The Healing (The Things We Can't Change Book 3) (21 page)

Her bandage had fallen off and one of the healing ones had broken open and bled for a while. They probably should have been stitched up, but at least they’re clean and healing. They are not, however, very pleasing to the eye, big and red and scabbed. I suppress a shudder and try to move on from those thoughts and images.

“How are things?” I ask, pleased because for once, she seems pretty with it.

“Oh, you know,” she gestures expansively. “Just celebrating,” she squints at the banner above the big cake across the room, “Sadie and Abram’s twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.”

“Never met them before?” I asked, smiling despite myself.

“Never. Clarissa’s friends, not mine. I think they’re friends of our neighbor or something.” Evie bites a lip, then leans closer toward me, enough that I can smell the intoxicating, flowery scent of the hair I was thinking about just hours ago. “She was furious. About the driveway. Like, absolutely livid, Zeke.”

For the first time, I feel a stirring of regret over what we did yesterday. “She didn’t like, do anything to you, did she?” I ask warily, because I wouldn’t put it past Clarissa Parker.

“Oh no,” Evie rolls her eyes. “I’m ‘grounded’ and she also made me come to this thing. She knows coming to the club is the worst punishment she could give me.”

“Evie!”

I hear the shrill voice and we both cringe as we see Clarissa headed our direction.

“You better go,” Evie mutters. “She’s convinced you’re out to steal from us and destroy our house, and that the bedroom was just the start of your mission.”

I can’t help but grin a little at that, but when I see the glint in Clarissa’s eyes as she draws closer, I decide to take the coward’s way out. “See you,” I say quickly, and dart away to disappear in the crowd.

I don’t get the opportunity to talk to Evie again for the rest of the night, because it’s a huge party and we servers can barely circle the room with our trays. I even have to work behind the bar with Uncle Alex a few times, uncorking bottles and filling ice because he’s clearly flagging under the onslaught. There should have been another manager here to help, but Alex told me he had to stay home because his kid was sick. Alex doesn’t normally like to have any of the servers behind the bar, ever, but it’s extreme circumstances and he doesn’t argue when I pitch in of my own accord.

I work the whole night without a break and the time between seeing Evie outside the kitchen and the last guest leaving seems to pass in the blink of an eye. I don’t even catch her leaving to say goodbye, and at first the thought has me feeling a little disappointed.

After I’m dropped off at home, I realize what a girl I’m being about it all. So what if Evie didn’t come and tell me goodbye? What does it fucking matter? I’ll see her on Monday, it’s not like she’s going anywhere. I mean, for pete’s sake, I still barely even know her. I know her biggest secret, I know what a struggle she’s facing, but I don’t
know
Evie. It’s not like with Koby and Dominic, where we’ve been friends for years.

And yet, I realize with almost mounting panic as I ascend the steps to my bedroom, I
do
know Evie like that. I know her favorite food, her favorite kind of pop. I know her deepest, darkest secrets; the darkness inside her that she’s allowed to take over, despite the fact that she didn’t want it to. I know that she feels lost without her dad and hates her stepmom and stepbrother. I know the half-smile she makes when she’s having fun but feels guilty about it, and I know that her violet eyes light up and her cheeks flush when she’s angry.

I know Evie too well, and I know that it’s dangerous. I shouldn’t be feeling this way about her, disappointed that she didn’t care enough to come and tell me goodbye. I don’t want to have that role in her life, so why am I upset that I don’t? My heart is battling disappointment at the fact that I didn’t see her again, at the same time its beating double time at the thought of seeing her again just the day after tomorrow.

I fall into my bed, trying to ruthlessly shove the thoughts back, hands trapped under me again to keep from jumping up and grabbing a can of spray paint to get it all out of me. I tell myself I don’t need to do that, that I’m fine and I don’t have to get the feelings out of me because there
are
no feelings to get rid of. I like Evie, I’m fond of her, the same way I’m fond of a dog. And that’s it.

I know it’s another lie, one of many I keep telling myself, especially where Evie is concerned, but in some cases, lies are preferable to the truth. I close my eyes, force my mind to empty, and finally fall asleep.

I’m standing on the street, my feet frozen to the concrete just like always. Cindy is on the crosswalk, head down as she digs through her bag and talks to me, her last words to me that I don’t even get to hear. Tony is coming down the street, eyes wide and out of control. I can always see the bastard so clearly, every last detail, while my memories of Cindy are blurred, her face never in sharp, clear contrast anymore, not since the night at the studio when I drew Evie instead of her.

This time, however, one thing is different. One thing isn’t just like always.

Evie is there.

She’s crossing the street close to Cindy, looking straight at me with a smile on her face. She’s also oblivious to the oncoming car, and I notice everything about her. Her Coach sneakers, her dark-wash jeans, the white v-neck she’s wearing, the way her hair is down in my favorite style, big wavy curls cascading all over her back and shoulders and even her chest, an innocent, unaware sensuality. Her high cheekbones, pert nose, and those violet eyes. I see everything, while Cindy is a faded memory just behind her.

Tony is coming closer and closer and I want to scream for both of them to get the hell out of the street, to move, to dive to the side. But the words don’t come. It’s like I’m struck dumb and my lips refuse to move. I take a step toward them, one hand outstretched as though to snatch them up in my hand to keep them safe.

I took a step.
The thought, the realization explodes into me. I can move. This time I can move, this time I can
save
her. I sprint forward without conscious thought, only thinking to rescue. I dive for the crosswalk, curl my arms around the small, fragile body and protect her as we roll out of the way. Behind us, just half a second later, the impact of a car hitting another small body is heard, the sickening thud and crack of glass and crumpling of the metal siding of the car.

My chest is heaving and tears sting my eyes as I open them and look down, bracing myself up on my arms as I look down at my sister beneath me. Only violet eyes are looking up at me, not green. Evie is lying beneath me, scraped, shocked, but unharmed.

I chose her over my sister; let Cindy die yet again, as she has thousands of times already in my dreams. I finally had a chance to save her, and I wasted it.

When I wake up, my head is whirling as fast as the fan above my head and I’m panting from the nightmare. I gasp in air, my chest rising to its highest point as I fill it as much as I possibly can, hoping I can clear the images from my head as easily as I expel the big breath from my body.

But it’s not that easy and after all this time, I should know that. The feelings are roiling around in me, a mad, crazy maelstrom of grief, loss, and betrayal. It’s the last one that cuts the deepest, not just betrayal of Cindy, but of myself. At my role as her brother and protector. I was supposed to keep her
safe
, to protect and guard her against the world. I was supposed to be Cindy’s first defense against anything that could hurt her, and I failed at that when it really mattered, when her life was at stake.

And now, through my dream, I’ve done the unthinkable and failed a second time by choosing Evie over her. I feel gross, dirty inside my own skin and disgusted with myself, and I have the wild thought that this must be how Evie feels all the time, dirty on the inside and no way to get clean. I have a sudden understanding of why she might go to the extremes of cutting herself and washing her hands until they bleed just for a small respite from it.

I feel bereft; distanced from Cindy and all her memories in a way that I haven’t since she died, not even since I realized I was forgetting what she looked like. I want to feel so close to her and smothered in all things Cindy that I have no room to feel anything else, or think about anyone else, especially Evie.

I tear out of bed and go to her room and sit on her bed, but it doesn’t help. All I can do is stare at the white furniture and think of Evie’s old room, of her face lit up as we threw out, literally, all her memories of Tony and that night.

I jump off Cindy’s bed and sprint back to my room, throwing on the first casual clothes I find, jeans that will make me hot in the summer sun and a red t-shirt I don’t think is close to being clean. I shove my feet into my steel-toed boots and take off through the house, scattering bits of mud all over the floors and not caring, even though my dad will probably give me shit for it later.

I find him in the kitchen with a cup of coffee, reading his newspaper just like he has every weekend morning for as far back as I can remember. He looks up at me with a calm face, eyebrows slightly raised at my abrupt and less than graceful entrance.

“I need to borrow your keys,” I say without preamble, déjà vu streaking through me as I remember asking Uncle Alex the same thing, and my dad looks at me with the same trace of skepticism, eyebrows raised.

“Can I borrow your car, please?” I quickly correct, adjusting my stance with my hands behind my back. I resolve then and there that all the money I don’t have to spend on Cindy anymore is now going toward getting my own car, because I’m sick of being at my dad’s mercy when I want to go someplace.

“Where are you going?”

To the one place I can still feel close to Cindy,
I think, but answer, “To… the studio. I need to get out of here. I need to think.”

My dad puts down his coffee cup with a sigh and I feel a lecture in the making. “No.”

I blink at him. “What?”

“I said no. I don’t want you going there. There’s no point.” He hesitates for a moment, and then says in a voice that I guess is supposed to be calmly encouraging, “You need to let her go at some point, Zeke.”

Rage courses through my veins, fiery and white-hot, strong and almost blinding in its intensity. “Yeah?” I snort, my voice cold. “Is that what you’ve done? Let her go? Let her go before she died, is more like. You didn’t even care about us when Cindy was
alive
. Well, some of us actually loved her, and so we’re having some trouble forgetting her at the drop of a hat.”

My dad leaps up from his chair, his hands slamming down on the table with a
bang
. “Don’t you dare say I didn’t love my daughter!” he thunders. “You have no concept of love and sacrifice! You’ve always been stuck in your own tortured little world and cared about no one but yourself!”

I see white, then red for a full minute and my hands are trembling. For one awful second, I actually think I’m going to hit him. Then I reign myself in and take several steps backward out of the kitchen, away from the horrible temptation to do him bodily harm.

“I’ll walk,” I say, and my voice is trembling and pitchy with ill-concealed rage. “Thanks a lot, Dad.”

I spin on my heel and leave the house, stepping as loud and hard as I can to annoy him and leave as much dirt and mud behind as possible.

Evangeline

63

The next day, I decide I need to get out of the house. The decision is partly because I’m bored without Zeke’s company, and partly because I’m tired of all the glares Clarissa has been sending my way. Still, I’m encouraged by the fact that I actually want to leave the house for a change, not just sit around and mope. So I wait until Clarissa is in another part of the house before I jot her a vague note and flee the house before she can stop me.

My plan is to go to Macy’s and Bed Bath & Beyond to look for inspiration for the new bedroom I have to decorate and furnish. Zeke said he would help me if time allowed, and I want something adult and sophisticated, calm and collected; a safe haven. At first, I wanted to paint the walls a soothing light blue, but then I’d met Zeke’s eyes and decided on a deep forest green instead.

I like the symbolism of it; Zeke always there to watch and keep me safe, in a place that used to give me such terror.

I fly down Riverside Drive with the windows down and my hair flying, feeling alive for the first time in a while. I plan to take the long way through Dublin instead of getting on the freeway toward the mall, but even the best laid plans go awry.

I’m stopped at a light with a Starbucks on my right when no one other than Zeke Quain walks across the crosswalk in front of me. My mouth drops open as he passes and I almost call out, but then I look to my left and I know exactly where he is going. My heart gives a small pang.

For a long moment, I’m torn. I know Zeke doesn’t want my intrusion.
Not a willing participant.
Besides, am I in any shape to help him? But then I remember the look in his eyes, his voice in that horrible message. And I know what I have to do.