The knot in Henry’s gut grew tighter with each minute that ticked by on the car dashboard. He shifted in his seat, trying to get comfortable, but it was no use, and Ivy’s car wasn’t the problem. The radio blared a way too upbeat tune and he reached over and flicked it off.
“Sorry,” he said, giving his sister a guilty glance. “I just didn’t feel up for it right now.”
“We’re almost there.” Ivy’s lips thinned, and Henry knew she was dreading this just as much as he was. They rarely talked about their mother. Even when she was alive, they communicated in silence through meaningful glances that spoke words too painful to voice. The few times they’d had to address a situation, like her failed stint in rehab, the string of arrests, or the numerous times she was passed out on a couch, they did so efficiently, without emotion. Henry knew that deep inside, Ivy ran the gauntlet of emotions like he did, but there was no use in letting it out. It didn’t change a damn thing. It was better to try to forget about it for a while.
He heaved a sigh. “The sooner we get started, the sooner it’s over, right?”
“A necessary evil,” Ivy agreed, her eyes still fixed to the road. It was growing dark, and the old country roads weren’t well lit.
Henry clenched his teeth, his shoulders growing tense as Ivy slowed and then pulled the car onto the gravel driveway. It was a Pavlovian response—the tires bumped and the first wave of nausea hit, his chest heavy with dread and a sense of foreboding. If he closed his eyes he could almost hear the bottles crashing, see his mother thrashing about, screaming about something.
He and Ivy had learned to live around their mother, careful not to set her off, sometimes trying to calm her down, to bring her over to the couch and offer up her favorite game show, or sometimes to sit in her wrath, to hear it but not see it. “Don’t look her in the eye.” He could remember saying that to Ivy when they must have only been four or five. She’d nodded her head, her eyes large and understanding. Don’t look her in the eye, ’cause when you do—
His back began to cramp. He’d get in and out and he’d never look back. The sooner they got to work, the sooner it would be over.
The house looked smaller than he’d remembered it, barely visible in the shadows of the moonlight cutting through the tree branches. It was a dark night, the sky murky with dense clouds, and an owl hooted in the distance. God, he hated this place. He preferred the bustle of the city, the chaos of the traffic, the way you could just melt in, anonymously, but somehow never be alone. Out here, he was painfully aware of just alone he and Ivy were in the world.
Slowly, he let himself out of the car and followed Ivy up the path to the front door, careful not to trip on the flat stones that had settled unevenly over time. As Ivy fished out the key and fumbled to find the lock, he peered into the distance. There was Adam’s old house, lit up and cheerful in the near distance. He turned his back to it, his heart pounding, resisting the part of himself that wanted to run down that hill, push open the door, breathe in the warm air, sit down at the dinner table, and laugh and talk the way families did this time of night. His jaw tensed. That was never his home, much as he’d wished it could be. This was his reality.
He shoved his hands into his pockets and hunched against the brisk wind. There would be no running away from his problems tonight. He was going to face them, head on, and then hopefully forget them forever.
The lock finally clicked, and his stomach heaved when Ivy pushed open the door. Even over the sound of the rustling leaves, he could hear her sigh. “Here we are.” She flicked on a light and the hallway sprung to life around them.
“It’s freezing in here,” Henry pointed out. He looked to the ceiling for any sign of damage. “We’re lucky we came when we did. If we’d held off much longer, a pipe could have burst.”
Ivy’s forehead creased. “I know I should have stopped by and turned on the heat, but I…” She shook her head, and Henry let it drop. She hadn’t wanted to come back. Who would?
The hallway itself was sparse and bare. To the left was the living room, where he and Ivy used to sit on the floor around the wood-carved coffee table, playing cards. He always let Ivy win.
“This room’s going to take the most work,” Ivy was saying from the back of the house.
Turning, Henry marched to the kitchen and then halted in the doorway. The yellowing floral wallpaper was singed above the range, and the countertops were damaged beyond repair with dark stains. The window near the sink was cracked, and the molding around it was warped and peeling, indicating a leak and potential wood rot. The rubber soles of his shoes stuck to the peeling linoleum.
“I’m sorry,” Ivy said despairingly. She blinked several times. “I should have come sooner, I just…”
Henry swallowed hard. “Don’t apologize—it’s not your fault.”
They made their way up the dimly lit stairs, poking their heads into rooms instead of entering, and then came back down a few minutes later. Henry paused at the door to the basement and then yanked it open. He flicked the switch; nothing happened, but it didn’t matter. They knew these stairs by heart; the creaking of the boards was cemented into their memory from all the times they had hidden down there to get away. Ivy stayed close behind him, the light from the main hall guiding their way.
They reached the cold concrete floor and Henry reached up to pull on a cord. A single lightbulb lit the room. Damp settled over them, and he covered his mouth with his hand. Had it always been this dark and wet down here? It had seemed like their haven at one point, a refuge from the stress unfolding up above. They used to run free down here. He could still picture Ivy in her hand-me-down roller skates, laughing as she wound her way around the room. He crossed over to the back of the room, nearly tripping over something. An empty vodka bottle rolled to the wall. Several more were collected in the corner.
“Sometimes she couldn’t be bothered to throw them away,” Ivy said quietly.
Henry rubbed the space between his eyebrows. His mother couldn’t be bothered to do anything most days. Couldn’t get out of bed. Couldn’t go to the store for groceries, much less fix a meal. Their dad was gone before they were even born. Their grandmother had lived with them for the first six years of their life, but when she died, everything had fallen apart.
Henry shuddered to think what might have become of him and his sister had his grandmother not lived as long as she had.
“Sometimes it amazes me we even managed to get to school every day.” Or that his mother managed to hold down a job, albeit never for longer than a few weeks at a time. She shuffled around, cleaning houses or waitressing in neighboring towns. The secretary jobs rarely lasted more than a few days, especially when she got too friendly with the boss. He shook his head. He’d blocked so much out, refusing to go back there and think about that time in his life. It was so much easier to run, to keep running, to keep putting distance between him and this place.
Henry had liked school. It had opened a whole new world to him, a life beyond these four walls. He kept to himself mostly, playing with Ivy at recess or spending his free time in the library, until he’d met Adam. Adam was a year behind, but that didn’t matter. The Browns lived next door, just down the hill, and they both liked fast cars and baseball. For a first grader, that was enough, but after the first time Henry went to Adam’s house, he clung to his new friend like a life raft, and Adam happily went along with it. Suddenly Henry had a warm, safe place to go every day, and a loving, smiling mother to feed him an after-school snack on the walk home each afternoon. He could still remember Mrs. Brown checking his backpack each morning to see if there was a lunch, often adding an apple or a few slices of cheese or a carton of chocolate milk. “We have extra,” she’d say with a casual smile. If Ivy had already gone ahead, wanting to meet up with some of the girls, he’d give her half of his share at the playground.
His lips thinned. He should visit Adam’s parents while he was in town. But somehow, the thought of going back there was almost more unbearable than being here. It was just a reminder somehow that they were a family, and even now, all these years later, he was, well… still on the fringes.
“So what should we do with everything?” Ivy asked, when they returned to the main level.
“Get rid of it,” Henry said. He shrugged. “I don’t see any reason to keep anything, do you? It’s not like Mom was one for family photos.”
“I guess not,” Ivy said sadly. She sighed and wandered back into the living room. Neither of them made any movement toward sitting down.
Henry looked around the room. It was just as dark and uninviting as he had remembered. No pictures hung on the walls, and the mirror that had been hung over the mantel all his life still bore the enormous, jagged crack through the middle from the time their mother had thrown his boots at it. He and Ivy had stood frozen, not daring to speak or even breathe, as she railed about money and expenses. They waited until after she’d stormed upstairs and slammed her bedroom door shut, and then Henry had quietly picked up the shards of broken glass, thrown them away, and forced his feet into the too-small boots. He’d worn those things all winter, even though his big toe ached, and he never asked for another pair again.
The next Christmas, when his mother was in a “festive” mood, she’d brought them shopping downtown. As much as they preferred this side of her, another part of it terrified them even more. She cranked up the radio in the car and even ran the heater, singing at the top of her lungs as they swerved into town. “Pick anything you want!” she’d cried, laughing and smiling, and taking their hands. He and Ivy had glanced at each other nervously, shrugged, and then decided to enjoy it while it lasted. Ivy wanted a new doll with a pink dress and long and dark silky hair she could brush, but he told her no, first things first. They managed to get a new pair of boots each, gym shoes, and a matching hat and mittens set for Ivy before things turned sour. By the time they’d returned to the toy shop, he could smell the sourness on his mother’s breath, and the glint in her eye had returned. When Ivy whined about the doll, their mother ripped it from her hands and slammed it back on the shelf. Ivy began to cry.
“We’ll go the library,” Henry said, as his mother headed for the car. If she bothered to reply, it was lost in the winter wind.
With his sister at his side, he made a collect call to Adam’s mother. She picked them up ten minutes later, giving a forced, bright smile, her forehead wrinkled despite the cheerful tone she tried to maintain.
“You know if you ever need anything, just come next door,” she said when she dropped them off later that night, a warm meal in their stomachs.
Once, when he was playing in Adam’s room, he overheard Mr. and Mrs. Brown talking about him, using words he didn’t understand, like authorities. When he went to the library the next afternoon, he looked it up, and then slammed the book shut.
If the police took his mother away, then he and Ivy would be sent away, possibly split up, forever. He’d read enough books to know how that worked. He couldn’t let that happen.
From then on, when Mrs. Brown asked how things were at home, he just shrugged. She suspected things, he was sure, but he wasn’t going to give her any proof. His sister needed him. She still did.
“How do you feel?” Ivy asked after she turned the key and checked the knob, ensuring the house was locked behind them.
He looked at her. “Pretty crappy.”
She gave a thin smile. “Me, too.”
Henry gave her a long look. “I’m sorry I didn’t come back sooner.”
Ivy just shrugged. “We weren’t sure what was going to happen with Mom a year ago. There was no reason for you to come back before now.”
He opened his mouth to say something about the burial, to explain, or apologize, but no sound came out. He’d been in a small town about half an hour outside Amsterdam when Ivy called him to tell him that the time had come. It was no surprise, but still it was a punch in the gut. He’d said nothing, just held the phone to his ear for a good half hour, listening to Ivy’s breath on the other end. They didn’t discuss the arrangements. Ivy said she wasn’t going to have a service, and Henry put a check in the mail for the burial expenses. He couldn’t sleep that night, but not because of sadness. No, the only emotion he felt was anger, anger so deep he couldn’t contain it, and he cursed his mother and cursed himself for not being able to save her, no matter how hard he’d tried.
The last time he’d spoken with his mother, he’d managed to convince her to go to rehab, only he didn’t word it quite like that. He’d found a nice place outside Orange County, where she could relax and regroup. Slowly, she’d come around to the idea, and he paid for the full thirty days, bought her a first-class ticket, and arranged for Ivy to drive her to the airport that night. She had no idea that he’d been saving his money, pinching and scrimping and hoping it would be enough, that maybe, somehow, they could find a way to be a real family.
She checked herself out of the facility forty-four hours after she’d arrived, hit the airport bar, and was stopped by security before she could board the plane. When they called him to pick her up at LAX, he refused.
It was his last effort, but after she died, he wondered what would have happened if he’d tried just one more time… He inhaled sharply. No point in thinking that way.
“I’ll call a clean-up crew and see if they can come out this week or next.”
“Thanks.” Ivy popped the locks on the car and they both slipped inside.
Suddenly in need of a reminder that there was life outside this dreadful place, Henry flicked on the radio. Instantly, an announcer’s voice filled the air. Slowly, life went back to normal.
They passed Adam’s old house. The light was on in the kitchen, and he strained his eyes to get a glimpse inside. It looked the same. Small. Quaint. The porch light illuminated a perfectly maintained row of hedges along the base of the front window.
“I know it’s not easy for you, being back in Briar Creek.” Ivy paused. “I want you to know that I appreciate it.”
“Then do me a favor,” Henry said. “Take the money I offered you and get yourself some better health insurance.”
“Henry…” Ivy sighed. “I told you, it will all work out. This year’s just been more expensive than usual.”
“Because of the burial. Cash the check, Ivy.”
“No.” Her voice was sharp. “You did enough for her. It was my turn.”
He ran a hand through his hair and stared into the dark forest. She was determined to make the arrangements her sole responsibility. Maybe he should let her.
“Besides, that’s not the only reason things are tight,” she continued. “My rent went up on the shop this year, and my wholesaler raised prices. It adds up.”
“I don’t like you putting money toward the business that should be going toward your health.”
“What’s the alternative?” Ivy asked. “If I don’t have a business, then I’m really screwed.”
“You know I have the money.” He wasn’t wealthy, not with a journalist’s salary, but he lived a comfortable life and had few expenses given how much he traveled for work. “Please let me help.”
She said nothing more until they were in town and she pulled to a stop in front of the hotel. He could tell by the look in her eyes that she was tired. He should let her get home to rest.
She stopped him before he could say goodnight. “Jane mentioned to me that you were considering featuring Briar Creek in one of your articles.”
His heart sped up. “When did you talk to Jane?”
Her gaze was steady. “I had a quick dinner with her this evening before I met up with you. She and Sophie were at the diner.”
He’d been in his room, preparing himself to go to the house. He suddenly wished he’d taken Ivy up on her offer to meet for dinner instead.
“I’m not the best person to write about this town.” He arched a brow, giving her a long, knowing look.
“I know.” She sighed, then leaned across the armrest to give him a hug. “You’re the best, Henry.”
He unhooked his seatbelt and crawled out of the car, waving until his sister was out of sight, her words still ringing in his ears. He wasn’t the best. Not the best son, not the best brother. Guilt burned in his stomach, leaving him uneasy and agitated when he thought of Ivy’s struggles, her bills, what Jane had said about putting Briar Creek on the map.
Ivy was his family. She was all he had. And he’d do anything for her. Even write an article on this godforsaken town, he thought ruefully.