“We don’t have a lot of extra space, like an attic or something,” Boyd told me.
“Don’t your parents have a big house?” I knew that they did since I’d visited my sister above their detached garage, and he frowned. “It’s your baby stuff. I cleaned it as best as I could,” I told her. “Have a look while I get ready for work. I’ll be a few minutes.”
“No, take your time,” she ordered me. “Dry your hair and put on makeup.”
I didn’t do all that, but I made a little bit of an effort. “I’m not wearing a ponytail,” I announced when I rejoined them in the garage. Only Boyd was there.
“Where’s Willow?” I asked him.
“In the bathroom. She looked in some of the boxes and got upset but she didn’t want you to know, so she’s trying to clean up her face.”
“Why doesn’t she want me to know?” I started to go back inside to find her, but he told me to stop.
“She thinks that you worry all the time,” he said. “She worries about you, too, like about that crap with your mom.”
“My mom? What does she have to do with anything?”
“I’m saying that your sister wants to protect you, like you do for her,” he told me. “And she wants you to believe that she’s all right and she can handle herself.”
“I do believe that. Almost always,” I amended. “She was gravely injured, though.”
“More than five years ago.”
“It doesn’t feel like that much time has passed. Sometimes it feels like it just happened this morning. I can picture every detail so vividly.” When I got the call about the accident, I had been cutting an apple and I sliced my finger with the knife. I could still see the blood, my blood, as it dripped on the counter. I had gotten worried that I wouldn’t be able to play my horn.
“I remember hearing about it. One of the girls who had been there posted shit about what had happened but she said that Willow was dead.” He blew out a breath. “I thought it was my fault. For years, that was what I thought. I had to go into therapy so that I could get out of bed.”
“You did? You cared?”
“I always cared about her,” Boyd said. “Always, but I was a stupid kid. She was, too.”
“She just wanted somebody to love her,” I said. “She had lost her mother and then she had to live with my mom being so awful, and our dad was weak and drunk. I did my best to help.”
“She knows that,” he said. “You helped her too much.”
“What does that mean?” I asked angrily. Was I supposed to have left her hungry? Who would have brought her to the bathroom? Who would have gotten her dressed? “She needed me!”
“She kind of stopped growing up, you know? Like how she never got her license, never got a job or went to school. She thinks about stuff like a high school kid sometimes, about how relationships should be, about playing games with me. But she’s working on that,” he said. “She thinks that this Ford guy is playing games with you.”
“I don’t agree. But I realize that I don’t know enough to know,” I admitted.
“Neither does Willow. She’s just worried because she loves you so much,” Boyd told me. “I know you love her, too, and that’s why you hate my ass.”
“I don’t hate your ass,” I said. “I want us to get along.”
“Good,” he told me, and my sister came out of the house. We both watched her descend the steps to the concrete floor and I saw that she’d done a very good job of disguising the fact that she’d been crying.
“We should go,” she told her boyfriend. “Can you carry the boxes?”
He nodded at her and at me, then started for the car, taking two of the bins with him. My sister sighed. “I made him drive me over here because I thought you’d been in some kind of accident, and the only thing going on is Everett Ford sticking his tongue down your throat. Be careful, Zo.” She turned to follow her boyfriend.
“Why don’t you come over for dinner tonight?” I asked her. “I mean, both of you should come.”
Willow stopped and turned back. “We could do that,” she answered.
“Good. I’ll make something you’ll really like,” I said, and she smiled.
“You always do. You’re always want the best for me.”
