I am not sitting at the same table as Derek. But I go in the house and drop my bag at the foot of the steps. Dad’s already at the table, slouched in his chair. He glances up when I come in and smiles stiffly. The boys shuffle in and take the seats they’ve always sat in, Derek next to Dad, Justin next to Mom, leaving me to squeeze in beside Derek.
Not today.
Today, I drag my chair around the table to squeeze next to Justin.
Mom storms into the kitchen and comes back a few seconds later with a huge bowl of pasta that she plops on the table with a heavy bang, only to disappear back into the kitchen. The food smells great. If I shut my eyes, I can remember all the other pasta dinners we’ve had here.
Wednesday night was family night.
With Justin working his part-time jobs and Derek at some practice or another, weekends were always packed full of schedule conflicts. So Wednesday became the only night the five of us could eat a real dinner together. We settled on pasta because it was easy—boil some water, cook, done.
It evolved into a big thing. Mom progressed from boring spaghetti to homemade manicotti, Derek’s favorite, lasagna, which was Justin’s, and ravioli, which was mine. We’d eat, we’d tell Mom and Dad about our days, we’d have dessert, and then we’d play a board game or maybe cards.
I was always on Derek’s team, if we had teams. We all used to get mad at Dad because he’d play aggressively, and Mom would tell us to deal with it because out in the real world, nobody would ever go easy on us.
I squeeze my eyes shut. God. Truer words were never spoken.
Mom slams another dish to the table. Garlic bread this time. Dad jumps up and disappears into the kitchen with her. They return together. He holds the grated parmesan cheese, and she’s got the bowl of meatballs.
I notice that tonight’s dish is nobody’s favorite. Just spaghetti and meatballs.
Mom drags out her chair, plops down on it, and snaps her fingers at me for my plate. Wordlessly, I hold it out to her. It’s the good china. She set the table with all the good china we’d need for tomorrow’s holiday meal, and now I feel like a brat for trying to blow off this dinner, which makes me hate all of this even more, because seriously, don’t I have a right to feel how I feel without the guilt trip?
She scoops out a serving of spaghetti with an angry twist of her arm that splatters sauce all over the table. With a loud curse, she drops her elbows to the table and lets her face fall into her hands. I am a brat, and because I know I am, I’m going to wash all these dishes tonight myself.
“Mom, I’m sorry,” I squeak out, shooting a nasty look at Derek, but he’s looking away, an expression of such sadness on his face that for a moment, I forget that he hates me and I hate him and almost run to him with open arms. When we were little, Derek was almost never sad. Like never.
God, I wish we were little again.
Mom doesn’t move, but Dad and Justin wear twin looks of annoyance. Dad clears his throat. “Ashley. Derek. The two of you have treated this home and this family like a battleground long enough. It ends now. Is that clear?”
Derek nods immediately.
I sneer. What a kiss-ass. I keep my eyes pinned on Derek, waiting for the usual malicious grin or stuck-out tongue.
“Ashley, you knew your mom was planning a nice family dinner tonight, and you deliberately disappeared. Why would you do that?”
“Because.”
Dad knows the answer to this already. I’d told them both enough times.
“Because why, Ashley?” he demands.
We’re back to everything being my fault. “Because!” I repeat with venom. “Because I saw Victor Patton at the theater! Because he’s out of prison, and I’m not. I have to live with what happened every second of my life. It’s like this festering wound that won’t heal because the scab keeps getting torn off. Because I can’t stomach the thought of eating while looking at him.” I shout, that single statement aimed with all my hatred and outrage and sarcasm right at Derek.
He flinches and lowers his head, but he doesn’t deny it, doesn’t try to deflect and blame me for it.
What strange alternate universe did I fall into?
Nobody says anything for a minute. Mom mops her eyes with a napkin, and my heart sinks. I’m breaking her heart, and I know it, which is why I really need to be away from here. I’m afraid I may actually not be able to help doing it.
“You saw Victor Patton?” Derek asks me but sends a pointed look to Dad.
“We’re doing all we can—” Mom starts to say, but Dad’s still stuck on his original point.
“Ashley.” Dad holds up a hand to Mom, glaring at me. “Has it occurred to you that other members of this family love Derek, want to see him, want to hear how school is? Have you forgotten that Derek is our child and we love him as much as we love you?”
I stare at my father and try to breathe around the spike he just drove through my gut. I press both hands to my chest where the pain is so huge, I’m sure it’s gonna kill me. I forget all about Mom’s feelings because my own boil over. “How, Dad?” I croak. “Vic is out of prison.” A shudder of revulsion ripples over me. “And I’m stuck in one!” I shout. Shaking now, I jab a finger in the air toward Derek. “And you still love him? Tell me how!” I scream.
Dad’s fist hits the table, and everybody jumps. “Because he’s my son!” he shouts back, his face dark. “I know you blame him for what happened at the trial, but it’s not his fault, Ashley.”
I laugh, a bitter sound that holds zero humor. “You think I’m upset about the trial? That’s the least of it. No. I know how Derek really feels, and he’s not sorry. Not one bit. He got what he always wanted. For his annoying sister to leave him alone.”
“No! Jesus, Ashley.” Derek shuts his eyes. “You just want to believe it so you can keep hating me.”
“No. No more hating anybody.” Dad stands up and walks around to me. “I love him like I love you, like I love Justin. Do you hear me, Ashley? Do you understand how you’re cutting us to pieces?”
“Joe,” Mom tries to interrupt, but he’s not having it.
The veins are standing out in his neck now. “None of you are perfect, you know. All of you make mistakes! I forgave Justin for wrecking the car a few years ago. So I can forgive Derek for what he said to the judge just like I can forgive you for drinking with that boy in the first place.”
The air leaves my lungs in a whoosh that freezes me where I sit. A ball of ice sits heavy inside my gut, making me shiver, while those two words echo.
Forgive you.
Mom makes a sound of horror—a loud gasp that echoes around the dining room.
Justin leaps to his feet. “Dad, come on. Let’s you and me go take a walk.”
Dad shrugs him off.
Then Derek’s head snaps up, and for one brief second, I see outrage in Derek’s blue eyes, the same outrage that reminds me of that hot day so many years ago when he beat up a playground bully and became my Leo.
And then he’s on his feet. “Are you crazy?” he asks quietly, pulling out a folded-up paper from his pocket and all but shoving it under Dad’s face. “Did you not read a word of all the literature the hospital sent us home with? Don’t blame the victim, Dad! It’s the first thing they told us back then. It’s the first thing they tell us now in my GAR meetings.” Derek’s voice is steadily rising, and that icy ball deep inside me just cracked a little.
“It is not her fault, Dad. It doesn’t matter if she had a beer, it doesn’t matter if she said yes and changed her mind later, it doesn’t even matter if she slept with him a hundred times in the past. All that matters, the only thing that matters, is she said no, and he didn’t listen. He made that choice. Nobody else.” Derek flings the paper to the table and looks around. He seems surprised he’s on his feet. Slowly, he sits back down, but his face is red from his temper, and a muscle in his
jaw twitches. The rest of us watch him, stunned into silence.
Especially me.
My brother just defended me.
Slowly, everybody sits. Derek picks up his fork, his flush deepening. He twirls some spaghetti around it and then drops it with a curse. “You know, I cannot actually believe this. You signed one of Ashley’s pledge forms! How can you sit there and judge her?”
“How could you?” Dad fires back, and Derek winces.
“You’re right,” he admits quietly. “I did then. But not now, Dad. I read every word of that material.” He stabs a finger at the brochure next to Dad’s plate. “I know all the statistics by heart. I know that recovery depends entirely on a rape survivor’s support system. That’s us. She needs us to tell her over and over again that it’s not her fault, that we love her, that we don’t blame her.”
“Sitting right here,” I remind them, putting up a hand to stop this act, entertaining as it is. I already know what they really think.
Derek turns his head and then lowers his eyes. “Sorry, Ashley.”
“Oh, you’re sorry,” Dad mocks. “Where were you when she screamed in her sleep, Derek? Where were you when she couldn’t leave her bedroom for days at a time?”
Derek lifts his eyes to mine. “I couldn’t face it then.”
“Face me, you mean,” I correct him.
“Face me,” he corrects, leaning toward me. “I’m sorry. I’ll say it every day for the rest of my life if it’ll help. I’m sorry for all of it. The hunt. For ditching you. For teasing you. You have any idea how many nights I spent wondering if this would have happened if I hadn’t been such a jerk?”
I stare at him for a moment. Are we really gonna play this game? Get out the ruler and measure whose pain is worse? “Nowhere even close to how many I have.”
He jerks and then inclines his head in a single nod. “There is nothing I can do to change it, Ashley. Nothing. All I can do is tell you I’m sorry, tell you I love you, that I believe you. That I’m here for you.”
His words are pretty, but I know that’s all they are. I know him. So I watch and wait, wondering what his endgame is. I study him, waiting for him to reveal the truth. The curl of his lip, the roll of his eyes, maybe a stuck-out tongue—all the signs of the old Derek that always, always follow this sort of performance.
The others watch us, eyes flicking from Derek to me.
“Please, honey,” Mom whispers. “Please. Just try to forgive each other.”
I wish I could believe him. I want to believe he’s serious, want to believe my Leo is still buried somewhere deep inside the stranger at our dining room table. But I remember what he said that night in the hospital.
Every word.
I shift my gaze to Mom, to the raw hope etched into every line on her face. An eerie calm settles over me. An almost supernatural sense of…serenity, I think. It confuses me until I feel the burn in my chest when my lungs constrict. No, not serenity. It was the ebb before the flow, the draining of the ocean before the tsunami surges. Blinking lights fill my vision, and my chest goes tight. The ball of ice in my belly shatters. I gasp, trying to move air past that pain, hoping I’ll pass out because at least then, I’d be free of the pressing weight of the guilt and pain that started at homecoming two years ago and just never leaves.
“Breathe, Ashley!” a voice says, but it’s too far away to tell whose. I try to inhale, try again and again to suck air into my body, but the gaping wound where my heart used to be is a vacuum.
My vision fades completely, and a split second later, so do I.
26
Derek
NOW
BELLFORD, OHIO
I’m up and around the table to Ashley’s side before she slumps out of her chair. Her eyes are rolled back in her head. Mom’s hysterical, and I kick myself for not sticking to my guns. I shouldn’t have come home.
I only make it harder for her. I know now that there’s no apology big enough for all the shit between us, the shit I put there. There never will be.
I scoop her into my arms, take her to the sofa, and lay her gently against the pillows. “Justin, get a cold cloth or something. Dad, we got any smelling salts?”
They sure worked on me.
He stares at me. Mom’s still crying.
“Mom, stop! This isn’t about you,” I shout.
Pissing off my parents does the trick. Dad’s blank look disappears and is replaced with red-faced rage. Mom’s sobs stop, and she hurries to the sofa, petting Ashley’s hair.
Justin comes back with a damp towel. I press it to Ashley’s forehead and neck like Mary Ann, the paramedic, did for me. Her eyelids flutter, and she moans.
“How the hell did you learn this?” Justin wonders.
“Personal experience,” I mutter.
“What?” Dad asks, and I sigh.
Now is so not the time for this.
“I passed out last week.”
“Why? Were you drunk?”
My temper surges. “No, I wasn’t drunk. I don’t drink because I have an athletic scholarship, remember? I had an anxiety attack.”
Justin flings up both arms. “Great. Now we’ve got a matching set of bookends.”
I ignore them and focus on Ashley. Her face is kind of gray. I take her hand and put two fingers on her wrist, not surprised to feel her pulse weak. I tap her cheek.
“Come on, April, snap out of it before Mom has a cow.”
Brown eyes blink open and then focus on me. She shrinks farther into the pillows. “Don’t call me that.”
I hold up both hands in surrender. “Better?”
Her hands flutter up to her chest, and she rubs a circle over the middle. Yep. I remember that pain, too. Felt like my heart had exploded.
She looks around, discovers she’s no longer in the dining room, and sighs.
I get it; she’s embarrassed.
“How did I get on the sofa?”
“I carried you,” I admit.
She shoots me a look that could peel the paint off the walls. “Surprised you didn’t let me drown in the spaghetti sauce.”
Mom makes a sound of protest, but I laugh. “Drown? Hey, you may be a pain in the ass, but I don’t want you dead.”
Ashley’s face goes red. Good. Getting everybody angry is productive. I can work with anger.
“Look, before you checked out in there,” I say, jerking a thumb toward the dining room. “Dad was talking about forgiveness. I was about to tell you something, something I should have said years ago.”
Ashley sucks in one cheek and shoves herself up into a sitting position, wincing from the effort. “This should be good. Okay. Let’s hear it.” She circles her hands.
“I was an asshole—”
“You think?”
I clear my throat and start again. “I was a total jerk to you for a long time, and I’m sorry for that. It wasn’t you. I just wanted my own space. Mom wouldn’t let me escape.” I shake my head with a laugh. “And you were fucking relentless.”
“Derek!” Mom gasps.
I, um, kind of forgot we have an audience.
“Sorry, Mom, but she was,” I insist. And then I shrug. “And I got desperate. And none of that—absolutely none of it deserved, asked for, or justifies what Vic did to you. I’m sorry for it, Ashley. I meant what I said. I’ll apologize every day for the rest of my life if you need that.”
Mom squeaks and puts both hands over her mouth. Dad and Justin look to Ashley. I swear I hear everybody take a breath and hold it.
But Ashley’s not impressed. Her face gets redder. “You are so full of it, Derek.” She swings her legs off the couch. “You aren’t sorry at all.”
“Ashley, I—”
“Save it!” she screams so loudly the dog next door starts barking. “I know what you really think. I know.”
br /> What the hell?
“Ashley, Derek is—”
“A liar, that’s what he is,” she says, cutting off whatever Mom was about to say. “Every word out of his mouth is bullshit! I know how you really feel, Derek. No apology in the universe can ever change what you told me that night in the hospital.”
I blink at her.
“Oh my God! You really believe your own bull.” Ashley rakes both hands through her hair and grunts in frustration. “They may think the lawyers tripped you up, but I know, Derek. I know. I heard every single word from your own lips because I wasn’t asleep.”
I still don’t know what—
Oh my God.
The memory sinks its pointy fangs in me, forcing me to relive every horrible word as it gnashes its jaws. Both of my parents go on the attack.
“What is she talking about?”
“Derek, what does Ashley mean?”
I want to puke, but all I can do is sit there, on the edge of the couch, unable to push words out.
“Tell them, Derek,” Ashley jeers. “I’m sure they’ll want to hear all about this.”
• • •
I got hit wrong in a game once.
Some kid came at me and hit me helmet to stomach. I don’t know who taught him to play football, but I was lucky he was weak, or he’d have ruptured my liver. I felt like I’d been hit by a fast-moving train.
This is worse. Like a hundred times worse. It’s like getting hit in the solar plexus, and while you’re gasping for air like a fish on land, bam! You get kicked in the nuts.
My whole body goes numb. I don’t know if my blood is still circulating. I don’t know if my heart’s beating. I can’t tell if I’m still breathing. I’ve been blasted outside my body. I can see it—the whole scene—beneath me. Ashley on the couch, Mom hovering over her, and Dad and Justin hanging back, staring at me.
At me.
Oh God, oh God, oh God.
“Tell them, Derek!” Ashley screams at me, and suddenly, I’m sucked back into my body, and I can feel every fucking thing.
My hands shake when I pull them through my hair and sink deep into the sofa by her feet. She snaps them away and curls into her own corner, still spitting in rage. “I was awake, you ass. I heard you. You stood there and said why couldn’t I just stay home, just stay home like you told me to. You said I was such a pain, and that none of us would ever be the same now because of me.”