Page 14 of The Burning
I turned to look at him and saw he was looking at Austin, who stood in the corner with his arms crossed against his chest. Austin said “No” so nonchalantly and looked so genuinely honest that I almost believed him. What a good liar he was.
Elodie glanced down, avoiding the lie. I looked at the man’s face, but didn’t see anything familiar. Austin was looking at his phone, pretending the whole exchange hadn’t happened.
The man seemed suspicious and annoyed, but just nodded.
“Why?” I asked him, my curiosity taking over.
Austin jerked his head toward me, clearly unhappy that I had engaged when he had dodged the question in the first place.
Another nurse popped her head in. “We need you. Broken arm,” she told her colleague.
He looked at the two of us for a moment before exiting the room.
I glared at my brother. “Do you know him? What was that about?”
“I think he’s Dad’s friend.”
“So why did you lie?”
He shrugged. “Like I said, I think he’s Dad’s friend.” Austin looked at me as if that simple statement said everything I needed to know.
“You sure seem used to lying. Wonder where you gotthat,” was all I could say.
Austin moved closer to me and lifted his arms in the air. “I didn’t lie to you!” he whispered desperately.
His words hit me, right smack in the middle of my chest. I could feel that rumble, my temper shaking just below the surface. My brother tilted his head back and sighed. “Karina. I knew if I told you, you would freak out. Wonder where you got that.”
I could feel anger budding around the sting of his accusation of being like our mother. We did that so much, comparing one another or ourselves to our parents as a way of inflicting hurt.
Elodie was looking patiently back and forth between my brother and me, unaware of what we were talking about. I gently squeezed her hand. The last thing she needed was more stress. I had to put her first, even though my temper was barely manageable.
“I’m so glad the baby is okay. I was worried about you. Both of you.”
She nodded, lightly tightening her grip on my hand. “Me too. I’m sorry for all these problems. And this thing keeps checking the baby’s heartbeat.” She looked up at the beeping machines and the equipment lining the wall behind the head of her bed.
“There’s nothing to be sorry about. You didn’t do anything wrong,” I told her.
Why do women always apologize for things they can’t control?I did it, Elodie, my mom . . .
“Everything feels wrong. My parents. Phillip . . . he’s . . .”
Elodie looked away from my eyes to the small television hanging in the corner. The thin curtain didn’t really separate us much from the rest of the patients and I’m sure our neighbors could hear everything we were saying. I heard the bustle of nurses and that god-awful cough again. All of it was making me antsy, but I needed to be there for her.
I took in her frail body.
“Did something else happen with Phillip?” I caught her hollow gaze and hesitated with my brother there, and the other patients, and the lack of privacy in a place like this. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to talk about it.”
“The Facebook messages I told you about, well, they said that the woman my husband was cheating on me with is deployed with him. And married. And so I sent Phillip a message about it and he just replied.” She looked at Austin before me.
She rubbed her baby bump over the thin hospital gown that draped over her body like cheap paper.
“How did he react?” I asked her.
“He said it’s a total lie and he can’t believe I had the nerve to even question him. He’s really pissed off now.”
I looked up at Austin, but he was staring at the floor. I imagined he was trying to make Elodie forget he was there so she would be more comfortable. Phillip’s anger toward Elodie was a huge red flag to me. These kinds of stories were very familiar in a place where people got married well before they could legally drink. Married and deployed, then a baby, then deployed again. Underpaid, overworked, and underappreciated for enlistment after enlistment. It was a cycle, and Elodie seemed to be trapped in her own version of it. And this was just the beginning for her.
“When will you two talk next?” I asked.
