All Fall Down

  “Sunshine, that’s—”

  “I don’t have to go anywhere with him,” she put in quickly. “I know it’s not really appropriate.”

  Dating wasn’t something she’d ever even heard about until she came out into the world. In Sanctuary such a thing didn’t exist. When she was a little girl, she’d thought about what it would be like to be the one true wife. Nobody else could marry until Papa found her. When she got older…well, by the time Sunny was old enough to even care about boys, she’d already had Happy, who’d been a blessing to her in so many ways.

  After Happy came, John Second had left her alone.

  “Why wouldn’t it be appropriate?” Chris asked.

  She turned her head toward the blare of cartoons coming from the den. Then she looked at her son, still so diligently coloring. She touched his hair.

  “Because.”

  The silence between them was perfect, no need to speak for the sake of speech itself.

  Happy looked up. “Mama?”

  “Yes, my sweetheart.”

  “Are you going away?”

  Sunny shook her head. “Of course not.”

  “I think going to dinner and a movie would be fine,” Chris said.

  Sunny’s smile twisted, and so did her fingers, linking with each other. “I really like him, Chris.”

  “Then you should go.”

  Happy frowned. “Mama, you said no.”

  “Just out with a friend, that’s all,” she told him. “But you’ll stay here with Liesel and Chris, and that will be fun, won’t it?”

  Happy nodded, looking solemn. He showed Chris the picture he’d been working on. “The lady was pushing Peace, and I thought she was pushing her down, but Liesel says it was just for fun.”

  That sounded like a story, but not one Happy wanted to continue, because he hopped down from the chair and left his crayons and book behind to go in search of the cartoons. Chris and Sunny sat in more quiet, something that had been awkward eased between them.

  “We’ll want to meet him first, of course,” Chris said after a pause.

  Sunny laughed. “You will?”

  “Sure. Of course.”

  “But…you don’t mind? Really, you think it would be okay?”

  Chris reached across the table to take her hand, stilling her twisting fingers. He cupped both her hands with his. “I think it would be okay, Sunny.”

  A key turned inside a lock, something inside her she hadn’t known could even open. Sunny drew in a hitching breath that hurt her throat. Her eyes stung. Her lips moved, forming words she didn’t even know she wanted to say aloud until they forced their way up from her throat in a guttering rasp.

  Chris pulled her chair closer to him. He hugged her hard. One hand stroked down her back, over and over, slowly. Her mom had done that for her, a long, long time ago, when Sunny was very small. She missed her mom more than ever.

  This was so different from that first time, in the dark. Sunny closed her eyes and pressed her face to the front of his shirt while she fought to keep herself from shaking in her grief. When his hand moved along her hair, it was too much. She wept.

  It felt good; she knew then why crying had been so discouraged in Sanctuary. Not because it made you weak, but just the opposite. Holding in your sorrow was what weakened you. Hiding your feelings never kept you from having them.

  She cried for just a few minutes, but hard enough to wet the front of his shirt. Chris gave her a napkin from the table, and she blew her nose. Wiped her eyes. She didn’t move away, though, and he didn’t push her. They sat like that for what felt like a long, long time.

  “Wendy said she knew you in school.”

  “Yeah, I knew Wendy back in the day.” Chris rubbed slow circles on her back.

  “She said…she knew my mom, too.”

  The motion of his hand slowed, then stopped. “Yeah. She knew your mom, too.”

  “Do you miss her?”

  It seemed like a normal enough question for her to ask. He’d been married to her mom, after all. Even if it had been a really long time ago, even if they’d gotten divorced and he’d married Liesel, that didn’t mean he couldn’t miss her.

  “Papa always said the people we love leave a spot on our hearts,” Sunny said when Chris didn’t answer right away. “When I was small, I thought he meant like a bruise on an apple. I was sort of silly.”

  “It was just like a bruise on an apple.” Chris’s hand moved again, this time up and down, before he let it rest between her shoulder blades for a second. Then he pulled away to look her in the face. “I loved your mom very, very much.”

  He paused. Lowered his voice. “Don’t tell Liesel I said that.”

  Sunny pondered that. “She won’t ask me if you said it, I guess. So…I wouldn’t have to lie or anything.”

  “I don’t want you to lie. Just… She wouldn’t be happy to hear I said that.”

  “But even if she’s not happy about it,” Sunny said, “it’s still true.”

  Chris laughed with a grimace. “Yeah. I guess so. But I love Liesel, too. Don’t want her to be upset, right?”

  Sunny thought again. “No. Of course not.”

  Both of them looked up at the scrape of shoes on the tile floor of the hall. Liesel came through the arched doorway to the kitchen, her face red and gleaming, her hair stiff with sweat in the front and great rings of it under her arms. She went straight to the fridge to grab the pitcher of lemonade and poured herself a tall glass, drinking it down without a word.

  Chris moved away from Sunny without saying a word, making a space between them. She took the hint and moved, too, got up to take the mugs to the dishwasher, where she almost bumped into Liesel putting away her glass.

  “Did you have a good run?” Sunny asked.

  Liesel looked at her without expression. “It was good. Not long enough. But good.”

  She looked at Chris. “I’m going up to take a shower and get to bed early. Sunny, you work tomorrow, right?”

  Sunny nodded, but Liesel wasn’t looking at her. Instead, she pushed past Sunny and barely gave Chris a nod before leaving the kitchen and them behind. At the table, Chris let out a long, slow sigh.

  It seemed there should be something for Sunny to say, the silence not as perfect now as it had been just a little while ago. Without a word, Chris got up and left the kitchen, heading toward the den. Then she was left alone.

  Chapter 32

  While helping Christopher’s mother clear out some boxes in preparation for her move to New Jersey, Liesel had found a whole box of Christopher’s high school memorabilia. Stuck in the very bottom was a white faux-leather album filled with wedding photos. None of them professional, not like Liesel and Christopher’s posed portraits with every stray blemish and those few extra pounds erased. These were snapshots of a much younger Christopher and his beaming bride in a dress covered in frills and lace.

  Trish had been so…pretty. In those snapshots, Liesel saw her husband in love with the sort of woman she’d never been and never would be. They’d cemented to Liesel that she was not the first woman her husband had loved enough to marry. She’d never, until now, even wondered if he’d never loved her as much.

  Her mother had always said you never heard anything good when you listened at doors. Liesel had discovered that, all right. And what could she have said to her husband about it? Trish was not only long gone from his life, but she was also dead. That there was a living, breathing reminder living in their house with them was whose fault? Who’d wanted it? She had. And now she had to, as Christopher had so sweetly pointed out to her, deal with it.

  “Christopher said a boy from work asked you to go out with him. When are you going?” Liesel tried to keep her voice light, unaccu
sing. She’d been the one to tell Christopher he needed to talk to his daughter. What kind of bitch would she be to be angry with him now that he had?

  “I don’t know. I told him I would, but he hasn’t been in since then.” Sunny looked at Liesel. “Maybe he won’t ask me again.”

  “He asked you already, right? Why would he change his mind?”

  Sunny shrugged. “Maybe he didn’t mean it.”

  Liesel could remember that feeling. Liking a guy, not sure if he liked her in return. Hoping, but not convinced. “I’m sure he did.”

  Sunny shrugged again. “He doesn’t know anything about me. Or…what if he does?”

  Liesel kept her attention on the pile of laundry they were folding. Something in Sunny’s voice sounded precarious, incapable of facing a direct look. “So, he’ll get to know you.”

  Sunny hesitated, then shrugged one more time.

  “You know, Sunny,” Liesel said carefully, “it’s really okay to leave the past behind. You don’t have to forget it. But you don’t have to carry it along with you forever, either.”

  Another pause.

  “Maybe you want to start seeing Dr. Braddock again? She helped you a lot before, didn’t she?” Liesel matched socks. Folded small T-shirts into tidy bundles.

  Sunny was working on the towels. The basket was fuller, but the work was easier, and Liesel couldn’t stop a stab of annoyance that once again she’d ended up with the more difficult chore.

  Sunny smoothed a tea towel across her knees. “If you think I should.”

  “No. I mean, I only want you to if you think you want to. If she’d help. Or you can talk to me, to your dad—”

  Sunny’s sharp laugh cut off Liesel’s words. “It’s not talking that’s the problem, Liesel. It’s the listening.”

  “We’d listen.”

  Sunny smiled. Shrugged again. She folded more towels while Liesel dug around to find the counterpart to too many tiny socks and came up missing.

  They worked in silence after that, until Peace tripped and bumped her head on the edge of the counter and needed an icepack and some cuddles that Sunny gave without even a grimace. So easy. So calm. Was it because she’d given birth to them? Was that what made it easier for Sunny to handle three kids? Or was it that she’d grown up without having to worry about anything other than the straight and simple tasks set in front of her, and she still didn’t. No worries beyond what was right in front of her.

  Envy tasted sour, the bitterness lingering even when Liesel drank to wash out her mouth. More guilt. Sunny’d been through a lot more in her life than Liesel ever had or would ever want to.

  Sunny’d never gone on a date. She’d had babies, but no boyfriends. Now a boy liked her, and it would’ve been, should’ve been the most normal thing in the world for her to giggle over him with Liesel, but instead she’d acted as though she didn’t even freaking deserve to be liked.

  She didn’t even know how beautiful she was, Liesel thought, watching Sunny wash Peace’s face at the sink and send her back off to play. She didn’t know how to be pretty, and whose job should it be to teach her? Her mother’s, of course, but she didn’t have a mother.

  She had Liesel.

  “I have an idea. Something that might make you feel a little better about your date.”

  Sunny straightened, her smile wry. “The one I might not have?”

  “The one you will have,” Liesel told her. “C’mon upstairs with me.”

  In her bedroom, she opened the closet, then looked at Sunny over her shoulder. “Let’s give you a makeover.”

  Sunny’s brows rose. “Oh…Liesel. I’m not sure…”

  “Nothing crazy,” Liesel promised. “But I know I have some things in here that I haven’t worn in a while. They’ll fit you.”

  Most other girls Sunny’s age would’ve turned up their noses at hand-me-downs, but Liesel had learned that the concept of new clothes, new anything when there was an alternative, made Sunny anxious. Now she tugged out a lightweight summer dress with a matching shrug to cover up the bare arms. It had an empire waistline, which had never been flattering on Liesel.

  “Try this.”

  Ten minutes later, Sunny stepped shyly in front of the mirror. With her long blond hair piled on top of her head, just a few ringlets escaping around her face, and the long dress, she looked like a character out of a Jane Austen novel. She turned slowly back and forth, looking at her reflection.

  More envy, the pang of it sharper this time. Sunny was lovely in a way Liesel had never been. Feminine, delicate. Not that Liesel was some great galumphing beast or anything like that. But she’d never look like that. Never like Trish had.

  “You look so pretty,” Liesel said.

  She did. Tall, slim, blond, skin like peaches and cream. Sunny’s beauty was effortless and therefore shouldn’t have been enviable. But it was.

  Sunny smoothed the front of the dress. From down the hall came a set of suspicious thumps from Sunny’s room. Before either of them could react, there was a much louder thump and a scream. Liesel was halfway out the door behind Sunny when she recognized the screaming as laughter, at least not pain or terror. Thank God. But when she rounded the corner and stared through the doorway into the guest bedroom, she let out a scream of her own.

  Bliss had pulled herself up against the side of the portable crib with Happy and Peace standing in front of her. All three kids looked as if they’d been dipped face-first in a bath of chocolate, a real Willy Wonka explosion. All three of them were grinning.

  “Bliss made a poop,” Happy said. “We tried to change her diaper.”

  Sunny had made it through the door before Liesel, but now she sagged back a few steps so her shoulder hit the door frame. She let out a low noise Liesel couldn’t identify. Her shoulders shook.

  Oh, God. It was shit? Everywhere was shit. All over the sheets and blankets, the children. Even on the white curtains hanging just over the crib. The smell of it rose thick and rich from across the room, and for the first time in her life Liesel truly understood the term miasma.

  She let out a strangled sound of her own and fought a gag. Sunny turned to her, face red, eyes bright. For an instant Liesel assumed Sunny was weeping, ashamed at how horrible her children had behaved, but before Liesel could bite out a lie and tell her it was okay, she saw it was just the opposite.

  Sunny was laughing.

  “This is it!” Liesel shouted.

  Instant silence. No more giggles. No hitching breaths as Sunny tried to hold in her laughter. Even baby Bliss looked up with surprise, tiny eyes wide, before bursting into a wail.

  “This is…abominable. Outrageous. It’s disgusting!” Liesel screamed, far from proud at how Peace and Happy both flinched, clapping their hands over their ears. “What is wrong with you?”

  The question was more like what wasn’t wrong with her. What wasn’t wrong with any of them? Liesel backed into the doorway, her stomach clenching, and wondered if she was ever going to feel like her life was back to normal.

  Sunny had retreated, scuttling across the carpet to get to her kids. She stood in front of them, protective, not seeming to care that she was getting feces all over the back of Liesel’s dress. They stood like that for a half a minute before Peace was the next to burst into tears.

  “Hush,” Sunny said. The little girl didn’t hush, but despite the stench, the confusion, Sunny didn’t lose her temper. “I said hush.”

  The four of them stared at Liesel, who realized she was making a strange, low growling. She forced herself to stop. She covered her mouth and nose, trying not to breathe.

  “It’s only poop,” Sunny said as though she was trying to comfort Liesel. “I know it’s gross, but poop washes off.”

  The children and all the clothes and beddi
ng needed to be washed; the question was, which could she stand to deal with better? “Run a bath in the big tub in my room. You bathe the kids, I’ll do the wash,” Liesel said.

  Sunny nodded, no longer laughing. She lifted the baby, holding her away from her body, though it didn’t really matter. The dress was covered in crap all along the back, and it was of a dry-clean-only material. They’d probably just have to throw it in the trash. Sunny murmured, calm as she ever was, and took the children from the room, leaving Liesel surrounded by filth.

  She couldn’t do anything but stand there for a long time. Hands shaking. Not really angry. More ashamed at her reaction than anything else. Sunny had handled it so easily. So simply. Poop washes off.

  Of course it did.

  Yet as Liesel looked around the room and the mess the children had made, all she could think of was how everything had turned to shit.

  Chapter 33

  Liesel, car keys in hand, met Sunny at the door with Bliss in her arms and passed the baby off with little more than a mumbled greeting. She barely kissed Chris, who’d come in the door behind Sunny. “Going shopping,” she said and then was out the door and in her car, backing out of the garage.

  “What the hell is her problem?” Chris muttered.

  “Hi, baby,” Sunny said to Bliss, who’d started babbling and was now waving chubby fists around. “You telling me a story?”

  In the kitchen, Chris muttered again, “No dinner?”

  Sunny looked around as she settled Bliss into her high chair. She could hear the sound of cartoons from the family room. “Happy! Peace!”

  Happy came at once on skipping feet to give her a hug. Peace didn’t. Sunny thought of shouting for her a second time, but then if Peace still didn’t obey she’d be forced to punish her. Sunny didn’t feel like punishing or even disciplining her daughter, a fault of her own and one that would’ve meant her own punishment back in Sanctuary.

  But…she wasn’t in Sanctuary.

  “Happy, you need to clean off this table so we can have some dinner. Put all your cars in the box. The puzzles, too.” Bliss banged her hands on the tray, and Sunny rubbed the baby’s head. “Yes, my sweetheart, I’ll get you something to eat.”