Chapter 8

Talia

I coaxed Fox back into the house after his small breakdown, feeling a wave of camaraderie between us. Slipping my fingers through his, I brimmed with excitement. Finally, Fox had opened up to me! After ten years, he’d given me the truth—that he’d skipped town not to abandon me, not to seek sex and drugs and fortune, but to leave the context of his family behind.

His father, Hank, had been a cruel drunk, and often leered at me, at my teenage body. His cigarette had bobbed continually between his lips, and he stank, with his fingers permanently discolored an off-yellow. “You getting frisky with my son?” he’d asked me once, when I’d come out of an ice cream shop with a girlfriend. “Because my son, he ain’t gonna like it if you eat that ice cream. Can’t stand an ounce of fat on a girl.”

Now, we’d been given a second chance. It was up to us to bandage up our lives, to join together, to understand.

Lily-Rose swept her bright face toward us as we entered, shimmying her fingers across the keys. “Look, Fox!” she cried. “I think I got it.”

Lily-Rose began to play a two-handed melody, with her left fingers lazily chunking across the lower keys. She brimmed with excitement, playing the first three bars of a patriotic tune. After dropping her hands to the side, she glanced back at us for approval.

“Aunt Talia says that maybe you can help me play at the benefit concert?” she said, her voice childish and bright.

“That sounds like a really good plan,” Fox said, his voice slightly strained. “We’ll have to work hard. But it seems like you already know how to do that.”

Lily-Rose jumped up from the bench, leaping onto it and standing tall, her hands on her hips. “Talia says that the benefit concert will save the community center. And Fox, you’re so good at music! I think you should play, too. Maybe you play the guitar, and I play the piano,” she spoke and pointed, acting playful and wild.

I could see the adrenaline in her eyes as she spoke. She was riding a kind of mania, and was clearly pleased with herself for her piano progress. In my memory, Lily-Rose had never been stellar at anything, certainly not baseball, or making friends, or school. This. This was her first big shot.

But Fox surprised me. He stuttered slightly, slipping his fingers through his hair.

“I’m just not sure that would be a good idea, Lily-Rose,” he said.

Lily-Rose’s face faltered. She scrunched it up, glaring at him. For a long moment, the air in the living room grew thick with tension. Anger rose up within me as well, but I tried not to show it. I pressed at my chest with my hand, feeling the staggering weight of heart break.

How dare Fox say all those things on the back porch? All that honesty about “why he’d really left,” only to come in here and stomp all over Lily-Rose.

“You really won’t play with me?” Lily-Rose screeched, bringing her hands into fists.

“Unfortunately, I can’t,” Fox said, his shoulders dropping slightly as he spoke.

I felt the wave of anger coming like a train. Lily-Rose blasted forward from the piano bench, ripping her fists into Fox’s thighs, his calves. She screamed, then wailed, tossing herself onto the ground and kicking her legs wildly. Before I could reach her, she tore up from the ground and bounded toward the dining room table, where she lifted one of my mother’s china pieces and crashed it against the edge of the table. The shards scattered on all sides. Realizing the effect it had, Lily-Rose reached for another, giddy, giggling in an almost maniacal way.

Rushing forward, I wrapped my arms around her and held her tightly against me. She thrashed from side to side, trying to bolt toward either doorway. I stared up at Fox, fear and anger pumping through my blood. Fox just gazed at us, incredulous, his hands splayed out in front of him.

“I just can’t make a promise I can’t keep,” Fox whispered, shrugging.

Beneath me, Lily-Rose continued to blare and cry and scream. I wrapped her tighter against me, trying to control her.

“You’re just going to leave us again, aren’t you?” I cried, trying to speak over Lily-Rose. “You’re going to tell her you’re going to teach her for the benefit concert, and then, you’re just going to abandon her?”

I knew, even as I spoke, that I wasn’t necessarily talking about Lily-Rose. I was talking about me. My voice quivered, hunting for some kind of validation. I knew, now, that I shouldn’t have ever trusted him. That even leaning into him, kissing him, in the backyard, had ignited some kind of inner force, and one I could not control.

“I’m going to help her play for the benefit,” Fox said, moving toward us. His voice boomed. “I just said that. Didn’t you just hear me, Talia? Or are you just going to hear what you want to hear?”

“Get out of here, Fox,” I cried, my muscles still straining with Lily-Rose’s incredible, adrenalin-fueled strength. “Just get out of here. Leave us alone!”

“I’m going to help her!” Fox blared. He shoved his hand into his pocket, drawing out a package of cigarettes. Popping one into his lips, he strode toward the door, slamming it shut. “Jesus fucking Christ,” he muttered from the front porch, stomping toward his car. “I can’t fucking handle this.”

The minute I heard his car crank up outside, I fell to my knees. Lily-Rose fell before me as well, her throat emitting only a whimper. Fox revved from the driveway and out of sight, leaving Lily-Rose and me in a shell of our own loneliness.

“Is he going to come back?” Lily-Rose whispered, her eyes wide. There was no longer a trace of the wild girl who’d flung expensive china across the room. This was the face of a girl who wanted nothing more than the kind of “father figure” Fox had provided her.

“He told you he would,” I heard myself whisper, drawing my fingers through her blonde locks. “I guess we have to trust him, don’t we?”

In the back of my mind, I wanted nothing more than for him to leave us for good. For him to let us go back to normal, to the hum-drum nature of our hum-drum lives. But beyond the lies, I’d sensed the truth in him saying he would return to help her for the benefit concert. If nothing else, he would get her through that.

And then, perhaps, he would continue on his wayward, lonely journey. Running away from his past—his father, his brother, his deceased wife. And even me, in a way. What did I remind him of, if not simpler times?

And sometimes, it was easier not to think of how good things ever were, if you had to continue to survive in the present. Sometimes, you had to put your head down, and persevere. No matter how much love you felt brewing in your heart.