Damage - A. M. Jenkins [51]
You take another look at the roses. They’re just buds, actually. Tied up with a cheap, shiny ribbon already unraveled a little on one end.
Heather wouldn’t like flowers from some guy off the street. She’s probably used to florist flowers, done up in a vase with a card, delivered by a van with lettering on the side.
Of course, she might not be able to tell where they came from.
But you have a feeling that she would.
The light is already green. There’s nobody behind you telling you to move on. Or even to turn back.
You ease off on the clutch at the same moment slowly begin to press the accelerator. And in a moment you’re heading down the highway toward home.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
When you finally get home, you pull up the gravel driveway past the house, and head around to the back. You park in your usual spot by the back porch and cut the engine.
There is only one thing left.
You sit perfectly still and you shut your eyes, and listen to yourself breathe.
The truck seat is firm under you. The air is cool; hugs your shirt to your skin. It’s peaceful in here. It’s like being on the bottom of a pool, in the stillness and the silence, while up above you the ripples are still spreading.
In the quiet a sound begins; a sound that you can’t identify; rhythmic, muffled through the window.
You open the door, and the noise gets louder. It is coming from across the front yard. From the Hightowers’ house? It’s harsher now, regular—almost a sound.
It must be Curtis. Nobody else would be over there this time of day.
Curtis will be pretty torn up when he finds out you’re gone. Maybe you ought to go over, give him one last moment. A good-bye, whether he knows it or not. Something, because you owe him, for what you’re about to do.
Although the truth is, talking to Curtis isn’t going any of this easier for him. Probably you should just go inside. It’s going to be getting dark soon. You should walk inside and go stand in front of the sink and let that razor blade do its job. Sure, some people are going to be hurt. Curtis. Mom. Becky. But eventually they’ll heal. They’ll all get over it, with time.
Of course, Heather’s dad probably thought the same thing.
The thought ruffles your sense of peace. You try to smooth it back down, try to breathe deep and recapture the silence of a moment ago, but that sound from outside is scraping the air around you. So you sit there for you don’t know how long, breathing too fast, staring at what’s left of the vine-covered old fence that lies along the property line between your house and Curtis’s; a few weathered old posts in varying degrees of decay and uprightness, held in their positions by a couple of rusted coils of wire, the whole thing covered with blackberry vines.
You and Curtis used to set empty cans on those posts, throwing rocks at them for target practice. That was long time ago, but now you’re remembering how, when all the cans were knocked off, you and Curtis would walk over to reset them and end up taking a break every time, filling up with blackberries, talking and laughing about nothing in particular while the afternoon shadows grew longer and longer.
You and Curtis always tried to stretch the days out, because no day was ever long enough, back then.
You get out of the cab. Everything had stopped, inside your truck—but now that you’re out, you’ve got make choices.
Choices, it seems, have fingers reaching out in every direction. To the future. And the past.
That’s why you follow the sound over to the Hightowers’ house. And find Curtis scraping paint off the front porch railing as if this is a day like any other.
“Hey,” he greets you, not pausing in his scraping.
“Hey.” Then, “Getting ready to paint?”
Stupid question. Curtis, of course, doesn’t bother to answer.
You