Hold Me Close Read online

  They share the drink and a package of stale pretzels that taste slightly bitter but don’t make her feel sick. Effie makes Heath take more than she does. He’s bigger and needs it. Besides, though she can’t say so without making him feel bad, he deserves more. He’s the one who works for it.

  It’s too warm. She’s very thirsty now, but there’s no more lemonade. Effie blinks and blinks at the orange lights, which have begun to grow bigger and smaller, like some kind of Alice in Wonderland trick.

  “There was something in the lemonade,” Heath says. “I’m sorry.”

  Effie’s laugh is the burble of a brook rushing over stones. The bones in her hands have gone translucent. She’s growing wings. Something is happening.

  “There’s always something in everything,” she says.

  She doesn’t mean to kiss him. They haven’t talked about what happens when the lights go off and he gets into bed with her. How he touches her, or the things he likes her to do. She shouldn’t kiss his cheek, his ear, his neck, his mouth. She shouldn’t open his lips with her tongue and push herself onto his lap.

  It is the first time they’ve done this with the lights still on. She has seen him naked, of course. They don’t have much room for modesty down here. It’s different now, though, with her hands on his body and the sound of Heath’s moaning in her ears.

  Something has overtaken them, a force neither of them can fight against. Because this feels good, and down here in the basement, almost nothing else does. They should stop for so many reasons, but all Effie can think about is getting that feeling back, the one that erases everything else.

  Being with Heath blocks out the world.

  They are stupid with it. Sating themselves and going at it again, then falling asleep curled in each other’s arms without bothering to put their clothes back on or to pull up the blankets.

  There is music, that song, the song, and the lights, and Effie struggles up and out of sleep as if she’s swimming through marshmallow fluff. Sticky, suffocating, she can’t breathe. She’s covered in sweat.

  “I knew it,” Daddy says from the doorway. “I always knew it. Get up! Get up, you disgusting brats!”

  He has Heath by one arm, yanking him. Heath falls out of the bed. Effie finds her way to consciousness. She launches herself from the bed. Bare feet hit the filthy concrete. Her ankle twists.

  When Effie comes at him with windmill arms, all it takes is one strong crack of his fist against her cheek to send her down. She hits her head. There is no pain. Everything is soft-edged, blurry, floating. She is on her feet again, though. Screaming.

  Screaming.

  If they can get him down, they can run. Find the key. In his pocket. Open the door. Up the stairs. Break the door, they can break the door, they’ll break.

  Something breaks. Glass. No key, no door, no running, her head spins, and Effie falls back when Daddy hits her again.

  Leaning over her, spit flies from his mouth. His face is red. He stinks, sour breath. Dandruff in the part of his thinning hair. His eyes are red, with slits like a cat or a lizard. Oh, shit, oh, shit, what’s wrong with his eyes?

  Her wrist breaks with a crack louder than the shatter of glass. Now there’s pain, instant and ferocious and all-consuming. She can’t even scream with it. All she can do is fall back.

  “I knew you were a little whore all along, I knew it. I knew it! You’ve been fucking him this whole time, haven’t you?” Daddy hits her again. The same arm. More pain. Effie’s scream is thin and breathless, a tin-whistle teakettle shriek.

  “Leave her alone!” Heath hits Daddy over the back and shoulders with the rickety chair. It splinters, pieces flying. Some hit Effie in the face, scratching.

  Daddy turns. He’s so much bigger than Heath, his fists are hammers. Punching. Heath lifts the chair leg, the end jagged.

  Daddy goes to his knees. The chair leg sticking out of his stomach wobbles. There is blood, not as much as you’d expect, until he pulls it out, and then there’s a flood of it. Daddy gets to his feet. Again, he punches Heath in the face, sending him to the floor with a thud as loud as thunder. He kicks. Again. Again. Hand over the hole in his belly, blood gouting.

  Effie can’t move. Her arm is in agony. Her head swims. This is a nightmare, she thinks, crawling to Heath, who won’t wake up. She can’t wake up, either. She wants to wake up.

  “Both of you, just like the other ones. Sick little fucks. Lying little cunts. Like your mother, full of filth and lies, oh, oh, you stupid little bitches.”

  Daddy spits. Frothy blood curdles in the corners of his mouth. There’s more shouting, but Effie can’t hear it. Her ears are ringing, ringing, there’s a conflagration, a tintinnabulation, and then...

  There is darkness.

  And it stays dark for a long, long time.

  chapter forty-one

  The house was not on Effie’s way to anywhere she ever really had to go, but she drove past it anyway, at least two or three times a week. Snow fell, nobody plowed the driveway. She drove past on garbage day and never saw a can at the curb. The mailbox never had the red flag up.

  But the lights were always on inside.

  She never stopped again. If the weather had been warm, she might’ve jogged past to get a closer look beyond the living room curtains, but winter had sunk in its teeth at last and wasn’t letting go. She satisfied herself with slowing as she passed. Once or twice, a silhouetted figure twitched the curtains, or at least she let herself imagine so.

  She never meant to drive past with Polly in the car, but like an addict who promises only one drink, only one pill, never when it will get in the way of life, just a little hit to keep things going...that was Effie with that house. Of course that was the day the ambulance sat in the driveway. That was the day the traffic was blocked by a cop car, not Bill’s, thank God, so that Effie had to slow and stop to wait for the cars coming in the opposite direction to pass before she could drive on.

  “What’s going on, Mom?” Polly looked up from her phone, where she’d been busily trying to beat the next level of her favorite game.

  Effie rolled down her window to say to the woman standing on the sidewalk, her dog on a leash, “What’s happening?”

  “Guy died,” the woman said, all too eager to share the information. No shame at all. Sort of gleeful, actually. “Guess his daughter came in to check on him when she hadn’t heard from him in a few days, found him dead.”

  “Gross,” Polly said.

  Effie looked at her daughter, who’d been made immune to the random deaths of strangers by too much violence on television. Or something. “How did he die?”

  “Stroke, I think someone said.” The woman shrugged. “He was pretty old, and it was a shame, to tell you the truth, that his children left him alone so much. The house was in total neglect.”

  “How long have you lived in this neighborhood?” Effie asked.

  The woman looked surprised and a little affronted. “Five years. Why?”

  Effie rolled up her window and drove on without replying. Polly’s phone bleated and beeped. She finished the level and turned to her mother.

  “Mom.”

  “Yeah, Wog. What?”

  “Mom, was that the house?”

  Startled, Effie twisted to look at Polly. Her fingers gripped the wheel hard enough to hurt. “Why do you ask me that?”

  “I know it was close to Nana’s house. And this isn’t the way to the mall.” Polly looked solemn. “And...I saw a picture of it on the internet, when I was looking at that stuff I wasn’t supposed to see. I’m sorry, Mom, I didn’t look again after you said not to.”

  Effie swallowed and concentrated on the road ahead, mindful of what had happened the last time she hadn’t been paying attention. She’d barely gotten over the bruises. “Yes. That was the house. I shouldn�