Kimberly had explained the night before that she and Jason had crafted a fabrication, as she referred to it, about the bucket and water bottle in case either Amy or David walked into the room while I was asleep and discovered either them and me there at Andi's bed, or noticed that I looked hungover.
I was going to tell them that Indie and I went out for dinner and got food poisoning at a diner somewhere—she mentioned it was important not to name actual diners, in case they actually called to report it—and that's why I was sick. I wasn't completely sure of what they told Andi, but it seemed to me as if she knew that I didn't just have a bad cheeseburger the next morning.
She was opening and slamming drawers as she got dressed, muttering to herself about how she got a chocolate stain on one of her shirts, hum. I rolled over in her bed, pulled her covers over my head, realize that the bright light coming through the material was her rolling up all the blinds.
Then, as all the blades snapped together over my head, Kingston came into my mind. A drifting thought that felt vague and distorted, like there was something I was supposed to be remember, something I had been thinking about him, like he was in one of my forgotten dreams or something, before I realized that Andi was humming one of the songs that played at the party the other night.
Last night.
Where I was with Indie, after leaving the lake house, determined not to come back—that worked out well, apparently, less than twelve hours later—and we went because I texted Kingston. I could still smell the beer and campfire on my clothes, especially under the covers, and then I realized that I kissed him. Actually, kissed him.
Then I remembered seeing him totally, frontal naked.
Before I changed my mind, leaving him there, still naked, in that bathroom alone.
And Jude was there, but he walked past me. He was at a party, where everyone there was at least twenty or thirty years younger than him, and alone, like he wasn't there to pick up someone who was drunk like Jason and Kimberly were.
I gave Ethan Denvers a hug, after totally unloading on him.
I groaned.
Andi's humming was momentarily replaced with a muffled chuckle. "Have fun waking up to that."
The door opened, footsteps quiet against the carpet, before I heard a confused Natalie asking, "Do you smell smoke?"
~
I wasn't completely sure of what to expect from Amy and David later that morning, after I emerged from the bathroom with my hair still damp from my shower and the clothes I wore to the party the night before in the washing machine—which Kimberly had to teach me how to use, the screens and buttons strikingly different from the dials I was used to at the laundromat—and went into the kitchen, realizing that neither of them were there.
Amy wasn't standing in front of the stove, scrambling eggs or flipping pancakes, and David had left early that morning for the office, according to Jason, who was in the kitchen, sitting at the island with a smoothie and his laptop in front of him on the counter.
"Mom went out for a run," he pointed out when I was still looking around the room, tentatively reaching out for the handle of the refrigerator door because I still didn't feel comfortable just opening it and grabbing whatever I wanted. Usually, I just took whatever was out in sight, like fruit from the bowl on the counter or from their serving bowls at meals. "She does that sometimes. When she's frustrated."
"I could make something," Kimberly offered, glancing at me but I just shrugged, grabbing the gallon of orange juice because it felt weird, like I was being watched or supervised. Like I hadn't spent most of my life figuring out things for myself, like what I was going to have for breakfast or walking in from the car to a bedroom.
She grabbed a couple of bananas from the fruit bowl on the island, breaking the stem as Jason suddenly closed his laptop and stared at me, intently. I was almost startled by it. "Did you seriously leave last night because Mom and Dad offered to give you a car?"
I blinked, confused. "Yeah. You're acting like that's not a big deal. Just like they did."
"Yeah, it's a big deal but not the kind you run away from home for," he retorted, his elbow nudging against his smoothie as he ran his fingers through his hair, his palm rubbing against his forehead. He looked more like David then than he had since I came. "You went out, got drunk at a college party, because they wanted to give you a car."
Kimberly took a paring knife out of the knife block. "I don't think that's the whole reason, honey," she said, the knife hitting against the cutting board in between her words. "You've missed home a lot, haven't you, Bronwyn?"
"That's why they were offering to give her a car," Jason interjected. "So, she could go visit."
"But I don't want to just visit. That's my home. I wasn't running away from home, I was running back to it because that's where I'm supposed to be. Home."
He looked as if he were about to say more, but then just shook his head and opened his laptop again, typing aggressively against the keyboard instead of responding. Then, he paused and glanced back over the screen at me. "Getting drunk at a party with people you don't know, not responding to texts, not telling anyone where you are, that's a bad idea. It's a stupid idea, no matter where your home is."
"But you're not stupid," Kimberly added, shooting Jason a look over her shoulder.
"No, you're not. Which makes what you did even stupider."
I shoved the gallon of orange juice back into the refrigerator after just untwisting the cap, still on the granite countertop near the sink as the juice sloshed around inside the plastic as it was knocked against a reusable container of strawberries.
"I don't remember asking what you thought was stupid," I snapped, because I was so done with everyone, with all of the Solidays, acting like they had some sort of say now. After almost seventeen years of radio silence and one isolated birthday party invitation, now they wanted to do things like just give me a car and act protective like an older brother I didn't really have. Now, when I was old enough not to need or want it, it was finally there. Relentlessly.
He resumed his aggressive typing. "Well, maybe you need someone to tell you. Anyone else would've been sensible enough to figure it out on their own."
"Honey," Kimberly murmured, drawing out the vowels on her tongue as she gave him another look, the blade of her knife hitting the wooden board with a clunk that sounded louder now that we were both quiet.
I blinked, glancing away from her and back to Jason, realizing as my own frustration ebbed away that he was actually angry. Maybe not the kind I was used to, the kind that was loud and expletive and overly emotional, but some sort of reserved anger. Barely held back.
And it struck me that I hadn't seen any of the Solidays angry before. Polite, upset, placating, disappointed. Annoyance from Andi, mostly, since she really didn't even acknowledge me enough to be that angry with me, but here was Jason, of all people, actually expressing a negative emotion.
But I also couldn't quite fathom it, understand why right now he could be angry with me. "Why are you angry?" I asked, quieter and somewhat softer than before, wondering if maybe it was because Indie called in the middle of the night and his sense of Soliday obligation made him get up and drive an hour away to pick up my drunk self, lie to his parents about it this morning.
Jason just stared at me blankly, with the slightest hint of indignation reflected in his pupils, like it was so blatantly clear to him and anyone else who heard it. "I'm angry because no one knew where you were," he told me, his voice not quieter and softer. "Your mom was murdered, the police don't know who did it, and you go back home, without telling anyone, and then we get a call in the middle of the night from someone, saying they can't find you. We all thought you went to work, instead you're out getting drunk with strangers. Then, we find you and want to take care of you, but you're just so focused on hating everything we do, it's—" He stopped abruptly, looking back down at the screen as he took in a breath. He typed for another few seconds before finally muttering, "I have a work email to finish."
He might have wanted to go back to wordlessly typing out his email—poorly, it looked, considering how many times his ring finger had to tap against the backspace button—but I didn't.
"Why is this all coming out now?" I asked, gesturing to him, the lake-house, the offer of my own car made in this kitchen the night before like it was still clinging to the inside of the room. "Where was this when I was born? Or a kid, or literally any time ever before my mom died?"
"What are you talking about?" he asked, his brow furrowed. "It's always been there."
"Yeah, right, for you maybe."
He shook his head. "And for you. We invited you to come up for the summers, birthday parties, my graduation. We even sent a wedding invitation to the last address Dad had, but it was just mailed back. Whoever was living there said you moved, but even before then, you never actually came. Just that one time."
Now I was frowning. "Did you actually send those?"
"Yeah, of course—"
"No, I mean, besides the wedding invitation. Were you the one sending invitations for parties and summers, sleepovers and whatever?"
He looked at me for a long moment, confused. "No. I guess my parents would've probably done that."
I nodded then, because that made more sense than anything else could've. David had told him, maybe the rest of his children too, that he was inviting me to their family gatherings and holidays, like he was actually this brilliant and shining father he wanted them and the public to think of him as, but it wasn't real. He pretended to send them, told his family that I never answered, that I wanted my own separate world away from them.
And David said he went to our trailer to look for me after the tornado hit, so he had the right current address to give Jason for him to send a wedding invitation.
One that was mailed back, saying we must have moved when we probably had never lived there in the first place.