The Healing (The Things We Can't Change Book 3) (6 page)

It gives me a kind of rush to see the bridge with all my marks on it and face down the urge to paint. It’s tempting, oh-so-tempting, especially right now, but at the moment the feelings I have are… manageable. Not overwhelming and all-consuming. They aren’t so entirely repulsive to me, and I’m not sure if it’s because they’re about Evie, or if it’s because I’m feeling I at least need to give helping her one shot before I go into denial. I try not to think too hard about it and just push away from the bridge after fifteen minutes, finally making it to the Parkers driveway.

I ascend the hill, wondering how many more dozens of times I’ll do so for the remainder of the summer, and pause at the top of the driveway. I take a discreet peek into the garages and feel an immeasurable sense of relief when I see that both Clarissa and Hunter seem to be absent. Evie’s car, however, is still there, and I cross my fingers that she’s home. I’ve only just realized how pointless this is if she’s not around.

I go up to the front door and then chicken out, realize how absurd this is. I don’t have any right to knock on the front door, and if Evie is home alone she probably won’t even answer. I circle around to the back of the yard where a flood of plants has been delivered, creating a messy jungle of potted trees and bushes and flowers, scattered haphazardly all over the backyard. I halfheartedly gather my shovel and gloves from the shed and position them again the gazebo, but don’t start working.

I just stand and stare up at the big, dark house. No lights, no movement from within. A chill runs down my spine as I wonder exactly where Clarissa and Hunter might be, how long Evie has been alone in this house with no one to watch over her. Then I think, who am I kidding? Even with Clarissa around, it’s not like there is anyone to watch over her. The words Clarissa hissed at her when the two of them discussed Evie’s rape come back to me, suddenly in a different context as I realize what Clarissa must have been referring to.
I’ll turn you in to social services. I know what you’re doing to yourself. I’ve seen you, and I know your secret. You’re a pitiful wreck, Evie.

Clarissa had known. She must have stumbled upon Evie at some point, maybe not caught her, but she’d seen, and she was—is—doing nothing about it, nothing to help Evie. I know Evie was seeing a therapist for a while, but I’m willing to bet that she hasn’t gone to an appointment since her dad died. In fact, I’m willing to bet just about anything that she hasn’t even left this house since the funeral. The idea, the total loneliness and abandonment she must be feeling makes me ache for her, but I quickly dispel the emotion.

You’re not getting in too deep,
I remind myself, even as I’m striding up toward the house.
You’re just going to make sure she isn’t suicidal, that she isn’t up there dead or anything and make her go see her therapist, maybe find her a freaking friend, for Pete’s sake. A girl she can spill her guts to.

I can’t deny that a flash of fear goes through me as I enter the silent house, visions of finding Evie dead on the floor, but while I’m uneasy, worried, it isn’t anywhere near to the feeling of outright wrongness and creepiness that I got on Friday. My sixth sense is telling me that things seem to be okay. Aside from the fact, you know, that Evie is cutting herself, I keep avoiding jail by a hair, Cindy and Dr. Parker are dead, Tony is in a coma, and neither of us seems able to deal with any of it.

Typical teenager problems.

Not.

Evie isn’t in the kitchen, though it’s about breakfast time, and I decide to go upstairs and check the office first, even though the idea of setting foot in there gives me the creeps. Hairs rise up on my arms, but not in a bad way. Just your usual creeping-through-someone’s-house-uninvited kind of uneasiness. The hallway to the office is dim and I have to take a gamble on which door it is, my memory failing me when the first door reveals just a spare bedroom. Then I have to face the next door knowing that it’s the correct one and gather my nerve to push the door open, not knowing what I’m going to find.

What I find is Evie, sitting in the big leather chair behind the desk, wrapped up in a big blanket and slumped over to the side. At first I think she’s asleep, but then her eyes flicker open and stare at me. For just a moment they widen in panic, and then she seems to recognize me, or just not care that I’m here, because she stays slumped in the chair and doesn’t move.

“You’re not supposed to be here today,” she mumbles, her voice slow and thick. As though she has a headache, she sighs and closes her eyes, letting her head fall back against the back of the chair.

“Yeah-” I begin, but then I see it. On the surface of the desk, right in front of her and positioned just so, is a kitchen knife. Not a huge one, but no paring knife either. There’s also a new roll of gauze to the right, some medical tape on the left. A neat sort of diamond shape, with Evie forming the fourth point.

“
Evie!
” I explode, and then I start forward, circling the desk and yanking her up out of the chair by grabbing two fistfuls of the blanket wrapped around her, since I can’t locate her hands.

“Stop!” she screeches. “Stop it! Zeke!”

“What the hell are you doing?” I growl, trying to locate her arm inside the massive blanket and failing. “What did you
do
, Evie?”

“Nothing! I didn’t even do it!” She’s struggling to get away but is only impeded by the blanket wrapped around her and finally stumbles, falling against me so that I have no choice but to catch her. “I didn’t do anything after you left!”

“Then why did you get a new knife?” I demand. Her back is against my chest and I pin her against me with one arm, sticking the other inside the blanket and grappling around for her left arm. I find a few things, a hip, some hair that I accidentally pull, bare stomach and—I swallow hard—a breast, and then give up after
that
accidental touch.

I spin her around, keeping hold on one side of the blanket so she’s mummified and can’t lift her arms to struggle. I stare into her eyes, trying to see the truth of it there. She’s glaring back at me with hatred, resenting the intrusion, but I don’t see evasion there or get the sense that she’s lying. But she still hasn’t answered me.

“Why the new knife, Evie?” I say, and I use the same voice that I always used with Cameron, when I was facing him down, brooking no argument.

She finally looks away, casting her eyes down toward the ground, unable to maintain eye contact. “I just needed it,” she mutters, barely audible. “I wasn’t going to… to do
it
, but it helps me stay… calm. If it’s there. Just in case I… just in case I change my mind.”

“Calm?” I echo, my voice trembling a bit. This is so out of my league to handle. “You feel calm by having a knife around in case you want to cut yourself? Evie, that’s so-”

She looks up at me again, glaring. “You don’t understand,” she interrupts, snapping with fury. “You can’t possibly understand. I’ve told you over and over,
butt out
, Zeke!”

We stare at each other again for a long, loaded moment. Evie is trembling with fury, I’m trembling with… hell, I don’t even know. Horror? Worry? Anger? I can’t pinpoint just one thing, and it’s probably a combination of those three and many other things. It’s decision time. Let her stay here and suffer, or continue butting in. Just a little. Not enough to make me feel. Just enough to maybe make
her
feel again, because she’s clearly losing it.

I wish I could say it was a struggle, that I had a hard time forcing myself into getting enough emotion to actually convince myself to do it. But that would be a bold-face lie.

“No,” I say, and without further warning I grab Evie and toss her up over my shoulder and turn on my heel, marching out of the office.

“Zeke!” She’s shrieking again, struggling and squirming but it doesn’t really do her much good because her arms and her legs are still trapped within the blanket and she can’t even beat at me with her fists. The whole blanket thing is genius really, as it makes it pretty easy to travel quickly through the house, out the sliding glass door and down the steps of the deck toward the gazebo.

“Let me go!” Evie screams. “Put me down! Don’t touch me! I swear I’m going to fucking kill you for this, Zeke! Put me
down
!”

“Fine,” I say calmly, and with great ceremony and very little care, I drop her down on the ground next to the beginning of the path toward the gazebo.

She’s tiny and small, so light I’m not even breathing hard from carrying her all that way, but there is still an audible
thump
as she hits the ground. Evie lays there for a long moment, and I can tell from the stunned look in her eyes that the breath has been knocked out of her. And hopefully some common sense will have been knocked
into
her. I keep my hands on my hips and stare down at her.

Finally, she recovers herself and her eyes zero in on me, narrowing. “Ass,” she spits out.

“Emo cutter wannabe,” I retort back, not sure where this edge of sarcasm is coming from. It feels kind of good, however. Distant. Yes, that’s what I need. A little distance and detachment.
Not too deep, Zeke, not too deep.

“Funny,” Evie snarls, and she begins to fight her way out of the layers of blanket. She’s spitting mad, her angry, jerky movements making the job more difficult than it should be.

Finally, she’s free and tries to stand up, but it takes her a few failed attempts. She’s wearing the same clothes as last time I saw her, and her hair looks greasy and I know she hasn’t washed it in days. In fact, as I take in her skeletal frame, I wonder when she last ate.

“Where do you think you’re going?” I ask, as she finally gains her feet, though she’s shaking and breathing hard, as though this has taken all her strength.

“Back into the house,” she snaps, and her voice is still strong, if not her body. She takes one unsteady step toward the house and almost falls, and I swoop in to catch her.

“I don’t think so,” I say, and push her back down onto the blanket.

She lands on her ass and lets loose a deep, frustrated scream deep in her throat, glaring at me with so much hatred that it almost chills me a little. “Leave me
alone
!” she screams, rolling over to all fours and trying to push to her feet again.

It’s pathetic that it only takes a little nudge from me to get her off balance, though a large portion of it may also be due to the fact that we’re at the base of a hill and she’s on ground that’s sloping upward. Either way, she falls again and screams again in anger and frustration, cussing and spitting, mostly at me but also at herself.

“We can do this all day,” I say pleasantly, looking up at the clear, blue sky. “Or you can just accept it and sit out here while I work so I can be sure you’re not trying to do open-heart surgery on yourself or anything.”

“
Open-heart surgery on yourself,
” Evie mimics in a nasty voice, trying to get onto her feet again. “Ha-ha. Get away from me, Zeke. I don’t need your help. I don’t want it either.”

She manages to get a few steps up the hill, until I lunge forward and give her ankle a tug and she’s thrown off balance and literally rolls back down the hill again.

“
I hate you
!” It’s the loudest scream yet, and I have a flash of worry that the neighbors might stumble upon this scene, and try to decide how bad it might look to an unfamiliar eye. What the hell. We’re hidden from view as far as the neighbors are concerned, what with all the new plants that were delivered, and only someone in the Parker house would have a clear view of us.

We do it three more times, Evie trying to stand, to head back into the house and me stopping her easily, usually with pretty dirty, underhanded tricks. Tripping her, pushing her over, fighting like two five-year-olds on a playground over a Pokémon card. After the third attempt, Evie is sprawled out on the blanket, her chest heaving, her left arm—the one wrapped over and over in gauze—lying across her chest.

I can see her ribs poking out even when she’s inhaling, and she’s clearly exhausted, completely spent. I know it’s because she probably hasn’t been eating, has hardly moved out of that office since her dad died. Probably she’s weak from blood loss too, though that thought gives me a shudder and I push it quickly away.

After she just lies there, prone, for a full two minutes, I decide she’s done fighting—for now. I feel I can stop standing guard for a while and get to work, and I do. I try to pretend I’m not really paying attention to her, and there are moments, when I encounter a thick root or am lifting something heavy, that I forget Evie is there. As soon as I remember, though, I whip around to check on her, but two hours later, she’s still there.

I think she falls asleep at first, though maybe not willingly. She’s just so still for those two hours, chest moving up and down in a steady but quick rhythm, eyes closed. I try to be as quiet as I can, even though digging holes and moving dirt and planting bushes and flowers isn’t exactly a quiet job. By noon, she’s awake, and I look up from a particularly violent fight with a fern that doesn’t want to come out of its plastic pot to find that Evie is sitting up now, sitting on half of the blanket with the other half once again wrapped around her.

She’s watching me, her eyes wide and alert and she looks… I’m not sure of the right word. Calmer, maybe. It makes me feel a little bit relieved, to see her looking just a little more with it. She’s still got huge circles under her eyes, still so thin and fragile looking, but she’s already got a little more color in her face from lying in the warm summer sun and it does wonders to improve her looks.