Which I know deep down is what this is all about: I’m a selfish fuck who doesn’t want her to go.
At least this way I know she’s eating.
So at least there’s that.
But Friday night, Silas has apparently had enough.
I’m in my room, pretending to study, when I hear Silas’s boots on the stairs. Mom’s quick steps follow, her voice low and warning.
“Silas, please, maybe if we just find her therapist?—”
“She’s pouting like a child, and I’ve hadenough!” His voice hits like a hammer on steel.
I hear it then—the pounding on her door.
Thud. Thud. THUD.
“Harper! Open this door right now!”
I hear him rattling the door that’s clearly locked. “Harper!” he yells again, even louder.
The sound makes my teeth hurt. I’m up before I even think about it, chair scraping across the floor. But I stop halfway to the bathroom because I know exactly what he’s about to do.
The Jack-and-Jill bathroom between our rooms—her side’s an old-fashioned, thumb-turn lock. If he can’t get through her locked door, he’ll try to come through my room and get in through the bathroom with a coin or safety pin. I mean, realistically, he could just shoulder the thing off its hinges. And if he gets to her when she’s as upset as she obviously is and he’s still doing this bull-in-a-china-shop-schtick?—
I move.
I rip open my bedroom door right as Silas reaches for the handle on the other side. He’s close enough that I can see the fear under his anger. And maybe that’s supposed to make how he’s acting okay, but it doesn’t.
“Move,” he says.
“Move,” he repeats.
“No.” It’s one word. Solid. My voice doesn’t shake.
My hands do, but I keep them fisted at my sides. Nails digging into palms. Four fingers curled, thumb pressed against the side. Even pressure. Even count. Even is more lucky than odd.
One-two-three-four. One-two-three-four.
The pain helps. Grounds me.
His head tilts, slow and predatory. “Excuse me?”
“Give her space.”
“Or what?” The words are almost calm. “You’ll stop me, boy?”
Boy.
I feel the sting in my gut, but I don’t move. “If I have to.”
Silas and I have gotten close over the past year, or I thought we had, weekends out working on the Mustang. He’s confided in me about his past and the man he used to be, always with shame in his voice. He said he had Harper when he was young and dumb and didn’t know any better. And that he grew up like an animal, only focused on surviving the next day. He called himself a “rabid dog” and that his first stint in jail only made it worse. That he didn’t even learn how to be a man until he was thirty.
But this is the first time I’m getting a glimpse of that man he might have been before.
For a second, we just stare each other down in a stand-off. Mom is somewhere behind him in the hall. I can hear her breathing.
Then—something changes. The stiffness in his shoulders loosens. His mouth softens.