Jared
I stood off to one end of the couch, a step behind it. On the fringe of the family room, like maybe I was the outsider. Which made no fucking sense since this was my house, but all of Aly’s family had descended on it and I didn’t quite know what to do with myself.
I lifted the half-empty bottle of beer to my mouth. Cold liquid slid down my throat. Swallowing, I sighed and let my gaze wander over my girl. She sat on the hearth beside her Mom, in the garden, as she liked to call it. An indulgent snort escaped my nose. How fucking cute was that?
I’d build this girl a thousand gardens if she wanted me to.
My attention drifted around the dimly lit room. Dave Moore sat in the overstuffed chair under the window. Christopher and Aug had made themselves at home, all sprawled out on the couch with their feet propped up on the coffee table, facing Aly and her mom. In the fireplace behind them, flames crackled and jumped, igniting the warmth on the walls.
I still couldn’t believe the way the house had turned out. Pride gave a firm tug at my spirit. Every square inch of it was perfect. Because it was perfect for Aly.
God, she looked like she was made to be sitting there on the smooth, flat stones. Dark hair twisted up in a messy pile on top of her head, pieces falling down to frame her face.
All of this I’d done for her.
She kept laughing, loud and carefree, listening to her brothers tell stories. That throaty lilt of her voice twisted through me like a summer breeze. Both she and her mom kept calling them out on their bullshit, reining in their tales that were stampeding out of control.
Another roar of laughter died down, and Karen sighed, sipping from a mug of hot tea Aly had made her. Her eyes traced the room I’d just been appreciating. She locked her gaze on me. “You have done such an amazing job with this place, Jared. I hardly recognize it since the last time I was here.”
A shock of self-conscious gratification stunned me. It unsettled me. My entire adult life had been spent fighting against anything inside myself that hinted at good. All these desolate days offered as penance while my soul sought destruction – my identity given to the dead.
“Thank you.” I had to force it out. Shame twisted through me on a gale-force wind – flashes of my mother’s face, what I had done. They all clashed in a violent fury against the love I’d found in this life, in the light that was Aly.
My hand tightened on my bottle, just as tight as my chest.
God, all I wanted was the light. To stand in it. Bask in it.
Awareness gathered on Aly’s features. She was so in tune with me. She cocked her head.
Are you okay?
She was the only one who understood. The only one who got me, as much of a fucking nightmare as I was, my moods manic, surging from one extreme to the other.
They’d been worse lately. Brewing. I could feel it. Like my demons were staging an assault, staking their claim. With each night, they dug their fingers deeper, spindly tendrils taking hold.
I wasn’t fool enough to pretend like I didn’t know why.
The first month back in Phoenix, I dove headfirst into making a life for me and Aly and our baby because I’d had the intense urge to build. To create something good in the chaos that ruled my heart and mind.
If I could just have one goddamned thing in this world that I did right, it’d be me doing right by Aly and our kid.
But it was like as soon as the year flipped, so did I.
I watched the calendar crawl, speed, and blur, dreading for the day to come and begging for it to pass.
All I had to do was get past it.
On its own accord, my hand fisted. The ink on my skin flexed as it burned, the imprint promising me I would never forget.
2006.
In a week and a half, seven years would have passed since the day I stamped out the good, since she’d sucked my soul into the nothingness where she’d forever beg in the bowels of my brain, where she cried out for atonement in the night.
But my spirit had rebelled against those chains. Now I somehow felt as if I was living in the light in the day and running from the darkness at night. Suspended somewhere in between. Fighting as hard as I could for what my heart wanted while my wicked feet took me down those same haunted roads.
But I refused to walk them.
Not a fucking chance.
I just needed to make it through that day and I would be okay.
Out of the corner of her eye, Aly continued to watch me. Worry crested her forehead, her eyes landing on mine almost hesitantly.
I swallowed hard, pushed all of that shit back down where it belonged. A reassuring smile pulled at the side of my mouth, my head tipping with it, letting her know it was all going to be fine.
With a frown, she wavered, before she let her own smile whisper at her mouth. This smile was meant only for me. Her own reassurance. That dose of encouragement that kept me going every fucking day.
Because I was living for this girl.
Slowly, Karen climbed to her feet, standing to take in the warmth of the fire. She seemed to rock as she let her attention pass over the few pictures Aly had added to the mantel. There was a family picture of theirs, all five of them smiling at the camera in a staged cheesy pose. In another, Christopher had his arm slung around Aly’s shoulders when she was all dressed up in her cap and gown to graduate high school. She was already beautiful then, all her childhood days behind her and a woman taking hold.
The truth was, she’d always been beautiful. She’d just affected me differently, made my heart crazy at every age because she’d always belonged to me.
Different, but still the fucking same.
It didn’t take a whole lot to admit my favorite was the grainy one snapped back when Aly had to be the cutest fucking kid around. Her two missing top front teeth weren’t enough to stop the undaunted force of her trusting smile as she grinned right at the camera. Behind her, Christopher was midjump, acting like the monkey the asshole always was. Off to the side, I stood with my arms crossed over my chest, wearing a knowing smile like I was observing it all.
We were out in our empty field. Happy and free.
And fuck if I didn’t like to be reminded of those days, just the overwhelming heat of the summer sun and the excitement bounding through our veins.
“I remember this day,” Karen murmured. She looked over her shoulder at me. A wistful smile pulled at her mouth, full of sadness and outright affection. “Your mom and I had been sitting out back, listening to you kids play.”
I blanched with the casual mention of her.
Karen slanted an accusatory brow in Christopher’s direction. “I don’t think you all knew that’s where we’d sneak out to when you’d run off to play. We knew we had to keep an ear on you in case you needed us. Christopher was giving Aly a hard time… again… telling her it was past her naptime and she needed to go home. Of course she was six years old and she hadn’t had a nap in years.”
With a delicate snort, Karen shook her head, glancing at Christopher with a knowing gleam in her eyes. “You were always trying to embarrass your sister… chase her off.” She shifted and pinned me with a look that had me itching, wanting to run and desperate to hear what she had to say all at the same time. “But Jared was always there to stick up for her.”
My hand shook as I roughed it over my head. Why did Karen have to pick a moment like now to bring this up? Audiences weren’t exactly my thing.
But it was like Aly’s entire family had settled into the memory, too.
Christopher chuckled low, but without all the asshole he usually injected into everything. He cast a repentant smile at his sister.
“You told Christopher to shut it,” Karen continued with a tender laugh, “and it wasn’t Aly who needed a nap but him because he was the one who was always acting like a baby.”
She bit at her trembling lip, fighting some kind of raw emotion. “Your mom climbed onto the storage box we had pushed up against the back fence.” Wistful, she let her gaze travel over us all. “Bet you didn’t know how much we spied on you kids to make sure you were staying out of trouble.” She shook her head and looked back to the picture. “I grabbed my camera and climbed up beside her.”
I swore to God if she started to cry I was going to bolt. I didn’t talk about my mom. Ever. It’d been my rule for years, and it’d been a damn good one. Only one night had I ever faltered, the night I’d ripped myself open and told Aly what happened the day I’d taken it all.
Of course it was Aly.
It’d always been Aly.
But I sure as hell learned my lesson that night. Had gotten my fill of baring my soul. It amounted to no good, just ushered in the torment and shame, flamed the guilt that had chased me out Aly’s door and into the three fucking most miserable months of my desolate life.
Aly had talked about her the night I’d returned, too, spoke secret words about drawing her, about my mom somehow crying out to her.
That was an idea I couldn’t fathom. Refused to. All I knew was Aly’d been the one who’d partnered with fate, that piece of fate that kept me chained to this world, what kept me tied to this girl. That was all I needed. The rest I rejected.
After that, Aly had attempted to bring her up, subtly, tiptoeing around the subject I consistently shut down.
But not Karen.
She just jumped into it like she’d opened the pages of a history book that was meant for everyone to see.
“She was giggling when she asked Aly if she liked playing with you boys or if she wanted to come in and hang out with us girls.”
Picking up the picture, Karen caressed her thumb over the black wooden frame that housed the image, like she could somehow touch that day. “This right here?” she said, tapping it. “This was Aly telling your mom you were her very best friend and she wasn’t leaving your side.”
That rock of unspent emotion at the base of my throat throbbed.
Fuck.
I tried to maintain my cool, doing my all not to lose my shit. But damn it all, Karen Moore just had that way about her. Like she was a direct portal to the past, kicking up stones with every step she took. Stones that were better left unturned.
Still, my heart fluttered, because Aly beamed across at me before she looked up at her mom, like the memory had just sailed into her consciousness. “I forgot about that… I was digging through old pictures at the house a few weeks ago and found it.” Aly glanced at me, love pouring free. “I knew I wanted it on display… now I know why.”
My chest tightened.
She’d brought home a picture of my family, too. She seemed almost sad when I came in and found her in her little room, sitting on the floor. She was floating in a sea of photos, lost in all the memories spread out around her. She’d looked over at me as if she was in some kind of pain. Softly, she beckoned me to her side, where she had so many moments of our past set out on display.
In her hand she held a picture of my family. It was from when I was little and could barely remember my baby sister, who my mom had propped up against her chest.
But my eye had been drawn to the middle of the floor, where Aly had laid out a picture of my mom. She was by herself, just fucking smiling at the camera with all that light that had surrounded her.
“I think we should pick one of these to put up on the mantel,” Aly had whispered, carefully, quietly. And God, I’d wanted to be pissed off at her, lash out at her for even suggesting something so obscene. Putting my family up there like I felt pride when what I’d done to it was my greatest disgrace.
As if I had the right.
It’d taken everything I had not to mangle them up in my hands, to destroy them like I’d destroyed everything else. Instead I’d looked at Aly, choked over my demand. “Don’t… I don’t ever want to see those again.”
I knew she’d tucked them away somewhere in her studio, within the drawings bred in her mind and born of her hand, somewhere in the places where she kept my mother’s face on the pages of her sketch pads.
Nostalgia billowed through Karen, her movements saturated with it as she carefully set the picture back on the mantel. Then she turned to the fireplace and ran her fingers along the ornate carvings. “And this… this is unbelievable,” she murmured in distinct awe.
Pride made another rush on me, boosting me to a level where I didn’t belong.
My head spun.
Shit.
It was like I was being forced up the shore on a swelling wave. At the same time I was all twisted up in the undertow, losing footing, losing ground. Once again, it was Karen Moore yanking me from one extreme to the other.
But this… this was what I was most proud of, what I’d poured myself into. Working on it, my hands had twitched while my imagination soared. I’d been compelled. That was the only way to describe it. The design for the fireplace had spiraled through my brain, urging my fingers to create. I saw it so clearly the first time I walked through the door of this house.
Even before I brought Aly here.
The idea of rebuilding this house had just come to me the first time I walked through it, like all the pieces had stacked together and become clear. But at the center of it was the fireplace. How this single structure would become something unique to mute out all the bland, how the rest of the layout of the house would flow from it, each room distinct on its own, but still tied to the creation Karen was currently tracing with her fingers.
I’d finished it only two days ago. After dinner, Aly’d been all too excited to build our first fire in it, to show it off. Immediately everyone had been drawn into this room, settling right into its comfort.
Karen’s fingertips gently caressed the lines, curling through the vines and up to the petals that stretched out, twisted, and twined as they merged into the gnarled bouquet that stretched across the top.
“Just incredible,” she whispered, her touch fluttering over the intricate designs as if they told a story. She looked across at me, sincerely, but with something so powerful it cut me to core.
A tremor of unease shook me. Because I realized she was having some kind of secret conversation with me, as if she thought I should know something I didn’t. Suddenly I felt like I was struggling to catch on, to catch up, when I was pretty damned sure the smart thing to do would be to step away.
“You know I have it?” she asked.
A frown formed, set deep between my eyes. Misunderstanding I shook my head. “I’m sorry?” I asked, wishing I hadn’t, because something sick plummeted into my stomach, the hint of a heavy memory that had disappeared a long time ago into the darkest corner of my consciousness sinking like a stone.
Karen Moore wrung her hands, tilting her head, searching. “Before your father moved away… he… he brought me a bunch of her stuff… he said he couldn’t handle taking it with him but he couldn’t stand the thought of someone having it who didn’t know her.”
Cold crawled under the surface of my skin. Freezing me from the inside out. Stop got stuck on my swollen tongue, because that’s all I wanted her to do. I just wanted her to stop.
I could sense the concern rise up in Aly. Palpable. Like it was pushing out from her and reaching for me.
Like she was desperate to shoulder some of my burden.
And God, I hated being this way. Karen couldn’t even mention my father without me losing my shit. But goddamn it, didn’t she understand? Didn’t she know that dredging up old shit was just asking for trouble, bringing stuff out into the light when it was meant for the dark?
Didn’t she understand what I’d done?
Karen just pressed on. “The jewelry box,” she clarified.
Every muscle in my body seized. Because that hint of fear that had plummeted in my gut manifested into something whole.
Nausea rolled through me.
Lines etched into her forehead, and her head jerked for the shortest second toward the fireplace. “It is the same, isn’t it?” Her words came with caution, with a quiet love for her friend, all of it tempered with compassion.
Still, they stole every fucking last drop of air from the room.
Or maybe it was the sharp breath I sucked in that pilfered it all.
I slammed my eyes shut, squeezing the bottle in my trembling hand so tight I was sure I’d crush it, that it’d crack. Shatter. That it’d break and I’d bleed.
Because all I wanted in that moment was the pain. To release the spark of aggression that flamed, singeing my insides, seeking a release. Something physical to prevent the memory from finding its way back into the light.
But it didn’t fucking matter if I tried to block it, it all came flooding back.
“It’s exactly the same as you left it.” Karen began to stammer, almost pleading as she spoke over strangled words. “It’s still rough and unfinished. The design is every bit as beautiful here as it is there.”
Fuck. What did she want me to say? That I was fucking happy that she had it stowed away somewhere? When I’d forgotten it’d existed?
Awareness constricted my chest, pressing in, crushing.
Because I knew somewhere inside me I hadn’t really forgotten.
Drawn, I let my eyes glide open to the girl. She slowly stood. Warily, she watched.
As if she knew the fire had been lit.
“You did this for her… for your mom?” Karen asked, confused, looking back to the fireplace that I’d carved out as a sanctuary for Aly in our home.
When in reality it’d been some sort of fucked-up shrine.
Still, I denied it. “No.” I shook my head, which only spun. “I did it for Aly.”
I did it for Aly.
Karen straightened herself and brushed off the single tear that slid down her face. “Oh, well… I guess I misread it.” She forced a smile, sniffled once. “You do beautiful work, Jared. You always have.”
I just nodded through the unease, fighting the desire I had to rip the wood from the wall. To hear it splinter as I tore it free.
I just wanted to watch it burn.
Hatred flared. God, I was an idiot. A fool. Thinking I could outrun her.
She was fucking everywhere, taunting me, mocking every move I made.
For about three minutes, we all suffered through awkward conversation, no one immune to all my bullshit.
“We’d better get going,” Karen finally said.
Christopher clapped me on the back as he headed out, his expression pained but pointed. His thoughts obviously went straight back to the conversation we’d had on New Year’s Eve.
Karen came up to me and hugged me good-bye. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“It was just a misunderstanding,” I mumbled back, even though we both knew I was lying.
She just squeezed me tighter and murmured, “It’s yours when you’re ready for it.”
My skin was crawling by the time Dave shook my hand and followed the rest of his family outside.
Aly locked the door behind them and slowly turned around. In silence, she stared across at me. Sympathy edged her eyes, creasing with lines, her green gaze begging me to tell her what the hell was going on in my mind.
But how could I tell her? That what I’d been most proud of creating for her had really been created for my mom.
Long ago.
Before I’d trampled her spirit, stamped out her light.
“Jared…” Aly pleaded, taking a step forward.
Backing away, I shook my head. “I’m going to go out back, get some air.”
Aly nodded. Her expression turned pained, but she knew me well enough to know when I needed space.
With my head hung, I went into our room, grabbed a pack of cigarettes from the dresser, fumbled around through my old bag for my journal.
When I came back out, Aly was standing in front of the fireplace, staring unseeing into the flames. Awareness slipped through her, but she didn’t turn to look at me. It was like she was promising to give me time and telling me she was there for me when I was ready for her.
I escaped out back. The night was thick. Stars stretched across the inky dome that sagged low on the city. Suffocating.
Still it felt fucking cold, the crisp winter air clashing with my heated skin.
I sank to the cool ground, propped my back up against the hard, stucco wall. I banged my head against it, wishing to blot it all out, to erase all the bad.
How could I ever leave it behind when it was always there? Lurking. Threatening my sanity and the world I’d worked so hard to build for Aly. For our baby.
Goddamn it.
I gripped my hair in my hands.
I just wanted to scrape it all from my consciousness. To purge it from my mind.
To take it back.
I shook a smoke from the pack and tilted my head down as I lit it. I drew it deep into my lungs. The faintest calm seeped through my veins, and I slowly blew it toward the sky. Curls of smoke rose upward, twisting as it spiraled toward the heavens. It dissipated, faded into the nothingness.
Bitter laughter rolled from me.
Didn’t matter what I did, she’d always be there.
Pulling me back into it.
I grabbed my journal and flipped through the worn, tattered pages. Scrawled across the pages was my darkness, all that I held so fucking deep inside. I wanted to pour it all here and pray it would stay, that it’d be done, that I’d have paid.
Fuck.
All I wanted was to be able to breathe.