The Vow

Chapter 23

Annie

We leave and I make it to the car. I don’t think I will at first. The softness in my knees and hips is spreading up and down my legs, and with every step down the driveway I’m surprised my joints don’t give out completely. Something is melting—cartilage? ligaments? bones?— and I’m liquid, warm and woozy, by the time I drag my body into the passenger seat.

Mo’s hand is shaking as he puts the key into the ignition, and he won’t look at me.

I put my head between my knees. “I told you not to talk.”

“I know.”

“You shouldn’t have said that.”

“I know.”

“I was hurting them enough on my own. They didn’t need that from you.”

“Maybe I have Tourette’s,” he says. “Except instead of screaming obscenities, I scream totally true things that I’ve been thinking and not saying for years.”

I press my forehead into my knees. Totally true things. Is that why what I’m feeling right now is not exactly sadness? It’s definitely not what I felt after I told Reed. That was a squeezing dark pain, purple and scarlet and black. This is opaque blue and ice-cold. I’m a little free.

If it wasn’t for that last over-the-shoulder glimpse—Dad’s face crumpling, Mom’s features permanently pained, with her eyes closed—I’d almost feel okay.

Our evening isn’t terrible. Not at all. I make grilled cheese again, Mo heats up a can of tomato soup, and we eat in front of the TV and drink our soup from mugs because Mo thinks it tastes better that way. It’s no gourmet feast, but when we’re done there are only golden crumbs on my plate, and my lips are buttery and warm. Even after I have food in me, I’m too drained to get off the couch, so we watch three episodes of Arrested Development, followed by Footloose (the newer one), which Mo pretends to hate.

“I’m going to bed,” I say, finally dragging myself off the couch. “Your sheets are in the dryer.”

“Oh, yeah. I totally forgot. Thanks for washing them.”

“You’re welcome,” I say. “Thanks for getting control of yourself and not killing Duchess.”

“I regret it already.”

“And thanks for coming with me,” I add.

“So much better than waiting for him to come here and kill me in my sleep. Wait, he could still do that, right?”

“Yeah, but I don’t think he would.”

“Very reassuring.”

Instinctively, I reach for my phone to check messages before I remember I turned it off after we left their house. “I think maybe I want to give my phone back to them,” I say, thinking aloud. “Do we have enough money to get me one? Maybe a pay-as-you-go?”

“I think so. Let’s figure it out in the morning.”

“Okay. Good night.”

“Good night.”

The bed is soft, but the pillows are too thick, like overstuffed balloons really, so my neck is arched up at an angle and my body feels like it’s hanging from my head.

Or it could be the guilt that’s keeping me awake. It’s like I’m clenching an ice cube in my fist. It’s cold and it’s burning me, but I can’t let go, and the ice-scorched skin feeling is too intense to let me fall asleep. I’ve got so many people to be sorry to.

And then there’s one tiny sliver of guilt scraping away at me from the inside too. It’s small and unexpected, but it’s the only one I can do something about. I slip out of bed and open the door. From the doorway, I can see the back of the couch and a single foot dangling from the end.

“Are you awake?” I whisper.

“Sort of,” he answers.

I swallow, wishing he was one or the other—awake or asleep—so this could matter or not, no guessing. “I’m sorry about what my dad said to you.”

He yawns. “About wanting to kill my dad, or about me being a lying little snake? Wait, he called me a bugger too, didn’t he? I would never do that, by the way. That’s disgusting.”

“About calling you a terrorist.” I wait in the doorway, feel the cat slink between my legs, then back into the room. “He didn’t mean it. He was in shock. Not that that makes it okay, but I don’t think he usually thinks things like that. He definitely doesn’t say them.”

Mo is quiet. The cat glides a figure eight around and through me again.

“No worries,” he says finally.

“Okay.” But it’s so not okay.

Back in bed, the pillows are still too big, so I use a bunched-up hoodie, which is too small, instead. As for the ice cube of guilt, if it’s even possible, I’m starting to numb. It’s still there. But it’ll be there tomorrow.

Duchess stretches herself across the foot of the bed and I’m suddenly jealous of how easy cat life is. She does what she wants, when she wants, where she wants. What I want, when I want, where I want—I don’t even know the answer to one of those. Or maybe I do. Reed. Now. Here.

I shove my face into my hoodie-pillow and wonder what he’s doing. Sleeping, probably. I hope he’s still mad or sad, or whatever emotion his grief storm settled into. That makes me a terrible person, but since I’m already a terrible person, I may as well admit it. I want him to be as gutted as I am. To think I could slip from his thoughts like I was never even there, just a meaningless summer fling with some high school girl, makes me want to curl up and squeeze myself until I disappear.

I should be happier. After all, living with Mo is strangely nice. I guess that shouldn’t be so surprising, but I was so traumatized that day at Sam’s, I couldn’t even think about what my life would really be like once I made it through the terrible parts. Telling my parents, telling Reed—those were messy and horrific enough to suck up any thought about the afterward. And now that I’m in the afterward, I feel lost. Almost dazed. If I didn’t have this constant scraped feeling in my chest, I don’t know what I’d feel.

Coexisting is bizarre. Mo doesn’t know how new this is for me—not being alone. He had Sarina before. And as much as I dislike Mr. Hussein, I know he and Mo would sit around and talk about boring stuff for hours.

The Berniers don’t coexist. They isolate heartbeats and lock doors.

For the first week, Mo and I stay up late watching TV, talking, throwing Duchess’s cat toys at each other, painting (me), reading (him), arguing about whether Duchess is actually possessed or just a man-hater, fixing meals, doing dishes. We live in the same space and it’s simple and easy. I don’t remember the feel of living in Lena’s space, or how different my parents were before. Maybe it was like this.

If I didn’t miss Reed so much, maybe I’d be able to feel how good this all is. But I can’t feel anything.

“We need to go grocery shopping,” Mo says.

“Yeah, I know.” I put my brush down and stand up.

At first I couldn’t paint with Mo in the room. I went so far as to haul my easel into the bedroom for some artistic privacy, but the lighting in there is lousy, and when I complained about it, Mo let me in on his little secret: He doesn’t actually care what I’m painting. At all. He even admitted that unless there are large-breasted naked women somewhere on the canvas, he doesn’t enjoy art.

It’s not as insulting as it sounds. It was actually pretty considerate of him to admit, since he knows saying it makes him sound like a Neanderthal and a pig, but he was willing to anyway so I can use the natural light from the window and listen to the TV while I paint and not feel watched.

I hardly ever think about my mural.

“Let’s skateboard to Kroger,” he says.

“That is such a bad idea.”

“If by bad, you mean amazing, then I agree.”

“No, it’s really bad,” I insist. “How much stuff can we safely carry back? Two small bags each. Tops.”

“Perfect. It’ll force us to be frugal.”

“It’s more frugal to buy in bulk,” I say, but I’m already giving in.

Mo found matching skateboards at a yard sale a few days ago and decided we had to have them. A wedding present to ourselves, he called it. Neither of us had ever spent more than a few minutes on one before (though I think Bryce had one when we were twelve and thirteen and they were somewhat cool), but Mo seems to have mastered the art of getting places without bloodying up his palms. I have not. I have scraped-up knees too. I’m pretty sure we look like complete dorks, but in light of everything else, it doesn’t seem to matter.

People know. It’s not worth tracing the twisted grapevine since it was inevitable, but I imagine it went from my heartbroken mom to her best friend, to her college-aged daughter, to the entire populace of Hardin County in a single afternoon.

But being a freak-show eloper is not that different from being a murdered girl’s sister, or how it was in the beginning, at least. In the last week I’ve had about ten awkward exchanges and six hundred weird stares. I’ve had two congratulations too, but they don’t count since they were from guys Mo plays basketball with, and neither of them could stop grinning and glancing at my stomach.

There’s been a lot of glancing at my stomach. So why not ride around on a skateboard with grocery bags and really give people something to talk about?

“How’s the job search coming?” Mo asks as we carry our boards down the stairwell to the parking lot.

“How’s your love letter to Maya coming?”

“Maya is supposedly on vacation in Boston with the Dunkirks for the next three weeks, so it’s being temporarily reshelved in my brain. And you know I’d be out there looking for a job too if I had work authorization.”

“Easy to say when you don’t. Are we in trouble or something? I thought your dad was putting money in the account.”

“He is.” Mo puts his board on the pavement, steps on, and glides away from me. “He just keeps asking if you’re working yet.”

I drop my board and try to glide after Mo, but it’s more of a jerk-and-wobble. “Excuse me?”

I can’t see his face, but his words are perfectly clear. “I don’t know what his deal is. I told him you quit your old job and he’s been asking if you’ve found a new one ever since. You know how he is about work ethic and stuff, though.”

“Wait a second. He’s thinks I’m freeloading? Seriously? He’s pissed because I’m not paying half the rent?” I have to shout to be heard, and I can’t tell whether it’s the shouting that’s making me angry, or the fact that Mo sped off so quickly, or that Mo’s delivering Mr. Hussein’s insults like they’re nothing. “Slow down!” I shout.

He doesn’t hear me, though. It isn’t until we’re approaching our first corner that he slows and stops to wait for me, and by the time I’ve reached him, I know exactly why I’m mad. “Does he not understand what’s happening here?” I step off my board, breathless, shaky. “What I’m giving up—what I’m going to give up? Do you even stick up for me when he says stuff like that?”

Mo looks confused. “I didn’t realize . . .”

“That he was being a total jerk?” I can’t catch his eyes because he’s looking all around me instead of at me, and he’d better not be about to apologize because I’m not in the mood. I’d much rather fight.

“I guess I didn’t.”

I fold my arms and wait for him to go on.

“It’s not that I’m afraid to stick up for you,” he explains. “But I didn’t realize what a total douchebag thing it was of him to say until . . .” Mo stops and scratches the mosquito bite above his elbow. “Until now, I guess. I’m sorry.”

And there it is. Just when I want to kill him, he completely takes the wind out of my sails. I slap another bug off his arm. “We’ve gotta get mosquito repellent at the store. They love you.”

“It’s because I’m so delicious.” He puts one foot on his board. “You really shouldn’t get a job if you don’t want to. I mean it.”

A job. I can’t think about a job without thinking about Mr. Twister, and I can’t think about Mr. Twister without thinking about Reed, and I can’t think about Reed without wanting to crumble like chalk. I step back onto my board. This time Mo stays by my side—bold move, as I’m still a danger to myself and others. A job. Working, trying to pay at least a part of the bills is the adult thing to do, and that’s the game that Mo and I are supposed to be playing, aren’t we? But doing the adult thing is so much easier when I’m not fighting the urge to curl over and into myself, and feed all the raggedness in my heart with memories of Reed, or sit in my corner painting hundreds of small canvases to replace the massive mural space in my brain.

“Working might make me feel better,” I say, not meaning it.

Mo says nothing. He knows that I’m sad, more sad than either of us thought I would be, and he’s letting me be that way.

I’ve almost told Mo the truth about Reed at least a dozen times. He has no clue that I think about calling Reed at least once an hour, but I don’t know how to say that what I felt, no, feel, is so much more than what I let on. I’m not even sure how I got here—from being able to tell Mo everything to not being able to tell him the most important thing. It’s a cop-out to say I don’t want Mo to feel guilty about my broken heart. That’s not it. It’s something to do with how I clutch my pain, something I don’t understand about myself. It’s a magic stone or a candy in my cheek. I want it all to myself.

It’s better to let Mo think I’m sad about disappointing my parents.

We’re here. Mo stashes our skateboards in a bush while I grab a cart.

“What are we getting?” Mo asks.

“Small things. Small, light things.”

“I’m worried someone’s going to steal the skateboards.”

“No offense to your wedding gift to us, but I don’t think anyone would bother. Besides, they’re barely visible.”

We wander the aisles without a list or a plan, but we do fine with Mo’s stomach as our guide and a few last-minute additions by me to round out a meal or two. Or at least I think so until I see our purchases through the eyes of the middle-aged checker, whom I kind of know because her daughter was in my chemistry and English classes last semester. Angel hair. Pop-Tarts. Alfredo sauce. Wonder Bread. A bunch of bananas. Nutella. Chocolate milk. Regular milk. Frozen garlic bread. Cheese sticks. Instant mashed potatoes.

“I just realized we’re only buying white foods,” I whisper. “We’re going to die of malnutrition.”

“Nutella and chocolate milk,” Mo says. He has no whisper in his repertoire, so the checker can be open with her disapproving stare. “That’s team brown being well represented. And plus, we’ve got like ten boxes of cereal at home, and they are all fortified with stuff. I think.”

Out front, we’re reorganizing groceries when Mo says, “Crap, I forgot something.”

“What?”

“I’ll be back in a minute.”

“What did you forget?” I ask.

“Just something.”

I finish the reorganizing, trying not to think about what “just something” might mean—laxatives, jock itch medication, hemorrhoid cream. I can’t even think what else might be too embarrassing for him to tell me. He generally has no shame.

By the time he reappears I’ve divided everything into two light bags for me and two heavier bags for him, and I’ve eaten half a banana.

“You ready?” I ask, trying not to notice that every pocket on his cargo shorts is bulging.

“You want to see what I bought?”

“Do you want to show me what you bought?” I ask cautiously.

It’s then I really look at him, see the little-boy smile. He holds out his hand and opens one finger at a time, revealing a plastic egg, red on the bottom, clear on the top. Inside, something glitters. “It took me nine quarters.”

I take the egg from his hand and pop it open. It’s a ring, the color of grape crush and the size of a dime, glued to an adjustable plastic band. “Sparkly,” I whisper. “How many karats—no, don’t tell me.”

“And we also have a collection of sticky hands and princess tattoos.” He pats his pockets.

The ring is too small, even with the adjustable band, so I slide it halfway down my pinkie. “Perfect.”

“If you were five.”

“I’m young at heart.” I reach down, pick up the two heavier bags, and hand them to him. “Thanks.”

He shrugs. “I can’t have my wife wandering around without a ring, can I? No telling who might hit on her.”

“Does that mean I’m supposed to buy you a ring too so girls aren’t throwing themselves at you?” I ask, and shove the rest of the banana in my mouth and throw the peel at him.

He dodges it, picks it up, and tosses it into the trash. “No amount of bling is going to stop the ladies from doing that. Let’s go.”

I examine the ring one more time. The plastic is already digging into my knuckle. I want to say thank you again—less for the ring, more for just being Mo—but I’m suddenly fighting to swallow over the lump in my throat.

Mo’s staring at me. “Your parents are going to get over it.”

Oh, them. I nod. And for just a second I consider really telling him about my broken, smashed, trampled-on heart. Maybe I wouldn’t feel so empty if I could explain I think I may have actually been in love.

“They will,” he says. “They love you. They’re just playing hardball. Ready?” He steps on his board.

I grab my bags and follow.

I don’t like being weighted on wheels, without hands free to catch myself when the inevitable happens. The bags are practically even, but I still feel like I’m leaning left. All I have to do is let go of the bags if I fall. I know that, but I doubt I’ll know that while I’m actually falling. Not everyone has the same set of survival instincts.

But I don’t fall. Not on the surprise lip in the sidewalk, not on either of the two hills, and not even when we roll back through the parking lot and I see my Explorer parked in a visitor stall, my mother in the driver’s seat, staring off into nothing.

It’s only been a week. I’m not sure if this makes me a bad daughter, but I haven’t missed her, unless the heart lurch I feel right now counts. I’ve been too busy dying over Reed, too busy playing house with Mo, too busy painting pictures of weird objects from the apartment to chase the ocean out of my head.

She turns and sees me, then lifts a hand—a greeting, not a smile.

Is she waiting for me to go to her? I step off my board, but I don’t get any closer.

Mo swears under his breath.

“You should go up to the apartment,” I say.

He tucks my board under his arm and takes the bags from me with his other hand.

She gets out of the car and walks toward us.

“Mrs. Bernier,” he says with a nod.

She squints at the skateboards instead of looking him in the eye. “You don’t have a car?”

“Yes, ma’am. It’s over there.” He points to the Camry.

“It doesn’t work?”

“It works fine.”

“Mo’s just taking this stuff up,” I say.

He nods. “Nice seeing you, ma’am.”

She rummages through her purse, pretending to look for something so she doesn’t have to say good-bye politely, like she doesn’t know I’ve seen that move from her before.

I wait until the stairwell door clicks shut. “You could be nice to him, you know. It’s not like he has any family around anymore.”

“Is that why you married him? Because you felt bad for him? So you could take care of him? Girls who think like that don’t end up happy, you know.”

“Why are you here?”

“To help you.”

“I don’t need help.”

“Of course you do.”

“No, I don’t. I’m an adult. I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine. And adults don’t ride skateboards to the grocery store. You’re kids playing some kind of grown-up married-person game, and at some point you’re going to realize there’s a lot more to marriage than skating around and whatever else you two do together.”

I snort. Whatever else. This is the closest thing to a sex talk we have ever had. “Maybe my marriage isn’t anything like yours, but I happen to think that’s a good thing.”

She lifts her chin slightly, pulls her cheeks in so her face looks a little gaunter. The movements are all small, but I recognize them. I’ve hurt her. That familiar pang of guilt rings through me. I’m so tired of hurting her.

“I am here to help you,” she says. She may be wounded, but she’s always calm, like a bird with a smashed wing waiting for something worse to happen. “You don’t want to come home. Fine. I can’t make you. But your dad thinks you’ll change your mind faster if we sit back and let you sink, and I’m not prepared to do that.” She holds out the car keys. “Here.” The single word echoes through the garage.

“I don’t want it.”

“Take it.”

“No.”

“You can’t skateboard to school all winter long.”

“Mo has a car!”

“Then take this,” she says, slipping her MasterCard out of her wallet.

I shake my head.

“For when the car breaks down.”

“Mo has money.”

“You mean Mo’s dad has money. Is either of you working?”

I cringe. “No.” I wouldn’t have wasted my week moping about Reed if I’d known I was going to have to admit that to her.

She thrusts it at me. “Take it so you don’t have to go begging to Mo’s dad the next time you want a new outfit. Do you know anything about how those people operate?”

I look into her eyes and see tears pooling, her lower lip quivering.

“Those people?”

She grits her teeth, pulling the tears back in. “Don’t get all high and mighty with the political correctness now. You don’t just marry a person. You marry a family and a religion and a culture—do you even know the first thing about any of it?”

My heart is racing now.

“Do you know how they treat their women?”

“I know how Mo treats me.”

“Do you realize that according to them you’re his property now?”

“It’s not li—”

“Or that your children will be Muslim, even if you aren’t? Although if you’ve already converted, that’s obviously not something that’s going to bother you. Have you?”

I stare into her eyes. Who said anything about converting to Islam? Her eyes really are brilliant when she’s angry. The sparkle reminds me of my new ring.

“But if you think that’s something that’s not going to bother me and your dad, you’re wrong. Sorry if it’s not politically correct, or if it makes me old-fashioned and small-minded in your eyes, but there’s something to be said for calling it like it is.”

I’m too blindingly angry to speak. I can’t even think with her eyes cutting into me like that. It’s the glare. I don’t even know which question to answer first. But silence sounds like stupidity to her, and I wish I weren’t too stunned to breathe.

“I just never thought you’d hurt us this way,” she says bitterly.

“That’s the problem!” I hear myself yell, but it doesn’t even feel like me. It’s some other girl, some other explosion. “There isn’t a maximum amount of pain you can feel. It’s not like you can use it all up on Lena and expect to be done. I can’t hide in my room the rest of my life because your heart is already too broken. It’s not my fault that you let what happened to her crush you.”

She pulls in her chin and lifts her shoulders like she’s bracing, but it’s too late. I’ve already said it. We’re both too shocked to do anything but stare at each other. Tears pool in her eyes. Finally she stretches out her arm again, pushing the card inches from my hand. “Take it.”

I slap it away.

It doesn’t feel like my hand, but now there’s a slight stinging in the center of my palm where it connected, and in the seconds that it takes for the card to cartwheel through the air, I hear her gasp like it’s her face that I’ve slapped. The card clatters as it hits the cement, the sound echoing like applause. Or gunfire.

I can’t look at her in the silence that follows. I stare at the card, lying facedown beneath the tailpipe of a minivan. We’re finished. I turn away. Don’t run, don’t run, don’t run, my brain tells my body, and my body obeys even though walking hurts. Still, I force myself to the stairwell, one deliberate step away from her at a time, and when the door clicks shut behind me and I’m finally free to run up to Mo without looking like a baby, I don’t. The adrenaline is gone. I do exactly what my mother thinks I’m going to do. I stumble forward and sink.