Jumping from the truck, I don’t even switch the engine off, I just leave it sitting idle as I spill from the seat into the fog of the morning heat.
Sweat drips down my back and the house appears smaller than it did yesterday.
Max’s mother’s curtains twitch and I debate going to her and asking her what she knows about everything that happened with my mother and family, and if she knows her son already has a child with a woman twice his age who used to be his teacher.
I guess my appeal would grow a couple of scales compared to that reality.
Serves her right for being a judgmental bitch.
My hands shake and I drop the keys trying to open the front door. Bugs crawl over the ground at the front step and I stab at them with the sharp edge of the keys.
It takes three attempts before I get inside and slam the door shut.
Giggles bounce around the walls followed by crying.
There’s an overbearing buzzing inside my skull and everything is thick and heavy around me.
My legs buckle and I tumble like Alice down the rabbit hole.
Silhouettes of boys pass me, their face a blur, but they’re caked in mud and carrying shovels.
A man, also distorted, an unnatural being rather than a human, enormous and imposing.
His outstretched hand beckons me and something inside me obeys without delay.
Fear grips me in its hold, its claws of unmistakable doom creeping around my throat like a vine of thorns, squeezing, scarring, infecting.
My feet want to dig into the ground and stop myself from being dragged into the punishing night when he opens the back door and steps outside.
I’m wearing just a vest and underwear, and the cold slithers into the bones and roots itself there.
Wind and rain whip at my small frame and the monster, with me in his grip, pulls me further from the house into the woods.
The trees seem to come to life under the darkness of the night, grasping and moving, hissing with their arms.
Animals stalk and howl, and I know out of everything that should scare me, the monster who should be the one to protect me from danger scares me above all others.
Dirt squishes between my toes and lodges under my toenails.
I already know he won’t let me bath this late so I’m going to have to sleep in the dirt and ruin my sheets, which will get me whipped with his belt tomorrow.
All of a sudden, he stops and launches me forward with no effort at all and I stumble, almost lifting clean from the floor, but land just as quick with a painful thump.
Twigs break underneath my body as I crumble into a big ditch-like hole.
Damp earth collapses around me and the hole I’ve fallen into is deep and deliberate, created by my brothers because my daddy would have commanded it.
“Daddy?” I whisper with a stutter as my teeth chatter.
The bones creak inside my skin as I shake, unsure if it’s the cold or the fear making them rattle.
Acid bubbles in my tummy and I think I’m going to be sick, which I know will make him even madder.
What did I do to make him angry?
I run off the chores on my list that I have to do on Mondays and I completed them all.
I wasn’t late home from school and I helped cook dinner, and I even went to my brothers when they ordered me to.
I cleared the blood from mom’s sheets.
I was a good girl. I was a good girl, Daddy.
A sneer pulls up his lips and create fang-like shadows.
“If you tell anyone about her, I’ll bury you both out here and no one will ever know. The bugs and worms will eat you alive and you’ll feel it all, buried beneath the dirt like an animal.”
His words are cruel and harsh and I know he means them.
Crying sounds out and his head whips back to the direction of the house.
I see mom holding something in her hands, cradled against her chest. She followed us.
I won’t tell. I promise. I promise.
Raised voices penetrate through the haze and the dream-like memory evaporates.
Tell anyone what?
What is my mind hiding from me?
Everything hurts over my body and the taste of pennies coat my lips.
Crap.
I’m on the floor and must have hit my suitcase on the way down because it’s turned over on top of me and my face smarts as I crawl to my feet and look in the mirror to see a cut on my lip and a bruise blossoming over my cheek.
I’m riddled with injuries and I’m so tired of being here.
Tired of hurting. Tired of fighting myself.
The rumbling of male voices signal from outside and I sidle up to the window and stare out.
Thud…
Two broad figures stand out in the front garden.
My stomach flips over when I recognize the unmistakable sound of Garret’s voice.
Garret?
“She’s not a well girl, otherwise I wouldn’t be here. Now let me see her, please,” he says to someone in front of him
“Where the hell have you been? You’re supposed to be her boyfriend and yet you allowed her to come here alone?” Max’s voice causes a jump in my pulse.
Max and Garret are here, together?
“I’m her doctor.”
Shut up, Garret.
“What?” Max grits out.
Go away, Max.
“Not her boyfriend. I’m her doctor. Evi has had a psychotic break and I fear she’s spiraling further into psychosis. I shouldn’t even be discussing this with you,” Garret grates, and the atmosphere in the open space around me becomes taut, closing around me in a throttling fog.
I’m not her boyfriend.
Psychosis.
“How did you know she was here?” Max asks, and Garret turns from him and looks over at the house.
I pull back and hide against the wall, terrified of being in the same space as him, as them.
What if what he’s telling Max is true?
“Why didn’t she remember that her mother died?” Max shoots question after question at him.
“She left her lake house and came here because she said her mother left her a letter and the deed. She didn’t remember her dying.”
Stop.
Stop it, Max. I scream internally.
“It’s not her lake house.”
What?
He’s lying.
Stop pulling the thread, Max.
Stop it.
“The lake house you’re referring to is a not a property Evi owns or lives in. She was staying at Greenfields Psychiatric Facility. It’s up at Green Lake.”
No. No. No.
“A mental hospital?” Max sneers.
“I can’t discuss this information with you,” Garret announces after already indulging Max’s questions.
“Just fucking tell me! Is it a mental hospital?” Max roars, and a shower of goose bumps explode over my skin, my womb crying out to him, my yearnings flooding my system and wiping away the confusion.
Why do I have this sexual urge so powerful inside me?
Silence hangs in the air so deafening I want to scream out just to shatter it.
“No, it’s not a mental hospital. It’s a voluntary facility. A resort of sorts,” Garret finally answers.
“A very renowned doctor owns the property and runs the facility and Evi chose to be there until recently when she fled with no explanation.”
That’s not true.
I live at my lake house.
This is a misunderstanding. Garret’s just protecting me and feeding him lies.
A fist pounds on the door making me jump, but Max isn’t finished.
“Why wouldn’t she tell me all this?” He sounds broken, distraught, and betrayed.
It’s all lies, Max. Don’t listen. Go away from here.
The world I know feels so fragile, like everything is made of paper and a storm cloud has begun to trickle down upon it.
If I don’t hold onto the balance, it will become a waterfall, turning everything I know to mush.
I count the seconds of their silence.
One.
Two.
Three.
I’m being swallowed up in the hush of their tongues and the need to swim, wash away everything bad, sharpens within me.
“Because she doesn’t know what’s real and what isn’t, she creates a world and lives inside it.”
I don’t.
Do I?
What’s real?
Pulling open the door, the gust it creates lifts my hair and tosses it over my face, sheltering me from both probing sets of eyes that turn to me.
“That’s not true, Garret,” I whisper.
“Evi, it’s good to see you again.” He is speaking with a careful method, one someone would use to approach a criminal holding hostages and not wanting to startle or anger them.
Who is my hostage?
You are, Evi.
I just want to be safe inside my head, make all this go away.
My eyes creep over his form and my heart thunders.
He looks older than I remember.
“Why would you tell him those things?” I ask knowing, if it’s true and we’re just doctor/patient, he’s divulged more than he should have.
Tears burn in my eyes but I don’t allow them to fall.
“Because they’re the truth, Evi. You moved to Greenfields after your parents’ accident.”
Thud…
My parents weren’t in an accident.
Thud…
Were they?
Why hasn’t mom been calling me?
Thud… Thud… Thud…
“I don’t understand.” The thoughts begin to hum like static.
“We’re so sorry, Evi. Both your parents were amongst the dead.”
“Did something happen at Greenfields?” he asks me, his forehead puckered and his gaze intrusive as he steps toward me, trying to placate me.
“You’re ok, Evi. Just breathe.” With his words, I realize I’m gasping for air and my chest is once again crushing my lungs.
A shadow creeps over me and blots out Garret and the world. Max’s scent coaxes me back from the brink of passing out.
“Shh, just relax. I’ve got you, I promise.”
“Nothing he says makes sense,” I say.
Crying echoes in the back of my mind and I find myself smacking my hands against my skull to shut them up.
“Stop doing that,” Max instructs, taking my hands in his.
The child of Miss Bloom’s comes into focus in my thoughts and I pull away from Max.
They all lie to me.
They all lie.
His pupils flare and he holds his hands up in surrender, begging me with his eyes not to pull away.
Don’t run, he tells me with just a look, but I’m being dragged into my own madness.
“I just need it all to go away. It hurts too much.” I close my eyes.
“We’re not creatures made to be alone, Evi. You left that place seeking something and you found it here. Sometimes the worst parts of our lives lead us to the best parts. Don’t run from this. From your past. From us.”
His words penetrate my soul and I want to believe him and let him make everything better.
“How could you be with her after she let this happen to me?” Tears trickle from my lashes and down my cheeks.
Miss Bloom didn’t help me and yet he let her be with him.
His lips part and he searches for clarification, and before I give him some, realization dawns on him.
“The child is my sister, Evi.”
What?
Crying resonates from somewhere behind me. I turn to follow the sound but Max doesn’t allow me to drift.
“The baby, it’s my dad’s. He lives in the next town over. He and Miss Bloom were together.”
That bitch.
“But you said you two slept together.”
I hate that she experienced him like that.
Shame waters into his eyes; it’s the same look I see in the mirror every day.
“She didn’t tell me until after. She was angry with him because he left her.”
Oh God, she’s a manipulative bitch.
“So, she used you to get revenge?”
Shrugging his shoulders, he looks heavenward and then back down to me.
“My mom doesn’t know about Gracie.”
Gracie, the child.
He could have told me all of this before when we spoke about her.
He’s gazing up at me, waiting for what?
He appears so brittle in this moment, breakable, and yet I’m still captivated by him.
Taking a step towards him, I take his hand and entwine our fingers, his so much bigger than mine, and it makes me feel safe in the midst of so much uncertainty.
“I don’t know why, but what Garret is saying isn’t right.”
Garret’s sigh sounds from behind the protection of Max’s body, which is creating a wall between us.
“Maybe you can just hear him out and see what does feel right to you?” Max says.
“I’m scared,” I admit, my heart bleeding.
I need his arms around me to prevent me from crashing to the floor and being lost to my dreams, my nightmares, my insanity.