Vengeance (13 page)

“Are you going on the trip, Maya?” Ron asked.

“Nope. I’ve got another year left,” she said.

“How’s your mom doing?” Joanne asked.

“Fine,” Maya said. There was an awkward pause, and then Maya started talking again. “Anyway, I’m going to visit my brother this weekend.”

“Where is he in school?” Ron asked.

“Portland,” she said. “Not too far.”

Southern Maine. At least three hours away. Might as well have been Boston or New York or Florida. But at least it was close enough for her brother to hop in a car if he needed to.

“At least you can drive,” Joanne said. “You sure you don’t want to go somewhere you can drive, Delaney?”

Delaney didn’t answer.

“She’s not the best flyer,” Joanne said, I guess to the rest of the group. That was an understatement.

I was listening from the living room couch with a can of soda in my hand and my homework on my lap, though I wasn’t really concentrating. “Drink some tea,” my mom was saying to Delaney. Drinking tea was her go-to cure for nerves.

“I’ll be fine,” Delaney said. Delaney would not be fine. She hated to fly. Hated it but did it. She’d told me that mentally she knew she’d be fine, but she couldn’t convince her body.

“Oh,” Maya said, “have you tried Xanax? Works wonders.”

There was a beat of silence before her mother said, “Delaney would prefer not to take medicine.” Yeah, she’d preferred that ever since her mother kept forcing drugs on her, trying to turn her back to the person she thought she knew before the accident.

“Maybe you outgrew it? You did great over spring break,” Joanne said.

I choked on the soda. Had to wipe it off my notebook. Spring break she’d had to visit her grandmother in Florida. She got antsy the whole week before, but at least she had school to distract her. The morning of her flight, the first day of spring break, she let herself in my front door. “I’m leaving in fifteen,” she said, pacing the living room absently. She had on a black skirt that hit just above her knees and gray tights underneath. The skirt was flowy and pretty but definitely not her. “Nice skirt,” I said, trying to catch her as she paced back and forth.

“My grandma gave it to me for Christmas. So.” She plopped onto the sofa, and her skirt rode up an inch, and I could see that her tights weren’t tights at all, but something that stopped at her thigh.

“This, too?” I asked, pulling at the top of her stocking.

“No, these are all mine.” She stood up and said, “Look. Maine-weather-appropriate.” She gestured toward her covered legs. Then bent over and pushed down the socks. “Florida-weather-appropriate. Totally practical. I can do it on the airplane.”

It was so logical and ridiculous and so totally Delaney.
She sat down again, and her fingers shook as she pulled the sock up her left leg. I knelt in front of her. “Okay, you have to breathe.” I pulled up the right one for her. I actually found it kind of adorable that airplanes freaked her out. Of all the things that happened to her in the last few months,
this
still scared her. I was smiling and had my hand on her leg, about to stand up.

And she was definitely still not breathing.

Then I felt her bare skin under her skirt, under my hands, where I had frozen. Her skin was hot. The room was hot. I didn’t want to back away. I looked up at her, and she was watching me, and her mouth was kind of open, and I said, “Okay, seriously, breathe.”

She smiled for a second, and she didn’t pull away from me or say anything clever or tell me she had to go, which she did. I could hear the clock ticking from the mantel.

There was an eternal span of seconds, I heard them ticking away, where neither of us moved. Neither of us breathed.

“Hey, Delaney? I love you, you know.” I’d said it to her before, more than once, but never kneeling between her legs with my hand halfway up her skirt, where I could feel her pulse coming fast. She nodded and I kissed her mouth and moved my hand and almost lost it when she closed her eyes and leaned into me. Lost it completely when she whispered my name and pulled me close, breathing into my ear.

I didn’t tell her that it was time to go after. But I pulled her up to standing, watched as her skirt fluttered down. She kissed me good-bye, pressing every part of her to every part of me.

She walked across the room, and I smiled—or I was still smiling—and said, “Have a good flight.”

She opened the front door, looked over her shoulder, and smiled like she knew a secret. A side of her I’d never seen before.

And of all the moments that happened between that day and this one, that’s the one I remember the most. The one that made me feel like I hadn’t known all of her until that day. That every side of her—the ones she showed and the ones she didn’t—were mine. And some were mine alone.

Even now, I got a thrill knowing she was thinking of that moment hours later, on the plane. That she was distracted from her fear of flying by thinking of
that
. That she was thinking about it this very second as she walked behind the couch, on the way to the bathroom.

“So, guess you must really miss me right about now,” I said. The words tasted vile on the way out, felt like acid in the air. They burned her skin. Burned her eyes. Burned everything between us.

“What did you say?” she asked, coming around the couch. She stared at me, but I couldn’t look at her. Felt the words burning me, too. “Of course I miss you. I miss you all the time. But don’t do that,” she said, and I watched her feet shuffle down the hall. She let me hate her. She let me be angry. But not this. “Don’t,” she said again, the second before she slammed the door.

Don’t make us cheap.

Don’t make us not matter.

Don’t give us up.

Maya was standing by the couch when Delaney walked back through. “My mom just texted,” she said, holding up her phone. “She needs me home. Any chance I can get a ride?”

Joanne came out of the kitchen with a Tupperware container of potato salad. “How about a burger for the road? For your mom?”

“Hold on,” Maya said, intently typing on her phone. “No thanks,” she said.

“You don’t have to go,” Delaney said. “Come on, my mom makes a killer apple pie.”

But Maya waved her phone again. “Yes,” she said, “I
do
have to go.”

Joanne said, “Delaney, drive her home.” Joanne didn’t always get Delaney. Didn’t understand every turn of her thoughts, every tone of her voice. But I did.

Delaney plastered on a fake grin and headed for the front door, but I knew. Maya just wanted an excuse to get out of here. Honestly, today I couldn’t blame her.

After dinner, I walked with my mom over to our house. She opened the garage, which had remained perfectly functional, no water damage. A separate light, battery powered and not connected to the rest of the house, hung from the ceiling with
its own switch. She turned it on, and the room was filled with a yellow glow.

“I could camp out in here,” I said. She laughed. I was only half-kidding.

She had these books and papers spread out on top of the hood of my dad’s gray car, which sat, unused, taunting me. Like he was still here, in this house. I wondered if she was planning on selling it. I wondered whether she’d give it to me if I asked for it. If I wanted it at all.

“I want your opinion on the floors,” she said.

“The floors?” I asked, trying to figure out what she was talking about.

“Yeah, the color. We have to replace them, so I’m trying to decide what I want.”

“What you want,” I said. I couldn’t process that. What she wanted, like this was all an excuse to do things around the house. I could see why insurance said they’d be taking a hard look at us. “What was wrong with the floors we had?”

“Nothing,” she said, but she shrugged. “They weren’t in the best shape. Before. They were on my list of things to fix anyway.”

“You’re not serious,” I said. She froze under the light in the garage, knowing exactly what I meant. “You want my opinion on the goddamn floors. You want to change the
goddamn floors
.”

She put her palm flat on the hood of the car, bracing herself. “We have to put new floors in anyway.”

“And you think I care.”

She set her mouth, like she did when she was disappointed
in me. Or like she did when she didn’t want to give anything away. “I’m trying to include you.”

“Oh,
now
you want to include me? That’s funny. That’s
hilarious
. Yeah, let’s talk about the floors. That’s important.” I had my hands on the trunk, and we stood like that, looking over the top of the car at each other. “Do you honestly care?” I asked.

“I don’t know, Decker. But don’t you think I’m entitled to something good? Even if it’s just the damn floors?”

“What about me?” I asked.

“What
about
you?” she asked. “What would you like? Would you like to go to Boston? Oh, good, you are. Would you like me to pay your way to college, even though you have no clue what you want to do? Because I am. I’m trying. So tell me, what is it, exactly, that you
want
?”

I stared at her. She stared at me.

Listen
. The buzz from the light. Her breathing. My breathing.

She lowered her voice and said, “I mean, something I can actually give you.”

I dropped my head and closed my eyes. I hated looking at her like this. She came around the car and pulled me toward her. I wrapped my arms around her back and buried my face in her shoulder. I realized today that we’d never get over Carson. I’d never get over this. “I’m sorry,” she whispered as I swallowed back the urge to cry. I was losing.

I hated that she was apologizing, like everyone else with their useless condolences.

“I’m sorry we didn’t tell you,” she said.

I wondered why Delaney couldn’t say the same thing.

“Why didn’t they
do
something?” I mumbled into her shoulder. “Isn’t that the whole point of being a cardiologist? To fix the freaking heart?”

She let out a slow breath. “It’s a condition that can affect your whole body, but it went after his heart the hardest. There were deposits all over it by the time he had any symptoms. They were keeping an eye on it … doing what they could. But Decker, we knew there wasn’t a cure for cardiac amyloidosis. I’m so sorry.”

It was like she was apologizing because nobody else could.

“Couldn’t they just give him a new heart?”

I could feel her shaking her head. She whispered, “No, they couldn’t. It would just come back. It was a part of him.”

I gritted my teeth. Shook my head. Felt the anger coursing through me again. “And that was
it
?” I hated feeling like he went gently. I wanted him to be the kind who fights death, all the way.

“He was taking medicine, Decker. He was trying to slow it down. We were keeping an eye on it … we
were
. We didn’t think it would be so soon.” I felt her weight, like I felt my dad’s as he fell to the floor. And I realized we had shifted positions. I was holding her up.

Delaney was blocking the door to the office/my bedroom when I was trying to leave for school the next morning. She
must’ve been waiting there, because as soon as I opened it, dressed and ready to leave, she put her hands on either side and leaned toward me.

“Shit,” I said as I dropped my bag in shock. I stared at it on the floor.

“This is my house,” she said. If I was looking at her, my guess is that she’d be scowling. “You don’t get to make me feel like crap anymore in my own house. You don’t get to make me feel like …
trash
—”

I winced.

“—in my own house.”

“Sorry,” I said, even though I hated that I was the one apologizing. I felt the guilt stirring inside of me, where it sat permanently, like a lung. Easy to forget about until you can’t breathe.

Guilt for leaving her on the lake. Guilt for everything that followed. She stood in my house after and said, “I forgive you,” like it was the easiest thing in the world. And then she did. She never mentioned it. Not once.

Everyone else acted like I was a hero because I’d saved her. Nobody remembered what happened the moment before, when I left her.

She just … forgave me. I wondered whether I could do the same. If I could force the words out and they’d gather meaning on the way from my lungs to my lips. If they’d become real.

I opened my mouth, but she put up her hand. “And I know I’m not supposed to say this because your dad died and you hate me and you can’t even go to your own house. And now
you’re stuck here with a girl you can’t even look at in a place you don’t want to live, and it sucks. But this is my house. So pretend. It’s not that hard. Look. I’m pretending right now.”

I actually smiled because it was so ridiculous. She wasn’t pretending anything; she was saying exactly what she was thinking. “What, exactly, are you pretending?” I asked.

“I’m pretending that this”—she waved her hands in the empty space between us—“isn’t
killing
me.”

I swallowed the knot at the base of my throat. “Anything else?”

“Yes,” she said. And that was just like Delaney. Ignoring my sarcasm. “When you finish the goddamn milk, don’t put it back in the goddamn fridge.”

I looked at her then, as she walked away, her hair trailing halfway down her back. And the truth is, I’d trade her again. I’d make the same bargain. Her for anyone.

Even now.

It made me sick to my stomach, knowing that.

“Do I get a turn to talk now?” I asked.

“Sorry,” she said. “The guy living at my house is too pissed at me to let me ride with him to school, so I have to catch the bus.”

Point: Delaney.

“I never said you couldn’t.”

“No, you just left without me. Good thing I’m smart enough to read between the lines.”

I heard Maya’s voice in my head, telling me to grow up. “Just give me a sec.” I tossed her the keys, and by the time I
got outside, she was sitting in the passenger seat with the engine running, reading a book.

I heard her flipping the pages as we drove. I could set a clock to it. But every few minutes she’d stop and make a note in the margin. For school. For a grade. I didn’t apologize. I didn’t say I forgave her as she sat beside me, planning for her future like none of this mattered in the long run.