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“I’m going to Dan’s,” JJ announced from the doorway.
Ellie craned her neck from the couch to eye him, lips in a thin line. His scrawny, tall — taller than Ellie or Dina — posture was shrouded in a baggy jacket, and his head was cascaded in wild hair. He looked more like Jesse every day with Dina’s soft face and strong nose. Grew more, every day, and he was just thirteen, so he probably had another growth spurt stowed.
“Did you clean your cave?” Because if Ellie thought she was a slob, she’d never expected JJ to take that crown.
He groaned. “Yes, mom.”
“Tone.” It was more of a joke than anything. She couldn’t care less.
“Okay,” JJ huffed, ever sardonic, “fine. Jeez. See you later.”
Pursed, she kept her mouth tight to keep from laughing at his petulance; it was hard to take him seriously with his crackly, changing voice. But she didn’t pay it much mind. God knows she’d said worse as a teen. “Be safe. Love you.” She sank back into the couch, tucking her head against the pillow on the armrest. Some documentary was in the VCR. It was salvaged from the library and displayed different fossils, scientists detailing how to identify them and the dinosaurs for which they were attributed. Ellie could deal with the VHS skipping occasionally for that.
“Love you, too.”
Ellie heard the screen door open and close, rendering her alone in the house. Dina was getting groceries. Ronnie was… somewhere outside, catching vermin. The scroungy cat always made his way back, fur soaked to his skin and expecting food.
As she ticked the mental checklist, she halted to ponder about how she got there. How she never would’ve expected it: Forgiveness, wholeness. And how she was still yearning to deserve it. Ellie pressed her head harder to drown the noise out, eyes squeezed shut.
—
A hand jostled her shoulder. The TV’s static rang through the living room, bracketed by evening sifting through the windows and Dina leering down at her. Over the years, she’d become stouter, hair teetering prettily to the small of her back tied by a ribbon, uncut since JJ was born. She often wore something scarlet on her lips, something that tasted sweet as berries. Her expression, however, was not saccharine.
“Where’s JJ?” Part panicked, part irritated. “I told him I needed him to stay and rake the yard. I had to borrow one from Cal while I was out.”
Ellie mumbled, rubbing her eyes, “Y’didn’t tell me that.” Her voice slurred with sleep, neck panging from how she’d rested, and fuck, that knot was uncomfortable. She massaged her nape with a hiss.
“You okay?” No matter how exasperated, how annoyed, she could mellow her voice and ease Ellie, burnishing her hand over Ellie’s and rubbing her neck for her.
“Slept on it weird.” She closed her eyes. “He said he cleaned his room. Figured it’d be fine to let him go to Dan’s.”
“Well, he didn’t clean his room. I checked.”
“Not even a little?”
“It’s pigsty levels.”
“Ugh.”
“Yep.” Dina retracted her hand and moved to the kitchen. “Come help with groceries.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Ellie grumbled. A yawn burgeoned her when she sat upright, trailing Dina and surveying what she’d gotten. It was mostly fruits and meat in the burlap bags, as they cultivated their own vegetables. “Any plans for dinner?” She took the packaged meat out and sat it in the fridge.
She hummed, thinking. “Probably that beef stew. With rice and beans.” But she was flat, none of that lightness Ellie savored resonant.
Ellie looked at her. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” Dina sat some vegetables out on the cutting board and sorted apples and oranges into the fruit bowl, hands becoming antsy, jaw set tight. As the last fruit was set, she muttered, “JJ’s worrying me.”
“Hey.” Ellie closed the door and walked to her, looping her arms around her waist, hands clasped and forefronting her stomach. “He’s fine. Just a teenager.”
“I know, but… it’d be different if I could understand him better.”
The unsaid words hung between them, heavy, and they were quiet for long seconds, chewing them. I wish Jesse were here. He’d know what to do. Always so steadfast, so confident.
“Yeah.”
Dina echoed softly, “Yeah.”
So Ellie held her, slotting her face in the crook of her neck to plant a gentle kiss there, their embrace a gentle sway — left, right. “You’re doing great, Dee.”
“I just feel like we aren’t on the same page.”
She stiffened. “What do you mean?” Their domesticity was something she held dear, knowing what it was like to lose it, but the quarter of it that was bickering, somberness, she could do without.
Ellie felt Dina grow taut in the embrace, halting their rocking, before she spoke, “You say yes too easily.”
Furrowed, she sent her a confused, narrow glance from behind, boring it into the side of her face. “I don’t.”
“He only asks you things ‘cause you always say yes. And if he has to ask me and I say no, he just goes around and — ”
“Are you saying I’m not — ”
“I’m saying that I’m tired of always having to put my foot down.”
“Right.” She pulled from Dina. Contemplating, she licked her lips and gazed at the floor tiles for long, pondering moments. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
Dina turned to face her, leaning on the counter. “I’m not angry with you, El.”
“I know, I just…,” she sighed and rubbed the back of her neck, though that didn’t soothe the burrowing, endless pit in her stomach. “I think I’m gonna lay down. My neck is killing me.”
“Go rest, babe.”
—
Ellie didn’t rest. She didn’t get a sliver of sleep, torn in a perpetual state of adjusting her arms, flipping her pillows, feeling too hot. Too much. Nothing in that bed could lull or reassure when she was the one pressing the mattress. Bloodied hands couldn’t touch white sheets, pretty floral bedspreads, without staining. There was evidence of her fault, rotten and stark, on all she touched. Especially Dina.
She pretended to be dozing when she heard Dina ascend the creaking stairs and slip into their bedroom, the gentle rustle of her changing clothes imminent. A melodic hum filled the room punctured by the occasional sung word. “Take On Me”. Dina’s quiet notes were off-key, jumping too high, too low, endearing always.
Like she had no wrongs, all truth in that pretty song, Ellie couldn’t repress a soft laugh.
The singing stopped instantly. “You’re awake?” She sounded bashful.
Ellie peeked, eyes half-lidded, and caught her at the bedside, red, embarrassed face complementing the gorgeous, plum nightgown that’d always been Ellie’s favorite. “You’re an amazing singer, Dee.”
“Shut up.”
“Never.”
They chuckled, though, and intertwined, Dina holding Ellie against her, head atop her chest. “I didn’t feel like making dinner since I assumed you were asleep.”
“I’m not hungry.”
The rise and fall of her breathing was a lullaby, her heart beating beneath her ear and her hand stroking her hair. Ellie had cropped it very short for years then, strands hardly passing her neck. It was a very messy cut. One done herself that Dina had begged to help with. She relished having that authority over her appearance, snipping strands when all else grew too heavy.
But when the sun set and the scissors were out of her hands, she couldn’t reign the thoughts consuming her, nothing to lighten them except for the girl — girl, still two kids hopelessly in love — she shared a bed with. She hadn’t earned it. Not a moment Dina spared was earned.
“Why me?” Ellie posed for the nth time. She’d asked in Seattle, on the farm, whenever she saw the scar on her forehead from that unforgiving theater floor.
She’d received a myriad of answers, but never the stroking hand in her hair unwavering and a simple, wordless kiss pressed to her forehead.
—
Ellie nursed a coffee as she gazed out the kitchen window. She couldn’t take it bitter but could stomach it with milk and sugar, and she’d do anything for a kick in the dreary morning. The stovetop sizzled with turkey bacon in the skillet, Dina tending with tongs.
“Do you want eggs?”
She swallowed a hearty sip. “Nah.”
“You might wanna get some fuel before you have to get JJ.”
Frowning, she cast Dina a glance. “Already? He’s only been gone for a night.”
She rose a brow, and as with her kiss, she didn’t need to say more.
—
Ellie had rapped her fist on the door one, two, three times, and was on her fourth, each knock emanating hard in the wood. Her patience was skimming thin. She was on the verge of shouting out for Dan’s mother. If she was even there. She estimated it was five minutes before JJ answered.
His eyes were dark, not the warm brown of Jesse but husked, and he didn’t meet Ellie’s gaze before sidestepping her to exit the house, backpack slung over his shoulder.
“Hey,” Ellie scolded. It felt unnatural in her mouth. “Why didn’t you answer the door?”
JJ didn’t answer. He was marching down the paved gravel street, legs carrying him faster than Ellie could follow, still confounded for a moment before she trailed.
“What’s wrong?”
He was silent and trained on something afar.
“JJ.” It pained her.
Nothing.
“JJ — ”
JJ swiveled to her and snapped, “You left us.”
She was pinned to her spot. Unmoving. Unspeaking, mouth unable to craft a reply, an excuse. She didn’t have one. Only the explanation that her veins had begun pumping tar that seeped into her heart. Black. No blush, Dina’s crimson lip balm stained on her cheek, hues of dusk between the high grass. Their rooster’s scarlet crest wobbling as it crowed each morning. It all turned black and white and gore red, all on her hands. Like a woven braid, her sight grew so narrow she could only see her. Some days, she still came back like a specter, taunting.
Ellie couldn’t verbalize what she’d lost when she left, how she rued it, and would do anything to turn back time. Pathetic and melancholic on her tongue, she murmured, “I know.”
“You know?” JJ echoed. His voice was raising and drawing attention from passersby. “Dan’s mom told me, and she said mommy was… she was destroyed. Alone.” He threw his hands up. “But you got off scot-free — ”
“That’s not true.”
“You never told me!” he shouted. “You never told me about Abby or what happened to Joel or — I’m fucking named after him, mom!”
She couldn’t object to anything slung at her. “Don’t curse.” A sad attempt at mediation where she was half-present, the edges of JJ’s frame blurred.
“Fuck you, why didn’t you tell me?”
“... I didn’t…” — she cleared her throat and scratched her nose, trying to keep her posture straight and voice level despite her vision concaving, a dark, dotted vignette, chest too tight, everything in the berth between them, shit — “I didn’t think it was important — ”
“Of course it’s important!”
Nothing else was said aloud, but it broke her heart to see his lip quiver, shoulders stuttering with sobs held back, and JJ walked from her before she could see the tears fall.
—
Ellie had paced town for hours before she returned home, and Dina was expectant on the porch swing, arms over her chest as she watched her approach. Her heart jumped to her throat. Her lungs felt collapsed.
“What happened?”
“Where’s JJ?”
They said it at the same time. Ellie’s lips parted slightly, awkward.
Dina muttered, “He’s in his room. Do you know what’s up with him?”
“Uh,” Ellie stammered, peering down at her beaten sneakers. They were scuffed. Stained with dirt and grass. Those shoes hadn’t transversed Seattle, but her own soles had. Bloodying everything, everyone. “... Dan’s mom apparently told him about… me leaving.”
She could feel Dina’s stare on her forehead. “All of it?”
“Probably.”
“Oh, shit.” Dina inhaled deeply and exhaled harder. “We should’ve told him sooner. On our terms.”
“Well, we didn’t.” There was ironic humor to it, but it didn’t bring Ellie a smile. Just an acrid laugh.
“Yeah.”
“... I guess I can try to talk to him.”
Dina scoffed, “If he’ll let you in.”
“Worth a shot, right?” Ellie looked up at her, feeling far too splayed open.
She chewed her cheek and contemplated, eventually nodding. “Worth a shot.”
—
Ellie rapped her fist on the door once.
The answer was immediate: “No.”
“JJ,” she pleaded, “c’mon. I need to talk to you.”
“I’m fine.”
Even from behind a door, she could tell he wasn’t. The mirth he typically possessed was absent in favor of hard enunciations, harshness. Hurt. “You’re not fine. Let me in, I’m serious.” If she put her entire soul into it, she couldn’t sound stern. Not towards him. “I’m not gonna go away.”
She heard gentle footfalls punctuated by the sound of his lock unclasping, and she stepped in. It was a pigsty, laundry strewn and comics laid neglected on every surface, but she’d address that later.
“What?” JJ grumbled, closing the door behind her.
Ellie sat at the foot of his bed and patted the spot next to her.
He begrudgingly took place beside, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and feet on the floor. He was too tall for his own good. It’d amuse Ellie any other day. Then, it just made her marvel at how he’d changed since he was an infant swaddled.
“Joel,” she began, and her throat caught on his name, “was the most important person in my life for a really long time.” In the grand scheme, they weren’t on level terms for long at all. She’d lived more years without him than with. But it never, ever felt that way. “And then… he wasn’t.” How she’d shoved him away at the hospital. “And then he was again.” The reconciliation. The coffee mug on his counter he’d never get to drink from again. “The details don’t… matter, but” — Ellie swallowed — “we were okay again, and she took that from me.”
JJ listened intently, if scorned, and he clarified, “Abby?”
“Yeah. Her.” She briefly bit her lip. Her leg bounced where she rested her foot on the bedframe. “I was angry. I wanna say I was sad, ‘cause I was, but… no. I was mostly angry. Angry at her. Angry at Joel. At… myself. And it made me sick.” Ellie shook her head, eyes squeezing shut. “I couldn’t see anything but myself, and I thought that by leaving to finish what she’d…,” she trailed. Joel had started it and she knew it. “What… we started, that I’d be okay again. I wasn’t.”
Ellie raised her left hand and swallowed.
“I didn’t get these bitten off by a dog. It was her. I lost everything when I went after her, even from the start. I lost your dad. Your mom. Myself.” Tentative, she laid her mangled hand between them. “I lost you. I abandoned you, and won’t ever be able to apologize enough.”
JJ was staring at her hand, speechless. Ellie sat it on his.
“I stopped making promises years ago. Or even accepting them.”
Swear to me that everything you said about the Fireflies is true.
I swear.
“But I made one when your mom took me back about a year after I came back to Jackson.” Ellie met JJ’s eye. “I swore to myself that I was gonna spend the rest of my life making it up to you.”
She watched him work his jaw, flex his fingers beneath hers. There was no pinky to link with his on that hand, no way to bond that promise. But his throat bobbed while he nodded, blinking quick and eyes wet. “Okay.”
Ellie smiled sadly. “You remind me of Joel sometimes. The best of him.”
On the good days, the color she’d lost seeped back. But the black was still there. Just in JJ and Dina’s shared coal hair, big pupils, thick lashes. Warm black, not the loss of hue. And the red was of shared hearts.
“How?” he asked quietly.
And the same went for herself, and Dina, and Jesse. “You love really hard.”