Beach Day

3: Playing Catch-Up

When the eggs are finished in the fridge and the promise of a late lunch is set, Tiff takes her bag out with her to the backyard. She deigned not to show her grandmother any of her paintings. She wouldn't like them.

Tiff takes a seat at the back of the yard, where the grass meets the trees and palmetto brushes. With her back against bark and lichen, she pulls her phone from her pocket and lets out the breath she has been holding in.

She couldn't call Denny if she wanted to. She had never considered it before— she wasn't allowed to have a phone growing up (her mother insisted it was the mark of the Devil)— but the reception out here sucks hot ass. She tucks her phone back into her pocket; she leans the back of her head against the tree.

It's fine. Coming here wasn't a mistake. She's just letting her nerves get to her for no good reason. Nothing bad has happened; nothing bad is going to happen.

And this trip isn't about her. It's about Drew. It's about Drew meeting the rest of his family. His eyes are new. He hasn't had the experiences she has— and did her experiences really matter all that much anyway? If they have changed (and they must have. It has been two years), then she must at least give them the benefit of the doubt. There's nothing to rail against if the behavior and the motivation have changed, right?

She opens her journal of sketches and paintings, clicks her pen, and sets to doodling. There's nothing worse than being too frazzled to actually think things out. That's when she must move— but it isn't like she can climb a tree here. She doesn't want to stir the pot.

Hands a wreck in motion, she sketches out what's in front of her: a home and a flowering weed in the grass. It's a view of something she once knew well. She draws on her own for a while, listening quietly to music she had downloaded to her phone forever ago. She spends enough time in the mountains that her definitely-legally-downloaded music library is more than extensive. She's eighteen. She can listen to Sleater-Kinney if she wants to. Nobody is out here to hear her and call the doctor, anyway.

And then somebody is.

Andy walks across the grass with his fists in his pockets. He's dressed very precociously for a kid who's definitely thirteen. It's almost the way their father would dress: khakis and a sweater. It may be unnaturally cold for a winter in Florida, but this is definitely still Florida. She can't imagine dressing like that in this weather (until she remembers she has, only the khakis weren't pants). There's a look on his face like neverending worry. He chews his lip the way he always has.

At least they got him glasses. It breaks her heart as she reminds herself: at least they cared enough to take him to an optometrist and get him glasses. That's a good sign. They didn't care enough to do it for her when she lived there. Maybe she was right when she left. Maybe not having their problem child around was what they needed to be good parents.

"Hey," she says, on his approach.

"Hello." His voice is quiet and almost-unsure.

She doesn't know what to say about that, if anything. (Was he always so tentative? Did it always worry her so much to hear how quiet he is? Or was it just that she was also quiet, and the hushed voices didn't quite feel like drowning?)

"I haven't seen you in a while." He stands over her, blocking out the sun.

She can't parse what's behind his eyes. "I haven't been here in a while."

"I haven't talked to you since last Christmas, either."

"That... isn't my fault."

She has an explanation. There just isn't an easy way to tell him that their parents are still finding ways to punish her when she's thousands of miles away. She can't explain how she sat around for hours on his birthday, trying desperately to get through until her parents blocked her number. It's because she hung up on Christmas Eve, and she knows it. The consequences of her actions have robbed her of a year of her brother's life— a year of updates on friends and school and class and even church. She would listen to a thousand sermons if it meant she could just be a part of Andy's life again.