Tears run down her cheeks. El doesn’t cry. But today she does. So I grasp around her and pull her close.
We lie there until the day becomes a night. I stroke through her hair, kiss her forehead, and hold her.
“Okay,” she says finally, a while after her sobs have died in the darkness of the room. “It’s okay. You can let go of me now.”
“I don’t want to,” I say.
“Okay,” she says and adds dryly, “But I really have to pee though.”
I laugh and let go of her.
“Go,” I say.
She laughs and gets up. She does not close the bathroom door. She never does, something I have gotten so used to. With her, there is just nothing weird or strange, because she doesn’t care.
She takes a very long time in the bathroom after flushing the toilet. So long, I am getting concerned. I get up and walk to the open door.
“Are you alright?” I ask without looking inside.
“Yeah,” she says so unconvincingly, that I stick my head into the room. She’s sitting on the floor, leaning against the glass wall separating the shower, staring at the floor.
I grab the small stuffed turtle I bought for her as a gift, get in the bathroom, sit down in front of her with my legs crossed, and hold it up to her face.
“For you,” I say.
She looks at it and smiles.
“How do you know?” she asks.
I smirk. “There were three turtles in your room in Sagaponack.”
She takes it from my hand and presses it against her chest.
“Thank you,” she whispers. “I’ll name her Libby. She looks like a Libby.”
“Whatever floats your boat,” I say and laugh, before I get serious again. “Tell me what he did,” I say, putting my hand on her free hand.
“I can’t—“ she says and pulls her hand away. “If he ever finds out, I am dead.”
“El,” I say and grasp her legs as I move closer to her. “Listen to me very closely. He willneverfind out anything from me. I promise. I am asking because I need to know if I am in need of an alibi for what I am going to do with him.”
She looks at me, bewildered.
“Tell me what he did,” I say again. There is anger in me. Rage, and it stirs in my chest like a roaring fire.
“You wouldn’t?—“
“I would, without a blink,” I say, and then something fundamentally stupid slips out of my mouth. It slips, because the anger I feel is rooted in my own disdain for my father, for the world I was brought up in, and it connects me to the person I once was. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”
My hand slaps in front of my mouth, and El looks at me with wide eyes.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
“You killed someone?” she asks in a whisper, and the moment she does, I panic. I jump up and run from the room.
FUCK!
Panic consumes me, and I walk up and down the bedroom, nervously brushing through my hair as I realize what just happened. I blew everything up.
