Girl, Forgotten (Andrea Oliver 2)

Emily felt her fortress cracking against the weight of impending grief. No matter what happened—good, bad or indifferent—her grandmother would not bear witness. “I love you so much.”

There was no response. The cobwebs had fractured Gram’s gaze into the familiar look of confusion. She was holding a stranger’s hands. Embarrassed, she took up the knitting needles, and continued the sweater.

Emily wiped away the last of her tears as she stood up. There was nothing worse than watching a stranger cry. The mirror beckoned, but she felt bad enough without staring at her reflection for a second longer. Besides, nothing was going to change.

Gram didn’t glance up as Emily grabbed her things and left her room.

She went to the top of the stairs and listened. Her mother’s strident tone was muffled by her closed office doors. Emily strained for her father’s deep baritone, but he was probably still at his faculty meeting. Still, Emily slid off her shoes before carefully picking her way down the stairs. The old house’s creaks were as well-known to her as her parents’ warring shouts.

Her hand was reaching for the front door when she remembered the cookies. The stately old grandfather clock was ticking up on five. Gram wouldn’t remember the request, but nor would she be fed until well after six.

Emily placed her shoes by the door, then propped her small purse against the heels. She tiptoed past her mother’s office to the kitchen.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going dressed like that?” Her father’s stink of cigars and stale beer filled the kitchen. His black suit jacket was thrown over one of the chairs. The sleeves of his white dress shirt were rolled up. An unopened can of Natty Boh was beside two crushed empties on the counter.

Emily watched a bead of condensation roll down the side of the can.

Her father snapped his fingers as if hastening one of his grad students to get on with it. “Answer me.”

“I was just—”

“I know what you were just,” he cut her off. “You’re not content with the damage you’ve already caused this family? You’re going to completely blow up our lives two days before the most important week of your mother’s entire career?”

Emily’s face burned with shame. “It’s not about—”

“I don’t give a glorious goddamn what you think it is and is not about.” He pulled the ring off the can and threw it into the sink. “You can turn back around and get out of that hideous dress and stay in your room until I tell you otherwise.”

“Yes, sir.” She opened the cabinet to retrieve the cookies for her grandmother. Emily’s fingers had barely brushed the orange and white packaging on the Bergers when her father’s hand clamped around her wrist. Her brain focused not on the pain, but on the memory of the handcuff-shaped bruise around her grandmother’s frail wrist.

You’ll get away. You’ll go to college. You’ll meet a boy who loves you …

“Dad, I—”

He squeezed harder, and the pain took her breath away. Emily was on her knees, eyes tightly shut, when the stench of his breath curled into her nostrils. “What did I tell you?”

“You—” She gasped as the bones inside her wrist started to quiver. “I’m sorry, I—”

“What did I tell you?”

“T-to go to my room.”

The vise of his hand released. The relief brought another gasp from deep inside Emily’s belly. She stood up. She closed the cabinet door. She walked out of the kitchen. She went back up the hallway. She placed her foot on the bottom stair, directly above the loudest creak, before putting her foot back on the floor.

Emily turned.

Her shoes were still beside the front door alongside her purse. They were all dyed a perfect shade of turquoise to match her satin dress. But the dress was too tight and she couldn’t get her pantyhose past her knees and her feet were painfully swollen so she bypassed the heels and grabbed her clutch on the way out the door.

A gentle spring breeze caressed her bare shoulders as she walked across the lawn. The grass tickled her feet. In the distance, she could smell the pungent salt of the ocean. The Atlantic was far too cold for the tourists who would flock to the boardwalk in the summer. For now, Longbill Beach belonged to the townies, who would never stand in a snaking line outside of Thrasher’s for a bucket of French fries or stare in wonder at the machines stretching colorful strings of taffy in the candy shop window.

Summer.

Only a few months away.

Clay and Nardo and Ricky and Blake were all preparing for graduation, about to start their adult lives, about to leave this stifling, pathetic beach town. Would they ever think of Emily again? Did they even think of her now? Maybe with pity. Probably with relief that they had finally excised the rot from their incestuous little circle.

Her outsiderness didn’t hurt now as much as it had in the beginning. Emily had finally accepted that she wasn’t a part of their lives anymore. Contrary to what Gram had said, Emily was not going away. Not going to college. Not meeting a boy who loved her. She would end up shrieking her lifeguard whistle at obnoxious brats on the beach or passing out endless free samples from behind the counter at Salty Pete’s Soft Serve.

The soles of her feet slapped against the warm asphalt as she turned the corner. She wanted to look back at the house, but she refrained from the dramatic gesture. Instead, she conjured the image of her mother pacing back and forth across her office, phone to her ear as she strategized. Her father would be draining the can of beer, possibly weighing the distance between the rest of the beer in the fridge and the Scotch in the library. Her grandmother would be finishing the tiny sweater, wondering what child she could’ve possibly started it for.