I tear through the house when I get home, pulling out drawers in every room I pass, yanking open cabinets, searching for...
The light in the kitchen is on and my grandfather comes barreling out, my grandmother right on his heels looking like she’s already been through the war he’s ready to start.
“Where have you been?”
I don’t look at him, just move to the other side of the desk in the study and pull open another drawer. “I’m not doing this with you right now. I’ve had a shit night and I’m not interested in adding anything else to it.”
“Look at me when I’m talking to you. You took your grandmother’s car. Where were you?”
I grit my teeth. Stubborn old man. “I had to go do a thing.”
He shakes his head. “No, you don’t get to take off without telling us where. Not again.” He comes right at me, stopping mere inches from my face and I have no chill, none whatsoever with his flaring nostrils that close. I scramble back.
“You knew I was in LA last week. You called me—”
“You said all of ten words on the phone. We didn’t know when you’d becoming back—if you’d be coming back.” He stops then, noticing all the drawers I’ve opened. “What are you doing?”
I try to shove past him. “Looking for my keys.”
“You don’t have keys, and you won’t be getting them back for another month, or did you forget our conversation from last week?”
Oh, I remember the ass-chewing he’s referring to, and I’m not about to sit through another. I dart a quick glance at my grandmother, remembering the relief in her face when I’d come back...it’s gone now, replaced by tight-lipped worry.
“Ethan, we need to know where you are. I know you understand that.”
“No,” I say calmly even as a long-denied part of me starts to smoke and spark inside. “You don’t need to know, you want to know, which means I don’t have to tell you shit. That’s the rule, right?” I glance back and forth between them, one face hard, bordering on furious, and the other close to tears.
“What are you—”
My grandmother cuts my grandfather off with a hand on his arm, never taking her eyes off me. “No, it’s not the rule. We were afraid you’d try to leave and find her, and we didn’t want to lose you both.”
“That’s not up to you,” I say, my jaw hardening. “You kept everything from me.”
“We thought we were keeping you safe,” my grandmother says, headless of the flames threatening to lash out and burn her. “That’s all we ever tried to do. You were so young.”
The sparks leap onto the fuel of her words, blazing up in an instant. They were the ones who didn’t know. I was there, living the life they didn’t want to think about.
“But we should have told you this time.” Her face softens even as her eyes well up. “I’m sorry. She’ll always be my little girl, but I knew she wasn’t going to stay in rehab no matter what she promised us. You’re seventeen, Ethan. Next time we wouldn’t have been able to keep you with us.”
“Yeah, well, it’s a little late for sorry.” I turn my attention back to the desk and finally spot the keys. “And as soon as I get my keys, I’m—”
My grandfather slams the drawer shut, barely giving me time to snatch the keys and my hand back first. “You have a job and responsibilities here, people who care about you. You don’t even have a car and you’re not going anywhere else in your grandmother’s.”
I whirl on him. “You can’t keep me here.” But his expression tells me that’s exactly what he’ll try to do.
“This life already took one person I love from me and I won’t watch it take another.”
The fire inside engulfs my last bit of restraint and explodes out of me. I shove him back. “Won’t watch it?” The words scorch my throat. “Is that how you pretended it wasn’t happening? Just closed your eyes and imagined that she was fine all these years?” I feel the wetness on my cheeks, but the fire inside won’t stop, not anymore. “I didn’t get to look away or pretend. I saw everything, lived everything, only I wasn’t big enough to stop it.” I shove him again and he lets me.
“What could we have done? We tried everything to help her get clean, everything, but she wouldn’t—”
“You shouldn’t have let her take me!” Their faces turn ashen as soon as I scream it. “This life you gave me here, food and clothes and somewhere safe to sleep...” I glance at the wall as though I can see through it to Rebecca’s house across the yard “...somebody who loved me without asking for anything in return. And then you let her rip me away from all of that over and over again just to watch her fall harder every time.”
My grandmother’s tears are streaming silently down her face, but she isn’t moving, neither of them are.
“You were her parents. You should have done more to protect me and save her.” I wipe at my face and draw my shoulders back. “But I’m big enough now.”
I ignore my grandmother’s tears, shouldering out the door and moving faster than even my grandfather can grab for me.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
I see more than his red face and flaring nostrils. I see my grandmother’s faintly trembling chin and too-shiny eyes, all of it together makes my hands shake as I scoop up Old Man from the hall on my way to the garage. “Making sure you don’t have to watch.”