Catching Rainbows

38

tw/ retelling of death by gunshot/violence/domestic violence

My cousin woke me up at six the next morning but I didn't mind as I'd slept most of the night. I got her settled with a show to watch and slipped back into bed, which was warm from the beautiful body in it. 

Chloe opened her eyes as I entwined my bare legs with hers. She smiled sleepily, her hair messy, and my heart sang. "Hi," she said. "Is it morning?"

I smoothed the fine hairs of her eyebrow into place. "Not quite."

"Mmm." Her eyelids closed. "I might just sleep a little bit more." She nestled against me with a happy sigh. "It's so perfect here, with you."

I rarely knew what I was doing but in this case, it was clearly working, whatever it was. 

We spent the day together, first changing her number, then baking kitchen sink cookies, and finally sitting for two hours eating Mexican food while drinking virgin strawberry daiquiris. 

That night she went up to my room to call her family in private while I watched late night TV with my cousin, who was sleeping over again. I could hear her voice rise a few times during the short conversation, and she didn't come back down when it was over. 

I gave it a little while, not wanting to intrude, before I went to check on her. She was asleep, curled on her side, phone in hand. It was stuffy in the little room even with the fan in the window, which was open because Jared had taken down the long ladder. There wasn't anything I could do about the heat though so I went back downstairs.

"She's out," I told Jared, taking up my place on the couch again. It was nice to have him there. It felt like part of my world had been righted again.

"You really like her a lot." He had his socked feet up on the coffee table and a plate of cookies in his lap, which he offered me.

I took one as I scoffed. "Like her? Dude, I love her a lot. Like, a lot. She's amazing." The TV volume was low, an old Quentin Tarantino movie playing now. 

He bit into one of his. "Damn, these are good. I missed your food, Cuz."

I ate some of mine; he was right. "How could you not've?"

"I'm really sorry, again." He shook his head, drinking some of his root beer and half-stifling a burp. "And about . . . " he leaned forward to put the plate on the table, glancing at me briefly. "Your mom, and all." His voice broke on the last word.

She had been a huge part of his life, and I knew it must have been pretty bad for him too. "Yeah," I said. I didn't want to talk about it, except for the part of me that did, so I took another bite.

He played with the tab on his soda can, twisting it around, bending it back and forth. "I hate that I wasn't there for you and shit," he said gruffly, uncomfortable; talking about emotions had never been his favorite thing.

"I know," I whispered, not able to say it was okay even though I now knew the reasons behind what he'd done. 

The tab broke off and he squeezed it between his finger and thumb, studying it instead of looking at me. "Do you wanna tell me what happened?"

I'd told the cops--repeatedly, because they'd grilled me as I sat in shock with bloody hands at our kitchen table--and they had informed my relatives, but no one else had ever asked me.

"I don't know," I said honestly, but then the words just came. "I . . . left Monica's, I don't even really remember driving home." I'd been so stunned, the ten minute trip was a blur of disbelief and anguish. "I could hear him yelling when I got out of my car and I went in. The door was unlocked." My presence during a fight always aggravated my stepfather further, but I couldn't just sneak past them to my room and leave my mom to battle him alone. 

Jared dropped the tab into the empty can with a hollow clink.

I broke apart the uneaten half of my cookie, telling the story as a third party, detached. At least I wasn't crying. "They were in the kitchen, his back was to me. She told me to run." I would never forget the look of sheer terror in her eyes when she noticed me from her scrunched-down position in the corner. No, Luna, run! Get out of here! 

But I'd remained, frozen in place, forced to watch. "He had his gun on her, he didn't even look at me. Just laughed and pulled the trigger, twice." 

My cousin made a sound, shaking his head, his face tormented. "I'm sorry, Cuz. Fuck."

I nodded, putting the crumbly pieces on the edge of the cheap white plate and brushing my hands off together. The shots had been so loud I'd stepped backward, even as the blood bloomed through her pale green shirt. My stepfather had simply turned, smirked at me as he threw down the gun, and walked out the back door. "He just left. I went to her but she was already gone." The lifeless eyes and body of the person I loved most in the world had sent me over the edge, and next I knew, the police were shouting and swarming around me with their own guns drawn. The neighbors had called them. "At first they thought I did it."

Now he looked at me. "What? Even after his history with them?"

I nodded. The neighbors had called the police many times after my mother's second marriage. He never laid a hand on me, but their second month together had revealed not only his drinking problem but his penchant for domestic violence. He'd been arrested on those charges twice, but my mom refused to press charges.

The second time I'd sat with her the next morning when he left whistling for work; heartbroken over her injuries. "You have to leave him, Mom," I told her, something so clear to me. They had been married a little over two years, and I knew of at least half a dozen similar incidents the neighbors hadn't heard.

She'd looked at me with eyes half full of sympathy and half just . . . dull. "I can't, honey. If I could, I would." When I was older she'd told me the truth; that he swore he would make us all pay if she did. "I believe him, too," she'd added, and so had I. He was that kind of man, underneath his friendly good-old-boyishness. The Bad kind.

I shook my head now to rid it of the memories. "They figured it out eventually and arrested him at the Cantina." He'd been just sitting there at the bar drinking beer on tap, high on crystal meth, having his own small celebration of sorts. 

It turned out he had a record a mile long, and somehow we got a judge who sent him to prison rather than slap him on the wrist. He wasn't getting out anytime soon, and I hoped every day that he would piss the wrong person off and someone would kill him. If that made me a bad person, so be it.

"Damn," Jared said softly. He'd missed my mom's funeral because my aunt had asked him to stay with Hailie and Nathaniel, as he was one of the few people that we could leave Hailie with. 

"Yep," I said, feeling better but done talking about it. 

I got up, going toward the bathroom to blow my nose, but was stopped by sudden unintelligible yelling from upstairs. My heart started pounding as adrenaline rushed through me and I beat Jared up the little staircase, not caring how much noise I was making. 

I burst into my room just in time to see Chloe shove the ladder away from the house.

The surprised look on Keith's face was almost comical as he disappeared backward into the night.