It was my turn to change the topic. “I’m sorry that I’ve been so dull tonight,” I said. “I get like this at weddings. I went through a period of going to a ton of them for my friends from high school, and every one seemed to make me worse.”
“Worse how?”
“Sadder?” I offered, and then nodded. That was how I felt.
“Why? Because of your—”
Before Silas could start again with insults, I broke in. “Marriage is just a sore subject with me and it has been for years,” I explained. “I don’t know if Dax ever would have gone through with it. The only reason we got engaged was because he wanted me to quit my job and move here with him. He said, ‘If I have to marry you to get your ass to Detroit, I guess I will.’ And then he got me that fake ring because he was so tired of me harping on him about it.” He had yelled pretty loudly to express his displeasure, and a few times, he had thrown things.
“Why did you want someone like that creepy pissant? He had to twist himself in a knot to love you? You say all that shit to Lyra, but you don’t really believe it.”
“What shit?” I demanded. “I don’t tell her things that aren’t true! Except, ok, I did say that you can’t hit the ball hard unless you eat a lot of fruits and vegetables, but that also has a kernel of—”
“I mean when you talk to her about how to treat other people and how they should treat her back. She repeats everything to me,” he said. “It all sounds good but you don’t believe it for yourself, because you let that asshole act like absolute crap. He cheated, he lied, and apparently he also called you names. What made you stay and put up with it?”
“He wasn’t all bad,” I said, but Silas was shaking his head.
“You sound like my mom. She always had boyfriends who acted like that. They also used to hit her.”
“Dax never put a hand on me,” I promised.
“Right. He broke into your apartment and tore up your stuff, he made you feel worthless, and…I can feel you shaking.” By now, we had stopped dancing and a faster song had started. Laughing wedding guests swirled around us. “Are you going to cry?” Silas asked me.
Dax had asked me that same question when we’d argued. It had made him even more furious when I had allowed any tears so I’d done my best to hold them back. I did now, too, because we were at Rashelle’s wedding, in front of what looked like a thousand people and that crowd included most of my coworkers.
“You may be right about everything you just said but I don’t want to talk about it, not here,” I told him quietly. I tried to turn my expression into “lighthearted” or even “not miserable,” but I had a feeling that I failed. “I’m going to the bathroom to fix my shoe,” I said. “Excuse me.”
I walked off the dance floor, past Octavia who had something to say. I didn’t want to hear any of it from anyone.
Chapter 8
Ilooked at Lyra’s tiny bag and the contents spilling out, which consisted of one T-shirt and six library books. I had offered to help her pack but she’d said no, that she didn’t need me for anything.
So I didn’t repeat my suggestion now. “Ok, looks like you’re ready,” I told her instead. “I’m going to get my stuff together, too. Can you come with me?”
“Why?” she asked suspiciously.
“I wondered if you could, um…could you make sure my socks are matched correctly?” I improvised. She had been helping us with the laundry and was meticulous about making neat rolls with them.
She agreed to that and did check, but then she stayed and sat on my bed as I talked through my packing process. I laid out shirts, shorts, jeans, underwear, and toiletries. “There’s a chance of precipitation on Saturday, so I’ll bring my raincoat,” I mused.
“Silas says that it’s only a slight chance.” She studied the pile of my clothes. “Maybe I need to bring more stuff for myself,” she told me, and I raised my eyebrows to feign surprise. When I suggested again that I could help her, she agreed and we went back to her room.
Her brother was on his own for packing, but I trusted that he knew what to bring and that his own bag wouldn’t contain any of his band T-shirts with their scary pictures. My parents, who were big Tammy Wynette and Glen Campbell fans, wouldn’t have appreciated them, and they would get to see what he wore…because we were all preparing to go to their house in Kentucky! Lyra was taking a day off from school (Silas had made sure it was ok) and he was already free for the weekend, because he had quit his job at Château Moderne. He had mentioned that off-handedly and then, just as casual, had suggested that he and Lyra could come with me to visit my parents.
“She never gets to do too much and maybe you’d want the company on that drive,” he’d said, and both of those things were true.
I also wanted them to meet my mom and dad. I thought that it would be good for Lyra and I was curious about what my parents would think of Silas. They had hated Dax, absolutely despised him, and they had tried to keep that from me but it was pretty clear. I hoped they wouldn’t feel the same way again—of course, the stakes were much lower. Silas wasn’t the person I planned to marry like my ex had been.
By the next morning, we were ready to go and all of us were awake and at the breakfast table. Silas never ate too much soearly but he made an effort now because his sister mimicked everything he did, and she needed food to start herself off. Both of them were quiet in the morning and took a while to warm up, and I moved around getting the house ready for our absence.
“I don’t think you need to put rubber bands on the cabinet handles,” he said, breaking the silence.
I jumped a little. “I was trying to keep anything from opening them while we’re gone. I went home one weekend when I lived in my former apartment, and something got into the food I had,” I explained.
“Mice?” he suggested, and I made a face. It might have been mice, and I was glad that I didn’t live there anymore. I left the cabinets alone and soon enough, we were on our way—then we had to stop because Lyra had forgotten to go to the bathroom, and we were on our way again. We all stayed quiet as we drove out of the city on roads that were just beginning to get busy with Friday morning traffic. The two of them were still waking up and I had to pay careful attention to the other cars.
When the workday started at Whitaker Enterprises, I fielded several calls from people there, putting them on speaker and then once pulling off at an exit so that I could put my full attention on a problem. Both my passengers were quiet and neither complained while I did those things. In fact, I saw Lyra listening instead of reading as I tried to talk to Octavia about her Four-Squared project, which was concerning me. When I hung up and after Silas helped me merge back onto the interstate, she had something to say.
