25. Raleigh

CHAPTER 25

Raleigh

I slept so soundly in the car on the way here that I almost don’t expect to get anymore REM. Especially not with Derrick at my back. But after he lies down and his breathing evens out, I find my own eyelids drooping.

When I open them again, the light in the room has completely changed. Warm gold suffuses every surface- and bathes Derrick’s sleeping face. At some point, I must’ve rolled over to face him, and he moved closer to me. His dark hair is mussed, and I find myself reaching to fix it before I snatch my hand back.

He’s so beautiful, it almost makes me sad. His perfectly proportioned lips, the line of his mouth made soft by sleep, his long eyelashes, the neatness of his brows. I want to trace every line of him with my fingertips, memorize him with every one of my senses.

But I can’t. He’s not mine. He shouldn’t be, and he can’t be. As soon as I can, I have to leave.

How many times have I told myself that since he arrested me outside of Cooper’s?

I shake that thought off and carefully sit up in bed. Derrick doesn’t stir- he is the one who drove all night. Slowly, wincing at every shift of the mattress, I get up and tiptoe to the bedroom door. I’m not even surprised when I find Chance and Justice curled up on the rug on the other side of it.

They get up at the sight of me, and I put my finger to my lips. As if they can understand that their collars jingle when they move too fast. I expect them to slip past me into the room so they can pile into bed with Derrick, but the one I think is Justice sits at my feet and wags his tail hard. Chance just turns in a circle, as if waiting for me to follow him .

“All right, I’m coming,” I whisper, and close the door quietly behind me.

The three of us head downstairs, and I go to the kitchen first, bumbling through cupboards until I find a glass for some water. I don’t hear or see Beth anywhere, so I take this chance to get my own lay of the land. The four strange dogs that jumped me earlier are nowhere to be seen either, thank god. I sip my water and wander the house, soaking its peaceful silence into my pores.

I’m too nosy not to stop in front of any framed picture I find. There are tiny smiling Derricks with huge blue eyes and missing front teeth. One holds up a huge fat cat, almost as big as he is, that is definitely feral. There are slightly older Derricks, maybe in their tweens, whose eyes are empty and whose smiles are totally missing as if they’d never smiled before. I don’t see any pictures of Derrick older than that- not until he’s proudly posing beside his mother in a police uniform.

The house in the background of his younger photos is consistent. It’s small and shabby and overgrown with weeds, with windows dark like the empty eye sockets of a skull. But all the ones of Derrick as an adult are taken here.

There’s no man in any of the photos. They’re all of Derrick, or Derrick and his mother together.

I’m not actually interested in upsetting Beth, so I stick to the hallways and the main rooms of the house, then move to the back door leading out onto the fields. Chance and Justice immediately tear off into the tall grass, but I linger on the back patio for a while.

I’ve never smelled anything like the air here. It’s like I’m breathing in the sun and the sky. Even the light looks different, warm honey on every surface. I hear birds singing wildly in the trees, and even the noises the bugs are making sound good. And I hate bugs.

A caterwauling of dogs fills the air, making me jump. It’s the four uncivilized ones from this morning, but they don’t even see me. They run into Chance and Justice, and soon all six of them are chasing and playing in the grass.

I’ve never been somewhere so open and full of living things before. I suppose the Warwick estate is something like an anthill, with people always milling around. It’s just that it feels so busy, so orderly, like everyone has their job and everything’s in its place- except for me. If I wander around there, I’m under people’s feet. But here, I feel like one of the farm animals moseying through the grass, soaking in the sun and crisp air.

And it’s nice.

What would it be like to live in a place like this? To wake up to misty fields and birdsong every morning? How would it be to bring my baby into such a beautiful corner of the world?

A vision fills my mind of kids running and laughing and climbing in the trees, playing with dogs and chasing chickens. I see Derrick with a toddler on his hip that has his eyes and my natural golden hair. We’d have the happiest kids who would never be threatened by street gangs or shamed for how loud and wild they are.

I blink out of the daydream. Kids- plural ? And Derrick there too? That’s not the plan. The plan is one baby- this baby- and me. Maybe I can find a cute little house in the French countryside for the two of us. Similar to this, but not quite the same, which is fine.

Movement catches my eyes off to the right. I see Beth emerge from a storage shed with two large buckets in her hands. Without noticing me, she heads toward a building that I assume is the stable for the horses, and disappears inside.

Part of my mind screams at me to hide like a child, which is embarrassing. Beth greeted me with more warmth than anyone ever has, even though she knows nothing about me. Except that I’m dating her son, allegedly. I should thank her for that- no matter how terrified I am that she’ll suddenly reject me.

I cross the field to the stables and peek inside. Beth is brushing down one of the horses, who shakes its head with what I assume is impatience. Beth chides it, murmuring happily away, and the horse whinnies, as if in response.

I’ve never realized how big horses are in real life, and the idea of getting within twenty feet of the thing suddenly feels impossible.

But then Beth looks up and sees me, her warm face splitting into that broad smile that Derrick inherited. “Good morning, sweetheart! Or good afternoon I guess I should say. Did you sleep well?”

“I did, thanks,” I say, immediately shy of her sunbeam smile. “And, uh, sorry we immediately went to sleep after we got here.”

“You’re completely fine. I can’t believe Derrick had you two drive through the night to get here. He’s such a sporadic kid sometimes.”

I’ve never thought of the clever and calculated Derrick as sporadic , but maybe that’s something he used to be once.

Beth suddenly notices the distance I’m keeping between me and the horse and beckons me closer. “Oh you don’t have to worry about him. His kicking days are behind him, just like mine,” she laughs.

Well that’s easy for her to say, she and the horse know each other. Me, on the other hand… But I don’t want to disappoint her or feel rude, so I sidle up to them both, making sure to keep myself in the horse’s sight so I won’t startle it. Maybe me wearing Derrick’s clothes will help mask my scent or something.

Do horses smell people? Like dogs? What a stupid fucking question.

“I really can’t tell you how happy I am to meet you, Raleigh,” Beth says, running her brush over the horse’s sleek side. “As a mother, it doesn’t matter how old your child gets. You’re always worried about whether or not he’s making friends all right. And he’s always been so withdrawn.” Her smile saddens, just a little, her gaze going distant.

I think of how I’ve only ever had one friend in my life, even though I’ve always been surrounded by the same people. And even in Clara’s case, I’d still planned to leave her behind rather than burden her with the truth.

And now I’m twenty-five, and can’t imagine trying to build a friendship with them from scratch. “I… think I know what that’s like,” I say.

Beth smiles at me sympathetically, and my chest warms. “When he was little, Derrick was absolutely brimming with energy. He’d become best friends with everyone and everything he talked to, even if it wasn’t a living thing! He’d chat up the old dead tree on the side of the house, the stray cat that always hung around, the older kids riding around on their bikes- you name it, he’d make friends with it.”

That doesn’t sound withdrawn to me. It sounds just right for the gap-toothed kid in the photos, with eyes like twin oceans.

“What happened?” I ask. Awkwardly, I clarify. “I was looking at all the photos you’ve got of him. He seemed… sad when he got a little older.”

Beth’s smile sours, and I’m afraid I made her mad. But when she speaks again, she just sounds sad. “He had a shitty father,” she says. “Or maybe it’s more accurate to say I had a shitty husband. He… liked to talk with his fists, if you understand me.”

I do, and the very thought of it makes me sick. “I’m- I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to bring it up.”

Beth waves a hand to soothe me. “Don’t be sorry, sweetheart. The man’s been dead for years, and good riddance to him. Derrick and I are both much better now. We’re safe and we’re happy.” She says it like it’s something she’s had to remind herself of before, and I wonder if it’s something Derrick would agree with.

Is he happy with his life? Because he’s certainly not safe.

Suddenly, I understand why he lied to his own mother so many times just yesterday. I can only imagine what this woman has been through, and what she’s had to try to forget every day. My childhood wasn’t any kind of cakewalk, but at least no member of my family has ever hit me. If they did, and they died, I’d want to be told every single day that I was safe now, that everything was okay now, that nothing like that would happen again.

I don’t realize I’ve let the silence stretch until Beth reaches out to me. She touches my cheek like it’s the most natural thing in the world. “And we’re making new friends,” she adds, looking at me with love, pure and simple.

I make an excuse to return to the house before I can burst into tears in front of Beth. In my rush through the back door, I almost slam straight into Derrick, still looking sleep mussed and unfairly beautiful.

To my surprise, he lets out a sigh of relief when he sees me. “Where have you been?” he asks.

Did he think I’d run off again while he was asleep? Where the hell would I go in a police cruiser that looks like it’s been through the wars? I can’t be too offended, since I was the one who set the precedent.

Still, my stomach does something funny at the idea he’s been looking for me since he woke up. The tension between us now is not the same as it was last night. It’s more uncertain, less angry.

Is it a change in me, or in him?

“I just went for a walk,” I tell him. “Your mom and I talked for a bit in the stables.”

He looks instantly wary. “What did you say?”

I push past him into the house, abruptly tired of his suspicion, whether or not it’s been well earned. This is why I don’t make friends. You have to maintain people’s faith in you, and that’s exhausting when you’re as much a failure as I am.

“What she wanted to hear,” I say, and leave him in the doorway.