Page 9 of The Burning
Prior to Kael, Brien was my only point of reference as an ex, and our breakups never bothered me this way. I was always the less emotional one, the one who didn’t cry and didn’t budge when I thought I was right. He was the apologizer . . . at least in the beginning.
Over the course of our relationship, he wore me down, and now, with him completely out of my life, I knew that our relationship had felt so big to me because it was the closest I had ever been with a man. In his case, a boy pretending to be a man, but most men that I’d met seemed to be in that class. But you know, daddy issues and all that. Given the man who raised me, it was only natural for me to attract men who weren’t good for me.
Not Kael, though. Kael was an exception to nearly every rule. Every preconceived notion I had about men and relationships, he had proved them wrong.
Until he didn’t.
What he did was reinforce that I should never trust people I barely knew. Well, trusting anyone was risky, since I couldn’t trust Austin, my dad, or even myself lately.
I couldn’t think about Austin, and how he was throwing his life away and was a coward for avoiding me. Or Kael, and how he was helping him do just that. Ugh, my mind was all over the place, making my heart race to try to keep up. It felt completely devastating at first, calling my brother at least twenty times, texting him long rants about my anger and even apologies about the rants. It became a cycle. I avoided my dad’s stupid dinners the way Austin avoided me. I was growing tired of being the only person in my family who ever held themselves accountable. I was clearly still angry at Austin for not even trying to talk to me about it, or apologizing. The whole situation was completely unresolved and it made me sick thinking about it. Maybe it was time to cut him out of my life?
I couldn’t decide today, but this total blackout of communication was driving me mad and I needed to keep my head as clear as possible by reminding myself daily that I couldn’t change anything about this. I couldn’t undo his contract with the Army, and I couldn’t make him take accountability and have a conversation with me. I didn’t even know exactly where Kael’s house was, so I couldn’t just show up there to force Austin to explain himself to me. I mentally had to come to terms with the fact that Austin was actively choosing himself over my feelings about his choices and that he didn’t care about hurting me the way that I thought he did.
Water splashed on my feet, and I looked down to see it leaking over the edge of the kitchen sink, soaking my only pair of work shoes. I barely remembered turning the water on.
What the hell was wrong with me?
Quickly, I yanked the spout to shut the water off and let some of it drain while I grabbed a towel and threw it onto the floor, using my feet to dry the spillage. I added a ton of purple lavender dish soap to drown out the scent of the rest of the dishes. The pan from the other night was so blackened that I could still smell the burnt cheese. That, mixed with the humidity outside, did not create a good aroma in such an old house.
My fingers moved across a smooth ceramic plate. In the soapy water, I could feel the inscription of the date that Estelle and my dad promised to love one another until death did them part.
I was surprised that the fragile wedding gift had lasted so long in my chaotic little house.
Chapter Six
The kitchen door opened and the sound of Elodie’s native language glided through the room. She sounded upset, but I couldn’t make out what she was saying. I had picked up a couple French words from her, but nothing that lead to actual understanding.
When I looked at her, she mouthedSorryand made her way to the counter. Her arms were full of grocery bags and a coffee tray that she was about to drop. She was wearing her work uniform like I was, but had a rain jacket over it, with the hood pulled down. Her blond hair was dry, up in a little bun on her head. I grabbed a towel to wipe the soap off my hands and reached to help her.
The bags were heavier than they looked. One of them was filled with packs of construction paper, glue, and scissors. She really shouldn’t have been carrying that much at once. The female voice on the other end of the line got much louder, almost barking out of the speaker, and Elodie took the phone away from her ear.
“My parents,” she said to me as she set the bags down on the table.
I didn’t know very much about her parents except that they weren’t exactly thrilled when their daughter left France to marry an American soldier. It wasn’t common to meet French citizens in military communities like this one. I had known a lot of wives from South America and Mexico, and one from Germany, but never from France.
Elodie had an entirely different life here in Georgia than what she had known in France; everything from the food to medical care to social norms was different in Europe than it was in the Southern U.S. In France, she lived with her parents in a town where everyone knew everyone. She often talked about how quiet life here was, how pleasantly boring it was. When Phillip got back from deployment in Afghanistan, her life would be easier and better, and things would run smoothly. Or so I hoped. But I worried about the anger in his voice that I heard during their Skype conversations and the way she was so defeated. I hoped their tension was just a phase and they were just having the standard newlywed, husband-is-deployed, wife-is-pregnant fights that many couples went through.
I knew my optimism was mostly feigned.
Elodie, still on the phone, moved toward the door and I stopped her.
“I’ll get the rest. You can start putting them away?” I said.
She almost smiled, but whoever was on the phone said something that made her stop in her tracks and rest against the kitchen counter. She put the phone on speaker and dropped it onto the countertop. She spoke loudly, cutting against her mother’s excessive volume and bite. I left the kitchen to get the rest of the stuff from the car, hoping that whatever was going on wasn’t as bad as it seemed, and also hoping I would be quick enough to not get too soaked from the rain. I never had an umbrella or rain jacket when I needed one, and I had never owned rain boots. I was usually unprepared for regular life, and overly prepared for unlikely things. I had a full-on earthquake kit, for example, ready for the worst in southern Georgia, but no raincoat for the excessive rain that was the norm here.
I opened the screen door as Elodie stared at the phone with her tongue between her teeth. Dashing out, I yelped a little when the rain hit me and ran faster, trying not to slip in the mud next to the pavement. In the open trunk, just behind the few bags that were left, was a folded-up baby stroller. It was light green and looked almost new, but it wasn’t in a box. Sometimes I forgot there would be another human in my little house in a few short months.
I reached in and touched the stroller, pausing for a moment before I grabbed the rest of the groceries and jogged to the back door of the house. The thick smell of wet soil filled the air; another unfinished project of mine was to finish the landscaping in my yard. The home improvements I’d been putting off for so long were slowly getting done, though. I’d almost completed tiling the bathtub and had changed all of my ancient silver doorknobs to sleek and modern black ones. All within a freaking week.
Neurotic or responsible? Maybe a little bit of both.
A truck drove through the stop sign and my stomach flipped. It wasn’t Kael, it wasn’t his truck, but it made me think of him and the sound of his loud Bronco and how the walls of my house would rattle when he revved his engine outside. The man driving the truck turned down the alleyway across the street, his big tires splashing rainwater everywhere.
I was wet now, just standing in the rain like a lost puppy. I shut the trunk, hurried inside, and slammed the back door. Elodie was off the phone and sitting at the kitchen table.
Her voice was brittle, her accent wrapping around her words more than usual. “I’m sorry about that.” She sighed heavily, her eyes filling to the brim with tears. “They want me to come home.”
“What?”
