Page 91 of Our Crooked Hearts
“He hates me.”
She sighed. “I’m almost at the shop. Stay home today, try to map the fallout. I’ll come by tonight.”
We waited in blistering silence for our daughter to wake. Finally we heard the creak of the upper hall, the toilet’s flush. Then she was walking down the stairs humming something. She walked in, saw us sitting there like mannequins, and did a double take.
“Whoa. What’s up?”
Rob got up and folded her into a hug. “Everything’s fine,” he said unconvincingly.
“Dad,” she said after the hug had gone on too long.“Dad.”Then, craftily, sensing she held some mysterious advantage, “Can we go to Walker Bros.? I want a Dutch pancake.”
She could’ve asked for the moon.
We were only alone for a minute that morning, washing our hands in the women’s room. All morning I’d been searching for changes in her face. When our eyes met in the mirror, she squirmed and rolled her eyes.
“Mom.Stopstaringat me.”
My heart seized. “Ivy.”
Her brows drew down at the panic in my voice.
“Rooibos, lavender, bay,” I recited. “Lead dark hearts astray.”
Her mouth squished into an embarrassed line. “You’re being weird,” she whispered.
The bathroom door swung shut behind her.
Ivy’s friend Billy came by to see her an hour after we returned from breakfast. For days she’d been too busy locked inside her room to spend time with him, and I’d felt sorry for the kid. Now the sight of him filled me with terror. He was the only person besides me, Rob, and Fee whoknew.What would happen when he tried to talk to Ivy about stuff she couldn’t remember?
I turned him away. He came back the next morning. It was early and I told him Ivy was asleep, but when I turned she stood behind me on the stairs.
“Who was that?”
“Billy,” I said without thinking. She had a clear line on the door and would’ve seen his face.
“Who’s Billy?”
My body processed a single moment of compressed white shock. Then horror seeped in.
I’d wondered what Billy knew, and for how long, and I guessed I had my answer now. Magic must’ve been a part of their friendship from the start. It must’ve been at the very root of them. Her best friend and everything he was to her, fed to the golden box like another ripped-up weed.
“He’s nobody,” I said. “Just a boy on the block.”
