Page 34 of Avenged

Travis was at my side in a flash, grabbing my wrist and thrusting my hand under the kitchen sink as he turned on the cold water. His fingers on my arm burned almost as much as the pan had, and I jerked out of his grasp. He frowned, looking down into my face.

“Did you burn more than your fingers?” Concern radiated from him. My heart couldn’t handle it. I looked down at the red welt forming on my finger before looking back up.

“No,” I said, and he realized my jerking away had been from his touch. I saw the moment it registered, because his face turned from soft concern to something worse. Something like sadness. I hated that I’d made him feel that way, because sadness didn’t fit him. Travis wasn’t built to be sad. He was built for humor and laughter and heroism. I wanted to bonk my head against the refrigerator. Now, I sounded like some damsel in distress in the old comic books before the world realized multi-dimensional female superheroes were more interesting than macho male ones.

“Just keep it under the water for a few minutes while I go find the bandages.” His breath coasted over my neck, and I realized how close we actually were. My whole body was tucked up against him, my legs between his. We were twined together in a way that felt like coming home and like being lost at sea. Our morning was full of oxymorons. Things that shouldn’t be in the same sentence or in the same room. Travis and I were like that. Oxymorons. Contradictory terms being brought together by situations we had no control over.

“What in the world is this?” Mandy’s voice, full of confusion, caused us to jump apart like two teens caught by their parents. As we both turned, my hand swept the flowing water out toward Travis, soaking his T-shirt, making it cling to all the rippled muscles of his torso. We all stood there, staring at each other, and then I couldn’t help it. I just started laughing.

The day was a cluster of strange and random accidents. It was full of things you only read about in books or saw on some unbelievable television show. Mandy and Travis looked at me strangely at first, and then they both were smiling and laughing, too.

When we’d all calmed down, Mandy waved a notepad in our direction, her smile slipping away. “Now really, what is this?” Mandy asked.

And then it registered—the marriage contract Travis and I had signed. I’d taken the notepad and tucked it away in the drawer of the desk in the library because I couldn’t stand seeing it. I wanted to hide it away because I was riddled with guilt every time I saw it. I was riddled with guilt and relief all at once. Was that what made the Riddler go insane? Guilt. Relief. Joy. Sorrow. Pain. Reward. So many different emotions being tangled together.

Travis cleared his throat, and I looked down at the floor.

Violet came crashing into the room in her normal flurry of energy and noise. “What did Randy say?”

She stalled out as the vibe in the room caught up to her. She looked between the three of us, eyes landing on the notepad which was still in Mandy’s hand. “Oh!”

Mandy turned to her. “Do you know about this?”

Violet nodded. “Sure. I thought it was a little ridiculous for them to spell out all those things, but if it made them both feel better before saying I do…” She faded off as Mandy’s shock continued to grow.

“Wait, they actually went through with it?!” She turned from Violet back to Travis and me. “You got married?”

“Puhlease. It’s just so Jersey can go see the specialist in Derby,” Violet said as if it were the most normal thing in the world for two people to get married for the medical benefits.

But Mandy’s face turned deadly serious. “Specialist? What specialist? Why does Jersey need a specialist?”

“You didn’t tell them?” Travis turned to me, his own face matching Mandy’s.

Now my hand wasn’t the only thing stinging. My face was stinging as color and heat flooded it. I had been in charge of Violet and myself for so long now; I didn’t know how to react to people feeling like they had a right to know what was going on in our lives.

Mandy certainly deserved to know. She’d let Violet and me live there rent free for the last two years once she’d found out I didn’t have a first and a last down payment for a new place, after our last place had refused to renew our lease. The owner had finally put it together who we were, and he’d wanted nothing to do with the Banner family. The murderer’s family. The reason a family in town was now motherless. Forget that we had also been motherless for years. Forget that we weren’t the ones driving the car which had killed Ana Perez. Forget that Violet had almost lost her own life and that I’d had to live with the guilty knowledge that it was my fault Dad had gotten behind the wheel of the car at all.

I just wasn’t used to having to report to anyone anymore, and I certainly hadn’t wanted to tell them I probably needed to see a doctor I couldn’t afford, because Leena and Mandy would have tried to pay for it themselves. They would have taken out a second mortgage just to try to give me the money. I wasn’t going to let them do that, and in truth, I hadn’t thought I needed it. I’d thought my issues were just something many women lived with every day. That there was nothing to be done about it. I hadn’t known it was as serious as the ER doctor had made it sound. Life altering. Child-bearing altering.

Our silence seemed to speak more than our words would have.

Mandy sat down at the table. “What is it?”

When I first met Mandy, she had just found out she had breast cancer. The bookstore needed an extra pair of hands, and I’d badly needed the job. I’d been days away from social services taking Violet away. I’d been grateful, and I’d done everything I could to help Mandy, not just because of the gratitude, but because I’d watched my own mom battle it. Cancer was an unforgiving creature in whatever form it took.

“It’s not cancer,” I said, and she looked only slightly relieved. “It’s just endometriosis.”

“She says just, but Truck had to take her to the ER while you were gone,” Violet said, and I frowned at her, trying to tell her to stop, trying to tell her we didn’t need to worry the people who had taken us in and never let us pay more than a few bills here and there. “She was throwing up and everything. She doesn’t want me to know, but it has to be pretty bad if they’re wanting her to see a specialist.”

“Why haven’t you told us?” Mandy’s shock was turning into sadness, and my heart couldn’t take it. Couldn’t take letting down one of the only people to ever stand up for me—for us.

“I didn’t know it was anything to worry about. I’ve had bad cramps my whole life. It was just normal to me,” I told her, trying to downplay it all. I squeezed her shoulder, and she looked up at me, and whatever she saw there must have eased her own shock and sadness, because she patted my hand and squeezed back.

“Tell me what this has to do with you marrying Truck,” she said.

“For the insurance,” Travis said. “She needed medical insurance.”

“This is not why you marry someone,” Mandy said, her frown returning.

---