“Come on, hon. Tell us what that evil man did to you.” Wind settled on the side of the bed, but Trace faced the wall. She didn’t want to talk about it. Any of it. What had she been thinking, telling Dustin?
Houdini cuddled up at her side and purred. His soft fur soothed her a bit.
“I’m sorry,” Kat said in an un-Kat-like soft tone. “I thought I was so clever, pulling that deal out and making you both work together. It was stupid.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Trace mumbled into the pillow, longing to tell them everything, but she couldn’t. She’d already opened her big mouth to Dustin. She couldn’t bring her sisters into this nightmare, too. Besides, she could never let them know what she’d done.
Jewels patted her leg. “We’re all here for you, hon.”
“Even me,” Bri said in her light and happy voice.
“Nothing any of you can do. I’m fine. Tired, that’s all.”
Jewels’s hand rubbed small circles on Trace’s back. Humiliation didn’t begin to explain how she felt at this moment. Crying was for the weak, girly girls who needed attention. Not her. She was the one who would console everyone else. This attention from her friends unnerved her, and she needed to escape this friend therapy. “Listen. I’m fine. Better than fine.” She shot up and scooted to the edge of the bed. “As a matter of fact, I’m going to go work on my dad’s place. I’ll be back in a few hours.”
Kat blocked her exit, all five foot ten inches of her. “Not going anywhere.”
“Listen, leggy lawyer, get out of my way.” Trace looked to the others when Kat didn’t back down.
“We want to make sure you’re okay. Running off to hide in your father’s house isn’t the answer.” Jewels lifted Houdini to her shoulder and looked to Bri as if her daughter could find a better way to trap Trace in the room all night.
Bri scratched Houdini’s head. “If Trace wants to go work out whatever is upsetting her, shouldn’t we let her go? That’s how Trace deals. Avoidance and hard work.”
Trace didn’t like being talked about like she wasn’t even in the room. “Avoidance? I’ve taken on some of the biggest institutions in the world on my own or with little support. I’ve always attacked things directly, and I’ve never backed down.” Until Matt’s death.
Kat stepped out of her way. “We know you’re keeping something from us, but we’re here if you want to talk.”
Trace grabbed a lantern from her room and bolted from house, the love of old friends. At a brisk pace, she made it to the edge of town, avoiding the path behind Trevor’s place. Crying into Dustin’s arms was embarrassment enough for one day.
Rhonda strutted out of Skip’s and crossed the road. Trace picked up the pace. “The town’s going to see you for who you really are. I’ll make sure of that.”
Trace didn’t stop. No way Rhonda knew anything about what happened on that oil rig. The company had paid big money to shut down the talk and avoid bad press. Gag orders issued. Threats implied. Guilt and fear used as tools to silence her.
Trace’s breath came in short bursts, and her heart hammered against her ribs, but she didn’t stop. Not until she closed herself off from the world in her father’s home.
Her home.
She forced the anxiety into submission, flicked on the lanter, picked up a box, and tossed everything from the top shelf in the kitchen into it with one swoop of her arm. She opened up the cabinet under the sink and flung all the old cleaning chemicals into a bag. She yanked the 1970s fruit-faced clock from the wall and held it over the box but didn’t let it go.
The sound of cars in the distance buzzed like an oboe, waves crashing against the retaining wall like cymbals, chirping of grasshoppers like a flute. Something was missing from the song of years past. She turned the old clock over and wound it.
Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.
That sound completed the childhood symphony.
She retrieved from the shelf the book her father had left her and collapsed on the floor, setting the old clock by her side to tick away. “Dad, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for leaving you. I’m sorry for not visiting more. I’m sorry I’m not the woman you raised me to be.”
For twenty wave crashes and four car passes, she remained on the floor, legs tucked under her. “I wish you were here. For decades when you were alive, I never needed you. Now that you’re gone, I’d do anything to have you here. The guilt, regrets, are debilitating. I can’t see through it to know what to do. I need to make this right, Dad. How do I move on with my life if I can’t fix my past?”
She abandoned the book and clock to open the faux drawer in the desk to retrieve the letter. It was time. She needed to mail it. To tell the family what exactly happened to their son. What part she’d played in his death and the truth about the company that paid them off not to ask questions.
It didn’t matter if they sued her. She didn’t have much to take. A small retirement plan, but she didn’t need much to survive in this world.
Prison. That would be horrible, but if physical jail meant freedom for her soul, she’d pay that price, too.
Still, something kept her from mailing that letter.
She yanked the drawer open and crushed the letter to her chest. The secret. The truth gnawed at her every thought. The weight of her deception pounded her into submission and silence. She thought it would be less now that she’d unburdened herself to Dustin, but all that had done was add to her fear of discovery.
How long could she keep the truth from the world? “Dad, what should I do?”
A light knock at the front door drew her from the past. She shoved the letter back into the drawer and opened the front door to see her three friends and Bri standing together.
Jewels lifted a pitcher of homemade margaritas, and Wind held out plastic glasses.
“You don’t have to tell us anything. We only want to be here for you.” Kat marched past her and plopped a radio onto the table.
Bri held Houdini up to Trace. “He wanted to come, too.”
Houdini squawked at her as if in warning that he’d still be mischievous but he was here for her.
In that moment, she didn’t feel so alone. Her lifelong friends by her side without pressuring her to share meant everything to her. Only, she wanted to share, but not with them.
Not because she didn’t trust them. She trusted them more than anyone, but the warnings and threats from Robert’s lawyers had stuck with Trace enough that she didn’t want to risk any of them.
She picked up a box and went to work, allowing herself a reprieve from the monster memory of her failings.
That’s what friendsters did, provided respite from life. She only hoped she didn’t pull them under with her.