Soundtrack: 'Wash me clean' - Josh Garrels

{Cary}

Jon was quiet after the breakfast stop, his face shadowed in spite of the morning light. Cary rolled his window down and lit up a smoke, and Jon straightened, turning toward him with a hungry, desperate look on his face. Silently, Cary fished another smoke out of the pack and offered it with the lighter. The car filled with gusts of wind, which roughed up Jon's hair and tugged at his shirt while he nursed the cigarette to its filter. He cradled the half-empty bag of seeds and glumly munched on them when the cigarette was gone.

Cary kept glancing at the time, his thoughts returning to Kadee getting ready for school. The memory of her mouth curving in a smile, the sound of her laughing voice, was aching inside of him. He fought with himself: their goodbye had been so awkward and painful that the smart thing would be to give her some space. But his desire to hear her voice and feel the warm energy of her presence, even through the phone, won out. It wasn't too early—he thumbed his phone open with one hand and touched her number.

"Hey—it's you." Her voice was throaty like she'd just woken up.

Jon glanced at him, then looked away, propping his head against his arm on the window, watching the fields pass.

"Hey," Cary said. He got a little stuck—he didn't want to say anything that would give her a reason to hope and wait. How did people have conversations, anyways?

"Where are you this morning?"

He was grateful for a factual question he could actually answer. "Still on the road. Slept in the car."

"Cary," she began hesitantly. "Did Pete reach you?"

His stomach sank. "No."

"The Klassens are pressing charges."

He let his breath out slowly, his eyes on the horizon where the highway pinched into nothing. "Did you have to talk to the cops?" his voice was rough.

"Yes—they came to my house yesterday. No one's happy you left town. They wanted to know where you're going."

He was silent a moment. "I'm too close now to turn around."

The sound of Kadee's exhale was loud in Cary's ear. "Don't turn around. I told them I hit Todd first. I started it. You acted out of self-defence."

The car wobbled, but Cary righted it quickly.

"You shouldn't have—"

"It's what's true," she said firmly. "Maybe the fight wouldn't even have happened if I hadn't. I told them everything else, too—the gross things Todd's been saying. I think he posted that photo of me off his brother's phone."

"Then I'm glad I laid him out," Cary growled. He took a steadying breath. It might be enough to clear him. It might not. "If I have to, I'll come back and sort it out. When this is done."

"I miss you," she said softly.

"You too," he said, shooting a glance at Jon.

"I'm still going to the north doors at lunch, to eat in our spot."

His throat tightened. "Call me then." He hung up and tossed the phone on the dash, swearing.

"What's that about?" Jon asked quietly.

Cary gripped the steering wheel in his fists, then released. "Klassens are pressing charges."

Jon took a breath as if to speak, his freckles standing out on the pale skin of his cheeks, but then he covered his mouth with his hand and turned his face to the window. There was a tight silence, and Cary thumbed the phone open and passed it to Jon.

"Can you figure out where we're going?"

Jon bent his head over the map app that was open on the phone in his lap, his fingers trembling slightly on the screen. He fisted his hand closed and when he opened it, his fingers were steady. "That's our exit." Jon glanced up the tree-lined highway. "Next left. And then a grid road for a bit."

Cary slowed for the turn, the gravel making the car jolt and jostle. He folded all his sorries into a box where they were out of the way. He couldn't have those messing with him when he didn't know what he was getting into here.

The landscape had changed: the vast grain fields were now broken by stands of pine and thick sections of tree and bush. A house stood at the end of a long lane with two ruts winding through tall grass. The low building receded into the bush at its back like it would prefer to disappear, keeping its front door accessible out of the barest courtesy. Cary bumped over the ruts into the yard and two collies bounded toward the car. He sat for a moment, looking at the house. His stomach felt like butterflies the size of frying pans were jumping in it, and he tried to tell himself he didn't care how this went—if he'd made a mistake and she was a complete stranger, or worse, if another family member shut the door in his face.

Jon had his hands under his legs, leaning forward as he looked at the house. "Do you want me to wait here?"

There were a dozen things he would need to explain—Jon's presence was the least of his worries. "You're here. Might as well come."

"Good—I need to use the bathroom." Jon climbed out of the car, holding his arms up cautiously while the dogs sniffed him over, their tails waving.

Cary got out, smoothing his shirt front, tugging his cuffs straight and shaking the creases out of his pants. His father had at least taught him that much. He felt light-headed and his ears buzzed. He remembered to pray and drew a slow breath in and out. If this person shut the door in his face, at least he wasn't completely alone.

The dogs escorted them to the door at a loose trot. He rang the bell and waited, his hands in his pockets as he looked out over the land. He hadn't made a plan for the case that no one was home.

The latch clicked and Cary turned. The man in the doorway recoiled, his lip curling back from his teeth. "Conall Douglas, what in hell..." he growled.

Cary's hands clenched inside his pockets. "Ciaran—Cary."

The blue-grey eyes widened a fraction, and when the man spoke again, Cary realized it was a woman in a man's work shirt and jeans, bluff and square as a rock worn by weather in the fields around them. "Of course. My mind must be going. Your daddy would be going on 50 now."

He swallowed. "Yes, ma'am."

She looked skittish, like she still might just shut the door in his face. He turned aside. "This is my friend, Jon White. I been living with his family a while."

Jon lifted a hand with a smile and Cary thought he almost looked like his old self in baggy clothes.

"We're looking for my Aunt Tru," Cary said. He searched her face for any resemblance to his mother's smooth, dramatic features. Apart from the colour of her eyes, there wasn't any. The fiery hair he remembered was faded to ash and cut close around her wrinkled, unpierced ears. "There was an ad online about vegetables and eggs at this address? The contact had the same last name as my mom—before Douglas."

She turned aside. "Wipe your shoes afore you come in."

They wiped their shoes and stepped into a living room that had been furnished in the 1960s—orange shag carpet, olive green couch now flattened and shiny with wear, and a massive old television in a wooden case. The house smelled like warm dog and field dust.

The woman levered off her boots and walked through to the kitchen. A stack of seed catalogues and a Sudoku puzzle book were spread on the kitchen table. "Don't mind the mess. I wasn't expecting visitors." She darted a look at him, a flash of those hard blue-grey eyes going to the cut on his eyebrow, then the bruise on his face. "You take coffee?"

He stood in his socks, his hands closed at his sides. "Yes, ma'am." He didn't know what he'd been expecting...an embrace?

"You travelled a ways to get here. You drive?"

"Yes ma'am." He cleared his throat. "I'm 16."

She sized him up again with narrowed eyes. "Your father know you're here?"

It was a little hard to breathe. He thought it might be the eight-foot ceilings and the dust. "No. We don't—I'm not in contact with him."

Her eyebrows lifted. They were full and nearly met in the middle, like a man's. She turned aside and opened the cupboard. "How's your mother? I ain't heard from her in—going on five years now."

He didn't know how to find words to answer that for this strange, hard woman. His fingers found the photograph folded in his wallet and pulled it out. It was one of the casual shots of just his mom and Liam. He held it out.

She took it, her eyes widening, lifting to his face.

"My brother, Liam," Cary said. "He come this spring."

"Well now, that's sweet," she drawled, sneering as she thrust the photo back at him. "Your father must be over the moon. They always wanted another child after...Renae." She turned abruptly, clattering the mugs and jars in the cupboard.

Cary smoothed the photo against his chest, trying to take a full breath. He could feel Jon's eyes going back and forth between him and this woman. He didn't even know her name. "Conall don't live with them anymore. He's not allowed within 200 metres of Liam." At least he'd done that much right. "Or me."

Her hands paused, her broad shoulders stiff and still. "You remember your Aunt Tru, boy?"

"Some." His voice was unsteady. "She took me out for ice cream the day of the funeral."

She shot him a sideways glance. "You got vanilla twist all over your Sunday best, if I recall."

His ears got hot and his eyes pricked. "She prayed a prayer with me before bed—the one that goes 'Now I lay me down...'" his voice disappeared and he watched her, swallowing.

Her eyebrows lowered and she folded her arms in front of her. "I haven't thought of that prayer in years."

Cary drew in his breath and shut his eyes. It was her. She was a real person and still alive.

"Excuse me?" Jon asked faintly. "Can I use your bathroom?"

"Down the hall—the room with the toilet," she said shortly. She waited until he was gone, her mouth hardening as she looked steadily at Cary. "What did you come here for? Your mother send you? She coulda just called. Phone still works after all these years."

Her sarcasm was so harsh it scraped over his skin. He was starting to wonder the same thing. He could barely make the words. "I needed to know if I had more family."

"More than Beverly and Conall." She gave him a sharp look.

"Yes, ma'am," he said.

"They're a pair, aren't they? I'm surprised to hear they're separated. Course, it's probably just a matter of time before she goes back to him. She always does."

In the moment of brittle quiet, Cary realized he couldn't do this. He didn't know this woman and she clearly did not want to know him. He was wound up so tightly his shoulders hurt and he thought he might throw up. He turned aside and edged toward the door.

"I'm sorry I bothered you. I should've called. I'll just—I'll be on my way."

She braced herself on the counter, bending her head. "You look just like him." Her voice rasped with emotion. "When he started coming 'round—he swept her away and it was like she'd gone crazy."

Cary looked up at her, his fingers on the laces of his shoes.

"She couldn't say nothing against him. 'He's so passionate,' she'd say. 'He feels things so intensely; he can't help it.' And there'd be love shining out of her face all purple with bruises." Her mouth twisted with pain. "You know what that's like, boy?"

He covered his face in his hands, catching his breath. "Yes."

"When you were a little child, it weren't so hard to see you and forget who your father is. Now all I see is him. The man who took my little sister away."

Cary got to his feet, keeping his face away from the acid of her hatred. "I'll go."

"No, goddammit, you'll not go." She glared at him. "You think I'll let him take you too? I just gotta get used to you." She strode across the room and took his arm. Her fingers were calloused and strong. He let her lead him into the living room to stand on the rug in his boots. "Look me in the eyes, boy."

He did. She was only a little shorter than he was, holding him at arm's length in that firm grip. She tracked back and forth over his face like he was a wartime message coded to mean either "surrender" or "attack."

The hair on the back of his neck stirred as he thought of his father's face, which he wore, and all the other things his father had put inside of him. That he was worthless, that he deserved to hurt, that he would never be loved. Things he was starting to believe were not true, but they still cut deeply because his father thought they were true and maybe always would. The intensity of her gaze undid him and he had to close his eyes. "I'm not him."

Her grip loosened, and she slid her hand down to his wrist. She brushed a thumb over the scar showing past the edge of his cuff, lifting his hand to look at it more closely. "You didn't have these before."

He withdrew his hand, tugging the cuff straight. He needed a minute to steady his trembling. "I broke them. There's pins in."

"You broke them?" she growled softly.

He looked silently at her, thoroughly unsettled. Jon appeared in the doorway of the kitchen, watching them with his hair rumpled up over his pale face.

She turned away and said, "I'll put on the coffee. Might as well stay now you're here."

He took his time getting his boots off again; Jon crossed to sit on the edge of the old sofa, mouthing you okay? Cary shook his head, rubbing his hand over his mouth.

She looked up and seemed annoyed that he was still in the entryway. "Well, sit down. Your friend want a cup? Something to eat?"

Jon made a sick face and Cary said, "He's not been feeling well. I'll have a cup. Thanks."

He drew his chair up to the kitchen table again, watching her sideways while she rummaged in the cupboard, coming up with a box of cookies. She put a handful on a plate and set it on the table between them. She poured coffee out of an enamel pot and set it in front of him, then took her seat, leaning against the straight wooden back. "You must have something powerful to say if you drove all the way out here to say it."

Cary shook his head. This didn't seem the time to tell her he needed a place to stay. He wasn't even sure he would want to stay with her if she offered. "Questions," he said. "About my family."

She shifted in her chair. She hadn't touched her coffee. "I ain't talked to them in years, boy."

He took a breath, touching her face with a look for a moment. "You were there, though. Before. I've been trying to piece it together but...there's gaps."

She held his look, her eyebrows hanging down low. "Ask then."

He blew over the top of his drink, gathering his thoughts. "The last time you came was—for the funeral? For Renae?"

She nodded, unhappiness etched deep in the lines around her mouth. She took a breath so deep it shook her body, and then blew it out. "Bev took it so hard she about let go of life. Your momma. I came to care for her, and when he wouldn't let me do that, I stayed to care for you. I don't know much about children, but what little I knew—food at the right times, holding at the right times, keeping you clean and in clothes—I did as best I could. You were wide-eyed as a wild thing with his leg in a trap, and I didn't know how long it'd been since someone noticed you and fed you. Or gave you a kind word."

He held still, absorbing her words. They named the few pictures and impressions he had from that time. He thought he should say thank you, but he didn't know how.

She wrapped her hands around her mug, fingers overlapping. "He weren't hitting you then, or at least not recent. I checked you all over when I put you in pj's and put you to bed."

Cary lifted his shoulders. "No, he never—" he got stuck a second. "—hit me before then." He kept his eyes on his mug. "What do you mean—my mother let go of life?"

Tru hesitated. "She took to her bed and wouldn't get up. Wouldn't speak. Barely ate. Your father about went crazy trying to keep her from starving. He could sit her up and she would just fall over like a doll. Eyes open, nobody home."

Cary pressed his lips, looking at her. He suddenly remembered that, watching from a doorway while his father sat his mother up in bed, holding her against his chest so he could brush her hair.

"He was as dogged a nursemaid as I could have asked for," Tru allowed. "But he didn't see nothing else but her. Like both his children died, instead of just the one."

"When did she—come back?"

Tru shook her head. "I was gone before she was back on her feet."

Cary put his fist against his mouth, telling his body to keep breathing. He knew this part. He'd seen it in his nightmares too many times to count.

"Why did you go?" His voice was just a thread.

Her eyes lifted to his, her lips quivering, and for a second, he saw his mother's face in hers. "He wanted me out. I eked out one reason or another to stay a day or two, a week, but there weren't more I could do. You went back to school and he packed my bags."

He blinked. The day he came home from school and found Tru gone. The empty house, his father's door closed forbiddingly. He went into his mother's room even though he knew he wasn't supposed to go near her. He crawled into her bed, burrowing next to her soft warmth and put his arms around her. His tears fell on her still face and he shook her and screamed for her to wake up and come back for him.

She lay there with her eyes open, still and silent, while his father made him beg for mercy, hanging onto her feet under the covers while the belt licked every exposed inch of skin until he lost his voice for screaming. She got up the next day. Cary was in the basement, and she came to bring him up for lunch.

The silence was long. Tru burst out like he had accused her. "You weren't my child; I couldn't just take you with me! You didn't have a mark on you, and all that time I didn't see anything I could use to take you away. There weren't nothing but my own gut eating away at me day and night. I thought of you every day for years."

He bent his head, absorbing that. Someone had known. Someone had thought of him. "I don't blame you," he said in a low voice. "I didn't come here to blame you."

She ran her hand through her brush of greying hair. "I tried to keep in touch. I called. You were always at soccer, or art class, or piano lessons. At first your mother and I talked regular. They were trying to get pregnant, and she was on the phone to me every month crying when no baby came."

Cary's eyebrows hit his hairline. He hadn't known that.

"Then the calls just—quit coming. Not all at once, like something happened, just like...she forgot." She met his eyes, deep hurt showing in her own. "She forgot me and moved on. I hoped—I hoped that meant she was happy. That you were happy. That you all made a new life together and didn't need me."

Cary put his eyes on the window. The dogs were flopped in the dappled shade of a tree, panting. He said, "They were happy. In a way. In their work."

She gripped her mug in her fist, shifting her feet. "And you?"

"I kept the peace." It came out flat and dry. He made spit with his mouth and took a drink of his cooling coffee. "He didn't hit her as much. Almost not at all."

"I can't—I can't hardly believe he changed." She frowned at him. "Did it soften him, losing the child?"

He flinched his face aside. "No. He blamed me. I took it."

"You did not," she said hoarsely. "He did not do that. How could he blame you for Renae?"

Cary had told Pete this part, and Pete had said he was forgiven. But it was still hard to say it out loud—the thing that had beat inside him every day since her breath had stopped. "I was in the crib with her. I held her too tight. She smothered."

Tru's face darkened. "He never told you that." She slapped the table and the crack made Cary jump a foot. "That evil man—goddamn him to hottest hell." She stabbed her finger into his chest, like she'd forgotten who his face belonged to. "There was an autopsy. They told us both: your sister died because her heart weren't right. It could've happened anytime. Don't you tell me your father made you carry that lie the whole of your life, Ciaran. I will kill him myself."

He was on his feet so fast the chair fell back and bounced. For a moment, he didn't know what do to with his coffee or himself. He set the mug on the table and went out the front door, stumbling like he'd gone blind.

It was cooler outside. Pine-scented air on his face brought his breath back. He made it to the trees at the back corner of the house before his legs wouldn't go any farther. He sank down in the tall grass, trying to keep breathing.

The tree branches made a woven, living ceiling above him. The jewel green of their leaves was shot through with sunlight as the wind touched and moved them. They blurred and cleared as his tears fell. He couldn't name why he was crying—but he shook with feelings he didn't have words for.

One of Tru's collies trotted across the yard, its collar jingling. It circled around him, drawing closer, and then flopped down next to Cary's leg. He buried his hand in the coarse warmth of its fur, feeling its sides rising and falling as it breathed, completely relaxed.

Against Cary's will, his mind returned to the hot little cave he'd made of Renae's blankets, where he'd held her so tightly and she'd shuddered with tears. He'd felt her breath against his throat, and then he'd felt it stop.

He'd felt her breath. Cary made a choking noise, hiding his head with his arm. She had been breathing, and then she stopped. It wasn't his fault. On the inside of her tiny body, her heart glowed bright as an incandescent bulb, and then burned out. That was all the time she got, and her last moments were with him, safe in their hiding place. He had been doing what his own child-heart had always burned to do for her: loving her the best he could. The twist that had hurt him so deeply and for so long—that while he thought he was loving her, he had killed her—sprang open, and the release stung him sharply.

He had bent his back to receive his father's blows, and he had not deserved them. His father had been told that his daughter's heart was fatally flawed, and he chose instead to believe the flaw lay in Ciaran. He had exerted all his considerable strength to bend his son into a more acceptable shape, and Cary still didn't know if the things he had broken in the attempt would heal so that he could stand straight again.

It was so fucking pointless. Anger billowed out of his chest like flames. He bent with his hands gripped behind his neck and screamed it all into the dark made by the curl of his body.

He quit when his voice was gone. He held still, catching his breath, tears hot on his face. He let himself remember her soft hands clasped on his neck, and the feel of her hair on his lips. He let himself remember her breath. He let her go.

*A novel starts for me with a couple key 'hinge-point' scenes, that all the action is going to drive towards and all the resolution is going to hang on. This was one of the first WAKE scenes I wrote. I didn't know at first that Jon would be here with Cary, but the conversation with Tru is virtually unchanged.

How do you feel about this huge reveal?? Does this change the way you feel about Cary? How do you think it will change the way he feels about himself?*