Until We Fly

Chapter Fourteen

Brand

Each day of the week passes peacefully, each night just as peaceful. Nora sleeps in my bed, curled into my side.

Each morning, she kisses me awake, her hair falling onto my face.

Today, after breakfast, I venture outside while she works from her laptop at the table. I make my way down to the gazebo that sits near the beach.

Dropping onto a bench, I stare at the lake.

More specifically, I stare at the large buoy floating a hundred yards out. The bell dings with the breeze, as the moss covered buoy tilts to and fro on the waves.

A shudder runs through me.

As I stare at it, I don’t even see it anymore. Instead, in my head, I’m a boy again. And I still hear the dinging of that fucking bell.

I glance at the clock. Three a.m.

There’s only one person who would come for me at three a.m.

I swallow hard, the acidic taste of bile rising in my throat. It won’t go down, so I swallow harder, and the footsteps come closer.

My hands twist in the sheets, forming a fist….a fist that I know I won’t use. I’m only twelve and he outweighs me by a hundred pounds.

I grit my teeth, flexing my jaw.

My bedroom door opens.

His shadow fills up my doorway, falling onto the floor. In the blackness, his shadow resembles the monster he is.

“Get out here,” he growls.

I force myself to succumb to numbness as I climb from bed. It’s the only way I survive it… this… my life.

He grabs my arm, dragging me down the hall. Every other door remains closed, tight and dark. Like always, no one will come to my rescue.

I’m alone.

I’m used to it.

One foot after the other, I make the long walk. When the cold air hits my face, I don’t even flinch. My bare feet burn from the snow. I still don’t react.

All I do… all I can ever do… is brace myself for the pain.

It comes quickly.

My father backhands me hard, hard enough that I go flying into the frozen sand and I taste blood.

“Get up,” my father snarls, alcohol on his breath. He’s been at the bar, again. It’s always when he comes home trashed that he drags me out here.

I stagger to my feet, and the world whirls around me. I see two of my father, before I blink and they blend back into one.

“Swim out and ring the bell,” he demands.

I shake my head. “The lake is almost frozen,” I tell him. “I can’t.”

My father’s face contorts. “You’re such a little chicken shit,” he growls, backhanding the side of my head. I cup my ear with my hand and feel the blood as it trickles down my neck. It’s warm.

“It’s your fault she’s dead,” he tells me, his words as stark as the frozen lake. “And it should’ve been you.”

He hits me again, and this time, I don’t get up.

“A penny for your thoughts,” Nora tells me softly, coming up from behind. She lays her hand on my shoulder and I glance up, trying to shake the old memories away.

“They aren’t worth a penny,” I tell her. And I mean it. She eyes me curiously, then stares out at the buoy.

“Thinking about your dad’s will?”

No.

“Yeah,” I lie.

She bites her lip as she stares into the distance. “Have you decided if you’ll do it?”

I haven’t even thought about it.

“I probably will,” I tell her. “My mom wasn’t the best mother, but even she deserves something for staying married to my father for so long.”

Nora glances at me. “But do you deserve to have to be the one who gives it to her?”

I shrug. “I’m just going for a swim. No big deal.”

She eyes me doubtfully. “But you hate to swim.”

I nod. “Yeah, I do. But it won’t kill me.”

Nora can’t see the way my palms go clammy at the thought. Because damnit, Brand. Quit being a pussy.

Nora smiles at me. “The UPS driver was just here. You got something from Gabe.”

My tux. I’d called and asked Gabe’s wife Maddy to ship it. They’ve got a key to my place.

“Ah,” I tell her. “Good. It’s Friday and I need something to wear.”

Nora’s face instantly clouds over and I regret mentioning it. But it is Friday. She’s got to face it sometime, because the dinner is tonight.

“I’m sure your dad will be very happy to see me,” I tell her drolly. She actually laughs at that.

“I’m sure,” she agrees with a grin. “Don’t be surprised if he hugs you.”

“With his fist,” I nod. She giggles again.

“He wouldn’t have the balls,” she tells me.

She’s probably right. I could saw the fear hidden in his careful expression the other day.

We get up and walk back to the house, and as we cross the threshold of the living room, I can’t help but look at the fucking wooden box that my dad left for me. It mocks me.

Nora follows my gaze.

“What do you think is in it?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” I tell her honestly. “I can’t imagine.”

“Do you want to know?”

“I don’t know that, either,” I’m honest again. “Part of me is curious. Part of me just wants to burn it without looking. I don’t really care what he has to say to me.”

Nora stops in her tracks and is perfectly still as she watches me. “What did he do to you?” she asks quietly.

I shake my head. “It’s not worth talking about anymore. He’s gone. And he took his hatefulness with him.”

Nora takes a step, and puts her hand on my chest, feather-light, directly over my heart.

“He didn’t take it all,” she observes. “Part of it still lives on in here.” She taps on my heart. “He put those scars there, Brand. Somehow. You’ve got to figure out how to get those scars off.”

“I’ve heard vitamin E oil works,” I tell her glibly, without acknowledging what she said. She rolls her eyes.

“I’m serious. Deal with it and put it to bed, Brand. Whatever he did to you, he can never do it again. Because he’s gone.”

“He is,” I agree. “But so is my sister.”

Why did I just say that? The words came out before I could stop them.

Nora’s head snaps up.

“You have a sister?”

I opened this can of worms. With a sigh, I try and close it again.

“I did. She died a long time ago.”

I try and walk past Nora, but she grabs my arm and stares up at me, her blue eyes so so serious, and so fucking perceptive.

“How did she die?” she asks quietly, never taking her eyes off of me.

I swallow.

“She drowned. Out in the lake.”

“Oh my God,” Nora breathes. “Did you see it happen? Is that why you don’t like to swim?”

I look away, out at the water, at the sky, at the beach.

As I do, I can’t help but remember that night.

“I was sleeping when it happened,” I tell her woodenly. “My sister used to sleepwalk. They put a lock on her bedroom door on the outside, to lock her in so she couldn’t hurt herself on the stairs. But that night, my father forgot to lock it when he tucked her in before he went to the bar.”

Nora stares at me in horror.

“I don’t know what to say,” she finally says. “That’s awful. Why does he want you to ring the bell?”

I shake my head and I hate to say the words. But I say them anyway, because they’re the truth.

“Because sometimes, people can’t blame themselves even when they know they’re to blame. They just have to focus their anger on someone else, just to make it bearable.”

Nora stares at me in confusion. “I don’t understand. He blamed you? How in the world could it have been your fault?”

I swallow again, and again, trying to get the lump out of my throat. The fucking lump that forms whenever I think of Allison.

“My father was under the assumption that I should’ve heard her come out of her room in the middle of the night because my room was right across the hall. He thought that I had heard her and just chose not to follow her. See, back then, when I was little, I was scared of swimming in the lake. I wasn’t scared of anything else… I wasn’t scared of snakes or spiders or heights. But I was scared of the lake. I don’t know why.”

I stop speaking and stare out the window. In my head, it’s that night. And it’s black and terrible.

“He thought I was lying about not hearing her get up. He thought I was just too much of a chicken shit to follow her into the lake to save her.”

I never knew that speaking the hateful words out loud would be so painful, so much like a scalpel to my throat.

Nora shakes her head slowly, in blatant disbelief. “No. There’s no way he actually believed that. Surely not…”

I shrug, trying to appear nonchalant, like it doesn’t still hurt after so many years. “He did. And he convinced my mother of it, too. They both hated me after that.”

“How old was your sister?” Nora whispers.

“Four,” I answer.

“And you?”

“I was six.”

She stares back at me, her blue eyes unyielding. “You were six years old. Even if you had heard her, and I’m sure that you didn’t, how could you have saved her? You were too little.”

I meet her gaze without flinching. “Nora, I guarantee you. If I’d heard her get out of bed and walk outside, I would’ve saved her.”

Nora smiles a sad smile. “I have no doubt that you would’ve.”

We stand there for the longest time, and the air is heavy around us with the weight of our conversation.

“I can’t believe I just told you all of that,” I admit finally. “I’ve never told anyone before.”

She glances up at me, her eyes soft.

“Not even Gabe?”

I shake my head. “No. Gabe and Jacey were only here in the summers. They never saw my sister, so they don’t even know she existed. They saw the bruises my father gave me when I was a kid, but they never knew why.”

“Didn’t anyone ever try and take you away from your parents?” Nora asks softly, her eyes assessing me, raking me over, searching out my secrets.

I shake my head. “I never told anyone. Gabe knew, to some extent, but I made him swear not to tell. I guess kids are just always loyal to their parents, no matter what. But he and Jacey did their best to help me. They kept me down at their grandparents pretty much all summer, every summer.”

But the winters were endless.

“Why does he want you to ring the bell?” Nora asks, her voice filled with dread.

I stare out the window. “Because that used to be his thing. He thought I purposely didn’t save my sister because I was scared to swim. So he’d come home from the bar and drag me out to the beach, where he’d try and make me swim out and ring the bell. It infuriated him when I wouldn’t. He’d beat me senseless and I still wouldn’t do it.”

Nora sucks in her breath as she stares at me in sympathy.

“Don’t feel sorry for me,” I tell her firmly. “Because what he doesn’t know is that I stopped being afraid of the water by the time I was ten. But I kept refusing out of principle…and stubbornness. I decided that he could beat me, but he couldn’t make me pay for something I didn’t do. It was my own way of standing up to him.”

Nora’s lips spread in a slow smile. “So that’s why you can swim, but you don’t.”

I nod, curtly, one time.

“And now he’s trying to bully you into swimming,” she realizes. “One last time.”

I nod again.

But Nora’s confused again. “I don’t get it though,” she says. “You said your mom has hated you ever since. Why would your father think that using her as leverage would work?”

I look away from her. “Because one of the things he used to tell me was that I was weak. That I was too loyal, that I should be colder. Like him.”

Nora stares at me, horrified. “He faulted you for being a good human being?”

I shrug. “I guess. He saw kindness as a weakness. And he always called me weak. I guess he wants me to either show, once and for all, that I am weak, or show that I can be a cold-hearted bastard like him.”

Without another word, Nora throws herself into my arms with enough force to knock me backward. We tumble into the chair behind us and she lands on my lap.

“Is your leg ok?” she asks quickly.

I nod. “Yeah. Don’t worry about it.” My knee is throbbing, but I don’t care. It doesn’t matter.

She looks into my eyes. “You’re not weak, Brand. Being kind is not a weakness. You’re the farthest thing from weak that I’ve ever seen in my life.”

I don’t answer.

She lays her head on my chest, remaining still. After a while, she speaks without moving.

“I can hear your heart.”

I don’t say anything.

“You have the strongest heart of anyone I’ve ever known.”

I still don’t say anything, although that fucking lump forms in my throat again.

Before long, Nora raises her head.

“Don’t compromise yourself for him,” she tells me, her blue eyes staring into my own. “I don’t know what his game is. But don’t let him compromise you. Do what’s best for you. Do what you’re comfortable with. No more, no less.”

She stares at me fiercely for a minute before she kisses me, hard, with passion.

I kiss her back, pulling her into me, my arms wrapped around her.

She gets it. She’s the first person to ever really ‘get’ my situation and the fucked-upedness that was my father. But the sad part is, I know she only gets it through experience of her own.

Because her father is just as fucked up in his own way as my father was.

That only pisses me off more.

But now, instead of only being pissed at a dead man, I’m pissed at someone living, at a situation that I can actually change.

Nora’s dad isn’t going to hurt her again.