Beach Day

24: That Classic Cain Rage

There's no time to think about that. This is an exploration mission. She wants to push on, to take this further, to find something— even if she can smell that the rain is about to fall, even if she can feel it in the humidity on her sunburned skin. She has to keep going.

The drizzling must get to Drew, though, because he puts a hand on her shoulder and pulls her back before she can push through the fronds of another palmetto bush. "Tiff. It's raining. We should head back while we still can."

"It's always raining. If we turn back every time it starts to rain, we'll never get anything done."

"I don't feel like dying in the woods in Florida. I'm going back and I'm insisting that you come with me."

He's right. On some rational level, she knows that. She doesn't want to get totally lost in an area of these woods she isn't familiar with.

There's a part of her that knows, though, that she could find what she's looking for if she would just push on, over the ridge and down into the trees. That's the choice that must be made— rushing forward recklessly and acting against her best interest, or doing the wise thing and heading back to the side of the road.

Drew can probably read what she's thinking across her face. With a sigh and one hand pinching the bridge of his nose as the rain comes down, he reasons, "Tiff, listen. Whatever we're looking for will be here tomorrow. We can always just come back then."

"I can't come back tomorrow. I told Peepaw I would go to church."

"Church isn't an all-day thing," he points out, his tone reading a question of why would you agree to go to church, you dumb little atheist?

"It is around here— and probably in other places. I don't know. It's a thing where you go to Peepaw's house after church for a light lunch, play some board games, have dinner, more board games, family prayer and scripture study, and then you talk some more, and you finally leave at nine-thirty-PM. It's a time for— Sundays are for family, Drew."

"Then how come you always spend them in the woods?" he jokes.

"The woods are sacred." It's overdramatic on purpose; she simply must commit to the bit. Serious once more, she continues, "My point being, I won't be able to come here unless I can weasel my way out of everything else."

"I'm assuming it's more complicated than just 'you're legally an adult and you can leave if you want.'"

"Yeah, I don't want to start drama with them."

"That's fair, but—"

"You're right. It won't stop raining. And this will be here on Monday or Tuesday or whenever we can come back. Let's just... head back to the car." Tiff opens up the umbrella and steps up next to her cousin. "I should have brought a poncho."

"It's a bit late for that."

"I'm incredibly aware." She tilts the umbrella to get water on him on purpose. It isn't like it matters. He's already soaked.

They keep bickering, tromping through the underbrush, the rain, and the mud. Everything from her seeming inability to clean her room to the way he reacted to the fact that she was turning into a frog on the way here is fair game. Semi-unbridled rage is something they share, though, just as much as an undercurrent of love under all of it.

She tries not to question it anymore. She knows she is hard to be around and hard to love— but she also knows it's horrible and horribly selfish to act like people don't care about her. They keep demonstrating it, over and over again: Aunt Esther insisting she get a proper bedframe; Denny letting her use the basement as a workshop; Drew making sure she doesn't move to Kansas on an insecure whim; bickering with Drake when they thought they were in 1872; how is she not loved? It's foolish to think so, when Denny is always checking in on her, when Mr. Mathew saved her life, when the Vagrant told her about how the version of herself from that other timeline died, when Drew has made it clear that he does not hate her. It's hard to read love into situations where she knows she should be punished— but isn't it worth it?