The Healing (The Things We Can't Change Book 3) (8 page)

He’s early. At eight forty-five he appears in the driveway, his long legs eating up the distance, his forehead wrinkled as he frowns against the bright sun. He pauses in the driveway and considers the door to the house, then looks at his usual route around through the side yard and straight to work. I see him struggle and then he heads for the front door.

I’m on my feet in an instant and have the door open before Zeke is even on the landing. He gives me a faint look of surprise and then checks me over quickly before looking me right in the eye.

“Hey,” he says, sticking both his hands into the pockets of his worn jeans. “How… how are you?”

“I’m…” I pause for a moment and actually consider the question, because oddly enough I know he’ll call me out if I just use a blasé,
fine
. “I feel… calmer. A little more with it.”

He gives me a nod looking slightly relieved though he tries to hide it quickly. I still catch it and it gives me a strange warm glow that I don’t wholly understand.

“Well,” Zeke says, now looking past me into the house as I’m still trying to figure out what’s going on inside of me. “I’d better get to work.”

I feel, I realize with a jolt, the same way that I did around my dad; safe and calm, as though just this single person is capable of keeping my demons at bay for me, even if they have no idea what they are. I also know right then that if I want to stay in this slightly sane state, I need to be near Zeke. All the time, just as I was with my dad every day. I know Zeke probably won’t like it, won’t understand it, may even try and push to hear my reasons, but I don’t care. I just want to stay safe and sound inside my own head and the key to that is now Zeke and so I’m going to exploit it as best I can.

“I’ll come out with you,” I say quickly, and he doesn’t look surprised at all. In fact, he almost looks a little bit relieved, as though he had been prepared for a big fight.

“All right then. Let’s go.”

I take a step back so he can enter the house and we walk through to the kitchen together, and then out the sliding glass door and down the steps and into the backyard. Zeke heads immediately for the shed and gets out his tools while I find the blanket from yesterday, which we had left in the yard. It had completely slipped my mind to come back and retrieve it after he had left. It was slightly damp but otherwise fine. I spread it out and sat down on the driest part, lifting my face up to the morning sun.

I feel slightly like a vampire, left inside for so many days, finally out seeing the sun and feeling blinded by it. It was so bright after all that darkness. I lay back on the blanket as Zeke comes back out, shovel and gloves in hand as he gets to work. Next I know, I’m waking up and the sun is much higher overhead and Zeke is throwing the old hat at me again.

“I hate being fair skinned,” I grumble as I begin the laborious task of pulling my hair through the back of the hat again.

Zeke gives a small harrumph of laughter and my focus returns to him. He’s soaked in sweat, all down the back and chest of his plain gray t-shirt. He’s actually wearing basketball shorts today, plain black ones, but the steel-toed boots are the same, appropriate for the work he’s doing. It’s hot and I feel bad that he’s been assigned this task in the summer months, instead of the cooler fall or springtime.

“Why did you come back?” The question pops out before I think better of it.

Zeke looks up at me, eyebrows raised. “Come back… today?”

“Come back to work,” I clarify. “After my dad… died. I know it comes as no surprise to you that Clarissa doesn’t want you here. I’m surprised you showed up. Pressing charges for petty vandalism wasn’t really first priority to us.”

“I wasn’t going to come,” Zeke says, still focused on his work. He’s battling with a tree root, working on digging holes in the birm behind where the pond is slated to go. They’re giant holes, for the taller bushes and baby trees that will need to go in. “In fact, I was over the moon when I realized that your dad dying meant I was off the hook all summer. Not that I was happy that he died or anything,” he adds quickly, as though fearing I would be offended. “This just isn’t how I imagined spending my summer break.”

“Me either,” I whisper, though too quietly for him to hear. And then louder, “So, what changed?”

“My dad. He and I… don’t really get along well. Too different and too much the same. He’s been pretty pissed off with me for all the trouble I’ve been getting into lately, and he told me time before last he was done bailing me out. So when I got picked up this time around, he made it clear that he’d turn me in himself if I didn’t serve the time. He said he’d report me if I didn’t come here all summer, even though your dad was gone.”

I can only stare at him, mouth agape. The idea of not getting along with your dad is completely alien to me. “He was going to turn you in himself?” I echo. “That’s… that’s terrible!”

“Yeah, well, the Quains aren’t what you would call a close-knit family,” Zeke replies, grunting as he jams the shovel into the dirt several times, trying to cut the root. “In our case, water is a lot thicker than blood.”

I sit in silence for a while, thinking. I guess I can empathize, what with Clarissa and my relationship with her. But my dad? He had always been there for me, through thick and thin. Through my mom’s death, my relationship with Tony and the aftermath of that. He’d never judged, seemed to always know instinctively what I needed and when, had been content to let me walk my own path to recovery and just give me help when I needed it. But to have a dad that would willingly send you off to jail, to juvie? It seems like the worst kind of family betrayal.

We’re quiet for a while afterward, because I can’t think of anything to say and Zeke doesn’t seem inclined to talk. Or maybe that’s just because he’s actually working, and I’m just sitting on my butt doing absolutely nothing. I’m suddenly aware of the awkwardness of it, how it makes me seem like a rich, entitled girl sitting and watching the help.

I jump to my feet, determined not to be in
that
role any longer. Besides, I was always supposed to help Zeke with this part, before things had gotten so out of whack. “What can I do to help?”

Zeke looks up at me in surprise. “What?”

“I was always supposed to help you. With the planting and stuff. So, what do you want me to do?”

He continues to stare at me for a long moment and then shrugs. “Let me get the trees and stuff out of the buckets and into the holes, and you can fill them in and then start watering.”

I head for the shed while he wrestles two trees into the holes he’s already dug and I find my own pair of gloves and a much shorter shovel that suits my size better. I come out and stand at Zeke’s side and he looks up at me sardonically from the ground.

“Dare I ask?” The edge of sarcasm actually makes me feel good. It’s more of the true Zeke, and it means that he’s no longer tip toeing around me. At least, not as much. I just want to pretend everything is normal.

I try a winning smile that feels stiff and only reminds me of how chapped my lips are. At least I remembered to brush my teeth and shower this morning. “I planted an herb garden in an egg carton in the fifth grade.”

“Oh, yeah? How long did it last?”

I cough and avoid his eyes. “A few… days.” More like
a
day.

“Right. Well, it’s pretty basic. I’ve got the tree in the hole. Fill the rest of the hole with dirt. Don’t pack it in real tight, but give it a firm press now and then. Got it? We’ll water it all together later on.”

“Got it.” I nod and set to work on the second tree, the one closest to Zeke so he can correct me if I fail at the simple task. Silence stretches out between us, a little too heavy for comfort. I don’t know Zeke well enough to feel that easy camaraderie within a silence. I decide if I’m going to help him all summer, that has to change. Today.

“So,” I begin, and have to pause and heave some dirt into the hole, since it’s much heavier than it looks. “Coke or Pepsi?”

Zeke stops all movement and looks over at me, and I give him the wide-eyed innocent look I would always use on my dad for something he hesitated to give me.

“Coke,” he finally replies. “But Dr. Pepper above all. Never liked Pepsi.”

I can’t hold back a ridiculous giggle because we have it in common. “Jeans or sweatpants?”

“Jeans,” Zeke grunts, handling a huge shovelful of dirt with ease and making me feel like a weakling.

“Chocolate or vanilla?”

“Vanilla.”

“Sweet or sour?”

He appears to think this one over, not an instant answer, pausing as he prepares to drop another tree into his next hole. “Sweet, I guess.”

I scramble to think of more questions as I gently press dirt down around my first filled hole. My arm muscles are already twinging a little bit and I’m only just beginning to realize how little physical activity I’ve had the first month of summer. “Television shows or movies?”

Zeke shrugs. “Dunno. Depends, I guess. Shows are only cool if you can watch them all at once. I hate waiting for the next part. Cliffhanger every episode.”

“True,” I say, because the same thing annoys me. I’ve run out of questions and fall back on one as generic as the first. “Black or white?”

He looks over at me with a mock-accusing face. “Is that supposed to be a racist comment?”

“No!” I gasp, horrified. “Zeke, I-” But he’s cracking up before I can even apologize. “Jerk,” I mutter, and throw a pebble at him, though it bounces off harmlessly.

Zeke finally stops laughing and only says, “I guess I have to say both.” And then he’s laughing again.

I just keep filling my trees, rolling my eyes. When he’s quieted down for real, I manage to ask an actual, legitimate question, something I’ve always wondered about Zeke and only just occurred to me could maybe be asked under the guise of this game. Or at least, wondered ever since that day in the studio where I had seen him drawing Cindy. “Painting or drawing?”

He had been shoveling dirt, his movements automatically slow and seem to become uncertain when I voice the question. “What makes you think I do any painting aside from graffiti?” he asks in an even tone.

“I saw one of your paintings,” I say bluntly, and get satisfaction when he whirls around to look at me in surprise. “I took ceramics sophomore year, and the painting you did is hanging in the art room because it won the art show freshman year. It’s the one of the ballerina and I always thought it was beautiful, but I never really paid any attention to who had done it. When I saw you drawing that one day, I couldn’t figure out why the picture looked so familiar. Then the next week at school I was walking by the art room and remembered that painting. I checked the signature and sure enough, it was yours.”

I pause, because I’ve somehow stumbled into uncharted territory, memories that I know are better left untouched. Still, I can’t help it. “It was Cindy, wasn’t it? The girl in the painting?” My voice is soft, tentative. I try to let him know, by the fact that I keep working and don’t even look at him, that Zeke doesn’t have to answer me.

There’s a very long pause, but finally I hear a quiet, “Yeah.”

Zeke clears his throat, and then says in a louder voice, “It’s kind of a tie, in all honesty. I always liked the surprises you got with painting, the colors mixing, the sort of… experimental nature of it. And how you could just get those giant-ass pieces of canvas and just paint something enormous, a huge picture. It’s harder to get that with drawing. But drawing was always my first go-to thing, it was what I discovered I was good at first so I always had a soft spot for it. I liked it because you could do it anywhere, sketch anything, capture a moment so quickly.”

I’m burning to ask why he refers to all in the past tense, ask what really made him stop drawing, but like my own troubles, I know Zeke’s are off limits. Maybe it’s unspoken, but we both somehow seem to realize that spilling any secrets would require a trade, secret for secret, and neither of us is willing to part with our dark thoughts yet, not when we hold them so close to us. I reflect that perhaps the biggest distraction from your own problems is becoming obsessed with someone else’s. That’s what is working for me. When I think about Zeke, am with him, I slip into worrying about him, not myself. It’s a blessed distraction, if only temporary.

One question is out yet again before I can stop it, and I know I need to learn to control my mouth. “Why do you do graffiti?”

Just as I had predicted, Zeke looks over at me, no mocking in his expressionless face. “Why do you cut?” he asks.

And our conversation for the day is over.

Evangeline

51

The week passes on as Zeke and I fall into a routine, and I get to know him on a slightly more intimate level, the small random details you pick up about someone after an extended period of time—and random questions. He smokes even though he knows it’s bad for him; his favorite color is violet, though when I ask why he mutters that it just is and avoids my eye; he’s never been to a beach, seen the ocean or been on a boat, though he’s always wanted to see it; he doesn’t get along with his dad and his mom is gone, out of the picture. I don’t know if she died or left, and I don’t ask because of his tone when he answers the question.