Darkheart

The Present: Right & Wrong

Heather took one of the longest showers she'd ever taken. She dreaded going down those stairs, facing those people. She'd have asked Kevin if she could go to his place, but they didn't have that kind of relationship. She wasn't sure what kind of relationship they had, if they had any at all. No, they did. They must. Two people having regular sex for several days had some sort of relationship, whatever it might be.

They'd stayed at that motel a lot longer than they'd meant to, drinking and screwing and (in his case) smoking. They'd talked very little and come and gone at different times, mostly to the nearby gas station and mini mart, and even when they'd been fucking, there'd been nothing affectionate about it. They weren't gentle or kind with one another; they weren't fiery and passionate, either. They merely used one another to satisfy their own needs, and when that failed, they'd turn away and satisfy themselves. There'd been no kissing, no words, only as much touch as was necessary, and no lingering in one another's beds afterward. Their interactions were a reenactment of all they despised about themselves, a means through which they could temporarily forget the rooted self-loathing so otherwise difficult to escape. Heather knew Kevin had no actual feeling for her beyond contempt, and she was relatively certain that contempt was mutual. They reminded each other of too much, held up mirrors to one another's skeletons. Since they'd been unable to face their own failings singularly, was it so wrong to take them out on one another?

Kevin was one thing. He was easy. Whatever their situation was, neither had sought to rationalize it. But the people downstairs? They were a different story.

When Heather had called her mother to tell her she'd be in town for a visit and hoped to stay with her, the woman had immediately berated her for ignoring all her calls; apparently David had shown up a week earlier expecting Heather to be there, and when she hadn't been . . . well, he hadn't taken it well. Heather hadn't responded to any of his texts, not answered any calls. She'd assumed he'd stayed home and all his messages would be wondering where she was, asking when she and her "friend" would pick him up so they could all head to Port Killdeer. She hadn't thought he'd go to her hometown himself. Thank God that when she'd actually arrived at her childhood house, David had been at Biggie's. She'd averted her mother's questions as much as possible and headed up to her old bedroom (which had remained largely unchanged since her teenage years) and then straight into a shower, sure she had more to wash away than just a little sweat and dirt.

Her main motive, though, was to kill time. The longer she could avoid seeing her family, the better. It wasn't as if she didn't like her parents. They were all right. Her mother had communicated with her over the years, done that mother thing and pestered about grandbabies (as if Heather needed more reason to feel inadequate), offered unsolicited updates on the town gossip, sought advice about towels and recipes and laundry until she realized her daughter seemed to have an understanding of gardening, which gave her the legitimate excuse to call with questions concerning weeds and pests and what to plant where, when. Heather had known her mother was merely attempting to maintain a connection with her one biological child out of some ingrained notion that only a failed parent lost contact with her offspring. They'd been close for most of Heather's childhood, doing all the things a mother and her only daughter were supposed to do--shop and craft and bake and paint, bedazzle clothing and punch out paper dolls and eat sprinkled doughnuts in cafés and hand-sew the best sparkly costumes for school events . . . all of Heather's friends had envied her closeness with her mother, the "cool" mom. But then had come senior year; Heather had barely made it through her nine months of classes, and the older woman had helplessly watched what she'd thought had been an unshakeable mother-daughter bond deteriorate.

Heather knew, though, that their relationship's foundation had begun to corrode long before her senior year, before working at the resort, before Ryan's disappearance, even. What had begun the process was her mom's marriage to her stepfather, when they'd let Danny into Heather's life.