Lost in the Moment and Found (Wayward Children #8)(10)

“Clear your plate,” snapped Tyler.

Antsy had been wondering whether he remembered how much she hated peppers when he was setting the menu for tonight. When she heard that tone in his voice, she had her answer. He’d done it on purpose, just like he’d ordered her to set the table with real plates on purpose. He was trying to get her into trouble. He wanted her mother to be angry with her, and her to be begging and pleading for her side of the story. She just couldn’t figure out why a grownup would want to have a fight with a first-grader.

She also couldn’t make it easier on him. That wasn’t the sort of girl she was. So she looked him in the eye and said, “No.”

Tyler inhaled, anger clearly growing, but before he could speak, her mother asked, in a weary but reasonable tone, “Why do you not want to do something an adult has asked you to do?”

“My head already hurts, and I’m more likely to drop things when my head hurts,” Antsy said. “I don’t want to risk dropping the plate and making a big mess someone else will have to clean up.”

There: a good reason, sensible, and well within the limits of acceptability. Tyler settled back into his seat, still looking unhappy, and her mother managed a wan smile as she touched Antsy on the cheek.

“You’re my good girl,” she said. “Always so good. Always better than I deserved.”

“I love you,” said Antsy, and fled to her room. She emerged half an hour later to brush her teeth, grimacing and touching her temples the whole time, and while she saw Tyler watching from the hallway, reflected in the bathroom mirror like an unfriendly ghost, no one tried to talk to her or interrupt her. Clean, hungry, and afraid, Antsy went to bed.



* * *



THE BABY CAME ON time, as babies sometimes will, and loudly, as babies always do. A girl, a baby sister. Tyler and her mother tucked the crib into their room, and Antsy sat rigid with silent fear as she realized what the baby’s arrival really meant. She couldn’t sleep with the little girl wailing in the next room, but she wasn’t sleeping anyway, too afraid to close her eyes.

They named the baby Abigail. She became “Abby” instantly, even to Tyler, who still wouldn’t call Antsy by any name but “Antoinette.” And for a while, she took up all the attention in the house and all the air in whatever room she was in.

That was better. A Tyler focused on his daughter was a Tyler not looking at Antsy with that expression that made her skin crawl for reasons she couldn’t understand; a Tyler who cared about the baby was a Tyler who didn’t care about Antsy. She wanted that more than anything. She still didn’t like him, and she still didn’t know exactly why. He wasn’t trying to be her daddy, but as to what he was trying to be, she couldn’t say.

After that one bad dinner, he had never tried to play her against her mother like that again. Instead, he sat too close to her on the couch, he put his hands on her legs or arms whenever he had the slightest excuse, and he watched her.

Everywhere she went, he watched her. He watched her when she left for school, on the days when he hadn’t already gone to work, and he watched her when she played in the backyard on the weekends. His eyes were a constant danger, far worse than his hands, which required her to lower her guard and get close enough to grab. She hated them so. Her dislike was taking root and sprouting thorns, becoming something wilder and more tangled.

Six months after Abby was born, her mother sat her down in the living room and took her hands, as she’d done twice before. Antsy sat rigid, having learned that these were the moments where her life changed for the worse, where things she didn’t even know could be lost were ripped away from her and thrown aside. Somewhere in the time between her father’s collapse and now, she realized, she had lost the belief that her mother would always protect her, and somehow that burned the worst of all.

“Sweetheart,” said her mother. “This house isn’t big enough for our whole family. You know that. The baby can’t sleep with me and Tyler forever.”

“So she can share my room with me,” blurted Antsy, desperate to say something—say anything—that wouldn’t let the next change leave her mother’s lips. “I don’t mind. I already have a bunk bed. She can have the bottom bunk while she’s all little, and then when she gets bigger, we can take turns on top. It’ll be fun. Like having a sleepover, but with a sister.”

“Oh, darling, that’s very generous of you, but it wouldn’t be fair. This house isn’t big enough, and it’s full of memories that make us sadder than we have to be. Your father wouldn’t want us to be sad.”

Antsy wanted to scream. Her father wouldn’t have wanted Tyler lurking in the hall and watching her brush her teeth. He wouldn’t have wanted her to feel like she was being haunted in her own home, even though she didn’t understand why she felt that way. And she thought that maybe if he’d been there, he wouldn’t have wanted her to understand. She thought keeping her from ever understanding might have been the most important thing in the whole world to him.

“We’re moving,” said her mother.

Antsy stared at her, eyes large and grave and petrified. Her mother, weary and happy and unable to understand why she’d be alone in either of those things, squeezed her hands and smiled.

“You’ll have a bigger yard and a better room and you’ll never have to share it,” she said. “It’s going to be wonderful.”