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I feel sorry for Penny. Just an innocent little girl being used and manipulated to toy with an adult man. Forced to pretend to know things about me, to give me gifts, and to lie about her birthday.
Who the hell does things like that?
I guess child abuse comes in all sorts of messed-up forms.
Rage is pulsing like lava through my veins as I tread through the dark across their perfect green lawn. If it wasn’t so cold, I’d take a piss on it.
Every light on the first floor of their house is on. Faint voices can be heard. I creep along the side of the house, not wanting to be seen on my way to the front door. As I round the corner of the garage, the voices grow louder, breaking out into a chorus of “Happy Birthday.”
Surprise at hearing the song halts me. Glancing around to make sure none of the neighbors are outside, I edge toward the nearest window and peer inside.
It’s a scene right out of a movie. Penny is kneeling on a chair in front of a pink cake glowing with seven candles. Laura’s taking pictures with her back to the windows. A guy, who I assume must be Penny’s father, is standing next to her. I was expecting him to have red hair, but his is black and gelled up. All three of them are wearing silly paper party hats with too-tight elastics under their chins.
I was wrong.
This isn’t a sick revenge game orchestrated by Brianna’s father to torture me. It really is Penny’s birthday.
My attention is riveted on Penny as she closes her eyes, leaning fearlessly close to the flames. She blows each one out, pausing in between, not in one big breath, but with seven tiny breaths.
I don’t have to be in the room to know she just made seven wishes.
I’ve only ever seen one other person make a wish on each individual candle.
“Everything we want starts with a wish, Fox,” Brianna said dreamily. Smoke from the candles drifted in the air between us like wispy ghosts. “We should never settle for just one.”
“I don’t do wishes,” I said. I’d never had a birthday cake. My first ever was the one sitting between us that Bri spent the entire day baking and decorating for me. Eating it seemed like a sin. I wanted to save it forever—perfect and untouched.
Holding my gaze, she pulled a candle out of the cake and licked the frosting from it. “That’s why I made the wishes for you.” She leaned across the table and kissed me with sugary lips. “And you, my love, deserve to have every single one of them come true.”
I have no idea what wishes Brianna made for me that day. I’ll never know if they came true.
I wonder what Penny Rose just wished for and why she wanted to spend time with me and my dog on her birthday, of all the freakin’ places she could’ve picked.
“You and Cherry Pop and our little house are my favorite place,” Bri had said. “I don’t ever want to be anywhere else or with anyone else.”
Closing my eyes, I shake my head to rattle the memory away. That’s the thing about memories—they’re like a slot machine. I never know what I’m gonna get when my brain spins. It might land on one that’ll make me smile, or it might land on one that’ll be a knife plunged in my heart.
When I open my eyes, Penny is giggling as she plucks one of the candles from the cake and licks the icing off.
What. The. Fuck.
A surge of despair and envy tears through me. I don’t know what I’m doing here. All I know is the scene through the window should be mine. Me and Brianna should be at our table in the kitchen right now, celebrating Lily’s seventh birthday with a pretty pink birthday cake and presents. We should be singing and taking pictures. We should be making memories.
I’m not supposed to be alone and they’re not supposed to be gone.
She promised.
Chapter 7
ALEX - 2016
I’m wrestling with the rose bushes. Again.
Armed with welding gloves, I grasp the snarly branches and snap them in half. I’m not even sure how these bushes are still alive. The way they bloom every year annoys the hell out of me. I hate that the bushes die every winter then come back to life in the spring, all beautiful and thriving, even when there’s no one here to give a shit about them anymore.
Bri loved the roses, though. So every now and then—like today—I get a crazy urge to take care of them for her. Just in case she’s somehow watching me from wherever she is.
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch what I’d swear is Bri’s long hair blowing in the breeze around the back corner of the house. I can’t resist turning to look, my heart lurching at the hope that she might be there.
