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“It isn’t fair.”
Eli shrugged against me. “Life ain’t fair.”
“Aren’t you mad?” I was furious for him. Furious at this town. I wished I could rip off my skin and give it to him. I wished that white wasn’t such a good thing. Who determined that, anyway?
“What’s being mad gonna solve?” Eli bent down to kiss my forehead.
I didn’t know what it would solve, but it sure did feel good. It felt right.
“Do you understand, at least?” Eli asked against my skin.
I didn’t like it, but I understood.
I’d knocked at least four times now, each time without receiving a response. Double-checking my watch to confirm that I had the right time, I knocked a fifth time. Still no response. I started to feel queasy, like a prank was being played on me. Lennox had told me to come at 11:30 for the baby shower, but no one was responding. I stood outside the door, feeling dumb.
I turned to leave after the sixth knock, my hands in my pockets, when my finger touched something cool and metallic: the key. The key that opened the door in front of me. I pulled it out, eyeing it with uncertainty. Lennox had told me to use it.
Spinning it around in my fingers, I weighed the pros and cons. Maybe Lennox wasn’t answering on purpose. Maybe she wanted me to use the key. Or maybe she’d gone out for milk and would be horrified to find me in her apartment.
The key glinted in the hallway light, as if taunting me.
“Fine,” I muttered to myself.
I shoved the key into the lock, feeling odd as it unlocked their door. Despite Lennox’s assurances that she and Vic both wanted me to have and use the key whenever because I was family, I didn’t feel right using it. Family. It felt odd to say that, even in my head.
Even growing up, Daddy never said the word family much and I never thought about what we were. The three of us in that house…we just were.
Mama had once snuck me a book about Ancient Greek temples. I remembered the day very clearly, because that book in particular was so dangerous. If Daddy had found out Mama and I were reading about false gods… Well, I probably wouldn’t be here today.
Mama told me she kept the book from when she was in school, that she’d first gotten it when she was about my age. I was probably thirteen at the time. She snuck it to me when Daddy was out getting stuff at the market.
We sat together in my bed, flipping through the pictures of big marble gods encased in their stone homes. Mama explained their history to me. She explained that years ago people had worshiped other gods. She also reminded me that this was our secret, that Daddy could never find out about the other gods, or that we knew about them, or that we had that book.
That book became one of my favorites. As the years dragged on in our dark home, I came to see the three of us as the marble statues. Just like the marble gods, we were trapped in that house as the world moved around us.
I shut the door behind me and stepped into the open apartment. It was spacious and bright, sunlight streaming in through tall windows that lined the walls opposite me. I called out for Lennox, feeling like an intruder in the empty apartment.
There was no response. I held on to my key as I pressed forward on the dark wood floors, the only dark thing in the apartment. The kitchen was to my left, my reflection warped in various stainless steel surfaces.
“Lennox?” I called out again, my voice disappearing into the lofted ceiling.
A pastel pink sign that read “It’s a girl!” hung from the ceiling. Balloons floated unearthly, their ribboned stems swaying in some unfelt breeze. Everything was set up for the baby shower. I felt as if I’d just arrived after some mass abduction.
Following a noise, I walked up the stairs to the second floor. Now I really felt out of place. It was one thing to use my key and another thing entirely to go up to the second floor. It was where the bedrooms were. It was where they slept.
Once, when I was about four, I’d wandered into Daddy's bedroom looking for comfort after a nightmare. He’d slapped me and tanned my hide just for walking up to the second floor. I reckon you could say that gave me a few issues with going places I wasn’t expressly invited.
I paused, my feet stuck on the last step. This was the second floor. Though the apartment was open and lofted, and therefore you could clearly see part of the second floor from the first, it was still a different space. My hand shook on the railing.
“Grace?” That was definitely Lennox. Though faint, I could hear her voice.
“Lennox?” I called into the space of the second floor. “Lennox, is that you?”
“Grace, I’m in here!”
I swallowed and stepped up to the floor. I swore you could hear a thud when my feet hit the hardwood.
“Where are you, Lennox?” I tried to follow the sound of her voice, but it was still very faint. Why wasn’t she just coming out to meet me?
