Forhours.
Then he gets up and goes to sleep for however many hours are left between the time he came down in the night until seven, when I hear heavy impact sounds of weights in Nash’s home gym.
“This is a thing you don’t need to know about, especially a quarter of a bottle of whiskey deep. Leave it alone.”
“I’m going to assume it involves a box or a room with no windows,” I say.
“Don’t, Makhi.” There’s as much of a warning as a plea in his voice, and if it were anyone else, I’d push, but Vonn is a friend. More family than a friend with nearly five years of living together and having each other’s backs. We all have our sins and our crutches, and I don’t want to push him to reach for a bottle to escape more nightmares he can never outrun.
The biggest source of his nightmares is the wars he survived. He lost more people than I have family, and it drove him to roam after he got out of the army until he settled in Massey.
The more I think about what someone could have done to Byrdie, the more I realize he’s right. Idon’twant to know about this sweatbox because what I’ve come up with in my brain is already too much.
The thought of Byrdie being locked up in a dark, windowless room with no water or food, after I chased her out of this house, makes me want to fight Vonn for the bottle and drain it dry.
“I see why you do it now,” I say more to myself than to him. Then I push back from the table, saying, “I’m going for a smoke.”
“You should see her tomorrow. Apologize,” Vonn calls after me. “She might not respond, but she will listen.”
“She doesn’t want to talk to me.” I stop in the kitchen doorway, my back to him. It’s as much to stop my world from spinning after too much whiskey as it is to hide my guilt from him. But Vonn is perceptive. Too damn perceptive, with a bigger heart than a person who can kill as easily as he can. “You saw what happened in the truck.”
I got in the backseat beside Byrdie, and she froze up. We all saw it. She blames me for what happened to her, and she’s right to. What happened to her is on me. All of it.
Now something is wrong with her. We saved her and brought her back, but she’s a shell of her former self.
Whenever I pass by the living room that Nance turned into her bedroom, she’s sitting in her bed or in the armchair Vonn pushed in there, always staring at nothing.
Nash took a speaker in for her to play music she liked. We were all outside her room when the music stopped. We looked at each other, knowing she’d gotten up to turn it off. Nash thought he could reach her through the music she loved. It didn’t work, and none of us knows what to do. Hence the reason I’m climbing into a bottle of whiskey to escape from the guilt eating me alive.
I see the trays of food that Nance carries in. Full plates. Hours later, I see Nance carrying the barely touched trays back out again. None of us can reach her, and soon, whatever is wrong with her will kill her.
Because of me.
I have one last cigarette in my pocket. Halfway up the stairs, I pat my back jean pockets and stop. Cursing under my breath, I twist back around. I forgot my lighter. My head swims, and I grab the balustrade before I fall.
Go back for them?
“Too many fucking stairs.” I pat both my front pockets and grin when my fingers collide with something small and hard.
With a sigh of relief, I fish out my lighter, and continue up the stairs.
The door is open.
I frown at it, then shake my head.
I thought I was the only one who went up on the roof. Nash refuses to, and Vonn has never shown any interest in going up. Same with Nance, who’s getting to the age where she appreciates as few steps as possible. And Lydia?
Lydia is useless. I can see her coming up to the roof to play on her phone instead of cleaning, but that’s about it. She lives in town, and at nearly midnight, it’s too late for her to be here now.
I’d assume it was Byrdie, but after giving her a smoke and she slipped and nearly fell, I can’t see her up here either.
And especially not now.
At the top of the stairs, I’m fishing my cigarette from my pocket when I see her.
Byrdie.
She’s standing right at the edge of the roof, staring down as the wind whips her t-shirt around.
