Theo is casually scrolling on his phone. “You threatened topunch a horse.”
I dismiss him with a wave of my hand. “You’re completely misrepresenting what happened.”
His laughter is quietly smug as he types out a text. “I read it straight from the police report. But by all means, let’s hear how you werefalselyaccused of trying to punch a horse.”
We are stuck at the light, which is good since the driver’s gaze is now glued to the rearview mirror like he’s in the front row atHamiltonand we’re the show.
“The cop was on horseback and he charged at this girl who was in the middle of vomiting. He was basically threatening to trample her. So I said I didn’t want to have to punch his horse and that if he were a real man, he’d come try to move us on foot and see where it got him. I wouldneverhit a horse.”
“So you threatened to assault an officer.”
“Threatenedis a strong word. IimpliedI would turn the situation violent. Very different.”
His eyes glimmer with amusement. “Rebecca, you’re aware that you’re maybe five four at most? How exactly did you intend to fell this police officerorhis horse?”
“I’d had a lot of liquid courage at that point in the evening. I felt tall.”
He smirks. “How tall did you feel in prison?”
“Itwasn’tprison,” I snap.
He doesn’t drop the conversation, really, but gets too engrossed in work to continue dragging it out and I turn toward the window, watching the landscape grow familiar. There are so many things my family will never see again. So many things they’ll never do, places they’ll never visit. Bronwyn really wanted to try this ridiculous ice cream shop in London with a mile-long line. I’m sure it would have sucked and we’d have been miserable waiting in the cold, but that she’ll never get the chance to suffer a long line or possibly taste the world’s best ice cream makes my eyes sting. Why’d they have to take the train? Why couldn’t they have left on time? There are a thousand ways it could have gone differently, and I can’t stop combing through them as if any one particular answer will offer us a do-over. There’s a sick ache in my chest as I acknowledge they’re not getting one.
I glance at the man beside me, deliciously handsome and scowling at his phone, and swallow hard. This should beherday. I’ve stolen something she wanted, my lovely Bronwyn who wouldn’t hurt a fly…and it’s something I don’t even want.
The driver pulls up to the house at last. It looks the exact same—not haunted or empty or vacant. I hold a hand to my throat, wishing I could somehow slow my pulse. Theo won’t be staying here until we get back from Iceland, and I almost wish he was.
“You’ll be okay?” he asks softly. “Do you want me to…walk in with you?”
I force a smile. It’s kind of him to offer, and to hide the dread he must have felt in asking the question. “I’m good. I’ll see you next week.”
I climb out of the car, the driver hands me my suitcase, and I walk to the door.
I want to be anywhere else.
Anywhere but this house suspended in time: Bronwyn’s toothbrush still waiting in the cup beside the sink of our jack-and-jill bath, my dad’s half-eaten Cherry Garcia in the freezer.
People are meant to know the end is coming, and when I turn the knob at last, I can feel it—the way the house still expects them to walk in the door. The way they never said goodbye and left in a mad rush and didn’t think to pause, didn’t stop to consider the possibility that they might not ever return home.
The air is still and musty. This makes sense, of course, but somehow I hadn’t expected the silence, the lack of life. A mountain of letters and bills waits just inside the door, pushed through the mail slot, though it was supposed to be going to the executor’s office. I sink to the floor and pick up the nearest envelope—one of the cars needs its registration renewed. There are bills to be paid, decisions to be made, three people’s lives to wade through. It makes me want to lock the door, set the house on fire, and never look back.
I wish Theo hadn’t let me come in here alone.A better husband would have insisted.
I laugh at that, and then I bury my head in my hands and cry.
• • •
I used to have this dream when I was a kid: people were breaking in, and my family—Jessie, Bronwyn, my dad—were pushing me into this hole and covering me with household shit like couch cushions. And it was only after they’d closed the trap door and I heard them laughing that I realized they’d just been trying to get rid ofme.
It doesn’t take a psychologist to discern that the dream wasabout finding my place in our new family and, perhaps, a feeling that I was our Least Valuable Player. Not even a feeling, really. I was definitely, undoubtedly, our family’s LVP—the one who contributed nothing, made no one proud, who needed therapy we couldn’t necessarily afford and got called into the principal’s office often—for an innocent prank gone wrong or “saying hurtful things” to Blake McCullough, that fucking weasel.
Eventually the dreams stopped. Probably when I no longer worried about whether they wanted to be rid of me and accepted it as fact.
It’s a dream I’d almost forgotten, that I’d thought was behind me, until I wake gasping in my old bedroom.
“I can’t breathe,” I scream. “Let me out!”
My voice echoes through the room, through the empty house. Just like in my dream, they cannot hear me. Just like in my dream, they’ve left me behind. They wanted to escape me for seventeen years, and now, at last, they have.
