Page 25 of The Quiet Tenant

“I really like music.”

She squirms a little in her seat. “Oh. Me, too.”

Her father has stopped eating, his fork balanced on the edge of his plate. His eyes toggle from you to Cecilia like he’s watching a tennis match.

Something else you remember: How exciting it felt, at her age, when a teacher let you do a presentation on Cher. When someone else’s eyes widened with excitement at the mention of Bob Dylan. How music was a shortcut to kinship, to ending the devastating loneliness that came with being thirteen.

You smile at her. The girl who’s half him, the girl who mustn’t know what her father does in the shadows. “Who do you listen to?” you ask.

She thinks. You used to love and hate that question in equal measures. Love, because you never tired of tasting those names on your tongue—Pink Floyd and Bowie and Patti Smith and Jimi Hendrix and the Stones and Aerosmith and the Beatles and Deep Purple and Fleetwood Mac and Dylan. Hate, because you were terrified of saying the wrong name, the one that would unmask you not as a rock connoisseur, but just another teenage girl.

Cecilia names a few artists, Taylor Swift and Selena Gomez and Harry Styles. People who were just getting started when you disappeared. Talents that blossomed in your absence.

“Nice,” you tell her. How hard you found it, back when you were still out in the world, meeting people, making new friends, trying to sound appreciative but not condescending.

She nods. “You?”

You feel a father’s burning stare.This is what people do,you’ll tell him later, if he asks.They speak. They share the things they love the most.

You tell her some names. “The Rolling Stones—I saw them live in 2012, actually. The Beach Boys. The Pointer Sisters. Elvis, but I guess everyone loves Elvis. And Dolly Parton. I loved Dolly so much, when I was growing up. Begged my parents to take me to Dollywood every s—”

Like a curse word in a church. A stutter in an incantation. It stops you in your tracks.My parents.It’s the first time you’ve acknowledged them in his presence, the people he took you from.

You had your own life. A college student, weeks away from graduation. You had papers to write, things to do, friends, a job. But you were still theirs. Whether you liked it or not. You were still owed weekly dinners together. Texts and phone calls. A life to share.

Cecilia clears her throat. She reaches for the serving spoon, gives you time to collect yourself. You try again. “…every summer. Never worked, though.”

She dumps a spoonful of lasagna on her plate. When she lifts her gaze up to you again, it destroys you. It’s been so long since anyone looked at you like this. With kindness. With the idea that you and your feelings matter.

You don’t know what she’s thinking. Probably that you and your folks had a falling out, or that they died before they got a chance to take you to Dollywood. Whatever story she’s telling herself, she wants you to know that she gets it.

“Well,” she says. “Now you can go whenever you want.”

You stare down at what’s left on your plate. “Right. Whenever I want.”

Later on, when her dad tells her to go brush her teeth, she sneaksa glance at you. She has the eyes of a new intern who just found someone to sit next to on her first day of work. Of a lost cousin at a funeral, relieved to find a conversation partner during the reception.

You know these eyes. You’ve seen them before. They’re the eyes of someone who’s been lonely, and hurt.

CHAPTER 16

Cecilia

Sometimes I feel this terrible pressure at the back of my throat. It makes me want to scream or punch something. Not someone, never someone. Just something.

If my dad knew, he’d shake his head in that way that makes me want to die a little. My mom used to tell him,You can’t hold everyone to such high standards. Let her be a kid. She has her whole life to be likeyou.

When I can’t take it anymore, I go into the wooded area by the cemetery up the hill. I find a tree and kick it a few times with my shoe. Soft at first, then harder with each kick. My dad doesn’t know. Obviously. I do it between school and my art class so he doesn’t see me. He has enough on his plate right now.

First there was my mom, and then there was Rachel.

He told me about her before we moved. A friend of a friend of a friend is what he said. Whatever. I didn’t really care who she was, only that she was going to live with us in this new house I already didn’t love all that much.

Rachel needed help, he said. Bad things had happened to her. I asked what bad things, exactly. He said he didn’t want to go into details, but that she had gotten hurt and she didn’t have anyone else to help. So we were going to sublet the extra room in the judge’s house, and we were going to have her share our meals and things like that.

What I didn’t tell my dad: I’ve hit a rough patch, too, and I’m not crazy about sharing my meals with strangers, but sure.

“She’s been through a lot,” he told me. “So don’t crowd her. Don’t ask questions. Just be nice and polite and give her some space.”

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