Tomorrow's Sun (12 page)

And she shouldn’t be noticing. But as she did, “Kiss and run, oh what fun” played in her head like a jingle for a low-budget commercial.

“Did it hurt?”

“No.” He pointed to the lamp. “Want that in the attic?

She nodded. “This is just the beginning. I bought an air conditioner and a desk.”

“It’s going to be cozy up there. I tacked down that roll of vinyl I found, so half your floor is covered anyway.”

“Thank you. None of this is in your job description and—” Her phone rang. She grabbed it on the fourth ring, opening it as she raised it to her ear. “Hello?”

“Emily? Hi, it’s Sierra. How are you? I heard you moved.”

How am
I? The question crackled across four states and eighteen months, amplified by guilt. Emily turned her back on Jake and staggered toward the dining room. She should be the one asking the question, should have asked it long ago. How could the girl still sound the same? Young, joyful, as if a hope-filled life still lay ahead of her? As if Emily hadn’t stolen her future. “I’m fine. How”—the question she didn’t want answered lodged in her throat—“how are you doing, Sierra?”

“I’m good. Actually, I’m really, really good. Guess what?”

Leaning her elbow on the windowsill, Emily tried to stem tears. It didn’t work. “What?”

“Oh! I forgot why I called. Thank you for the birthday gift. You didn’t have to do that. I mean, that was
über
generous!” Her laugh tinkled like wind chimes. “So I have to tell you what I’m doing with the money. Are you ready? You won’t believe this.”

Through tears and regret, a sad smile tugged Emily’s mouth. “Tell me.”

“I’m buying a dress. For prom!”

“You’re going…to prom?” Emily wiped the dampness from her chin. What did prom look like at her school? There couldn’t be dancing.

“Yes! I met this guy, Dillon. He goes to my old school, so I guess that tells you something.” Again, the silvery laugh. “He calls himself a music geek. That’s how we met. He started taking lessons from my old piano teacher and she asked us to do a duet for Christmas Eve. It was so amazing. He said it was like we could read each other, like we had a soul connection. Isn’t that awesome?”

God, don’t let her get hurt. Don’t let him use her
. Prayers for Sierra were the only ones she knew these days. “That’s wonderful. What does your mom say?” The image of Dawn Anne, leaning against a hospital doorway, sobbing uncontrollably, was the only one she could call up. Years of memories. Girlfriend getaways overflowing with chocolate, wine, and laughter disappeared forever with a neurologist’s prognosis.

“She loves him. She should—he’s taking over half her job. Dillon picks me up on weekends and brings me home and over Christmas break he took me back and forth to rehab. He’s amazing. I guess I said that already. Oh, and Beacon loves him.”

“Beacon?”

“Sorry. I figured you would have heard about him from Mom. He’s my dog. I just got him in February. We’re still training together, but he’s so smart. He gets me almost as much as Dillon does.”

Emily ran a finger down a wavy streak on the window. A red dot bobbed and swam on a limb of her pine tree. “That’s…wonderful.” She turned away and sat on the floor.

“Have you talked to Mom lately?”

I
haven’t talked to your mom since I left Colorado
. Not because of Sierra’s mom. Dawn Anne hadn’t created the distance. Dawn Anne didn’t blame her. Because she didn’t know the truth. “No, I haven’t.”

“Cool. Then I get to tell you. But maybe you already heard about it from Aunt Susan.”

Emily’s sister hadn’t told her anything. Susan was an eggshell-walker, and sometimes that was just fine. “I haven’t heard anything.”

“Mom and I and Beacon are driving back to Michigan in June for her high school reunion. We want to stop and see you on the way.”

Her stomach contracted, her tongue roughened like the canvas on her sandals. Excuses flooded her mind. She didn’t have a place for them, or the emotions they’d leave behind like suitcases stuffed with dirty laundry. “I don’t have any furniture and the house will be torn up by then and I—”

Laughter cut her off. “We’ll only be there one night. We’ll find a hotel and you can stay with us and we’ll take you out to eat and you can show us your new town.”

Show you?
A solitary tear dropped to her knee, darkening the faded denim. “There isn’t much to see.” Her teeth ground together. Stupid choice of words.

“Well, you just mark your calendar and we’ll have fun no matter what. I’m making enough chocolate-covered pretzels to last the whole trip, so plan on getting fat.”

Emily nodded, wiping her face with her sleeve. “Sounds…fun.”

Her diaphragm tightened over her twisting stomach.

“Cool. Well, I have to get to class. See you soon.”

“Okay.” She rested her cheek on her knees. “Bye.”

Arms hugging bent legs, she groped for a mantra to banish despair, but the words that spit out of her roiling thoughts were ones her counselor had forbidden.
My fault…if only…I never should have… why her?

“Excuse me.”

Emily lifted her gaze from the distressed floorboards. For the second time in two weeks he’d found her in a fetal position.

Jake cleared his throat. “Colt Palin is here with your stuff. Do you want the desk upstairs, too?” He acted as if women in tears on the floor were an everyday occurrence.

Too spent to brush the tracks from her cheeks, she nodded. As his footsteps echoed through the parlor, she closed her eyes.

But even with her hands pressed against them, she couldn’t make the room as dark as Sierra’s world.

J
ake closed his bedroom door and checked to make sure the only window was open. No matter what the temperature outside, he couldn’t sleep with it closed. The glow from a streetlamp filled the window well and he closed the shade. Black cement-block walls sucked the brightness from his bedside lamp. He’d painted the room when he was fifteen, right after his father died. It suited his shortlived Goth phase. And it suited him now, at thirty-three, back in his cave in his mommy’s basement like all the other statistics who’d failed at playing grown-up.

He hadn’t failed. But only his two closest friends knew that. He wasn’t advertising his reasons for selling the house he’d put his sweat and soul into. He wasn’t talking about why his work truck was now his only transportation. His friends just assumed the economy had sucker-punched Braden Improvements and he was hanging on by his fingernails like too many of the guys he’d known since he was a kid. None of it was true. In spite of refusing to cut corners, the business his father had started the year Jake was born was still growing. But human nature gravitated to the worst. He put up with the razzing and enjoyed his mom’s cooking.

He sat on the bed and opened his laptop. His version of Emily’s floor plan lit the room. Tomorrow would decide which one of them would cave on the two walls he was determined not to destroy. The girl was definitely falling under the house’s spell. He had that on his side.

His eyes traced the double black line encompassing the dining room and stopped at the window, at the two square feet she’d occupied when he walked in on her, saw the tear streaks on her face, and did nothing. Palms sweating, mouth turning to dust, he’d merely said good-bye and left.

But even when he played the scene over, he couldn’t make it end right. In his first do-over, he asked if there was anything wrong. She responded with a head shake and an awkward silence. The next remake featured him dropping to one knee beside her and brushing away tears with the back of his hand.

Slapping the laptop closed, he slumped against black pillows and turned off the light. In the thick blackness he couldn’t even make out the outline of the hand that acted out the sweep of tears from a soft, damp cheek.

“Like this.” Jake dropped the pencil onto the unsteady card table and dared Emily with an unblinking gaze.

“But you said you’d changed your mind about doing it my way.” She picked up the pencil and aimed the eraser at the line he’d just sketched on the floor plan she’d drawn by hand.

“You’re a very good artist.” His voice dripped with intentional patronization.

“I majored in art.” She chewed her bottom lip, until it slipped out with a quiet sucking sound. “And you majored in getting your own way.”

Jake snickered through his nose. “You’re right. I have a BS in narcissism.”

In spite of the straight line of her mouth, her eyes glittered with mirth. The pencil lowered and she closed both hands around it on the table. She leaned back. “So what I need to do is figure out how to get that ego to want what I want.”

If not for the telltale glint, she might have pulled off the coldhearted, ruthless act. “Exactly.” He followed her lead, as if the rickety table were laden with poker chips.

“So what is it that will break you, Mr. Braden? Money? Fame? Your rep—”

His phone, on the table beside him, vibrated against his watch like a swarm of yellow jackets. He looked down. Ben. Or Ben’s phone anyway. Any other number and he would have ignored it and let Emily play out her hand. “Sorry. I have to—”

“Take it. I’ll just occupy myself….” She opened her hands. The pencil rolled out. She picked it up and began erasing.

One hand lunging for the pencil, he answered the phone. “Hello?”

“Jake. Can you come get me?” Lexi was breathless, her voice hoarse, as if she’d been running and crying at the same time.

“Where are you, Lex?”

“Ben is… I locked him outside and I just need you to come and—”

“I’m on my way.” He jumped up, knocking over a chair. “Did he hurt you?” He gestured an apology to Emily as he tossed her the pencil and strode toward the door.

“Not me. Pansy.”

“You know what to do. Don’t unlock the door. Call 911 and—”

“I gotta go. I gotta catch her.”

The phone was silent.

“Alexis, don’t be an idiot! You know who’s going to suffer for this. Open the door.”

Lexi swiped at her cheeks and flattened herself against the wall as her stepfather’s voice sliced through the fresh gash in the window screen. Pansy mewed, rubbing against Lexi’s legs. The cat had an angel. It was the only way to explain how quickly she’d recovered after Ben ripped her off the screen, threw her on the cement, and punted her into the house like a football.

It wasn’t the first of her nine lives she’d lost to the fat man screaming on the front step.

“Open the door or I’ll tear the whole screen off and you’ll pay for it.”

Gripping the phone in sweaty fingers, Lexi picked up the cat. “
Shh
. It’s okay.” Her eyes darted toward the back door. Jake had told her to stay inside until the police came. But she hadn’t called the police. She knew better than that.

The door rattled under huge hammering fists. “The longer you play games, the worse it’s going to be. When I get my hands on that cat…” This time he didn’t finish the sentence. This time he didn’t say he was going to pull her claws out one by one with pliers and then smash her head on concrete.