Page 63 of The Crush
I hold onto her as I turn, wrapping her up in the blankets to stay warm and giving her a lingering kiss on her forehead before I climb out of bed. When I reach the window and look out, I see nothing but black, the view only broken by the vibrations of the glass before I push the window closed and flip the lock into place.
A while later, my boots are scraping through gravel on the path back up to the house, my flashlight beam bobbing along the ground until I reach the light of the patio. I set the torch on the ground before I drop onto the edge of one of the chairs, my head falling into my hands at the end of a routine I’ve been carrying out for nearly three weeks now. Ever since that day by the water.
I need to get a hold of myself. Need to be able to reassure myself it’s all in my head without having to check the house, the outbuildings, the damnroad.
“There’snothingto find because there’snothingthere,” I mutter to myself. “There’s nothing—”
A soft sound behind me makes me shoot up so fast that my chair topples backward, my hand reflexively flying to my hip as I pivot.
“Morning, mijo.” My dad leans against the jam of the now-open sliding back door. “I didn’t realize we were getting started so early today.”
I exhale, bending over and bracing my hands on my knees as I try to dislodge my heart from my throat. “Pop, what the hell are you—”
“What amIdoing?” He raises his eyebrows. “I’m not the one running around in the backyard before the sun’s up.”
“Right.” I straighten, still breathing heavy. “I was just, um, taking a look around.”
“Maybe it’s ’cause I’m old,” my dad says, heading back inside as I do the same, “but I find it easier to take a look around in the daytime.”
Once in the kitchen, he makes a direct beeline for the waiting coffee pot, grabbing two mugs from the cabinet and letting the silence hang while he pours. He passes me one when he’s through, fixing me under his gaze. “Anything you want to talk about?”
“I’m fine,” I answer with an attempt at a smile. “I was up using the bathroom, and I thought I heard something out back.”
He nods, returning my smile before he says, “You think you heard something yesterday morning, too? What about two nights ago? Hear something then?”
I stare down at my cup of coffee, watching the ripples made by my unsteady hand. “The wind must have knocked something loose. I’ll have to take a look today.” I place the mug away from me on the counter. “Probably much easier once it’s light out, though. You’re right.”
In reply, my dad takes a long sip from his own mug then walks back over to the cabinet, pulling out a beat-up Thermos and transferring his coffee there.
“Twelve years,” he mutters, stopping to grab his hat from the hook by the door on his way outside. “Twelve years with the US government, and still can’t lie for shit.”
I roll my eyes, staying back long enough to leave Isabel a note. Then I follow him out.
Forty-Seven
Isabel
I oversleep. Although based on how tired I still feel, my body might beg to differ.
As it is, by the time I wake up and stumble into the kitchen in my chore clothes, the sun is high, Tadeo is already at church, and Daniel is, according to his note, out in the back fields.
I stare accusingly at the quickly scrawled message taped up on the fridge, my guilt compounding over the thought that I wasn’t also out there to help with a to-do list that seemed to frequently carry into the next day unfinished. And into the next. And into the next.
Speaking of which…My eyes move from the note to the calendar beside it, and I have no choice but to accept how long it’s been since that day at church. Since I’d seen anyone in my family besides Gabe, who was still not only regularly coming by to visit but also helping to provide a fraction of the extra hands that my family usually did this time of year. Trucks and trailers frequently passing between both ranches as we all prepared for the season ahead.
I knew from Gabe who apparently knew from Eli that Tadeo had still offered to come help where he could on my family’s land. An olive branch extended at last week’s Ag Hall meeting that wasswiftly swung back as my father refused to even look at, let alone speak to, his friend of forty years.
I shouldn’t have been surprised. My father was not one to back down on a stance he’d taken in private, much less in public.
If he said they were done, they were. If he said I couldn’t come home, then I couldn’t. But, truthfully, the longer I’m away from home, the less I want to go back.
I’m happy here. Even if the days are long and even if I still hate partially being the one to blame for it, I can’t bring myself to regret the reason. To regret any series of events that has led me to days spent talking to someone that actually listens, to evenings spent pretending we are the only two people in the world, to mornings spent waking up with the person I used to dream about.
Or at least Ishouldbe waking up with him.
I glare at the note again before walking over to the counter and wiggling open a sticky drawer near the oven. After a little effort, I’m able to reach in and grab the notepad resting on top, reading the first page of my shopping list before flipping to the next.
If today really is October 30, then that means tomorrow is Halloween, and the day after is Día de Muertos. A time meant to honor our passed loved ones, the holiday has always been one of my favorites, although it has not escaped me that the dead will likely be invited into my family’s home before I am.
