Better Left Buried (29 page)

Her
father twitched, rolled onto his knees, and crawled up the stairs. His face was clear, almost human.

“Harmony.”

The sadness in his eyes as he reached for her broke her heart.

The whisper caused the candle flame to flicker.

Her mother pulled something small and shiny from the kitchen drawer. She stood at the top of the stairs,
hunched over to keep pressure on her wound, her hand trembling as she took aim.

“No, please. No! Mommy, stop!”
Little girl Harmony pulled at her mother’s arm, dragging her down to her level and narrowly missing snatching the gun from her hand.

“I have to protect you.”

The gun went off with a flash.

A searing pain ripped through
little girl Harmony’s hand and she recoiled, howling.

The shadow of a bullet sailed through the air
and into her father’s forehead.

H
is body tumbled down the stairs.

He was dead
no matter how hard she had tried to stop it.

Brea rolled onto her side, breathing Jaxon’s smell through the t-shirt she couldn’t bring herself to take off. The green numbers on the digital alarm clock read 3:00 AM, three hours until she was supposed to get up for school. She glanced at her cell phone and sighed when she saw nothing but a handful of messages from Becky who had inserted herself as Brea’s replacement best friend.

She fired off a text to Jaxon. “Hey, how’s it going?”

“Miss me already?”

She hadn’t expected an answer for hours. “What are you doing up?”

“Same as you, I bet.” He punctuated his statement with a smiley face emoticon.

“Thinking about earlier?”
A grin spread across her face and she felt the faint blush of embarrassment. Some things were easier said under cover of night.

“You sorry?”

“For what?”

“For nearly burning up my clutch.
LOL.”

For a minute she wondered if they were even on the same page.

“I’m kidding,” he said after a long silence. “Obviously I meant the other thing. Any regrets?”

“None.”
She didn’t even have to think about it to answer.

“Can I tell you a secret?”

“Sure.” Part of her was afraid to hear it.

“I really like you.”

She’d hoped as much, considering. “That’s good news.”

“I mean, like
REALLY like you.”

His was the strangest profession of love she’d ever heard. “And I REALLY
like you, too.” She mirrored his caps, smiling at the irony that the last person she expected to be talking to about how much she liked Jaxon was Jaxon.

“You tell Harmony what happened?”

“No. You tell Pete?”

“Touché.
LOL. Have you heard from her?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Figure that’s part of why you’re up. Okay to call?”

She turned
off her phone sounds before answering. “Sure.”

The screen lit up: “Incoming call”.

“Hey.” She pulled her blanket over her head and spoke softly.

“Hey, yourself.”
His voice sounded deep, sleepy.

“I woke you up, didn’t I?”

“No.”

She could hear him yawning. “Would you tell me if I had?”

“Nope.” There was a smile in his voice.

“So, why’d you ask about Harmony?”

“Honestly?”

“Honestly.”

“Because I’m worried she might try to talk you out of me.” His insecurity was as unexpected as it was flattering. “I think things are good. Better than good, but I keep wondering what happens when she comes back.”

“Nothing changes.” Even as
Brea said it, she knew it wasn’t true. There was no way to preserve her past and move forward the way she had been. Harmony being gone had made the transition easy.

“You mean it?”

“I absolutely do.” The car stunt was the last straw. “Harmony’s a security blanket I have to learn to let go of.” It was something her mother had been telling her for years and only now, falling in love for the first time, did she think it for herself.

Their toxic co-dependent friendship had to end.

The conversation stalled, turning heavy as she realized what she had to do.

“You should probably get some sleep,” he said after a long silence.

“You, too,” she said. “See you in a few hours?”

“Absolutely.
I’ll pick you up around seven.”

“I’ll be here.” She hung up the phone
to do what needed to be done. All it was going to take for her to give Harmony another chance was a single panicked phone call. The minute Harmony called pleading for help, she’d cave. She always did. There was only one way to stop it. She entered her phone’s device settings, opened her contacts, and blocked Harmony’s phone number.

Harmony sat down at the kitchen table and buried her head in her hands.

“Why, why,
WHY
?”

She slammed down her fists. The replay faded,
bringing back repressed memories. She watched her father die all over again, but the pain of the past fourteen years, knowing how shitty her life had turned out, made the pain of losing him that much worse.

What if she had been
raised with at least one parent who loved her?

What if
her father had gotten help with his anger or drinking?

What if he
could have taken her away from the selfish thing her mother had become?

Her mother’s problems with him weren’t hers. He had never laid a hand on her.

She wiped away her tears.

“I’m so sorry
. I tried to stop her. I really, really tried.”

Harmony’s hand had been
next to the pistol when it went off. She traced the scar where the gun’s slide had cut her. Her mother made her wear a pair of pink mittens to hide the injury. Someone had tried to take them at the hospital but she refused to take them off until it healed.

Only some things never do.

The memories suffocated her with sadness.

S
he emptied her purse, lining up the prescription bottles—morphine, fentanyl, sleeping pills, and codeine—and opened each one. Cutting her wrists had been painful, hard to do, but looking at the pills as she spilled them all into a pile on the table, the out seemed somehow easier. The truth was too much. Combined with the trouble she was facing, the bleak future of the Midtown Home, of losing Brea, and realizing Adam wasn’t the hero she always thought he was, the memories were the catalyst she needed to make the final decision. She walked to the sink, her resolve strengthening with each step, and turned on the faucet. The water ran rust red then cleared, the well still functioning after so many years.

She took a cup down from the cabinet and
chased the first few pills with a mouthful of cool water, catching sight of the tattoo on her wrist:
Summerland
.

Some things were preordained.

She thought about the fear she had felt when she’d sliced her wrists. The scars were a permanent reminder. Back then, she wasn’t afraid to die. Now, she worried about what came after. No matter. Stumbling through a dead end existence, slowly becoming her mother, was its own hell.

She turned on her cell phone
and a dozen new messages from Adam poured in.

She didn’t need him.

She needed Brea.

Harmony dialed the familiar number,
praying she’d answer.

“I’m
sorry, the person you’re trying to reach is unavailable.”

Unavailable.

It was as much a sign as she needed. She drew a deep breath, refilled the glass, and sat on the top basement step with a handful of pills.

Moonlight shimmered on the still surface of the flooded basement where her father’s murder repl
ayed a dozen times in her head. The nightmares and visions suddenly all made sense. Whether her father wanted to hurt her or not was up for debate—she might well have cut herself that night at Adam’s—but he clearly wanted her to remember. Everything led her back home, to him, and the closest thing to normal she’d ever had.

The doctor’s words, said when her mother
had overdosed, resonated; her failed suicide was due to the fact that the pills hadn’t digested. They had pumped her stomach to save her. Harmony refused to let that be an option. She tilted her head back and filled her mouth with as many pills as she could chew. The ground up pills filled the ridges of her teeth with a bitter paste that made her tongue feel numb and thick. She gagged, her body rejecting the poison she was force-feeding it. She took a swig of water, swishing the crushed pills loose before swallowing. The second handful went down easier and she listened to Adam’s voicemails while she waited for them to take hold.

“
Please call me back. I’m worried sick. Where are you? I love you.
”

She was sobbing uncontrollably by the time she finished listening to them. Her vision blurred and her fingers struggled to compose a final text message: “I love you, too, and I’m sorry.
Goodbye.”

She stood
, holding onto the railing and intending to go back to the master bedroom. The drugs worked quickly and she stumbled across the kitchen threshold. The spongy wood floor groaned as she veered far enough to the left to knock a lamp off the living room end table. Ceramic chips scattered, one of them lodging in the bottom of her foot. The painkiller kept the agony at bay, but she couldn’t shake the feeling of a rock in a shoe she wasn’t wearing. Her heel broke through the rotting floor and she flung herself forward, collapsing on the mold-covered couch and choking on the acrid smell as the particles aerosolized. Confusion set in, then finally exhaustion. Her eyes rolled closed, tears spilling down her cheeks as her breathing became labored. Her chest heaved, her body fighting its own death, no matter how much her mind welcomed it.

There comes a point when there’s so little time left between falling asleep and waking up that it’s not worth fighting the insomnia. Brea had hit that wall when Adam’s call came in. She didn’t recognize the phone number, but seven consecutive attempts at getting through said the matter was urgent. She hurried out of the house to meet him.

“How long ago did she send the message?” She climbed into the passenger’s side of his truck and put on her seatbelt. The two of them had never seen eye to eye, but with Harmony
in serious trouble, that didn’t matter.

“A little over an hour ago.”
The tires squealed on the pavement.

Brea
didn’t even care if the sound woke her mother. Blocking Harmony’s number had been a knee-jerk reaction, an easy fix that let her enjoy Jaxon without having to stand up to her to do it. She felt terribly guilty, wondering if Harmony had tried to call first. She’d never forgive herself if something serious had happened. “What did the message say exactly?”

Adam handed her his phone. “I love you, too. I’m sorry. Goodbye.” He was right about the finality of the message.
“Goodbye” wasn’t in Harmony’s vocabulary. Adam ran his hands through his black hair, a motion he must have repeated a dozen times as he made his way through the village of Reston. “I’ve been everywhere, Brea.
Everywhere.
” His eyes were red and swollen from crying.

“Turn here.” She pointed for him to make a right.

“Where are we going?”

“The only place she could be. You know the construction area on Maple Avenue?” He nodded. “Head that way.” She was playing the odds that Harmony never told him about her mother’s house.

“Brea, what’s going on?”

She dialed Harmony’s cell. “There’s no time to explain.” The phone rang and rang
before finally going to voicemail. She hung up and called Harmony right back, getting the same result. “I might know where she is.”

“
We really can’t be wasting time. Are you sure?”

“I’m not sure about anything.” She kept her eye on the speedometer. “Can’t you go any faster?” He was already doing eighty in a forty-five.

He turned on Maple Avenue, kicking loose gravel up into the wheel wells. “Where to now?”

“There.” Brea pointed at the only house left standing.

Adam turned into the crumbled remains of the driveway and slammed the truck into park. Brea was out the door before he had a chance to pull his keys from the ignition.

“Harmony!”
Fresh wood covered the front door. “Harmony!” Brea ran around the back, her feet sinking into the thick mud. “Harmony, are you here?” She knocked, the rough two-by-fours biting into her knuckles.