Olivia
It’s a long time before I pick myself up off the floor, and even when I do it’s as if I’m in a haze. The same one I found my mamma in time and time again. My throat aches, but it’s no longer August’s hardened hands crushing my windpipe—it’s the past. It’s demons, and the blackness of regret, the hollowness of a childhood that cannot be changed, no matter how much you might want it to. I close the door and walk out to my bike. It’s already going on dark, which means I’ve been sat on that floor all day. I don’t care. Let the darkness have me. I deserve it.
My stomach growls with hunger, and I swallow through the pain in my throat, always hungry. When you spend your childhood starving, food becomes your comfort when you do have it. Excess, warmth, nice lingerie—all the things to cover how ugly I am inside. I shake my head. How ugly I was. I’m better now. I’m here for a reason. I’ve saved so many with the work I do, and yet it still feels like that little girl inside me is drowning, because I couldn’t save her. No one came to save her.
I pull the bike to a stop at the end of the long drive. Tanglewood sits like a shiny beacon in the dark, picturesque, beautiful, and sturdy, even though it’s crumbling around us. When I was a little girl, I dreamed of living in a house like this. I thought if I could dust myself off, make clean my dirty clothes, and wash away the stain of grubby handprints, that everything would be better, but demons live in pretty houses too. I didn’t know that then, but I do now. I’d thought that homes like this were for good people—they weren’t reserved for the heroin addicts or sullied children or Steves of the world. Boy, how I was wrong.
I climb off the bike and slowly push it up the drive before abandoning it in the graveyard of broken mowers, tractor parts, and cars that make up the Cottons’ garage. I’m stalling. I know this. I know that he didn’t mean to hurt me. It was my mistake—I screwed up. I ache all over, and I want to just melt into a hot bath, but the second I walk in the door August is there, towering before me.
“Olivia,” he says. His eyes are red-rimmed, bloodshot, and stricken.
“No.” I shake my head and step back. I’m afraid if I let him apologize, if I don’t walk away now he’ll see between the cracks. He’ll discover why my arms are scarred. He’ll find that darkness within me, and I won’t know how to put it all back inside. I won’t be able to reel in the thread that’s unraveling from my center, promising to smother all that’s good like so much black tar and sorrow. “I can’t. Not tonight.”
“I’m so sorry. I feel sick to my stomach.”
“I can’t do this now,” I say more firmly, pushing past.
“Olivia, please?” August grabs my arms, drawing me against him. I struggle in his grasp, but it’s useless.
“Don’t touch me!” Tears spill from my eyes, and I shut my lids against the pain that feels as if it will tear me in two. “Let me go, please?”
“Auggie?” From the top of the stairs, Bettina’s cry causes us both to cease fighting. I stare anxiously up at her, wondering how much she saw and what she makes of it. “Why are you hwurting her?”
“Goddamn it!” August releases me and stalks away, toward the kitchen, and I’m left staring up at this poor innocent little girl, who’s likely just as confused as I am about what she just witnessed. I clear my scratchy throat as the back door slams.
“Wivvie?”
I wipe away my tears with shaking hands and smile up at her. I’m sure she knows it’s as forced as it feels. I hate that she had to see that. I hate that my own demons are raring their ugly heads when I thought they were long since dead and buried, and I hate that I can’t do my job properly because my feelings are getting in the way. “Come on, pretty girl. Let’s get you back to bed.”
“Did Auggie hwurted you?”
“No, honey,” I lie. I don’t have the heart to explain what happened between us, because I barely understand it myself. “I was just … sad about something, and he was trying to make it better.”
“Auggie doesn’t like sad,” she says with a frown. I climb the stairs towards her. “Sad makeded him angwee. He got angwee all the time when Mamma and Papa died ’cause I cried a lot.”
I smooth the hair back from her face and tilt her chin up to me. “No, honey, he wasn’t angry at you. August loves you. I think he got mad because he misses them too, and he doesn’t know how to feel about that.”
She nods, and I can see how hard she’s trying to keep her tears at bay. “Mamma used to wead me bedtime stories, but Auggie doesn’t do that. Will you wead to me?”
I blink back my surprise and say, “Of course. You lead the way.”
Bettina takes my hand in her small one and guides me to the room at the end of the hall. It’s the first time I’ve been this far. I’ve never needed to visit her and August’s bedrooms before, and the bathroom and guestrooms are all at the opposite side of the house. I can’t help but peek as we walk past August’s room. It’s easy to see his Marine training hasn’t left him, because his corners are all tucked away nice and tight, and the room is obscenely neat. From what I can see, there are no personal belongings, no pictures on the walls or frames sitting on the bedside table. A pair of combat boots are lined up at the end of the bed, as if he’s only just taken them off and plans to step into them again. I draw my gaze away and come to a stop in a very pink, very princess-themed room.
It’s exactly the kind of room I’d dreamed of as a kid, and I smile, because Bettina has already had so much taken from her, but I’m glad that at least this one special place hasn’t been taken away too. I wonder if every time she enters this room she thinks of all the nights her mother must have tucked her in. I wonder if Pearl Cotton did the same to August, and when he got too old for that, if he pushed her away. Did it break her heart? I imagine that’s exactly what it would feel like, when your children were too big for cuddles.
Bettina runs over to the bed, but I stop on the threshold. I’m not sure August would want me in here, but right now, this is bigger than the two of us and our demons. A little girl just lost her mother and father, and she needs comfort. Incidentally, that happens to be what I’m good at, so I step inside her room and wait until she gets settled in her princess canopy bed before I climb in beside her, and I read from what she tells me is her favorite book. She snuggles in, and I stroke her silky hair between each turn of the pages.
Ten minutes later, Bettina is fast asleep, and the top stair creaks beneath August’s weight. His eyes meet mine down the long hall. I’m not sure he’s not going to fly into another rage, so I carefully slide out of the bed and switch on her night light. I cross the room and flick off the overhead lights, and just as I’m turning to close her door a fraction I’m pulled by the waist into August’s bedroom and pushed up against the door. I’m panting; my heart thunders against my chest as I glare up at him. He pens me in on either side of my head with huge forearms. I hadn’t noticed how many scars he has. There are two long keloids, and a few little divots from what appear to be shrapnel wounds.
“Olivia, I’m sorry.”
I nod. I don’t tell him it’s okay, because we both know it’d be lying.
“I’m so, so sorry. I wasn’t … here. I don’t know if that makes any sense to you, and I know it’s no excuse. Jesus. Please say something.”
“I need a drink.”
He frowns, and then a strange chuckle escapes his throat and he moves closer. He tilts his head, looking at my lips. For a beat, I think he’s going to kiss me, and then his gaze dips to my throat and his whole expression shuts down. Carefully, he reaches out. The pad of his thumb traces the sensitive flesh of my neck, the places where his fingers have bruised me, and I suck in a sharp breath at how tender a gesture it is. August shakes his head and backs away from me. I take it as my cue to leave, so I quietly open the door and exit. Closing it behind me, I lean against the heavy Cherrywood, and let out a deep sigh. One step forward, ten steps back. That’s the way it always seems to go with us.
I walk the hall to my room, where I close the door and let the world, and August Cotton, melt away as I collapse onto the bed. I’m raw, spent, and exposed, and I’ve done enough for one day. I sleep, and my dreams are filled with demons that hold me down and rape my mind and plunder my body as if it were treasure, as if I were a precious toy, and not broken on the inside.