The Best I Could (21 page)

Kneeling next to him, I did the same, the
murky water running down my skin, mixing with sweat and dust.

“Yeah,” Eli answered. “All of it belongs to
him. No one comes down here anymore, though. Not since Grams died.
This was her place. She had cancer. When she was diagnosed, my Pops
bought her the orchard, thinking it would be a nice place to
recuperate after treatments. Later, when we all realized that her
cancer was too advanced and she wasn’t going to make it, it became
her haven, the place she came to die.”

“Not a bad place to pass,” I whispered.

“No,” Eli agreed, “it isn’t a bad place at
all.” He nodded at the rowboat and pier. “We’d bring picnics down
here before she passed away. She liked the water. Like liquid
glass, she used to say. I liked it, too.” Taking my hand again, he
tugged me toward the rowboat. “Go out on the water with me.”

“What?” I pulled at my hand. “In that?”

The nightmare I’d had of Eli sailing a ship
on a bloody sea suddenly became startlingly real.

I froze. “No.”

Eli stopped, his eyes peering down into mine.
“You promised to live,” he reminded me.

My gaze slid to the water, to the dark, murky
depths. Brown, not red, but it didn’t take much imagination to see
the blood. Even so, hadn’t I begged him to take me away in the
dream? Hadn’t I begged him to bring me aboard his ship? It was the
strangest kind of déjà vu.

“I had a dream about this,” I revealed.

“About this? Me bringing you here?”

“No. You on the water. Only it wasn’t water.
It was … something else.”

“Was I walking on
this
something
water?” he teased.

A laugh escaped me. “You’re an arrogant son
of a bitch, you know that?”

“I’m oddly comforted by this.” Leaving me, he
moved to the rowboat, glanced inside, and then pushed it toward the
water, the muscles in his arms tensing. Pausing at the edge of the
shore, he held onto the boat and nodded at me. “Come on, get
in.”

Joining him, I glanced into the boat
skeptically. It was one of those cheap fiberglass boats, two oars
resting inside.

“Is it safe?”

“I don’t see any holes,” he commented
lightly. “Can you swim?”

I nodded.

“Then it doesn’t matter. If we sink, we’ll
swim back to shore.”

I stared, horrified. “There’s no telling
what’s in that water! Snakes, big man-eating catfish—”

He laughed. “Man-eating catfish? This isn’t
the river. Get in, Tansy.”

“Are you ordering me to do it?” I asked,
glaring.

“I don’t know, do you like being ordered to
do things?” He winked.

Rather than protest, I stared at his face,
curious. “Does it look like I’m the kind of person that likes being
ordered around?”

Eli studied me, his expression serious, his
lips parting. He leaned forward, his face lowering, only inches
from mine before pulling back just as quickly, his mouth snapping
shut. “You tell me, roof girl.”

I climbed into the boat because that was
safer than speaking. The vessel pitched from side to side, and I
grabbed the warm fiberglass, carefully lowering myself onto one of
the seats. “You should know that I’ve never been in a boat. Never
had a reason to be in one.”

“But you
can
swim?” Eli insisted.

I eyed him. “You’re going to push me in,
aren’t you?”

“No, but it never hurts to get a feel for
that kind of thing.”

Shoving the boat away from the shore, he
climbed in after me, grabbed an oar, and pushed at the shallow
waters, driving us farther and farther away from safety. Water
lapped against the shoreline, a steady beat in the silent air,
soothing and scary all at once.

“So, this is living?” I asked, gripping the
sides of the boat so hard, my fingers hurt.

Eli glanced at my hands. “When you chance
letting go, it is.” His gaze rose to the softly undulating water.
“It’s not much, but it’s something. When there’s nothing except
water and sky, you’re the only in between. The only thing
separating the world above from the water, pond or ocean, world
below. Both worlds, the air and the sea, were never meant for men,
but here we are invading them. Trying our best to conquer and
control what was never meant to be conquered or controlled.”

He droned on, words more philosophical than I
expected from him pouring out of his mouth, and I drowned in them,
remembering some of what he said and forgetting others.

When he fell silent, I found myself asking,
“Then why do you love it so much when you don’t belong in it?”

His gaze was stark and confident. “Because
the thrill comes from attempting to control it when you know you
can’t.”

“Oh.” My eyes fell to my
lap, to my tightly clenched knees. Eli rowed, his oar dipping in
and out of the water.
Splash, splash,
splash
.

Something jumped in the pond, ripples
spreading out around it.

I stared at the widening circles. “You’re
going to ask me why I did it, aren’t you? Why I cut myself?”

“What makes you think that?”

“Because you brought me here. Where I can’t
run.”

Eli pulled the oar up, letting it rest in the
boat. We drifted.

“Are you going to do it again?” he asked,
surprising me. “It doesn’t really matter why you did it, Tansy. If
there’s a reason, then it’s probably still there, so the best
question is: are you going to do it again?”

“Maybe,” I replied, and then, “Yeah,
probably. It’s a scary world, isn’t it? When pain feels good.”

For a long time, he watched me. A slow breeze
circled us. Water and sky. Us, the only between.

“Let’s go back.” Eli lifted the oar to row
again.

“We barely did anything,” I protested.

He smiled. “We did enough. Today.”

His gaze fell to my hands, and I found myself
wondering what he was thinking. If he thought I was as crazy as his
mom. If he was disappointed that I had hang-ups. If that was why we
had walked so far only to rush back so fast.

Did I care?

Eli

Pops was standing on the porch when we came
out of the orchard, his hands behind his back, his eyes on my face.
He didn’t say anything. He simply watched us.

Tansy returned to her work, doing whatever it
was a person did to make a yard look good, her movements full of
nervous energy. Waiting, I’m sure, for the explosion to come.

It never did.

Pops turned, walked into the house, and left
me staring at the place where he’d stood. It was the most my
grandfather had ever said without saying anything.

It reminded me of Tansy.

“Is he mad?” she asked, her gaze flicking
from me to the porch.

“No.” I smiled.

Sparing her a brief glance, I turned and
headed for the cottage.

“What about you?” she called. “Are you
okay?”

Still walking, I replied, “I’ve got a lot of
things I need to re-evaluate.”

Inside the cottage, I went to the guest room,
stared at the punching bag, pulled off my shirt, threw it on the
bed, and murmured, “Fuck it.”

Taking a red permanent marker, I twisted off
the lid and started to write. Words spilled out of me, some of them
words I’d already written on the bag. Except now, they meant
something because I was finally ready to face them. Words I needed
to let go of.

Mom.

Codeine.

Fear.

Expectations.

Pity.

Finished, I threw down the red marker and
grabbed the black one.

Future.

Just one word. Sometimes that’s all it takes.
One word to sum up everything.

I grabbed my cell phone from my room. The
damned thing was charged because I kept it that way, but it was
full of unread texts, unopened emails, and a shit load of missed
calls I’d been ignoring since it was returned to me at the
hospital. I hadn’t missed it.

Clicking on the music icon, I thumbed through
the tracks, mostly rap, tapped on a song, turned it up, and threw
the phone on the guest room dresser.

Tugging on my hook and loop gloves, I stared
at the words on the punching bag, unblinking, until the black and
red blurred together.

Music filled my head, drowning out everything
except me, my gloves, and my fuzzy words.

When my fist connected with the bag, the
tension in my chest unfurled, adrenaline rushing through my
veins.

Tap, tap, tap, tap.

As angry as I was at Lincoln for what he and
Mandy had done, he’d made me see something, forced me to really
look at myself.

Pity

Did people pity themselves naturally? Some of
us so much that it blinded us?

I laughed, the sound snatched by the music,
adding it to the angry rapping in the room. Tansy, the wound on her
hand, the way she looked at herself, at her family … we were more
alike than she realized.

She blamed herself for being like her dad,
for giving up on everything around her after her mom passed. She
accused those she loved of being self-centered because she didn’t
want to see it in herself.

Through her, I saw myself.
Because, truth was, out of everyone in my family,
I
was the one most like my
mother. I spent so much time hating Ivy and yelling at her because
I needed the same kind of validation she did. I needed someone to
look at me, see the tragedy there, and make me feel better for
it.

My fist. The bag. Me.

Strength coursed through me. Not the kind
that came from exercise. The kind that came from realizing that the
greatest strength came from seeing the tragedy in myself, from
making myself feel better about it.

I was not my mother.

Tansy was not her father.

In this moment, I was Elijah Bradford
Lockston.

My grandfather saw it. The bastard.

I didn’t need the orchard, this place, or
even to forgive my mother. I needed someone like Tansy, even as
unhealthy as I knew she was.

Tansy

Later that night, I stared at the wall,
remembering the day and Eli. The pond. The way the water stared
back at us, the sky, the heat, and the silence. The shame. I wasn’t
there anymore. I was here.

Home.

Silence.

Divided rooms.

No connection.

Lengthening shadows stealing my breath.

Memories … so many of them. From before Dad’s
death. From after Mom’s.

The house. A half-naked girl stumbling out
of Jet’s bedroom, her eyes wide and stricken, her lipstick smeared.
Smelling of sex and forgetfulness.

“Shit, I fell asleep!” the girl cried. “My
parents are going to kill me!”

They were all the same. Nameless. Late.
Sweet girls who cared about my brother.

Gathering her things, the nameless one
rushed to the door, stumbled into the world outside, and left us
marinating in the prison behind her.

“We have sex education at school. I don’t
need extra credit at home!” Deena yelled from her room.

Jet, shirtless with bloodshot eyes,
sauntered from his man cave to the kitchen, flung the refrigerator
door open, and stared.

“Tansy!” Dad wailed from his bedroom.

He was on the floor when I found him, his
hands against the wall, a sick smile plastered on his face. Two
spilled pill bottles and a liter of whiskey rested next to him.

“She’s so beautiful, isn’t she?”

Dad hallucinated when he mixed too many of
his medications and washed them down with liquor.

“She’s great,” I agreed, stepping toward him
carefully. “Do you need help getting up?”

“Up?” he asked, confused. “I’m fine,
Tansy.”

Jet’s shirtless figure darkened the doorway.
“Oh, shit! Come on, Dad!”

“He’s taken too much of something,” I
said.

Jet scowled. “Two more fucking months.
That’s all I’ve got left, and I’m out of this hell hole.”

He had a college acceptance letter in the
kitchen to prove it.

“Dad—” I began.

“Just go to work, Tansy,” Jet interceded.
“We need it right now with him missing work so much, and he’s not
going anywhere.”

“Dad?” Deena called from the hallway.

Panic seized me. “Get her out of here!” I
hissed at Jet, pushing him out into the hall toward our sister.

Slamming Dad’s door, I stared at him. He was
kissing the wall, and I looked away, nauseated.

“Hey,” Dad called after a while, his voice
deeper, different. Slurred and excited. “Where have you been,
GiGi?”

GiGi was my mother’s nickname. My head rose,
my gaze finding my father. He was pushing himself up the wall, his
intense stare on my face. Heat filled his eyes.

I’d been told on countless occasions how
much I looked like my mother. I’d always been comforted by that …
until now. The passionate look my father gave me was unfamiliar and
uncomfortable.

He doesn’t see
me
, I realized. Fear climbed up my
spine.

“Come here, GiGi,” he begged. “I’ve missed
you so much.”

“Dad, I’m not Mom,” I breathed, my hand
fumbling for the doorknob.

“What are you talking about, GiGi?” He
stumbled toward me.

I shoved at the door, twisting the knob.
Falling out into the hallway, I slammed it and leaned against the
door.

“What the hell?” Jet called from the
kitchen.

Dad pounded on the door. “GiGi!”

“Help me!” I yelled. “He thinks I’m
Mom.”

Jet paled. “Fuck!”

Rushing to my side, he shoved his shoulder
against the door, his bare skin burning me through my T-shirt. He
smelled like sweat and stale perfume.

“GiGi, why are you doing this?” Dad
cried.

Jet and I looked at each other, resigned
expressions on our faces.

Deena appeared in the hallway. “Why is Dad
yelling for Mom?”