Page 34 of Keep Me

“Yeah,” I said. The sound came out flat and empty.

He pulled back, his hands staying on my shoulders, shaking me once, very slightly, as if he was trying to clear a jam in a machine, trying to force the gears to engage. His eyes were bloodshot, the rims pink and raw.

“Are you okay?” he demanded. “Have you eaten? Zane, has she eaten?”

I looked at him. I looked past him to the kitchen island, where the phones were face-down, glass and silicon that dictate nothing. I felt nothing. There was no tremor in my hands, no catch in my throat.

“The Appalachian oak is what he chose,” I said. “Blue and white flowers.”

Austin looked down at me, his brows drawing together until a deep, vertical crease formed between his eyes. He looked at my mouth, then my eyes, then back to my mouth, waiting for a crack, a sob, a pulse. He let his hands drop. He looked at Zane. Zane looked at him. They looked at me. I looked at it all. The silence returned, but it was heavier now, packed tight with the air of three people who had no idea what to do.

At 1:45 AM, the voices from the kitchen released into the otherwise empty house. I was sitting on the third step from the top. My feet were bare. The wood was cold enough to make tiny goosebumps form on my skin, a distant physical fact that has nothing to do with me.

“—called me that morning,” Austin said. His voice was muffled by the drywall, but the pitch was wrong; it was too thin, the edges frayed. “Eight o’clock. He seemed fine. Told me he was stepping back from the firm. Told me it was time for the next generation to take the weight, said he wanted to relax and enjoy the time with Seren. And I congratulated him. I fucking congratulated him, Zane. I thought he meant retirement. I thought he wanted to enjoy the years with Seren… not… not this. He knew. He knew about the cancer.”

A chair dragged. A glass hit the counter; the heavy crystal tumbler Tom kept for the good stuff. The stuff he hid during my teenage years so all I had access to was cheap vodka.

“You didn’t know,” Zane said.

“I should have heard it. We went through it together after Jax was arrested, I know what he sounds like when there’s something big going on. I should have heard the damn drop in his voice.”

Through the walls, there was a sharp, ragged sound, a wet, choked intake of breath that cut off before it could finish. It was a seismic event. I had never heard Austin Portwood cry like this. I did not think the house has ever held that sound before.

“She doesn’t look good,” Austin muttered. I wondered how he could tell. After he got here, I went into my dad’s office and locked the door. When I heard them in the kitchen, I snuck out and came here. He had not even seen me besides our five-minute interaction when he arrived.

“I know,” Zane said. “I’m trying. She’s… like a statue. She’s not reaching out to me for help. She forgets I’m here most of the time. That’s okay, I get it. I understand how grief twists your mind. I thought maybe she would let you help her…”

Zane’s voice trailed off, and I could imagine the look on his face. Contemplative, with a hint of pain that no one else but me would notice. Eyes lost in thought, his mind remembering the bad times from years ago, the way I shut him down after Jax was arrested, and how I turned to Austin instead. He has never blamed me for doing that. It hurt him even if he didn’t blame me for it.

“She worries me,” Austin sighed out. “Her mind worries me.”

“I know,” Zane responded. “But she’s stronger now. Her mind is stronger. She’s done a lot of work on it these last three years. She’s not the same girl as the one she was when Jax hurt her.”

“But still…” Austin said, and Zane responded with nothing.

“We’re going to have to work together,” Austin continued. “I don’t want her left alone. Especially not after the funeral. We need to make sure one of us is always here.”

“When do you need to be back in Florida?” Zane asked him.

“Whenever the hell she’s okay, Briggs,” Austin muttered. “Come on. It’s Seren we’re talking about here.”

“I know. It’s Seren we’re talking about,” Zane said. “Of course, I’m not going anywhere either. But she won’t like it if she feels like we’re hovering.”

“I don’t give a shit what she likes right now. She’s white as a sheet, Zane. She looks like she’s lost ten pounds and she didn’t have ten pounds to spare in the first place. We have to staff the perimeter. We don’t leave her alone with the walls.”

“Austin.” Zane’s voice dropped low. It fell below the frequency of the kitchen fan, down into a frozen register. “She’s never even processed her grief from her mom. She can’t even say her name. The nurse told her that was Tom’s last word. I saw her face, she…”

He fell silent, like he was trying to chew on his own words. “Both of her parents died before she got the chance to know either one of them… not the way she should have. I don’t… I don’t know how long it will take her to come back from this. I love her more than I thought it would be possible to love someone. I will stay here and help her as long as it takes, but it might not be as simple as never leaving her alone. This… is different from last time. Last time we had to protect her from two things. Jax, and herself. There’s nothing to protect her from. Not this time.”

The kitchen went dead silent. I stood up. I did not use the handrail. I was not scared of dropping anyone’s memory. I walked back down the stairs and back into my father’s office, my soles making no contact sound against the runner. It went into the inventory. Another piece of logistics. A perimeter to be staffed.

At 3:47 AM I got up and walked into the kitchen and sat down on the second stool. I was not going upstairs. The bedroom was a calculation that didn’t resolve, so I leave it empty. The sofa was fine. The office chair was fine. The kitchen stool was fine.

By 4:00 AM, the house has stopped settling. The silence was absolute, the kind that exists only in the hour before the birds realize the sun is coming. I sat at the kitchen island, on the second metal stool from the end. The stool had a slight wobble in the left front leg if my weight shifts more than two inches to the side, so I keep my weight centered.

My father’s phone was three inches away from the edge of my forearm. It is face-down on the granite. That was why it felt like a waiting room. He had been dead for three days, and his phone was still sitting right where he left it, flat against the Absolute Black stone. I hadn’t been able to touch it. I hadn’t been able to look at the screen. So, we just sat here across from each other, me on the metal stool, the plastic and glass of him on the counter, like two strangers waiting for an appointment neither of us wants to keep. He was not going to pick it up. I am not going to turn it over. We were just waiting out the clock.

Upstairs, on the bed I am not going to sleep in, the black wool dress was laid out flat. The fabric was a forty percent synthetic blend, which means it would not wrinkle during the three-hour service. The sleeves were pinned straight along the seam lines of the duvet. The hem is perfectly parallel with the bottom edge of the footboard. The two black leather pumps were placed side by side at the floor line. The toes face the window. The heels point toward the door. They were size seven and a half. The room was 71 degrees. The window to the left is open.