Step Submission

STEP SUBMISSION

I sat quietly in the backseat of my stepbrother’s town car, curled up against the window with my head resting against the cool glass. The leather, buttery and unbroken, smelled like brand new, a side-effect of the seat warmer enhancing its aroma, I supposed.

It had been six long months since the last time I’d seen him. Beside me, he sipped a bottle of water—not his usual fare, but he was trying to be sensitive—and stared at me in the way people do when they’re trying to look like they’re not staring. His eyes kept fixing on my face, but would for a moment deviate to my body, my thin frame and the gray cardigan hanging listlessly from it. The last time he’d seen me, I’d been heavier, fuller. Now I was a shade, a shadow, a fraction of the woman I used to be.

This wasn’t what he imagined I’d look like once I got better. He hadn’t been prepared.

Well, tough shit. Neither had I.

I closed my eyes for a moment, letting my stringy blonde hair fall in front of my face. As much as he didn’t want to see me, I didn’t want to see him. It was too much too soon. I felt like I was exposed, a live wire sparking in the street ready to burn away anything I touched. I wasn’t ready yet. No matter what anyone said, I wasn’t ready to come home.

They don’t prepare you for leaving rehab. Not really. Sure, you get some technical training, some “career-oriented” skills and counseling. You’re encouraged to “make amends,” which honestly just makes everybody feel like shit and only vindicates the facility itself. Everything about it is awkward, dredging up shit that everyone involved would just rather forget. Our friends and family hate taking the calls as much as we hate making them.

But the counselors insist. So we do it, hoping that it’s just one more step toward earning back our freedom. Independence becomes a romantic notion when you’re locked away from the rest of the world. At first it breeds rebellion, then determination, yearning, resolve. It’s something to hold onto, a shining star in the twilight that you wish on as you recall only the good things about what being outside those walls was like. But as you move closer to it, you understand it’s all just a burning ball of gas that consumes everything it touches. You’re heading toward a light so bright it’s a wonder it hasn’t made you blind already. And once you realize what freedom is—a crushing aloneness, even when you’re surrounded by people—you start to avoid it. You adapt to your walls, your cell, your enforced routines.

And that, the facilities decide in all their learned wisdom, is when you’re ready to go home.

The car stopped and I opened my eyes again, blinking against the sunbeams filtering through the canopy of trees above. They were old oak, gnarled and reaching, their boughs plagued by Spanish Moss that stretched toward the ground like giant tears. They had deep roots in the land that spread like a vast ocean on each side of the unpaved drive past the wrought iron gates and wrapped around a manse that looked more like it belonged in Antebellum Louisiana than it did anywhere else.

It was the family home, a coveted piece of property fought over for generations by descendants of its owners. And now it was my stepbrother’s. I just hoped Kennith was the only one who still lived there. I wasn’t interested whatsoever in seeing our parents.

The thought of Daddy sitting in his wing-backed chair reading the Wall Street Journal and avoiding my gaze made my stomach turn. Similarly, when the image of my stepmother smoking on the front porch entered my mind, her long, nimble fingers cradling a gilt cigarette holder, sanguine lips parted to release a plume of toxic smoke, my heart began to pound and my vision began to tunnel.

Panic attacks had been a real problem lately. I guessed that was what happened when you gave up the addiction that had been keeping you sane for six years.

Kennith’s hand on my shoulder startled me, but a moment later, the warmth from his palm eased my nerves as well. I looked over at him for the first time since he’d picked me up from the facility, his big brown eyes still and deep like hot whiskey.

“Your old room’s still available,” he said, his gaze never faltering from mine. “Or you can pick a new one. Whichever you’d like.”

I felt my muscles relax. So, it was just the two of us. That was better than the alternative.

I looked again at the house that haunted so many of my dreams. Even my waking thoughts easily stole back to this place, with its windows like empty eye sockets and pillars like bleached bones standing on end. They bordered a gaping maw of a door, and despite Kennith’s assurances, I felt that prickling sensation roll down my spine again.

“Come on,” he said when I didn’t move. He opened his door and scooted across the seat, taking me by the wrist and forcing me to follow.

The world seemed cripplingly expansive. There was so much air out here, so much room, a far cry from the building I’d spend half a year in. Even the outdoors had been confined back there. I’d forgotten how big the world was outside of those walls, and now it was overwhelming.

I stayed close to Kennith’s side as he led me up the front steps while the driver hung back to retrieve my bags from the trunk of the car. I hadn’t carried much with me to the rehab facility—there hadn’t been much time to gather my belongings, and anyway, there wasn’t much I really wanted other than the sweet taste of liquor and the man who had driven me to it. In those last months, I’d spent more time in the arms of vodka or whiskey than I had in Caleb’s, and I found its embrace far more comforting than his, anyway.

And yet, in many ways, Caleb was also an addiction. Being with him was being high, so high that there was nothing but a void and him and me. He

was the twinkling stars, the shining moon, the atmosphere far below. But he was also the lack of air, the crushing cold of dead space, and the weightlessness that let me know if I were to let go of him, even for an instant, I’d drift into nothingness forever and ever—or come crashing down to Earth again, burning up on impact, my ashes scattering over the world we’d left behind.

That was exactly how it felt now. It felt like I was floating, alone in the dark, not knowing if I would go on forever like this or if I would someday get pulled into orbit and fall, fall, fall…

Kennith stopped at the door. He smiled at me. His brown, soulful eyes seemed sad, though, almost like he didn’t know who he was looking at anymore.

“Things have… changed while you’ve been gone,” he said at last. “The house looks different.”

I scowled, even though I didn’t want to. “I’m a big girl. I won’t shatter into a thousand pieces just because you’ve rearranged some furniture.”

“I know you won’t,” he answered with a soft frown. “I just didn’t want you to be shocked. That’s all.”

I nodded, drawing in a deep breath through my nose to quell the inexplicable frustration inside of me. There was no good reason for it. Kennith had been nothing but supportive for my entire stint. He’d called me whenever he could, even on the days when I couldn’t bear to call him back. He’d arrived on visiting days, even the ones where I was too pathetic to do more than sit and watch the community television with him. And he’d picked me up and brought me here to the home we’d grown up in, a home I supposed was now his, judging by its emptiness.

“Evie,” I muttered, her name floating back to me through the haze of time. “Doesn’t she live here with you?”

Kennith shook his head. “That ship has sailed. I keep forgetting you’ve been away for so long. Come on inside, and I’ll help you catch up.”

I stared, holding my breath as Kennith slowly pushed open the door to the manse, revealing an entryway that seemed much brighter and warmer than I’d remembered it.

It was as though, in my absence, everything about the home had improved. There was a weight missing from it, one that had always seemed so unbearable, so stifling. The walls no longer pressed in on me, and the shadows that had once haunted every corner of the place had fled, leaving behind the warm glow of the many sconces and chandeliers in their wake. I almost felt guilty for returning, as though it was my absence that had bestowed new life upon the house.

But I knew it wasn’t because of me. It was because of my stepmother’s voice no longer ringing through the halls, her heels click-clacking on the tile and the hardwood floors. It was because my father’s unsettling, and certainly willful ignorance did not hang over us like a shroud any longer. It was because Kennith was the new owner, and for that, I was grateful.

“I’d like a new room,” I said quickly and a little too loud. My voice echoed, and I grimaced. Rehab makes you smaller, thinner, quieter. I barely recognized my own tone. “Please,” I said much more softly this time.

“Any one you’d like,” Kennith assured me. “Please, Colette. This is your house as much as it is mine. You’re welcome to it. It’s not like it was back when we were kids.” He rubbed the back of his neck then, as if the mere allusion to our childhoods made him uncomfortable. “You probably haven’t eaten yet, have you? We could go to the kitchen and find something. Or Mrs. Maynard could make us something.”

“Simple is fine,” I told him. I wasn’t ready for a full-on meal. There were too many butterflies flitting in my stomach, and I just didn’t have the room.

We strode easily to the kitchen, a space I’d rarely spent time in as a child. Still, I knew something had changed there too. I just couldn’t put my finger on what, exactly.

I sat down at the marble-topped kitchen island, watching as my stepbrother rooted around in the fridge first, and then the pantry. I wondered if he had any idea at all how to cook, or if I’d put him out by blowing off his suggestion regarding Mrs. Maynard.

“If you need help…”

“I’ve got it,” Kennith said, pulling a blue and orange box out of the back of the pantry. His eyes glittered and his smile stretched wide from ear to ear. “Mac and cheese. I haven’t had this stuff in a while.”

I squinted at the box. “Are you sure it’s still good?”

“Seems so,” he said, looking it over. He opened it a crack, inhaled, and then nodded. “Yeah, it should be fine.”

I looked at him, raising an eyebrow. “Can you figure it out? Like I said, I can help you, if you need it.”

Kennith laughed. It sounded merry, like wind chimes in a warm breeze. The pit in my stomach reminded me of how much I had missed that laugh.

“I think I can manage,” he told me. “It is pretty straightforward. The directions are right on the box.” He set it down on the counter near the stovetop and fished about in the fridge for some butter and milk. “I know I haven’t always been the most responsible big brother in the world, but I promise that I can figure out how to feed myself, at least.”

I cringed. “I didn’t mean…”

Kennith closed the refrigerator door. He looked at me. His eyes were warm, soft, filled with nothing but tenderness and love. I’d never seen him look at anybody like that before. Not even Evie.

Then again, I hadn’t spent a lot of time sober until recently, so my memories had to be taken with a grain of salt.

“I was joking,” he said, his dark brows knitting together in a frown. “You used to have a sense of humor, Colette.”

I shrugged, uncomfortable. “Maybe that was just the booze.”

“I don’t believe that,” he said as he searched for a saucepan. “I’ve known you since you were ten, well before you started drinking. You used to laugh a lot back then, too.”

“That was before rehab.” I was making excuses, but that one was at least partially true.

We made no other mention for it as Kennith cooked. There was small talk between us, mostly, but I did ask a few questions about our parents. They’d moved into their summer home, it seemed. Daddy was going to tell me, call me, whatever, but Kennith’s mother had thought it would be too hard on me. The unspoken reality was that they’d left ahead of what they were sure would be some kind of scandal. Nobody gave two shits about our family, not really, but our parents were narcissists. There was no telling them that.

“So, I’m the family embarrassment,” I mused as he set my bowl down in front of me. “That must take a weight off of your shoulders.”

He laughed. “See? I told you it wasn’t the alcohol.”

He was right, of course. But hearing it said out loud by someone without a psychology degree, someone who knew me—really knew me—brought some small comfort.

Or perhaps it wasn’t so small. My stomach seemed less jittery and my heart slowed. I took more mouthfuls of food than I had in months, and when we finished eating, I wasn’t sullen or tired.

But I did have a question. A dangerous one. I didn’t know how to ask, but I also knew that I must. It would come up sooner or later, and I wanted control of when. But I also didn’t want to make Kennith uncomfortable. I didn’t want to bring back the awkwardness we’d only just dismissed.

“Not that it matters,” I began, averting my eyes, “but what happened to Caleb?”

If I had asked my stepmother, she would have flown into a tizzy. She would have scolded me, practically foamed at the mouth as she told me I was never to see him again. I would have been accused of “falling into bad habits already” and my character, my judgment, my ability to think and reason—all of it would have been called into question. Ultimately, she wouldn’t have answered.

If I had asked Daddy, he would have kept reading the paper or drinking his scotch. He would have pretended not to hear me, and when I asked again, he would have told me to ask my stepmother. There would be an air of disappointment to his words, and my limbs would have grown leaden, and suddenly, I wouldn’t want to know.

But I h

ad asked Kennith, and I expected him to tell me the truth. What I hadn’t expected was how it would affect me.

“He’s engaged.”

He’d probably wanted to get it over with, thinking that just coming out and saying it would be akin to tearing off a Band-Aid. And there was that initial sting, the shock of it, a veil ripped away so suddenly that there was hardly time for my brain to form the proper reaction. I went through a variety of options: crying, spitting, laughing uproariously, or perhaps even saying nothing at all. By the time I’d decided, I’d already gone numb, and I could only reply with:

“Oh. Good for him.”

I didn’t mean it, of course. Caleb had been the love of my life. He had been my arch nemesis, too, the greatest evil I’d ever had to overcome. But now he was someone else’s.

Did he love her? Did something in her make him change, something I never had? Did that make her better than me? Had everything that had happened been, somehow, my fault?