Clearer in the Night (8 page)

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” she asked me.

I tried to keep the long, deep sigh internal. I mostly succeeded. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“How about the truth?”

I pulled a black t-shirt over my head, and gathered my wet hair back into a ponytail. Letting it dry like this was going to give it weird waves later, but I wasn’t in the mood to have it wet and in my face. “The truth, Mom? I don’t know what happened. I don’t remember. Okay?”

“Were you drinking? On drugs?”

“God, no, you know me better than that.”

“Do I? I don’t know you anymore, Cait.”

“Yeah, and whose fault is that?” She tried to melt me with her laser eye beams of guilt and misery, but I held strong. “You don’t call me any more than I call you, Mom. I’m here because I’d like that to change, but it’s not going to if we just keep on fighting like this.” The lies tasted bitter and cold on my tongue. I swallowed, but the oily feeling remained. How could I tell her? She’d just send me back to be locked up. Knowing that I’d been attacked and somehow healed was different from being able to prove it, and I knew that.

She didn’t believe me, anyway. Her jaw was tight, her lips thin and white, her eyes narrow and focused. Was she this transparent with her clients, or did she want me to know that she knew I was lying? There had been a point in time when I’d just known all this stuff, second nature. I was so used to the games and the machinations that I could navigate them effortlessly. That time was apparently in the past.

“I ordered pizza,” she said, her doubting Thomas face unchanged. “Should be here soon. Don’t be long.” She stood, and took measured, precise steps to the doorway, then shut the bedroom door behind her.

My skin was vibrating. My hands were opening and closing, clenching and releasing. There was a howling wind inside my head, and if I loosened the muscles holding my jaw closed, the screams that would pour out would deafen the entire world. My nails dug into my palms, cutting half-moons that would bleed if I dug deep enough. Maybe then, the screams could slip out without anyone hearing.

I held myself still until the quaking stopped. And then I went downstairs, for pizza, and a movie, and to pretend like nothing had ever happened.

TUESDAY, JULY 31

After an uneventful night of movies and pizza, I’d been exhausted with a suddenness that shocked me. I’d begged off halfway through
Philadelphia Story
, a Katharine Hepburn–Cary Grant movie with a side of Jimmy Stewart that was usually one of my favorites, and made it to bed just in time to fall into a dreamless state that was probably closer to passing out than sleeping. I didn’t remember even pulling the covers down, but at some point in the night, I must have crawled under them. I woke up feeling refreshed, excited, almost frenetic. It would be overstating to say I sprang out of bed, but only just. Only just.

I had never been a morning person. My normal routine involved punching the snooze button on my phone three or four times, then lying in bed and poking at email and mourning the fact that I had to move, then dragging myself through the shower, and ever closer to the coffee pot. Some days, I had to caffeinate before I could even face the shower. Running your life on five hours of sleep does that to a person.

There had been a point in time when I woke up fast, eager, ready to go. That had been in college, though, when I’d been running just for the simple joy of putting one foot in front of the other, with no commitments or promises. Before I’d gotten the idea in my head that it was even possible to run away from the things that haunted you. That hadn’t lasted, though. The good things never really did. It had been three years since I’d even bothered to do a 5k. Longer than that since I’d run on a regular basis.

But this morning, it was the only thing I could think of. Moving fast and faster, until I shook the demons’ claws out of my heels.

Mom hadn’t thrown out anything of mine, and my old track stuff was no exception. The shorts were shorter than I remembered, and the sports bra was tighter than was comfortable. The shoes were more broken down than I liked. But I pulled my hair into a ponytail anyway, made sure the emergency $20 was still tucked into my shorts pocket, flipped over to the music on my phone, and headed out the front door. I thought about waking her up, letting her know where I was going, but if she was sleeping, she probably needed the rest. I’d be back before she woke up, most likely.

I started onto my old running route without thinking about it. Down the street, past all the other stuck-up Victorians, then turning into the trails, running a long circle around to another neighborhood, and then back. When I’d been in good form, it had been a decent half hour run, enough to keep me in shape during the off season.

Two minutes in, I wanted to quit. My body had utterly forgotten how to do this. There was none of the peace that I remembered, none of the quiet meditation of one foot in front of the other; I was caught up with remembering pacing and form and to breathe at all, never mind breathing well. An embarrassing three minutes in, before the first song on my old playlist had even ended, I shuffled to a walk, heaving air like an elephant. I’d been good at this once, but it turned out it was one more thing I failed at now.

Turning around seemed like the logical thing to do, and I almost did it. But something was stirring somewhere in me now, something that wanted to move more than it wanted to be still, something that knew it could run all day, if it just found the right pace. Cross-country had been my skill, back in the day; I couldn’t sprint, couldn’t leap, but I could run forever, once I got my feet and my heartbeat in the right pattern. Once I shut my brain off and started listening to my body. And that had been the magic of running, after all, right? Moving meditation, or something.

So I walked until the crick in my side worked itself out, and then I pushed my feet into a jog again. Slower than I’d tried the first time. I’d have to start out slow, but I could do this. I could. I’d done it before, and I’d remember how.

I kept my gaze low, focusing on the step in front of me, and then the one after that, and then the one after that. Just the next step, Cait. Don’t worry about what happens when your lungs tighten up again, and just run. Just keep moving.

That’s probably why I ran straight into someone. When running, remember to keep your eyes up. At least every once in a while. When you stare at your own feet, you smack straight into someone, hitting them with a huge oof of force, and the both of you go down in an unattractive and painful tangle of limbs and elbows. He must have seen me coming, though; he wrapped his arms around me, and managed to roll us both towards the grass, instead of landing on the sidewalk, and take the worst of the fall. We ended up side by side, and I looked up as I caught my breath—then lost it again as I met Eli’s deep blue eyes and slight, almost teasing, smile.

“Well,” he said, without loosening the circle of his arms. “I wasn’t expecting that.”

I almost relaxed. For no reason, for no sane reason, I almost let him hold me. And then I forced a laugh and pushed myself away. “Hey, sorry about that, I was—”

He let me go, still smiling that secret smile. “It happens.”

I sat up, collecting my arms and legs and detangling them from his. “Do you regularly get knocked over by girls who can’t be bothered to see where they’re going?”

“Okay, it’s not an everyday occurrence.”

“What are you doing here, anyway?” My tone was more accusatory than I’d meant it to be, but I let it stand. Because I was curious.

He lied so smoothly that I almost didn’t notice. But the tightness around his eyes and the change in the tension of his smile were unmistakable. Plus, I knew. Trying to think too hard about it—trying to understand what he was thinking the way I’d study the pattern of his shirt—made my head hurt, and it felt like trying to climb a sheer cliff made out of glass, but still. I knew in the way that meant I wasn’t wrong. “I was just going for a walk.”

“So you live nearby, then?”

“It was a long walk.” The smile was fading, and fast. Why was he lying about this? Had he been watching me? Following me? And then the smile came back, all in a rush. “There’s really no point, is there?”

“In what?”

“Lying to you.”

“I don’t appreciate it, that’s for sure.”

He stretched out on the grass, his arms behind his head, like a surfer stretching out to catch some rays in a bad movie. “Of course not, no one likes to be lied to. But that’s not what I mean. I’m never going to fool you, am I? Do you always know when people are lying to you?”

Right. Now I remembered why I didn’t like him. “I don’t read minds,” I snapped. Because admitting it was a one-way trip to the looney bin. It wasn’t possible. No way.

He was flat out grinning now, but his eyes—they were the color of the ocean, deep blue and very cold—were serious. “I didn’t say that you did.”

“You keep saying things about me. They’re not true. I don’t know why you’re saying them.” I hugged my knees to my chest. If I was going to sound like I was five years old, I might as well play the part.

His smile faded, slowly, and he reached out and touched my knee with three soft fingers. I didn’t flinch away from him, but holding still took more effort than I’d expected when he moved forward. “I don’t know who convinced you that your gift is a curse, Cait. It isn’t. It needs to be honed, trained, so that you don’t do things you don’t mean to—but it’s a gift, all the same.”

“I’m—I’m good at reading people. At understanding why they’re saying the things they are. I understand people. That’s all.”

“Sure,” he said, but that sideways smile was back, and he was lying again. No—humoring me. Which was worse. “So did you get a chance to try out the book?”

The book? Oh. “No. Mom had pizza and movie plans last night, and then I passed out.”

“So you’re staying with her for now. That’s good.”

Everyone sure seemed to think so. “I suppose.” He raised his eyebrows and waited. The silence stretched, until the words filled it up. “Mom and I have never been especially tight. But maybe we can fix that, this time.”

“I know that the church prays for you on a regular basis.” My turn to raise an eyebrow, and he shrugged. “When your grandmother is a deacon, it’s hard not to attend on a regular basis. We’ve been worried about you and your mom for a long time. Things have been hard for the both of you for longer than is fair.”

And that was the understatement of the year. There was something refreshing about being here, about knowing that he already knew the whole story, and that I would never watch as he absorbed the truth of my life, watch as his expression turned from interest to pity. Or, worse than that, fear that a tragedy like that could happen to him, too. And yet, people wondered why I opted for anonymous connections. It was so much easier not to have to explain. To just be a beautiful girl who loved to dance. To never watch that change happen.

There was no pity in Eli’s eyes, though, no overwhelming urge to comfort. He just watched me, waiting. It was…nice. Safe. “Whatever,” I said. “It’s life. I’m just staying with her for a few days, until she believes I’m not about to die on her, and then it’s back to normal.”

“Okay,” he said, in the kind of quiet, neutral voice that you use on suicide hotlines and people about to jump off bridges. “Try the book, when you get a chance. I think you’ll find it interesting.” He stood up, brushed himself off, and offered me a hand up.

“You keep giving me reading assignments,” I said, but I took his hand and let him pull me up. Somehow, I ended up very close to him, and it would have been the most natural thing in the world for him to put a hand on my waist and close the distance, pressing his lips against mine. He didn’t, though, just smiled softly, and this time, his eyes warmed up, just a little.

“Hard habit to break,” he said. I quirked my head sideways, not quite trusting myself to speak. “I teach. High school math.”

I was still holding his hand. I was holding his hand, and there was something, passing back and forth between us. My heart was climbing up into my throat, my belly bursting with little sparkles. I took a deep breath, imagined kissing him, hard and hot, and then I let his hand go. I tried to keep the sorrow off my face as the connection faded, and I took a step back. There was no zing. He was not a guy I was allowed to zing for. He already knew too much about me. And there was no point in pretending I was worth caring about, if you knew everything there was to know.

“I guess I’ll see you around,” I said.

He nodded. “At church.” It was an invitation and a statement.

“Sure,” I said. I hadn’t been in years, not since I’d gone to college, and stopped teaching the little kids’ Sunday school class. They said they were open to everyone, but even that had to have limits. I was sure of it.