Page 61 of Necessary Cruelty

My thoughts distract me long enough that Jake has already shut his door by the time I realize I should get out. He leaps up onto curb and comes to my side, pulling the passenger door open before my fumbling fingers can find the handle in the dark. Like the true gentleman he is, Jake helps me out of the car and keeps his steadying hand on my elbow as we mount the steep dirt path leading up to the front door.

“Did a hurricane come through here?” Jake laughs awkwardly as he helps me over a pile of rubble from the excavation work.

I had met him at the ball, instead of having him pick me up, precisely so he wouldn’t see any of this.

I can only imagine what he’s noticing about our house. The listing foundation that makes the house look a bit like a boat about to capsize. Scrubby grass out front made entirely of barely tamed weeds. The general air of abandonment and neglect.

It makes me feel pathetic.

I unlock the door, relieved that Vin hadn’t rekeyed it without bothering to tell me. The level of invasion into my life it requires for him to remodel my house without even consulting me first doesn’t surprise me at this point.

That is the saddest thought I’ve had all night.

Jake does surprise me when he steps into the house after me and closes the door behind him. He catches my expression and gives me a lopsided smile.

“I thought we could hang out a little longer. Spending time with you is nice.”

The look I cast him is curious and openly doubtful. You’d think by this point he would be getting tired of putting up with all my baggage.

“It doesn’t bother me that you don’t talk,” he says, anticipating my thoughts. “The silence is sort of nice, actually. I usually can’t get past the awkward conversation stage with a girl, and we get to blow right past that. Although, I don’t know where you get the willpower to never say anything to some of the assholes at our school.”

I smile weakly because his words are meant to be funny, but the smile is more than a little sad.

“If you did talk to me, I wouldn’t tell him.” Jake takes a step closer. “Guy doesn’t deserve to even look at you, much less treat you the way he does. I don’t get why everyone in this town acts like he shits solid gold.”

All it would take is for the Cortland’s to pack up their money and their businesses for half the town to lose their only source of income. Almost everyone in Deception has worked for a Cortland company at some point, or has a family member that does. They own the only strip mall in the Gulch and the holding company that has majority shares in most of the real estate everywhere else in town. First Bank of Deception, another Cortland family holding, backs pretty much every mortgage.

You can’t make a life in this town if you end up on the Cortland’s bad side.

Jake will figure that out eventually, it’s only a matter of time.

And then he will never speak to me again.

That is the only reason I don’t try to make him leave. I want to appreciate the one friend I have at Deception High before this relationship evaporates like everything else good in my life. Even though we spent the last few hours pressed against each other while we danced, standing together in my dark and silent house feels somehow more intimate.

Maybe because there isn’t anyone here to interrupt whatever happens between us.

Instead of attempting to answer without words, I hold my fingers to my lips and point to the living room. Even in the near-darkness, Grandpa’s hospital bed shines a dull white. The machine feeding him oxygen hisses every few seconds in time with each slumbering breath.

A pang of regret shoots through me as I remember that comfortable setup is only a result of Vin’s attempts at bribery. Now that I’ve rejected him, the expensive hospital bed and day nurse will go back wherever they came from.

But I won’t be bought. Not for this or anything else.

Moving past the living room, I take Jake on an impromptu tour of the first floor of our house, pretending to check that the doors and windows are all locked. Even in the Gulch, nobody would bother trying to steal from us. Even with Vin’s upgrades, there isn’t anything in this house worth the effort.

I hesitate when we get back to the entryway, unsure of precisely what he wants from me.

And even if I were willing to speak, I probably still wouldn’t ask him because I’m not sure I want the answer.

Jake leans against the wall next to a floating shelf full of worthless knickknacks: pottery projects Zion and I made in middle school and some pieces of raw quartz we found in the backyard. Unlike the entryway of Cortland Manor, there are no pictures of Milbourne ancestors hanging on the walls. Anything of value got sold off generations ago, and we’d lost possession of anything sentimental that wouldn’t be refused by the pawn shop. There used to be a few pictures of Zion and I with our mother, but Grandpa had us take them down after she left because the reminder made him angry.

She didn’t just leave her children without so much as a goodbye, but her father too.

Just like me, she stayed in Deception until she couldn’t take it anymore and had to run away. I’ll probably never know why she didn’t take us with her.

A few years back, I’d tried searching for her online. I used to think the only way she wouldn’t come back is if she couldn’t. She obviously never left a forwarding address, but Google searches for her name always came up empty. I checked the obituaries of neighboring counties and ran a database search for death certificates, but nothing ever came of it.

If my mother is still alive, she has no interest in being found.

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