“I never heard back from you, so we just decided to take the chance and drive up here and see if you were home! Which you are, apparently.”
“I kind of had plans,” I said tightly. I glanced over at Cole, who was looking at them curiously. “And I don’t even know where my phone is.”
“That’s silly of you. What if there was some sort of emergency and someone needed to get in touch with you? You should have your phone on you.”
I tried not to roll my eyes. “Okay,” I said. “So, you’re here. Yeah. Surprise.”
“So nice to see you again,” my mother said, going over to Cole. “And you too,” she said, looking at Declan. “This is my husband, Bill.”
“Nice to meet you,” Bill said, shaking Cole’s hand. He smiled at Declan. “And how old are you?”
I tried to tune him out. It felt like my shoulders were up to my ears, and I took a deep breath. Was this really fucking happening? Had she really just driven all the way up here with him, without even talking to me first? What if I hadn’t been here? What if I had gone away for the weekend or something? I knew the answer to that already, though—if I hadn’t been home when she got up here, she would’ve looked online and found the fanciest restaurant in the area and had Bill take her out there.
“What are you making?” my mother asked. “I didn’t know you knew how to grill.”
“I do know how to cook, Mom,” I said.
She reached over and squeezed my shoulders. “You look tense,” she said. “You need a massage. There’s probably not a good spa around here, is there?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m not sure a massage would help, anyway.”
Being around Bill made me simultaneously feel sick and feel overwhelmingly enraged. He didn’t seem so powerful now, not like he did when I was a teenager. As he sat there, sipping a beer, talking with Cole about fishing, he seemed completely innocuous. Like a total gentleman, in fact, not at all the sort of person you would expect to try and make a pass at his stepdaughter. But I knew if he kept drinking, he’d get more belligerent; at first it would seem funny, like he was the life of the party, but then it would start to get uncomfortable.
What would he do, I wondered, if I stood up and slapped the beer out of his hand, told him that maybe he had forgotten all about that night when I was 15, but I sure as hell had not?
He’d probably deny it.
And maybe that was what kept me in my seat, refusing to meet his gaze, answering his queries with one-word responses. It had happened so long ago, and though I was certain that it did indeed take place, the passage of time had rendered some of the details fuzzy in my mind. Had he crawled under the sheets, or had he remained on top of them? Had he slid his hand under my shirt as I lay there, curled up on my bed? Those things I couldn’t quite remember, but what had been cemented in my mind was the way his hard one had pressed into my back, his beer breath on my neck, wafting over me, his hands, fingertips like spider legs, creeping up my flanks.
But now, so much time had gone by, what would be the point of me accusing him? Nothing had happened, after all. He hadn’t gotten any further than those hands of his brushing my sternum than I’d flailed away from him, kicking back with my heels, launching him off the side of the bed. He laughed, but then he’d stopped laughing when I kicked out again and caught him on the side of the face. For some reason, I’d been completely unafraid that he would hurt me, and if he had tried, I probably would have clawed his eyes out.
“Don’t you ever fucking come near me again,” I’d snarled as he gathered himself up off the floor. He swayed a little, then staggered out of the room, leaving my bedroom door wide open. When I got up to shut it, I heard him opening another beer. About an hour after that, as I lay there, wide awake, I heard my mother come in. That would have been the time to tell her, but then she laughed loudly at something Bill had said, and I knew the moment was gone. Even if I had run out there and told her, there was still a good chance she wouldn’t have believed me. Not that I hadn’t later tried to bring up the matter, but it had always gone poorly. My mother’s ego was too frail to be able to withstand that sort of accusation; she’d be less concerned about the fact that some guy had tried to do something with her daughter than the fact that the guy in question was apparently choosing me over her. I had never wanted to be competitive with my mother, but I knew she felt that way with me, especially as we’d both gotten older.
The food had turned out great, better than I had thought, but it was hard to sit there and pretend like I wasn’t completely bothered by the fact that Bill was there. It was particularly enraging that he and Cole seemed to have an easy time talking together. When they finally announced that they were leaving, it was all I could do not to jump for joy.
“That was delicious,” my mother said. “And so glad that we were finally able to spend some time with you, Cole. And you too, of course, Declan,” she added, almost as an afterthought. She looked around the yard. “You know, I suppose there is something sort of quaint about up here, that whole back-to-nature vibe and everything. But next time, you guys should plan on coming down to the city, what do you say? We could go to a nice restaurant, do a little exploring.” She looked at Declan. “Have you ever been to LEGOLAND?”
“No,” Declan said, his eyes wide. “There is such a place?”
“There most certainly is. And I bet if you guys came down to visit us in Boston, we’d be able to go there!”
After they left, Cole looked at me, a little skeptically. “Does your mother really want to take Declan to LEGOLAND?” he asked. “I don’t mean any offense by this or anything, but she doesn’t really seem to be the sort of person who, I don’t know, would like to go to a place like that.”
I laughed. “No offense taken. And no, she’s not, but I think her main objective is to get us to come down to the city.”
“I’m pretty sure I told her that I’d lived there when I was going to school.”
“Oh, I’m sure you did, but she’s probably assuming that if we go back down there and you let her show you around, then you’ll fall in love with the city all over again and just have to move back there.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“Yeah, don’t worry. Me neither.”
“Your mom seems nice, though. Your stepdad didn’t really say much—he’s not much of a talker, is he?”
I stared off into the darkness, listening to the peepers somewhere in the distance. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to get into that whole story about Bill. “We don’t always get along,” I finally said.
“I could tell. I think that can be kind of common with stepparents.”