Work Text:
Title: Shift
Category: Books » Twilight
Author: MeraNaamJoker
Language: English, Rating: Rated: M
Genre: Family/General
Published: 12-18-10, Updated: 12-18-10
Chapters: 1, Words: 6,712
Chapter 1: Chapter 1
Twilight and all its recognizable situations belong to Stephenie Meyer.
# # #
Rachel knew she should go home for Christmas, but she just couldn't face it. It was going to be the same as it ever was, cramped and dark in the house, and cold and rain outside so she couldn't even hike. Every time she thought about the prospect, spurred by guilt about the look she knew would be on Jake's face (even though she hadn't seen the look in over a year, maybe a little longer because he'd been so happy last time she'd come home), and her father's heavy, silent disappointment, she would get as far as planning on taking her duffel bag out of her closet and then cringe away from the very idea.
It wasn't her fault that she couldn't be like Rebecca, smart enough to major in Marine Biology and lucky enough to win a scholarship to study over the summer before her freshman year of college in Hawaii and beautiful enough to capture the eye of a guy as gorgeous as Ioane (every time she thought about his eight-pack stomach Rachel felt a little sick to her own in envy of her sister—sure, they were twins, but they were different). If she had been Rebecca nobody would have blamed her for not coming home, because she would be dark with sun and happy on the big island with her Samoan surfer husband, probably having drunken monogamous sex on the beach every night and twice on Fridays and running her hands over that chiseled chest every. Chance. She got. It wasn't her fault, but Rachel felt guilty all the same, guilty because she wished she could have that good of an excuse—"Oh, sorry Dad, I couldn't make it home because I am banging that guy I married so hard that I can't walk to the airport gate. Also, tickets are expensive." And she didn't.
She should call, too; she knew that. She should call more often or even at all, should do more than text, "oh, hi, thinking of you, have a good day," to Jake. He always texted back within sixty seconds, no matter what time of the day or night she sent the message, like he'd been waiting with his phone in hand ever since the last time she'd bothered to hit the keys and "send." Like he'd been waiting since three weeks ago. She wondered sometimes what he was doing at two a.m. but then she thought that maybe it was better she didn't know. If she knew, she might have to decide whether or not to tell her father, and if she told her father she might be disappointed with whatever course of action he did or didn't pursue, and Rachel was tired of being disappointed in her father, so instead she just sent back smiley faces when Jake would reply, Hv a gd day 2 big sis.
She listed all the "shoulds" in her head until they buried her in an avalanche of guilt. Then she got pissed, because she hated feeling guilty, and if it weren't for her dad she would want to go home and then she wouldn't feel guilty and then she wouldn't be staring at her closet door at noon, avoiding thinking about getting her duffel bag down from the top shelf.
"Just fucking go already," said Chloe, bursting into the room with about twenty canvas bags looped over her strong arms. Just because she was indulging in the rampant consumerism that had stolen the "holy" from "holiday"—Chloe's mother's words, not Chloe's—didn't mean that Rachel's roommate forgot all of her convictions, and there was no way she'd ever use plastic bags, especially not this close to the ocean and Lake Washington ("Rachel. Turtles die from those things. They suffocate. Now carry that gallon of milk and stop being such a pussy.")
Rachel sighed. "No. I need to work."
"Right, because sitting around at home night after night is so goddamn expensive. You really better watch your spendy lifestyle, Ray-ray." Chloe started pulling out item after item and lining them up on the floor in front of Rachel. "Look at this cat. This is the cutest fucking cat in the history of fake cats. I wish I had this cat."
"So keep the cat," Rachel replied, picking it up and pushing the "Try Me!" part of the toy. The cat purred and swiped a paw over its nose in a creepily realistic fashion. "This is the only sort of cat I'd live with."
"And deprive my… shit, what number is she… seventh niece of the joy of driving her mother batshit insane by pressing the meow button eighty thousand times in a row on Christmas day? Fuck no. This cat is going straight to Delilah and I hope she holds it out of Jezebel's reach and torments her too. That's what big sisters are for." Chloe's sensible brunette ponytail was coming loose, but she didn't seem to care, tucking the loose strands behind her multi-pierced ears and continuing to unpack her bags. "Their mother taught me that. God I wanted that Buzz Lightyear so fucking bad. Bitch. So what'd you get your brother?"
"A gift certificate to Best Buy," Rachel answered, and winced at the look of utter incredulity Chloe turned her way.
"You've got to be shitting me. Please tell me this is a joke. I thought you lived in the middle of nowhere anyway!"
"Nearest store's almost three hours away," Rachel admitted. She pulled on a loose thread on her comforter. "But I figured he could shop online."
"You are like the poster child for big sister fail. And I know big sister fail, I'm the youngest of nine. This is pathetic, Ray-ray. Like, awful. What the fuck did he ever do to you?"
"Nothing!" Rachel exclaimed, squirming uncomfortably. "He just…"
"Holy hell," Chloe said, her deceptively innocent-looking blue eyes narrowing as realization dawned. "You don't know what he likes, do you?"
"He likes working on cars, but I can't get one of those for him, plus he's only fifteen so what would he do with it?" Rachel shrugged. "It's not like there's a lot to do on the rez anyway. I could get him a fishing pole or some hiking boots and that would cover the recreational activities they have available to them. Well, or I could buy him beer." Cheap-ass nasty domestic that hadn't crossed her lips since she'd come to Seattle, home of the thousand microbreweries and the snobbery that went with them. She could still taste that Bud—no no don't think of that.
"Not a good idea," Chloe said, and her eyes were dead serious and compassionate and Rachel couldn't stand it, so instead she hopped to her feet and said, "You know what? You're right. I might go to Pike Place and look around."
"That place is going to be fucking insane with all the tourists this time of year," Chloe warned. "I mean, it's Christmas Eve, eve, you know?"
"Don't care. I don't have work till tomorrow." Rachel grabbed her hoodie, purse, and umbrella and walked out the door before Chloe could offer to come with her.
Pike Place was insane, and cold too, with a damp wind coming off the bay that made Rachel wish she actually owned a winter coat, but she stood as close to the heat lamps as she dared and slowly made her way between the stalls, absentmindedly picking things up and putting them back without really seeing them.
Until the bangles.
There was a woman there, a woman of probably India-Indian descent even though she wore Western clothes, and she had stacks upon stacks of bangles strung up on long wooden stands like a child's stacking toy gone mad, all over the tables in front of her and the walls behind her, so many bangles that Rachel couldn't begin to imagine the number of color combinations she could come up with. Rachel stood and stared, and instead of the table she saw her mother, and instead of the noise of hundreds of people searching she heard the constant jingling that had accompanied Sarah Black's every move, and instead of the vendor's "Namaste, beta, can I help you find anything?" she listened to her mother say, "I'm just not sure I can do it anymore," on the phone as she twisted her fingers in the curling cord, the one that led to the wall and that Rachel and Rebecca used to play limbo underneath as they ran from their bedroom to the front door. (Rachel had seen the tears spilling down her mother's cheeks and instantly told herself she was wrong about that as she waved on her way out, fifteen years old and ready to leave the rez, even though she was dating Silas and was so in love with him that she would have let him do anything to her, and did.)
"Beta? See anything you like?" the saleswoman asked, still smiling although her expression had a faint tinge of concern now.
"May I see that one?" Rachel asked, stepping closer and indicating a pack of twenty bracelets, a round rainbow of bright colors, behind and above the other woman's head. "My roommate loves that sort of thing."
My mother loved that sort of thing.
She turned it over in her hands, pretending to inspect them, but the choice had already been made. "Thanks, I'll take them," Rachel told the saleswoman, and after paying stuck the bracelets down deep in her purse.
Down deep in her purse, just like the notes she'd found in her mother's purse; she'd been digging around, looking for a spare tampon because they were out again—with three women on the same schedule, feminine hygiene products tended to run out without warning—and then she'd found the papers, stained blue with their own old ink, folded up so tightly that she'd had to be careful not to rip them as she opened them. Dates and times and notes like smelled like Red Door, when her mother wore White Shoulders and joked about it every time the subject came up, which was way too often for Rachel's comfort level. The dates all had the wrong year on them, too—1989. What was up with that? Rachel wondered as she smoothed out the paper, which had gone soft and feathery with age and time spent rubbing against a decade's worth of purse detritus—her mother never cleaned her purse out. There were no names.
Okay. She'd bought a stocking stuffer for Chloe. Surely that merited a visit to Piroshky for a pastry.
There were no seats available inside, of course, so Rachel ate while she walked outside, walking to the railings and looking out over the water and listening to people gripe about the damn Canadian geese. Eight pounds of poop a day per bird, they were a menace, and on and on, but she didn't mind because that was more of a conversational staple than the weather. The weather was pretty much the same every day, this time of year.
It had been a whole day of sun followed by a clear night, and Rachel had been down on First Beach with Silas. Silas and a bunch of others, and they had drunk way too much Miller Lite that someone had bought with a fake i.d. (someone with terrible, horrible taste, in Rachel's opinion, or maybe they'd been so scared about getting caught that they'd just grabbed the first few cases that came to hand and made a dash for the cashier). Rachel had staggered over to the water to throw up all she'd drunk, and Silas had held her hair out of her face (he'd been so sweet, she didn't remember much about that time in her life now, but she remembered the sweetness), and she'd seen headlights, turning down the road, and shrieked in terror of discovery while hiding her face behind Silas's chest.
As the Metro had puttered past, she'd peeked under Silas's arm, and she'd recognized Embry Call's mother driving, and next to her…
Was a man…
And he kind of looked like…
But that was impossible.
Rachel blinked and tried to focus, but even though the car was going under the thirty-mile-per-hour speed limit it was moving too fast for her, and she was still pretty drunk in spite of having vomited up everything, including her stomach lining it felt like, and she didn't want to see impossible things because they were not real and Rachel was all about the real world. There were no monsters and no magic here. Rachel told herself that the nausea curling in her gut came from not having thrown up enough.
She rinsed out her mouth and then she pulled Silas somewhere that was dark enough that they could pretend it was private, and she gave up her virginity in the cold wet sand with a driftwood branch poking a red mark into her back because they were both so inexperienced that it never occurred to either of them that the missionary position might not be the best fit for the circumstances. That was supposed to be real, but she could barely remember it even the next morning. Only the scrape on her spine and the ache between her legs and Silas's tentative phone call had brought home the fact that she had actually done it, and by that time she had been able to tell herself that the only reason she'd gone ahead was because she wanted it.
The wind gusted off the bay, blowing Rachel's umbrella back and almost making her lose her grip on its handle. She clutched it a little more tightly and finished the last few bites of her pastry before reluctantly turning back to the market, tossing her tissue paper into a trash can on her way back under the shelter.
She ended up in the food vendors' section, walking past beautiful local produce, or what there was of it this time of year, and stopping to watch the fish guys throw their wares to each other—no matter how many times she saw it, the act didn't get old. After a while, she decided she'd better move on; the market hours were pretty limited compared to most retail outlets during the holiday shopping season, it was like the vendors wanted a life or something, how ridiculous—and she only walked a few dozen feet before she saw it.
Rachel stopped in her tracks, a smile of pure glee spreading across her face, and stared.
Oh, it was completely perfect, appalling and tacky and ludicrously sentimental, everything that would horrify a fifteen-year-old boy, and yeah, she might not be sure what he liked but she had the unerring sisterly instinct for what he would hate and she was going to use it right here. Right now. For this wolf statue. It was about six inches tall, made of resin, with an asinine expression painted on its fluffy face as if it had just eaten a special brownie before going to howl at the moon. And on its body, instead of fur, was painted a starry sky and the moon in all of its phases, from crescent to full and back again. Rachel adored it from first glance, comprehensively and without reservation.
"Excuse me, sir," she said to the man with the long white-haired ponytail behind the table, "How much is this… amazing wolf statue?"
"It's a beauty, isn't it?" he enthused, with no irony at all in his tone; Rachel regretted more than ever that she wasn't naturally cruel so she couldn't keep the grin on her face while he burbled on and on about "mystical and wild" and "highly collectible." Instead she just bit her cheeks and nodded solemnly until he wound his way around to telling her the price. She forked over her twenty-five dollars without a murmur, and asked him to pack it with special care to ensure it would reach its intended recipient unmarked.
With a sense of good deeds accomplished, she headed to wait for her bus, talking to the people next to her about oh, my God, the market was so crowded, damned tourists, why didn't they all just go back to California where they'd never have to drive in the rain anyway, but wasn't the day beautiful, it had hardly rained at all, until she alighted a block away from her apartment in the U district and walked home alone.
When she unlocked the door, she could hear Chloe wrapping presents and talking to her girlfriend on her phone in her bedroom—she knew it was her girlfriend by the sheer number of "shut ups" Chloe said per minute—so she put the wolf on the bar, ready for display and ridicule, and dug around in the refrigerator for a water bottle. She found a stray hidden under a tub of greens about to go bad. Neither she nor Chloe were overly conscientious about eating their vegetables, even though they always visited Costco with the best of intentions.
Embry Call had come, after the phone call but before the funeral, bearing a huge dish of green bean casserole in his twelve-year-old hands, wide-eyed with fear and uncertainty at the prospect of facing his best friend who had just suffered the most tremendous loss. (He was still brave for all of that, willing to listen, and listen without saying much, which was what Jacob had always needed regardless of the circumstances, but particularly in the days following Sarah Black's fatal car crash.)
His mother had been right on his heels, carrying an entire turkey and then going back to her car for mashed potatoes and a Tupperware container of gravy that she'd said they could just keep. She'd bustled around the kitchen, laying out the paper plates and plastic forks and paper napkins she'd brought along, so they wouldn't have to do dishes either. Rebecca had said thank you, and then turned her attention back to her book. Jacob had said thank you, and pulled Embry back with him into his room so they (he) could talk. Rachel had watched, narrow-eyed and thinking hard, waiting for Ms. Call to make one wrong move in her mother's kitchen, to put the serving spoons in with the utensils or leave the sponge on the bottom of the sink. Ms. Call never did.
However, Ms. Call did go and sit next to Billy's lounge chair and talk to him softly for an hour, listening to him say the same things over and over again, "I can't believe she's gone," "I can't either; it's awful, the very worst thing," without a hint of impatience or awkwardness in her tone or attitude. Ms. Call also gave detailed instructions to Billy on how to reheat the turkey so it didn't go dry, and how much milk to add to the green bean casserole before doing the same, along with an offer to bring over another dinner the next week, after the funeral. Rachel looked at them the entire time, and didn't even bother to pretend she was doing or thinking about something else, because all her pretenses had been stripped when she picked up the phone and spoke to the state trooper and collapsed on her knees, screaming.
Finally, Ms. Call stood, but after she stood, she stooped to speak to Billy one last time. As she did so, she put her hand on the armrest of his chair, next to his hand. While she said, "If there's anything else I can do, anything at all," and he protested, "You've done so much already," his hand turned on the green fabric of the chair and slid across the armrest to touch her fingertips. He seemed completely unconscious of the action, still looking her in the eye with a Serious Adult Expression, evidencing none of the signals Rachel had learned to decipher from interchanges between boys and girls at the tribal school.
But then the thought occurred to her that maybe adults showed these things differently than teenagers; maybe when you were old and in your forties you didn't giggle and slap and rub forearms because any touch was better than no touch at all. Maybe you made extended eye contact and had non-humorous conversations and didn't joke about anything when terrible things happened. Maybe you waited until all your children were asleep and then went out and comforted yourself with your son's best friend's mother for the loss of your wife. Maybe you didn't love your wife all that much and hadn't had sex with her in months and hadn't cared if she lived or died. Maybe she had taken notes about you fathering another son with another woman. Maybe you had made her cry on the phone.
Rachel looked at their fingertips, barely brushing on the velour, and her face went tingly, then numb, and her unfeeling lips parted so that she could breathe out, "You should go."
Neither of them heard her, they just kept on conversing about the details of the funeral and whether people should send flowers, so she said it again, managing a little more volume this time, "You should go."
Ms. Call stood up straight and turned around, a questioning look on her face, and Billy turned his black gaze upon her, eyebrows creased with weary puzzlement. "You should go," Rachel told Ms. Call. The incomprehension the woman showed in the face of such a perfectly simple order set off a wave of fury, and Rachel heard herself say, "You should go, you should go, you should go you should go YOU SHOULD GO NOW GO NOW GO NOW GO NOW," and she was screaming it because the shock was keeping Ms. Call from moving her feet, and she hoped that the loudness would finally spur the sensible Keds into action, propelling themselves and their owner right out the front door, never to return. Billy had absolutely no expression while he watched his daughter, and he said nothing, and that made it all so. Much. Worse.
So Rachel flung Rebecca's restraining arm off her own and took two shaking steps forward, and she growled at her dad, "You stay away from her, forever, do you hear me?" Without waiting for an answer, she flung herself through the door, across the rez, straight to Silas's house, surprising him as he was about to come in search of her, and she hadn't left his house for the next two weeks except for school. His mother and father had been surprisingly understanding, or maybe it was just that they thought Billy and Sarah Black's daughter surely wouldn't have been the kind of girl to sleep with her boyfriend at fifteen.
"You should go now," Chloe said, bursting from her bedroom door and dashing to the kitchen, pawing through the junk drawer and coming up with a roll of Scotch tape. "Just drive down and call in dead tomorrow. If they fire you, who cares? It's a shitty retail job; they're a dime a dozen this time of year anyway."
"Says the girl who gets to be a personal trainer at the athletic center," Rachel replied, folding her arms and glaring. "For Pete's sake, Chloe, do you know how many people with actual, real degrees are competing with me for my 'shitty retail job?' I'll give you a hint: a lot."
"Do you know how many people wish they had little brothers and dads as cool as Billy and Jacob?" Chloe snapped back. She'd met them, once when Rachel moved in with her and once when she'd made the trip down for Labor Day weekend. "I'll give you a hint. A lot. They might even be willing to spend Christmas with them one year out of three."
The guilt made Rachel flinch. She wanted to argue the point, but the knowledge that Chloe was absolutely right stilled her mouth. Instead, she pointed to the bag on the counter and said, "Do you want to see what I got for Jacob or not?"
"I can't believe you didn't take a bag with you," Chloe grumbled. She sat down on a barstool. "Okay. Let's see it. And it had better not be a 'World's Best Brother' mug or anything else completely lame."
Rachel carefully unwrapped the reams of tissue paper enfolding the wolf, and then reverently placed it upon the counter in front of her roommate. Chloe stared in shocked silence for a good minute.
Finally, she gasped out, "That should be illegal," and burst into hysterical laughter, bent over double on her stool and whooping until she couldn't breathe and fell on the floor. "Oh my God it's perfect!" she screeched. "He's going to hate it so bad!"
Rachel laughed, too, as she rewrapped the figurine and put it back into its plastic bag. "Hey, you're the one who said the Best Buy gift certificate wasn't good enough. I'm blaming you."
"Fine, but you really ought to give it to him in person," Chloe said, abruptly serious again.
Rachel sighed. "Fine," she said, wondering why even as the word left her mouth.
( * * * )
The instant Rachel's car crossed the boundary into the rez on Christmas Eve, the depression smacked into her like a wet blanket to the face. She shoved it down and kept breathing, navigating to her family's house without waving back to the four or five people who walked by her car and waved to her in recognition. She didn't care if that made her a bitch; she was doing good just to be here and not hyperventilating yet.
When she turned off the ignition, she noticed that all the lights in the house were off. Great. Well, maybe she could just turn around and drive away and if anyone said anything to her dad or Jake she could pretend ignorance. Except that would be a really shitty thing to do. Plus, she was tired of being behind the wheel.
Rachel got out and opened one of the back doors to lift out her duffle bag, but before she got the door closed again, Jake came around the back of the house with an incredulous look spread over his affable features. Features that were way higher over her head than they had been last time she visited, and also…
Whoa. Whoa. Jake was getting… what the hell, Jake was getting hot. Shit. She was going to have to be giving little rez girls dirty looks and threatening glares all weekend. Rachel spread her arms, smiling, and Jake laughed, running to lift her off of her feet and spin her around.
"I can't believe you made it! Why didn't you call?" he demanded, setting her back down again and taking her bag.
"I didn't know for sure if I could get off work," she replied.
His grin faded, just the tiniest fraction of a bit, but it meant he knew she could have gotten off work at any point. "Yeah. Well, I'm glad they let you go on Christmas Eve. Pretty generous of them. C'mon, I'll put your bag in your room."
Together, they put her things into her room, and then they sat down together on the living room couch, which was precisely as uncomfortable as Rachel remembered. She folded her legs under herself, trying for more padding between her ass and the springs.
"How's school?" she asked when they got settled.
He shrugged. "Fine. How's your school?"
She shrugged. "Okay. I made dean's list again."
"Go you." He reached out. "Let me see your phone." She dug around in her pocket and handed it to him. He pressed a few buttons, frowned. "Huh. Well, what do you know."
"What?" she asked, craning her neck to see.
His phone started ringing in his pocket. "It does work after all. Here I thought it must be broken or something considering you haven't called me since September, Rachel." He hit "end" and handed it back.
She rolled her eyes as she took the phone. "Oh please. It hasn't been…" He leveled his gaze at her, and she fell silent. After a moment, she said, "Okay. Yeah. It might have been. Sorry." Man, when had he learned how to do that? That used to be Billy's trick.
Jacob sighed. "You know, I guess I can understand. You've got a life, you've got friends, you've got classes, you're going places that aren't anywhere near the rez—"
"No, Jake," she interrupted. How could he think that? "It's not that I'm too busy for you…"
He flashed her a quick, bitter glance, and then directed his gaze back at the couch between them. "Right. So it's just that you don't care."
He was too young to look like that. He shouldn't be capable of that amount of cynicism. Still, she didn't think he was capable of hearing True Rachel Confessions without being hurt either. Listen, Jake, it's just that… before things went to shit, they kind of weren't great anyway, and I think maybe…
I think maybe…
I think…
She'd never managed to say it to herself. She couldn't say it to her little brother.
Instead, she rubbed his arm to comfort, and then to tease. "Whoa. Have you been working out?"
"Shut up," he said, but he flexed his biceps under her grip anyway, unable to resist the opportunity to show off. "I've been working on the Rabbit, is all."
"Who knew Volkswagen could mean 'ripped in the arms?'" She balled up her fist and punched his shoulder.
He just shook his head at her with a superior smirk. "Can't hurt steel. Are you hungry?"
"If I am, I'll get it myself," she told him with a frown. "You don't have to serve me like a guest."
Jake laughed. "I wanted to see if you'd pay for a pizza. There's not a lot of money in going to school."
Rachel laughed, too, happy to be back in the big sister role. "Sure. I'll buy one for you and one for me and dad to share. What do you want?"
They drove to Forks to get it, barely making it before the early closing time; on their way back they waved to Charlie Swan, who didn't see them until they were almost past his cruiser.
"He's distracted," Rachel noted. "Big case involving stolen trees?"
Jake snorted, but he looked a little worried, too. "Probably just his daughter."
Rachel dug around in her memory, and finally came up with a name. "Bella? She used to play with us a lot when we were little. Is she sick or something?"
"Or something, I guess. I haven't seen her in a long time. We're supposed to hang out tomorrow, though, so Dad and Charlie can watch the game."
Great. Game. Awesome hours of boringness. Maybe she could leave right after breakfast instead of waiting until afternoon the way she'd planned.
"Why'd you come, Rach?"
She glanced at him, but he had his face turned to look out the window. "I missed you."
"Did you?" he said softly. "Or did you just feel guilty?"
Rachel thought about it. Did she miss Jake? Sometimes she did; she missed the way he could turn any awkward or painful moment on its head through the power of sheer silliness. She missed being able to wrestle with him. She missed yelling at him to get out of her room and leave her alone while he opened and slammed her door over and over again, leaning in each time it opened to make a different idiotic expression, just to piss her off. The problem was, she never remembered that she missed him until he was right there in front of her, and the other problem was, Jacob came in a package deal with her dad.
"No," she said finally. "I missed you. I feel guilty too, but I miss you." Something occurred to her; she remembered to ask, "Where's dad?"
"Hanging out at the Clearwaters'. He'll be home later." Hanging out with the Clearwaters, where he'd undoubtedly be stuffing holiday candy and cookies down his face as if he weren't diabetic, and drinking as if he weren't diabetic too. Fine. Whatever. It wasn't like he was the only parent she had or anything.
When they got home, Jacob ate the entire pizza she'd bought for him and then bummed one of her slices too. He went to go wash his hands of the grease afterward; while he did that, Rachel walked around and around in the living room, aimlessly making the circuit around the couch because she was sick of sitting down. A corner of a book, lodged under the couch, caught her eye on the fifth revolution around it. Pulling it out, she saw that it was a photo album.
This will hurt, her heart warned her. Put it back. Do it now.
Rachel opened the book. Inside were pictures from the last six months before Sarah died.
It did hurt. It hurt to see Sarah's arms thrown carelessly around Rachel and her twin, laughing in between them, and it hurt to see her with Jake in her embrace while he grimaced and barely tolerated her touch. It hurt to see the picture of her in her Easter dress with sweet potatoes in her hands, ready for the big dinner. It hurt to see her in profile, that look of frowning concentration on her face, as she read the latest Dean Koontz at the kitchen table. It hurt to see…
Rachel frowned and looked closer at the picture of Sarah at the table, the thick hardcover lying open before her. Billy sat in the chair next to her, facing outward and looking a little irritated, probably about Jake leaving the screen door open for the billionth time that day. Neither of them seemed aware of the other…
Except that they were holding pinkies.
Their hands lay next to each other on the table between them, and no other part of their bodies even brushed together, but their pinkies overlaid each other, entwined while their other hands were occupied in holding the book open and gesticulating in reproof, respectively. Rachel flipped back, looking for other photos where they were together. In every one, they faced away from each other, busy taking care of some task or other. In every one, some part of Billy touched some part of Sarah, in such a way that it had to be intentional on both their parts regardless of whether or not it was conscious.
Rachel stared, and she felt her view rearrange itself, like making a quarter-turn with a kaleidoscope and having all the pieces shift without actually falling into a new order.
Maybe when you were old and in your forties and you'd been married for twenty years, you didn't have to be all over each other to still be in love. Maybe you touched with the barest brushes of skin in public because you knew you'd always have the rest of the person you loved available, that night and for the remainder of your life. Maybe you had conversations with people of the opposite sex when bad things happened and accepted comfort from those people because it was there, and because it was unthinkable to you that it could mean anything else. Maybe twelve years before you had taken notes on behalf of one of your friends, like Sam Uley's mother or maybe Quil Sr.'s wife. Maybe you cried about things that had nothing to do with your family.
The door opened, letting in a cold, damp gust of wind. Rachel shivered and put down the photo album. When she looked up, she saw her father, sitting in his wheelchair and gazing at her without expression. Rachel looked into his eyes, and saw that he was happy and shocked that she was there. That was when she realized that he did the same thing Rebecca did, or rather the other way around: when they felt deeply, it didn't show on their faces.
He turned his wheelchair so he could shut the door behind him; by the time he finished Rachel was already in front of him.
"Hey, Dad," she said.
"Rachel," he answered, nodding to her. His hands balled up into fists on his thighs. She looked at them in puzzlement for a second—was he angry?—and then she understood. He was trying to keep himself from reaching out and grabbing for her, because he knew she'd turn away before he got a grip.
Tears sprang hot into her eyes, but she blinked them back and went down in a crouch in front of him, putting her hands over his fists and looking into his eyes. "Merry Christmas, Dad."
"I'm glad you came, honey," he told her.
Rachel leaned up and forward until her head rested on his shoulder. "I missed you."
One hand reached up to stroke her hair; she pressed her face against the crook of his neck and tried not to cry. "I missed you, too, princess," her father said, and turned his head to press a kiss to hers. "What brought on this visit?"
Rachel laughed slightly; they both ignored the fact that it was a bit soggy-sounding. "Oh, you know. It's Christmas. We should be together for that, probably." She pulled away to look at him.
"Probably, you're right," he agreed after some mock contemplation.
"Oh!" Rachel exclaimed, rising back up to stand. "And! I have the best present for Jake."
"Really?" Jacob said excitedly, coming back into the room. "I've been wanting to buy some DVDs from Best Buy; their online store has some—" He petered off as Rachel shook her head with a superior smile. "What is it?"
"It's the sort of thing that has to be presented in person," she said in lofty tones. He grinned and shook his hair back, raising one eyebrow in question. "Seriously, Jake, it's that good. You'll be amazed. Best Christmas ever, I promise."
He eyed her with that slightly superior smirk—jeez, he was getting so grown—and then he gave her a big, genuine smile. "It might be," he admitted, and he sounded like he meant it, and Rachel discovered that she did too.