were said once my mom came downstairs, or the exact blows that caused the injuries Ames’s lawyer would later try to get him compensated for. Whatever had occurred, it had not only allowed me to get to Mrs. Chatham’s bedside, but also be there long enough to stay with Mac and Layla until she finally opened her eyes. For once, time was on my side.
I wasn’t aware of any of this then, though. Instead, I focused only on Mac’s hand in mine, Layla leaning into my shoulder on the other side. Even though there were a full eight of us in that small space, it was so quiet, the only sound the beeping of the heart monitor. It was
scary, this quiet vigil, like something I’d never before experienced. But I wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else. Whatever it would cost me—and I didn’t know the entirety of that sum yet—I already knew it was worth it.
It was somewhere around two a.m. when I started worrying about my mom. I’d been expecting her to turn up at any moment, and as more time passed without that happening—not to mention another text or call—I started to wonder why. I couldn’t imagine what would keep her from coming after me, much less prevent the inevitable confrontation that would follow. By three, though, I was outright concerned. So while everyone was talking at once, relieved that Mrs. Chatham had come to and was able to speak, I whispered to Mac that I was going to make a quick call. When I stepped into the hallway, I saw her.
She was right outside the door, in a metal chair against the wall. So close that if I’d been looking, I might have glimpsed her from inside. Like me, she’d arrived at U General, asked after Mrs. Chatham, and gotten the room number. Although she was shaken by what had happened with Ames—and finally understood my protests about being alone with him—she’d still been upset with me for leaving the house. All she wanted was to get me out of there.
“But you didn’t,” I said the next morning, when we finally sat down with my dad to talk about this. “You didn’t even come in.”
My mom rubbed her eyes; she looked as tired as I felt. “I was going to. I had every intention of dragging you out of there by your hair, if it came to that.”
“So what happened?” I asked.
She looked up at me, her expression so similar to the one I’d seen on her face in the hallway the night before. Tired, sad. “I saw you,” she said simply.