“Not much,” she says but turns her face from me. She looks down at her knees and a wave of brilliant red hair obscures her profile. I have to stop myself from tucking it behind her ear. “My cousin, Willow, told me you nearly killed someone.”
The air leaves my lungs. My stomach clenches and vomit burns its way up my throat. I take shuddering breath after shuddering breath. The world blurs in front of me, so I close my eyes, only to be faced with flashes of the worst day of my life.
The white hot rage.
The blood.
The screams of terror.
The sharp pain of my knees hitting pavement.
“Zander.” I hear through the roar of my brain. There are hands on me. One on my chest, over my heart, one on my upper thigh. “Zander, it’s okay. Breathe.” A dog plops in my lap. “Look at me, please.”
I open my eyes. Adelaide is crouched in front of me, hovering over top of my outstretched left leg. She shifts, planting herself firmly on the ground with her legs draping over mine, then takes my face in her hands. I have no choice but to ground myself in the midnight sky of her eyes. The freckles dotted across her noseand cheeks act as their own constellation. Lucy curls in the space between my legs, resting her head against my pelvis.
I almost start crying. The emotion tightens in my chest and I forcibly swallow it down.
“You don’t have to get into it.”
“I do,” I say, shocked to have found my voice so easily. “I just haven’t heard it phrased like that in a long time.”
“Where did you go?”
“Back to that night.”
“Do you want to tell me about it?”
I let out a huff of air and nod. Addie’s hands drop back to her lap, taking one of mine with her. I stare at our hands, her long, dainty fingers curled around my calloused ones.
“You don’t have to be so kind,” I say. “I know it’s not a pretty story.”
“It might not be pretty, but it’s yours. You’re still holding guilt over whatever you did. I don’t know what that is. I don’t know if the guilt is warranted. Maybe my feelings will change once I know the full story. I don’t know. But I saw you suffering and I wanted to help you. I’m not being kind for show. I’m being kind because you deserve it.”
“Do I?” I say with a self-deprecating laugh. “Don’t answer that. I—I appreciate it. Is that all you know about me?”
“You went to jail. Some people warned me that you were shady in school here. I didn’t want to believe anything until I could actually talk to you.”
“Okay.”
I close my eyes and put my life into the same neat little compartments I used in my memoir. I prepare to launch into the same spiel I’ve parroted at every talk I’ve done since the memoir’s publication. And then I stop. Fuck it. She deserves more.
“I just—First, I want to say that none of this is an excuse, because nothing can excuse what I did. It’s just context, I guess? It’s like I was on some slow-moving, destiny conveyer belt and if one thing hadn’t happened, then the rest wouldn’t have, and I could have stopped it at some point, maybe, but I didn’t have the resources or the development yet to actually do it.”
Addie nods. “Okay, so you were young and dumb.”
“I was young and dumb and angry at the world. I grew up here, but I think that’s where my similarities to everyone else in town end.” I run the back of my free hand over my eyes. “My parents shouldn’t have had kids. My mom met a guy second year university and got pregnant two months later. She gave up her dreams to have me and never let me forget that.”
Addie’s sharp intake of breath cuts me to the core. If that hurts her, the rest of this is only going to get worse.
“My dad was a mean son of a bitch,” I say with a harsh, bitter laugh. “The only way I can picture his face is with a scowl. I don’t remember it any other way. He had this look that would just stop you in your tracks. You knew nothing good would come after that. Everything I’ve read about abusive relationships tells me he wasn’t so bad to start. My mom must have seen something in him. But he was a demon by the time I came around.”
I pause. There are things I have never said, will never say, but they’re on the tip of my tongue now. The slope of Addie’s eyebrows, the press of her glossy lips, the gentle hold on my hand: everything makes me want to reveal the worst of me because something tells me she won’t throw me away like a piece of garbage. Even if I deserve it.
“Did he hurt you?” she whispers.
“Both of us,” I say, matching her tone. “It started with her. By the time I was six, he’d turned to me. By nine, she’d joined in. I could never do anything right. One time, he broke my arm because I didn’t have any friends. He couldn’t believe he hadsuch a loner for a son; but I didn’t have any friends because ofhim. I never had anyone over because I was never certain what they’d do, what mood they’d be in, whatstatethe house would…I started writing then. He didn’t like that, either.”
“Of course not,” Addie says. Her thumb circles a freckle on my palm. “You didn’t deserve that. Did Peggy know?”
