“Ah. Yeah, she is a bit weird about that,” River admitted, shooting Hallie a guilty look.
Hallie frowned. “Because she doesn’t want us eating someone else’s old, dried food remnants? That doesn’t sound that weird to me, but who am I to judge your poor hygiene choices?”
River seemed unbothered, but Cal’s smile became sickly, like he could see through Hallie’s comments and understand that she wasn’t going to happily go along with his bullshit. He didn’t like that. Hallie figured that was to be expected in this family. Even one day with them had shown her that everyonewent along with bullying Audrey and pretending it came from a place of concern.
Cal shook his head and stood up. “Just give it a few days. You’ll be eating your words.”
“Oh, I doubt that.” She smiled serenely at him. She didn’t need him to like her, and she had even less interest inwantinghim to like her. If the whole family hated her by the end of the week, great. They’d tell River to break up with her and they wouldn’t be surprised when River complied. It was the perfect plan.
Chapter Six
Someone in another room dropped a glass and the sound of it shattering jolted Audrey out of her… temporary absence.
She was in the bathroom, no idea how long she’d been there. Her phone was in one hand, scrolling aimlessly without really taking any of it in. And, as she tapped her fingertips against the thumb of her other hand, she registered that her heart was beating too quickly. Her brain didn’t like the rhythm as she tried to keep time with it. She tried to block her racing pulse out, slowing her fingers and counting to thirty-two. Pausing and going again.
If she did it enough times, everything would be fine.
Things weren’t better after six rounds, but someone banged on the door so Audrey had no choice but to leave the room.
Her body ached as she headed back towards the kitchen. All she wanted was to go home, but home was very far away indeed, and she’d agreed to be here. She couldn’t leave after just one day. She had to be stronger than that.
The noise when she entered the room was like being beaten with a bat, physical, overwhelming, and painful. She could handle chaos in her life but she didn’t do well with it at home, and, while this wasn’t her home, her whole family was here, and that was the problem. Everything was out of place. Disorganized, dirty, messy… contaminated, and Audrey couldn’t make it right. The sound was just a representation of the mess, another assault on her senses that made everything hurt.
“There you go,” Cal said, grinning widely at her. “Audrey’s here now. She’ll do the dishes. Might as well make use of that OCD of hers.”
Audrey felt like ice had been dropped directly into her stomach. She’d explained more than enough times that it didn’t work like that. While, yes, she needed things to be clean and tidy, she didn’t justenjoycleaning everyone’s mess up. But they couldn’t wrap their heads around it, and it always segued into discussing her job and how incompatible it seemed with what she was saying OCD was. As if OCD had any interest in being logical and making sense.
Her dad shot her a look, stepping away from the sink and drying his hands. He sighed at whatever her expression was doing. “Don’t be stubborn, Audrey.”
“I didn’t say anything,” she replied dryly.
He huffed a laugh. “You think we don’t know that expression? Are you forgetting we raised you? We know you better than you think.”
Every part of her was giving up functioning if the pain in her intercostal muscles as she breathed was anything to go by. It wasn’t new. Her brain was perfectly aware of all the ways she shut down, all the ways she hurt and ached when she was around her family. She just hadn’t managed to hit the point where refusing to be around them hurt less than this.
“No,” she said quietly, rolling up her sleeves and heading for the sink. The cocktail of shame and guilt that shot through her tasted like bile, felt like burning, and had her head spinning unpleasantly. Shame at not being enough, not being the daughter they wanted, the child and sister they thought they had. And at not being strong enough to refuse them. And all of that carried guilt too.
What a great gift.
Her mom smiled and patted her shoulder. “Try not to look too excited about the things you love.”
“I don’t actually love cleaning everyone’s plates,” she tried, her voice feeling a million miles from the person her colleagues all thought she was. Would they even recognize this version of her?
“Nobody here loves cleanliness the way you do.”
“And, besides,” Cal added, “if you didn’t love doing dishes, you wouldn’t spend so much time investigating them and washing them again before we use them.”
That wasn’t how it worked either. She didn’tlikedoing that. She had to do it. Had to check, had to know, couldn’t risk the contamination, the sickness and potential death that would follow using unwashed utensils. It wasn’t something you enjoyed. It was something you did to survive.
“At least, this way,” her dad said, smile audible, “you’re saving time at the next meal. Ifyou’vewashed them, you won’t have to wash them again later.”
That wasn’t necessarily true either. Depending on how… dirty her mind felt the next time she tried to eat, she might still need to sanitize things.
“Yeah, it’s fine,” she said, forcing her voice to sound normal as she fought the urge to smash the dirty dishes. She’d never do that, of course, but there were so many of them, and they were filled with everyone else’s food scraps, and everything aboutit felt wrong. The impulse hammered in her mind, amplifying itself the longer she stood there, begging to be heard, trying to promise her everything would be okay if she just broke them all instead. “I’ve got it.”
And she plunged her hands into the warm water.
She felt like she was going to pass out until the rest of her family left the room. At least, after tonight, it wouldn’t be their job to clean up for a couple of meals. She’d get away from it for a while. Kind of.
