The Bargaining (35 page)

“You need more butter in the batter,” April says. “And ­language.”

“In the batter?” Rob asks.

“As in watch it,” April says. “Save it for when I'm not standing right next to you helping you bake cookies for your new girlfriend.”

“Aha,” I say, and they both look up. “I was going to ask. And no offense, Rob, but I wouldn't even let you pour cereal for me.”

He looks genuinely panicked. “Look, you missed a few things this summer,” he says. “I'm more than just soccer and surprisingly insightful advice for my age. I'm in a
relationship
now.”

I will not look at April. If I look at April, I will see the look she's dying to give me, and Rob will never be able to erase the sound of his mother and stepsister laughing at his declaration of sudden maturity.

So I take a cookie from the tray, and despite its steaming,
charred edges that smell even sweeter this close to my face—and despite the stamp of heat it presses onto my tongue—I nod my head and give him an air high five.

“Gwen had better appreciate you,” April says, and finally I feel brave enough to glance up at her. She's looking right at me, something I didn't expect given this should be a moment between her own son and her. But Rob is too busy sliding burnt hockey pucks from the cookie sheet to see the look April offers me. A smile that seems to thank me, though I can't imagine what she would have to thank me for. Still, I feel grateful, and I find myself hoping my face somehow reflects that.

In my room, eight-by-ten-inch black-and-white photographs paper my walls. Every surface mirrors back the glossy image of a mistaken picture. Overexposed renderings of streams and trees, the unfocused capture of what was ­probably a toad leaping from a rock. A close-up of a man I thought was interesting on the street, but when I printed the picture, he felt hollow somehow. Mr. Jakes's classroom recycling bin is full of these types of shots. Ideas gone wrong, meandering inspiration that got caught up in barbed wire along the way.

I keep each and every one, though.

At the end of the summer, after April and I came home, after the fire inspector decided it had to be old wiring
that caused the blaze—a fire inspector who plays poker with Miller's electrician friend two nights a week—April decided she had no choice but to take a loss on the property. She could have fought to keep it. It was, after all, legally hers. But after it was condemned and the inspector added it to the long list of investigations he would eventually get to, April reflected back on the summer's failures and told the fine folks at Pierce County that they could choke on the house for all she cared. She was done.

And only because I was standing there when she threw her phone after hanging up did she also hear the breath escape my mouth. The one I think I might have been holding all summer.

“Good fucking riddance,” she said to me.

In that moment, for the first time ever, I saw where Rob got everything. His compassion and speedy assessment of the problem, his unmuddled advice. His confusion at why I might be so grateful for the honor of his understanding.

Faced with that new revelation and a comfort knowing that there are two of them in my life, I offered April only one observation from the events of the summer.

“I think some destruction is just too massive to repair.”

I never told her what happened that night we fled the house, and she never asked me.

Instead, she took a job with the Seattle Historical Society after two months off for internal reflection and an unexpected boost in luck after the investigation on the Carver House closed. The official cause of the fire: faulty wiring. The result: a substantial payment on insurance, enough to erase over half the devastating debt April thought she'd incurred.

Her new job specializes in, among other things, restoring old houses. Her first project is a 1912 Victorian in Pioneer Square. There was some competition for the position, apparently, but not even a spotty track record could keep April from cajoling her now boss into hiring her.

“It's three stories, with a basement and an attic!” she said after the deal closed. “And it's a total mess.”

She's been giddy for weeks. I've agreed to take her “before” and “after” pictures on this one, too, but only because I think it might be fun to spend weekends with her. Plus, it'll give me a little more practice behind the lens.

My gaze rests on the only image that survived the summer. I've hung it on the back of my bedroom door so I see it right before I go to bed at night, and it's the first thing I see in the morning. It's of a silver cloud, bloated with the light of the sun it's hiding, dusty rays extending from the edges.

The phone in my purse vibrates, and when I pull it out, I see only a phone number, no name or face to accompany it. But it's a number I remember, even after two months of not seeing it.

“It didn't work.”

I barely recognize Miller's voice. I could blame the horrible reception. It sounds like he's calling me from the bottom of a well, just like the very first time I heard his voice. But the crushing anguish is what distorts his tone now, fracturing each word so it sounds like they're falling in pieces from his mouth.

“What didn't work?” I ask, but it's only to make him keep talking. I already know what he's going to say.

“The last painting. I finished it, recreated it just the way it happened. The day they took him away. Just the way it
should
have happened. I thought . . .”

“Miller, I'm so sorry,” I say. It's the only thing I can say, but it's all wrong. Miller knows I'm not really sorry. Danny belongs to the woods now, just like the rest of them do. No one ever should have come back. Miller has finished his tragic landscape, and it didn't work, and now he's broken. And even though I didn't want him to be right, I never wanted him to feel what it was to be wrong.

“You were right, though, Penny.”

“I didn't want to—”

“It's okay. I'm not saying—” He stops himself, and I feel horrible. He's agitated, and I know he's probably looking for people to hate. It makes me sick to think I'm that person, but I'm willing to serve the purpose this one time.

“I'm trying to say that you were right. It doesn't have anything to do with him. Any of them. It's the woods. It's the goddamn woods, Penny.”

His voice pitches high, and I brush off the thought that he sounds a little hysterical. Of course he would be after what he's been through.

“He wants out, Penny. Don't you see? He wants out, but the woods . . .”

I feel cold suddenly, and I press my palm to my skin to find some warmth. But none comes, and I listen more closely to Miller's voice to try and locate the source of the chill I can't escape. I think I can hear traffic, but I'm not entirely certain.

“Miller, where are you?”

“Penny, you told me once that you were a throwaway. That your parents didn't see the purpose for you. Do you still believe that?”

I hesitate while I try to parse out what Miller just asked me and the increasing frenzy in his tone.

“Because I don't believe it,” he says before I can answer. “I don't know if I ever told you that, but I should have. I think everyone has a purpose. We
all
serve a purpose.”

“Miller? I can barely hear you.”

But in the pause between our breaths, I hear something else, something I couldn't quite place earlier. Now I recognize the source of the chill under my skin. Deep in the background of wherever Miller is, I hear the faintest sound of music. The tinny sound of a melody I used to struggle to place. But not anymore.

“I finally understand now,” Miller continues. “You helped me see.”

“Helped you see what? Miller, you—”

“I have to do it, Penny. I have to make it right. But it's okay. It's all going to be better once I make it right.”

“Miller!” I don't realize I'm shouting until I hear April calling to me from the kitchen.

“Miller?” I ask my phone, but when I pull it away from my ear, I see nothing but a blank screen. He's gone.

April's in my room now.

“Is that who I think it is?” she asks, her eyes looking like they're ready to ignite.

“Hmm?” I ask, hunting for my most casual expression. “Oh, it was, um, my mom.”

April crinkles her eyebrows, but she doesn't question me once I've invoked my mother.

“Oh, hey, can I borrow your car?” I ask, using every ounce of willpower to maintain my fake calm. “I was hoping to get to the frame shop before it closes.”

“Now? Sorry, no. I need to see a guy about some vintage wallpaper.”

I give her a look.

“It's important. It's for the new house,” she says, almost pouting. “And why am I explaining myself to you? It's my car.”

I debate how not to give away my conversation with Miller but still get the jeep from her.

“Tomorrow,” she offers. And before I can object, she leaves the room.

I stare at my walls the entire night, awash in a sea of black and white and shades of gray. I stare until my eyes give out and I fall into a haze so deep, I forget where I am.

I wake up in a room I swore I'd never have to see again.

“No,” I tell Danny, his eyes staring at me from the wall, blinking slowly enough for me to know he has one last message to convey. The grass beneath him is gone, the ground nothing but piles of black char. Instead of the swirl of paint dust that used to
envelop me, tiny black flakes dance like confused snow in the air between us.

He walks away, and I follow him because all I want to do is wake from his horror once and for all. All I want is for him to finally let me go.

A young Miller stands beside Danny, smoke from a cigarette between his older brother's fingers making Miller's eyes water. He rubs at his nose and scrunches his face, then leans unconvincingly toward the cigarette.

“Can I try?”

“Give it a rest,” Danny says, and he looks at Miller like he might ruffle his hair. Or punch his back. Instead, he does neither and reaches for his lighter, flicking it. He watches the spark ignite over and over, until he finishes his cigarette and stomps it into the dirt.

They're standing behind a building I recognize, staring at a wall I stared at through a rain-soaked windshield by the light of a dying streetlamp.

A wall coated in graffiti I saw later in a sketchbook.

“I have to tell you something,” Miller says to his brother.

“No,” Danny says.

“I have to tell you,” Miller persists.

“Don't say a fucking word,” Danny says, his eyes broiling behind their green facade.

Then Danny looks away, his eyes fixed somewhere beside the Dumpster behind Scoot's.

“I heard it fly into the window,” he says.

Miller looks confused, but he stays silent, a practice he seems to understand he's supposed to follow.

“I was clear across the store when I heard. Sounded like a rock or something. I got all pissed, thinking someone was messing with us, you know?”

Miller remains silent, but his eyes continue to search for what they're supposed to be seeing.

“But then I saw this little spray of feathers on the glass, and I knew what happened. I went outside, and it was just lying there in the rocks. Except its eyes were moving around. Like it knew it should be dead, but it still needed to see what was going on.”

The young Miller and I find what it is Danny's talking about.

A bird, a crow by the look of it, the kind that's always digging through Dumpsters and screaming about what they've found.

“I was going to kill it. But then something else happened. Another crow, this big angry fucker, it flew down and stood between me and the other one. Actually stood there between us. And it started making all kinds of noise. And I knew if I got any closer, it would do its damndest to peck my eyes out. So I walked away, and I listened to it squawk all day long. Until finally it just stopped.
And when I went out there to check on it, there it was. Dead as a fucking doornail.”

Then they're both silent for a while.

“Are you sorry about it?” Danny asks Miller, the question pointed directly at his younger brother, and we both know he isn't talking about a dead crow.

Miller nods dutifully at the ground.

“Say it, then,” Danny says, his voice rattling with the anger from before.

“I'm sorry,” Miller says, sounding older than he should.

But he still doesn't look at his brother.

There they stand, two brothers who never lived up to the first, watching a dead bird until the other crows come for it. And they walk away before they see what it is that crows do when one of their own dies.