Chapter Nine

I can’t go home.

Instead, after dropping Hayes off, I head to my cabin and work on the water tower design. Now that he’s agreed to help me, I feel a renewed sense of purpose. Like my fantasy project has more heft all of a sudden.

I grind away in creative flow as my lions roll in the grass and bat at butterflies until it gets so dark I need to turn my big lantern on. Then I continue working until the giant battery in my big lantern decides it’s had about enough.

The light gives two brief warning flickers before I’m plunged into sudden darkness. Ripped from the intense focus on my work, I feel utterly and completely alone.

My eyes adjust slowly, but the thin reed of moonlight coming through the small, high window of the cabin is almost nonexistent.

I wish I had the laptop with the videos of my mom with me now. The videos are safe. They’re all the happy version of Mom, the version of herself she showed the outside world, and the version she wanted everyone to remember forever.

I’m pretty sure she expected me to share them in one final posthumous art exhibit. Her grand masterpiece.

Over the final months of her life, she made the recordings while I was at school and Dad was at work. One by one, she covered topic after topic and hid the laptop on the top shelf of her closet.

If at any point during those months Dad or I had thought to check her closet, we would’ve seen what she was up to. But as it was, nothing made us curious. Nothing seemed suspicious.

When she stopped making art, we didn’t wonder what she did all day while she was home alone.

We were fatally uncurious.

If anything, we were relieved at how much happier she seemed overall those last months, more able to balance real life and the art life inside her—the side of her that so often made me feel invisible.

Suddenly, Mom was paying attention when I talked, like she wanted to get to know me better. My mother truly mothered me. And I loved it.

I know now she was only gathering information for the next day’s recording, but at the time, I took her attention at face value. I thought I deserved it.

I was the one who found the note.

Standing in the kitchen, with my school bag at my feet, my heart pounding with growing understanding. My feet pounding even louder up the stairs, racing against time—two hours too late for anything I did to matter.

I saw her body first.

Of course, my mother chose the most dramatic version of suicide.

Hanging would be too quick and prim for her, unless perhaps she could’ve done it in the center of a huge open space. Preferably a round room with sunlight dramatically spotlighting her swaying body. But our ceilings are not grand enough.

And pills would only look like she was sleeping peacefully. Gunshot to the head? Too damn unpredictable. Splatter is such a difficult medium, with its varying shape and size and projection.

No, Mom staged the scene of her suicide as if it were a piece of performance art.

After making her final recording, which was the day she made video number forty-seven, she wrote the brief note with a flourish and headed upstairs to the bathroom.

I wonder sometimes if her plan began the day she decided to renovate that bathroom and make everything pure white. Or perhaps she found her inspiration in the perfection of the shining, white floor tiles after they were laid.

Twisting a long string of cheap, plastic pearls around her neck, she applied her darkest red lipstick and removed her dress. Folded it neatly and laid it on the closed toilet.

She even tidied the bathroom, hiding the half-used bottles with glops of conditioner dripping down the sides, staging her set.

Naked, aside from the pearls and lipstick, she climbed into our deep, claw-foot tub. Let the water fill partway but twisted the knob to off while it was still too shallow to hide her body. Much too shallow.

Old-fashioned straight razor that she got God knows where in her hand.

Like two swift brushstrokes, she drew that razor that Dad and I had never seen across each wrist. Just a couple dramatic drops of blood for display on those pure-white floor tiles. Accents of red placed just so.

Hands resting on naked thighs, she reclined in the pool of shallow water and watched it transition from clear to ribboned to red.

Waited for the world to go dark and for her daughter to find her and grab her and pull her out, hugging her cold, wet mother with sightless, staring eyes and getting blood everywhere. Ruining the carefully staged scene with desperate, tearful flailing.

Stop it, Rory! I command.

I need to get out of my head right now. I bang on the lantern until its weak beam flickers back awake.

I pick up my blade and find the handle has gone cold.

I make a quick swipe at the piece of stencil I’ve been working on. My cut is impulsive and too fast, and now I’ll probably need to redo that section. Damn.

I wish I’d brought Hayes back here with me. I could be losing myself in slow, delicious moves. The two of us fitting together so beautifully…

Then I remember he knows. Everything is ruined. Even though he’s agreed to help me paint my masterpiece, I need to stop thinking about him in that way.

Checking my phone, I realize it’s nearly midnight, which explains why I’m feeling so drained. In addition to the numerous call alerts from my dad, I see Hayes sent me a text a few hours ago asking how I’m doing.

I ignore all that and try to figure out where I should sleep tonight. No way am I going home and dealing with Dad.

I can either try to make myself comfortable inside my small cabin, or I can curl up in my car. I’m thinking there’s a blanket in the back…

My phone vibrates violently in my hand while emitting an alarming beeping sound. One look at the screen tells me my electronic device isn’t just having a stroke; Dad is tracking my phone right now.

He’s had enough of me ignoring his calls. This is the first time he’s resorted to using my phone’s finder to hunt me down this way. It’s an admission of weakness and desperation. In a way, it means I’ve won, but he absolutely cannot find my cabin. So right now, he wins.

I rush to the door, trying to concoct a story of how I was driving through the woods, cooling off before coming home for the night. I decided to stop for an innocent little hike.

Sure, it’s the middle of the night, but it’s the only lie I can come up with, and I need to get the hell home and sell it before Dad comes here looking for me.

I shine the flickering lantern around my tiny cabin as I open the door and shudder at the damning evidence strewn about. One glance would tell my dad exactly what I’ve been up to.

Who I am.

And he won’t hesitate to arrest me for vandalism, of that I am certain. The chance to send me away to some reformatory school for delinquent girls would be like a dream come true for him.

If I stop to hide everything, it’ll just give him more time to track me here, and if I turn my phone off now it will just lock him onto this location.

All I can do is keep moving and pull the signal along with me and hope he buys my weak excuse.

My phone sounds off every few minutes as my dad continues tracking my progress home. The beep that sounds over the roar of my car engine makes me flinch each time.

When I finally pull into the driveway, the silhouette of him standing with his arms crossed is waiting for me in the middle of the front lawn.

“What were you doing out in those woods?” he demands as soon as I open my car door.

My anger blocks the lie I planned, and instead I shoot back, “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

I try pushing past him, but he grabs my arm and stops me.

“Ouch!” I’m overreacting to his grip, but this is the roughest he’s ever handled me in my life.

“Give me a break, Rory. You are not that delicate.”

Kelly starts barking from inside the house.

“So, what’re you going to do? Beat the shit out of me here on the front lawn in front of all the neighbors?” I don’t need to see Mrs. Delprete looking out her bedroom window to know she’s watching us. She’s always watching us.

Dad flings my arm back at me. “You know what? If I thought it would do any good, I’d be tempted to try it. But I just don’t even know how to reach you anymore, Rory.”

I smirk. “Giving up? So easily?”

He points a finger in my face. “I will never give up on you. Not ever. Do you understand me? You might think you’ve shut everyone out, but I know who you are, and this person standing in front of me is not the girl I raised.”

My fury hits like a gunshot. “I’m not your little girl anymore!” The words fire out of me. “Do you have any idea how fucked up I am? How much I’m like her? Or are you just so happy she’s dead you want to forget about Mom forever.”

Dad looks like he might really hit me. Which would be fantastic. But he just clenches his fist and hisses, “Your mother killed herself as part of some psychotic art installment because she didn’t see any value in reality. Or in being married to me. Or in being a mother to you.”

“She was an amazing artist!” I’m practically screaming. “You couldn’t stand her success and did everything you could to undermine her talent.”

“I supported her every step of the way, and you know that. She was depressed, and she refused to go on antidepressants.”

“She couldn’t create on those drugs. You wanted her to stop being an artist and just be some stupid, boring housewife.”

“I wanted her to take the medication the doctor prescribed so she wouldn’t try to kill herself.” He grabs my shoulders hard. “I cared more about her than I did about her damn artwork.”

“She was her art.”

“I don’t even understand that.”

“See, and that’s why you could never understand her. You never really knew her and now you don’t know me.” I lean forward and growl at him. “It’s the reason why you and I hate each other.”

He grips my shoulders. “I have never hated you, Rory.” He lets go and actually tries to hug me.

I fight him off. “Just stop it, Dad.”

Kelly is going wild inside the house, and Dad’s eyes slide to the lights that just flipped on in Mrs. Delprete’s upstairs window.

“Come on, Rory. We’ll go inside and you’ll tell me what you’ve really been up to.”

“Why?” I step back and yell, “Is screaming on the front lawn not acceptable behavior for a sergeant’s daughter?” I start putting on a big show now, distracting him from asking about where I’ve been.

He wipes his face with his palm in frustration. “This isn’t you.”

I egg him on. “You can’t say this isn’t me, Sarge.” I raise my voice even higher. “I decide who I am, not you.”

The porch light goes on next door, and through clenched teeth, Dad says, “Let’s continue this inside, Rory.”

“You can’t lock me up in some tower, you know. I’m not the one who’s supposed to be mourning my dead wife. I’m allowed to be young and go out and have fun.” I fling my arms out dramatically. “I’m free to fuck around with whoever I want.”

Oh shit. Did I really just yell that?

In the beam from the Delprete’s porch light, I can see that this declaration has finally made Dad’s eye start twitching.

With a grunt, he spins around and heads for the front door of our house.

“Everything okay out here?” Mrs. Delprete calls through her screen door.

All the fight drains out of me at the sound of her voice. She’s used to dramatic scenes playing out on our front lawn—vulgar performance art—but it’s been years since the last show.

And this is the first time I’ve been cast in the starring role of raving lunatic, instead of my mother.

I’m turning out exactly like her. The thought sends me following Dad into the house.

We’re both so angry we slam drawers and doors as we each get ready for bed, and then neither one of us says good night.

Most nights, my dad’s snores are deafening, but I’m still awake when the first morning birds start singing, and there hasn’t been a sound from his room.

The next thing I know, sunlight is slicing through my blinds, trying to pry my eyelids open. I must’ve drifted off for the last few hours of darkness.

Pulling the covers over my head, I roll toward the wall and listen to Dad getting ready for work.

When my door creaks open, I force my breathing to go slow and deep even though my heart is beating in my ears. I even manage to add a slight nose whistle—that little something extra to prove I’m really sleeping peacefully.

Dad quietly closes the door, but I keep pretending I’m asleep until I hear his car leave for work.