Hold Me Like a Breath (26 page)

And despite the lack of closed-eye time between sunset and sunrise, I felt more rested.

And guiltier.

I stared at the window, watching the glow change from
garish nighttime signs to sunrise clear, and listened as Char told me about working in the garden with his mother, accidentally weeding an entire row of mint plants and trying stick them back in the ground before she noticed.

“Char, I've got some things I need to do.” Showering was one, and I desperately needed to use the bathroom—I hadn't figured out a romantic way to request a pee break—but after that I needed to spend some time with my notebook. Reassure myself grieving wasn't any less painful or important, and making new memories with Char didn't mean I was forgetting my family.

“Oh, okay.”

“Thanks for keeping me company all night.”

“I feel like I should be saying that to you.” He laughed.

“Breakfast?” I asked. “Want to meet outside my place at ten?”

“Perfect. Good-bye, Maeve.”

I was already opening my notebook as I said good-bye. Skimming my last words before I set down the phone and planning my next ones while I took a quick shower and got dressed. When I sat back down with the notebook, my hand flew, a flood of memory pouring out as my shower-damp hair dripped down the back of my sundress.

Carter ran away once when he was twelve. It was during a bad spell, when my body was destroying platelets as fast as we infused them. He'd tried cheering me up by drawing smiley faces on my skin—and had been rewarded with a thunderous reprimand. He was feeling ignored and angry—and Magnolia
Vickers had dared him to during an ill-fated visit. The same visit where she broke my tea set and he broke his arm because of another one of her dares. In fact, I think it was her
last
visit to our estate. So he was in a cast—which made it easy for Al Ward to track him
.

“Have you seen a tall, blond boy with a camouflage-print arm cast?” is a pretty easy yes/no question. And it's not like the townspeople didn't know who he was or who our Family was—he was probably more supervised in town than he was on the estate. They quickly ratted out his escape route from the ice-cream shop to the comic book store to the bakery where Al found him halfway through a box of doughnuts
.

After he finished puking up his sugar overload, I expected Mother to hug him and cry and Father to yell, but it was Mother who went frosty and Father who intervened in her lecture. He led Carter outside for a man-to-man talk. I watched through the window as Father put his arm around Carter's shoulder and they strolled around the property
.

Carter never would tell me what Father said, or how he got past the guards and gates and all the way into town
.

I guess now I'll never know
.

I felt better after writing down that memory. Sadder, but that's how I was
supposed
to feel. I wiped tears from my cheeks, fixed my makeup, braided my damp hair, then watched the swinging tail of the cat clock. Ten a.m. was when we'd agreed to
meet, but I headed out my door at 9:45 and wasn't even a little surprised to see Char already waiting on the sidewalk spot I'd started thinking of as
his
.

I couldn't prevent my smile—a face-stretching grin that made it nearly impossible to mouth the word “hi” against his neck when he curled me into a greeting-slash-embrace.

“Hi, yourself.”

I inhaled his smell, then made myself step away from him, from his potential bruises. “Coffee? Maybe coconut?”

“Actually, may I meet your parents?” He looked over my shoulder at the apartment building, and I was grateful for that half second because I needed it to compose my face.

“What?”

“I know it's old-fashioned, but it's how I was raised. If they're home, I'd like to meet them, let your father know you're in good hands. Honorable intentions and all that.”

It was probably Midwestern values. I could imagine him sitting down in some other girl's family room, talking to her father before taking her out on a date—I wondered if he drove a truck. I wondered where he took other girls. If they had felt about him the way I did. But I couldn't afford to wonder—I needed to lie.

“They don't live here,” I said. “I'm apartment sitting for my aunt—the one from the whole phone-dishes caper. She's out of the country for the summer. In, uh … London. For business.”

“Wow.” He shook his head. “You've got to have the most trusting parents in the world. Who lets a seventeen-year-old apartment-sit by herself?”

The question hung open-ended because it would take too
many lies. But it's not like he'd really offered anything about his family either, not the first time I'd asked, not in any of our conversations since.

“Almost as big a show of trust as a walkabout.” I'd intended it as a tease, but it came out as a challenge. I met his eyes with searing contact. “Why are
you
in New York? Really?”

“This is my father's grand concession.” Char's face changed, the smile dropping like petals off a flower—leaving an expression as vulnerable and naked as a bare stem. I fought the urge to look away, study graffiti, boarded and barred windows, weeds growing between buildings, and cigarette butts, gum spots on the sidewalk—anything ugly, anything less painful than the look on his face.

I didn't want to ask. And I could have pushed him back to grins and glow with a snuggle or a safe comment, but I slid my fingers between his instead. He squeezed them, but this truth, this moment, was worth a bruise.

“Tell me.” The words might press him farther from happy, but if he shared this story—his pain—it would take
us
someplace deeper.

“He's not really one for compromise, my father. We had an argument at my graduation party—I was stupid enough to say something about med school to a friend's mom and he overheard. It was ugly. Like, he got so angry, he thought he was having a heart attack. This month of go-to-New-York-and-sow-your-wild-oats-or-do-whatever is a bribe. I get thirty days of freedom, time and space to let go of my dreams, and he gets the rest of my life.”

Char touched my wrist. Dragged a finger down the blue lines
of my arteries, making the blood inside rush and tumble back to my heart, which was skipping beats and breaking with my inability to fix this.

“Was that one of the opportunities you missed out on? Premed?”

He nodded. “I kept thinking he'd come around, but I let him shut down the topic whenever it came up and I never talked about it directly with him. I was scared and stupid—and his face when he overheard me at the party … His heart's not great. I could've killed him.” Char's face was pale; drops of sweat stood out around the edges of his hair. “If I'd just sat down and had a conversation with him—anytime this year—things wouldn't have blown up like that. And how can I possibly ask him to change his mind now?”

“I'm sorry.”

“Thanks, but can we change the topic? I don't want to be thinking about that right now. Not when I'm here, happy, with you.”

I nodded. Wondered what the
other
missed opportunity was, then allowed the question to be swallowed by a bigger concern. He only had thirty days. Thirty minus six since we'd met. Minus however many days he'd been in New York before then. I wasn't brave enough to ask for the difference.

“I believe you mentioned coconut coffee,” Char said. “I don't think I'm courageous enough for that combination, but I could use some caffeine after last night, what about you?”

“
Coconut
scares you? Then I guess you won't even consider kiwi. Byron will be so disappointed.”

I thought we were safe. Away from conversational land mines. Especially when Byron pulled out a new case of fall flavor syrups for us to “taste test.” Even I had to admit that sugar-free caramel apple and pumpkin pie sounded more appealing than tropical fruits.

But while we waited for our order, my eyes caught on the back page of the newspaper a man in a Yankees cap was reading and I was trapped by the headline and photo—the same one from our collision day. Mother's favorite. But with bull's-eyes superimposed over everyone but Father.

GRIEVING FATHER OR COLD-BLOODED KILLER?

I flinched when Char touched my arm, getting my attention so he could hand me my cup.

“It's so sad.” He nodded at the paper. I'd only just pulled my eyes away and now they followed his gesture back. One small part of me was grateful to this salt-and-pepper man for covering my face in the photo with his pointer finger, but most of me was just trying not to cry. “I don't believe that for a second,” Char said.

“What? Why?” His were magic words, cutting the paper's hold on me so I could turn full attention to his explanation.

“I don't know, just a feeling. I mean, he already lost his son, right? That's what they were saying on the news this morning. I may not have the greatest relationship with my father, but no guy who knows the pain of losing one kid would then kill the other one. That kind of tragedy would make you appreciate life
more
, not less.”

I put my coffee down on the condiments bar and hugged him.
He had no idea how much I need to hear someone else say he believed my father's innocence.

“Oh, okay. Hello, hug.” He kissed the top of my head, then rested one hand on my back while he doctored our coffees with his other. “Plus, look at him—or maybe don't, so that man doesn't think we're checking him out—but Malcolm Landlow doesn't look like the kind of guy … I don't know, I guess there's not really a
look
. It's not like I have facts or anything, I just don't want to believe it.”

Nestled against Char's chest, I inhaled. Despite the buzz of the bean grinder and cinnamon aroma of a tray of scones being pulled from the oven, I could make out
his
smell and each breath loosened the knot in my chest.

“He looks like he'd sing show tunes and read bedtime stories,” I whispered.

Char laughed. “I don't know if I'd go that far. He
was
part of one of those transplant mafias.”

I wanted to ask what he thought of them, but I didn't dare, not with my picture a few feet away. So I stepped back and accepted my coffee. “Let's go watch the dogs.”

On the sidewalk, Char said, “So, tell me about
your
future. I know you're here for the summer, but where do you live usually? You'll be a senior, right? Have you thought about what you'll do after?”

I ignored all the questions but the last one, which was really the only one that mattered.
After
.

I was already in
after
. Maybe not the after he'd intended, but this, and all days since Carter died. They were all my
after
.

“I've never really thought about college. Maybe? It never seemed like it was for me.”

It never seemed like a future my parents would allow. But if I could survive New York City, college couldn't be more dangerous.

“What do you want to do? What do you like?”

I liked the friction of his thumb on my inner wrist. I liked the way he was looking at me, as if the words about to cross my lips would be the most captivating thing he'd ever heard. Except I didn't know which words to use.

These were questions that shouldn't be seventeen years in the asking. I should have ready answers.

“I like … politics.” The answer surprised me more than him. “Maybe I'll take a post-school year and work on campaigns. Then decide.”

“That sounds amazing,” he said.

And it did. I could see myself working on the Organ Act. Not like Nolan did, where a single cause became an obsession, but maybe making campaign phone calls, updating a political blog, tracking poll numbers, editing flyers. I loved talking to strangers. I loved reading about policy. I loved watching C-Span.

I fingered the phone in my pocket. It's not as if I lacked for political connections—

There was a crack. A loud one. Like the soundtrack of my worst memories exploding into reality. I flung myself around a corner, pressed flat against a building. Char threw himself after me. I wasn't breathing. I don't think he was either.

The silence was suffocating.

“A car,” he whispered. “It was a car backfiring.”

I tried to nod. Panic was shaped like an elephant and perched on my chest. My blood was electric, carbonated. It sizzled in my veins and pounded in my temples.

I pushed against it. Fought to be rational. Measured the damaged I'd done—my hands, elbows, knees had all made contact with the brick wall. Knees and elbows were cushioned behind capris and a shirt—hopefully the bruises wouldn't be horrible.

And Char's hand. The one that he had curved protectively around me as he'd shielded my body with his. I'd have a bruise from that—a handprint across my stomach.

But I wasn't broken. I wasn't bleeding.

I wasn't shot.

No one had been shooting.

There'd been no danger.

Char was taking deliberate breaths. “Are you okay, Maeve? I'm sorry I overreacted. I didn't mean to scare you.”

It took a few attempts before I managed to say, “Fine,” but the picture from the newspaper burned in my mind.
My
face beneath a bull's-eye. I didn't want to be on the sidewalk anymore. I didn't want to stand in a park. Didn't want to feel exposed.

I wanted my mother. I wanted safety. I wanted the impossible.

“I'm hungry,” I lied, kicking my foot to shake spilled coffee off my toes. The cups we'd dropped were leaking sluggishly onto the concrete, creating a moat around my sandals. “Let's skip the dog park and get breakfast.”

I relaxed in stages. I remembered how to breathe first. Then my pulse slowed. My palms dried. I stopped shivering. I thawed. Began to feel the warmth of Char's arm around my shoulders,
felt the security of him holding me close as we walked to the diner.