I swallowed the lump in my throat as we pulled out of the parking lot. Through the dirty windows of the store, I could see Leroy staring off into the distance. I wondered if I had done enough. If I had done the right thing. I had to believe that death wasn’t the end. Maybe there was a heaven, or something like a heaven.
I hoped he’d take his dog and drive down to the ocean. I hoped there was still time. I pictured him sitting on the gray rocks with the waves crashing and spraying white foam. Maybe he’d hear something in the roar of the ocean, feel some limitless power, believe that there’s something greater. Something more. Maybe his heaven was at the coast, with a dog’s head in his lap, with nothing but water and depth from there to the horizon.
“Delaney,” Mom whispered. “Why are you crying?”
I touched my hand to my wet cheek. Then I wiped the tears off both sides of my face. “I’m not sure.”
Mom made fudge that night, as requested. The Maxwell house was playing a solid imitation of itself. Dad won at Scrabble, and Mom and I challenged him on words we knew were words anyway, just to make him feel smart. And like I said, Mom made fudge. And me, I ate it. Even though the chocolate reminded me of Troy and I really just wanted to go to my room and sleep. But the old Delaney Maxwell wouldn’t pass up fudge. Or Scrabble, for that matter. And Mom looked so content.
I tensed when the doorbell rang a few hours before midnight. I squeezed the tiled letter so hard between my fingers I thought it might shatter. Troy was out there somewhere. I could feel him lurking. I could sense him like I could sense when it was about to rain.
I held my breath while Dad opened the door. He reached out into the darkness and pulled Decker inside, smiling and patting him on the back. “Where’ve you been, kid?” he said, leading him to the sofa. “Joanne, get the boy some food.”
I handed the plate of fudge to Decker and smiled at him. “There’s not enough food in the house, Dad. Don’t bother.”
Decker shoved me aside with his foot and plopped in the spot between me and Mom on the couch. I leaned over and asked, “What are you doing here?”
He threw some fudge in the back of his mouth and said, “Same thing I do every year.” Except it was more, and we both knew it. But there was a chasm, too much said, too much unsaid, to go back. Or forward.
So we faked it. We played Trivial Pursuit and he mocked my general illiteracy in the entertainment category. I harped on his lack of literature knowledge. We pretended he hadn’t told me that he loved me. We pretended I hadn’t ignored him and left. We pretended we could go back to who we used to be.
And when the countdown to midnight hit zero, Decker squeezed my hand, and I pretended that I didn’t want to hold on tight and stay that way.
I was a great pretender. I unlaced our fingers, said “Happy New Year,” and stood up to get ready for bed.
Decker also stood. “Where do you think you’re going?” Mom asked.
Decker looked confused, like he didn’t know which one of us she was talking to. “Me? Home.”
“Oh, just because you think you’re all grown up now doesn’t mean you can break tradition, kiddo. Your parents expect me to take care of you New Year’s Eve every year. It’s a job I take seriously. Ron, get the spare sheets, will you?”
Then Mom unfolded the pull-out couch and Dad made the bed and Decker grinned at me like he thought it was funny. In truth, I was relieved, because I knew Troy was out there somewhere. I wanted—I needed—all the people I loved in the same place. I needed to know they were all safe.
We were all in bed soon after. The wind turned vengeful. The air howled through the gap between homes. The walls creaked and groaned in protest. And then, with one screeching hiss, the power went out. The heat clicked off. The hum of the refrigerator wound down to silence. The glow from the clock disappeared, leaving me in blackness.
Even the moon was hidden behind clouds. The streetlights were out. All that remained was a roaring blackness. Shadows. Emptiness. A void of light.
And Troy.
Chapter 19
I closed my eyes to a blackness I was comfortable with. I moved on instinct. Five steps to the door, hand on the door-jamb, follow the plastered wall to the light switch. I flipped it, just in case. Nothing. One more step until the stairs. I gripped the handrail and descended slowly. My foot creaked on the step, third from the bottom. Wind, creak, breathing.
“Decker?”
He didn’t respond, but I could hear his steady breathing in between the gusts of wind. I walked in the darkness with my hands out in front of me, trying to gauge the distance between the stairs and the couch. I whacked into the back of it with my hip, and then I didn’t hear Decker’s steady breathing anymore, but he didn’t say anything either.
So I edged around it, my fingers trailing the sofa, and eased myself onto the corner of the pull-out couch. The old springs shifted downward. I crawled toward the center of the mattress and sat cross-legged next to his body. His arm fell across my legs, and we just sat like that. I stared down at the space where I thought he’d be, even though I couldn’t really see him. I kept thinking of what to say, what to do. I was over-thinking it. So I said nothing.
And then the house grew colder. The heat escaped through the crack under the door and the thin glass windows, and without the power, all that was left was the cold. Which wasn’t a thing at all. Just an absence of heat. But it felt as real as anything else. So I slid under the sheets and curled up next to Decker, seeking his warmth. And still we didn’t say anything.
The great thing about the blackness was that I couldn’t tell whether his eyes were open or closed, and he couldn’t tell what I was thinking and I could go along pretending he didn’t know I was there, and he could go along thinking I was scared of the dark or lonely for company. My head rested in the curved space between his chin and his shoulder and my arm covered his chest, and I could hear and feel the beating of his heart.
His hand traced the edge of my face in the darkness. Like he knew me by heart and he was making sure it was me.
I drifted to sleep when his fingers slid down my face to the curve of my neck. Heaven. But I dreamed of hell. Of looking up from a useless body, tied to a bed, with Troy grinning down at me. He checked my pulse with one hand and caressed my cheek with the other, and I fought to pull away. To bite his hand. To do something. Anything. But I was powerless. And then he moved his hands to my mouth, traced the outline of my lips, and brought his palm down hard. He pinched my nose shut with his other hand. And I couldn’t even fight or claw or rage. I just lay there, watching him, until the blackness settled in.
I woke up gasping for breath. I sucked in deep breath after deep breath and heard the beeping of the microwave ready to be programmed and the heat click on and the refrigerator power itself back up. Light seeped through the curtains. One of Decker’s arms was still on me, though he was sleeping soundly.
I crept out from under the sheets before my parents woke up and found us in a compromising position and made our relationship limbo so much worse by making us talk about it. We couldn’t even talk to each other about it.
I peeked out the front curtains and saw Troy’s car down at the corner of the street. He wasn’t in it. Except it was too far for me to really know that.
But I did. I knew exactly where he was because I felt him. I felt him.
I stepped back from the window and let the curtains fall back into place. I knew where Troy was. I could always sense when he was around. I knew it then, and I knew it now. I just didn’t want to see it.