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“Evelyn? What’s wrong? Is the storm too much? Where are you?” he demanded.
I told him I was at the subway entrance, and then the line went dead in the middle of Julian speaking. I stared at my phone and realized I was in deep trouble when it told me there was no service. One of the towers must have been knocked out. Panic took over me, and I felt my whole body shake. It was too much.
“Damn, your kid is a tough one, isn’t she?” Garth laughed with a cough.
My father stared down at me, lying on the ground, bruised and beaten.
“My kid’s a goddamn mistake,” Dad whispered.
He turned his back on me, and Garth followed him into the house. The door was shut, and I heard the determined click of the deadbolt sliding home. When I knew they weren’t coming back out, I stood up and walked away—limped away—holding my sides. I walked until I was at the playground, and curled up under the platform of the slide. Everything hurt, but more than that, everything felt wrong. I was so,sotired, but I couldn’t fall asleep with the raging wind and rain around me. We had all been told to stay inside during the storm, but apparently, that hadn’t mattered to Garth, which definitely meant it hadn’t mattered to Dad.
The worst part was, Dad had never laid a finger on me. Instead, he stood idly by while his friends, the people that provided him with his next hit, did whatever they wanted, which was usually using me as a punching bag, or letting an errant hand stray when they were drunk. I felt the panic wash over me as I curled into myself on the suitcase, wondering why this was happening again. I lost myself in the fear, and before I knew it, the most dangerous thing of all happened. My heart rate sped up, and my mind went blank. I felt nothing; not the freezing rain or the frigid wind. I didn’t hear the shouting, and was unaware of the arms around me, holding me close.
When I came to, I was on a sofa, one I’d sat on many times before. Hannah was looming over me, her eyes wide and concerned.
“Holy crap, Evvie!” she cried, dragging me into her arms.
The hug she held me in was a tight one, and it made me feel a little claustrophobic. When she let me go, I sat up on my own and rubbed my head. I looked down, half expecting to see the bruises that once ringed my wrists, and my skin dotted with fingerprints. Instead, I saw a thick sweater, with the cuffs extending over my arms. It smelled like something I couldn’t place, but it was unbelievably comforting.
“What happened?” I whispered, still feeling the cuffs of the sweater.
“We found you outside the subway station, Ev,” Hannah said, sitting beside me, “You were totally out of it. You kept shaking and muttering about someone named Garth?”
“Huh,” I answered quietly.
I hadn’t thought about Garth in years. I was twelve when he beat me up for the first time, and sixteen when it all abruptly ended with his sudden, alcohol-induced, demise. He had been one of the meaner ones that my father had brought home.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Hannah asked.
“No,” I replied firmly.
“You know, you can tell me about your dad, Evelyn,” she said.
I looked into her eyes. She never called me Evelyn. It was always ‘Ev’, or ‘Evvie’.
“I know I can,” I sighed, “It’s just that I’m not really ready, you know? I guess for now you should just know that I’m scared of storms.”
She nodded understandingly.
“That’s okay,” she said, “But I’m here whenever you feel like you’re ready to talk to me.”
I was grateful for her, but she just reinforced my knowledge that I couldn’t ever have a relationship with Julian. Someone who was prepared to deal with my fucked-up backstory definitely didn’t need to have her whole world ripped out from under her.
Hannah left me alone. She brought my suitcase up to her bedroom, and let me wander around to my heart’s content. We weren’t going to the ground floor or cellar because of the potential for flooding, so I curled up in the library. I found a book about ancient medicine and was staring at an anatomical drawing of a leg amputation when someone came up behind me.
“That’s a little gory,” he said.
I turned my head, and Julian was there. He placed one hand on my shoulder, and I laid my head on the hand. He felt like home, and this stolen moment was worth more to me than every single minute I’d had in Oregon.
“It’s fascinating,” I insisted.
Julian withdrew his hand and sat opposite me in a chair of his own. He picked a book up from the pile on the table next to him and opened it to a bookmarked chapter. There wasn’t a need to talk, and we fell into companionable silence. A small part of me couldn’t help but imagine that it would always be like this if Julian and I were together. There was no need for conversation between us. Just knowing he was there and he was happy made my heart sing. I realized I hadn’t looked back to my book, and that I’d kept my eyes trained on him.
“You’re staring,” Julian said, eyes still on his book.
“No,” I said boldly, “I’m admiring.”
Julian raised an eyebrow but still didn’t look up. I edged one of my bare feet over to his legs and teased the edge of his ankle with my toes.
