Page 7 of Beneath My Skin

CHAPTER 3

My aunt was in a mood. Big surprise there.

“I brought you gifts,” I told her.

“Why?” came her snide retort.

I groaned, ready for the runaround. The circling conversation where neither one of us ever made it to the point. In this case, she did it because she wasn’t particularly happy to see me and wanted me to get gone. Quick. “Aunt Lynn, I’m trying to be nice. I had a really, really long day.”

“Doing what?” she pushed back.

Lynn was a tidy woman, with her carefully styled helmet hairdo and skin-tight flowered leggings. Her face held half an inch of powder, makeup troweled on, and her lips were a solid layer of pale pink lipstick. Her earrings were Christmas balls. She’d stepped out on the front porch in time to watch me walk up, her hands on her hips. Her cheeks were smooth and two bright spots of color blossomed there from the cold. Or it could have been rouge.

“Doing whatever it is I do,” I bit out. “AKA Internet marketing.”

It seemed illogical that my aunt would get her back up over a few Christmas presents. Why couldn’t I just accept her thinly veiled dislike of me and call it a day? Drop the presents off on the morning of with a handwritten note explaining my absence?

I blamed myself.

Aunt Lynn and her son lived on the poor side of Bridgeport, over the railroad tracks and close enough to them to feel the windows rattle when trains passed. It was the same house I’d grown up in. It sat in perpetual gloom underneath the towering presence of an overgrown oak. Especially depressing given the weather.

The house was a two-story mess that looked ready for a wrecking ball. Gray paint peeled and flaked to reveal a sickly orange color underneath. It may have fallen into disrepair, but Lynn and Luke never wanted for anything. The money she accumulated from her part-time job with a law office went toward her own physical maintenance and sports equipment for her son, who was a proud member of the Bassick Lions football team.

That was the way she preferred her life. The two of them as a tight and neat unit. And there I was, the third wheel on a bicycle built for two. For a split second, it felt surreal coming back and seeing her on the porch. Like I’d never really lived with them. I was a stranger, a distant cousin who came to town once every five years for a visit.

Lynn would be much happier if I stayed away.

“You walked? Why didn’t you just drive over?” she asked, staring at the street like my car would magically pop out of thin air.

Nope, I didn’t want to think about things popping out of thin air. “You know why.” It was our customary greeting, one where neither one of us said hello or asked after the health of the other. “I brought you both something,” I told her, pulling my hat lower and stuffing my hands into the fleece-lined pockets of my jacket, trying to get warm.

“Yes, I can see,” Lynn answered. “You didn’t even bother to wrap them.”

What part of “I’ve had a hard day” isn’t getting through to you? “I thought it would be nice to bring some things over now. To take my mind off of…you know.”

“Do I?”

I could tell in her voice that she didn’t understand me. She thought I had an underhanded scheme afoot. No, I thought wearily. Plain exhaustion just makes a person do crazy things from time to time.

“I’m sorry if I’m interrupting something,” I replied to the silence.

Lynn glared down at me from the top of the steps. “I guess you can come in. Make sure you take your boots off before you track snow and dirt down the hallway.”

I knew, of course. I remembered from the twelve years I’d been stuck with her. Though Lynn and my mother were not related by blood, only by the letter of the law when my mother married Lynn’s brother, they’d been friends. Good friends. I think things might have been different for us if my aunt hadn’t seen the writing on my arm.

Did she think I was personally to blame for the accident?

Yes. She did.

I stepped past her and into the house, taking time to kick off my boots and nudge them toward the hall closet. Lynn breezed in behind me and the door banged closed.

The sigh she heaved was uncharacteristically heavy. “I guess this means you won’t be coming over Christmas morning.”

“I’m not sure yet. For some reason, I’m not in the holiday spirit this year.”

“When have you ever been?” she asked dryly. “Luke! Luke, sweetie, come say hi to your cousin. She’s stopped by unexpectedly.”

Code for annoying interruption. I got the message. When I turned around to adjust the bags on my arm, Lynn was frowning at me.

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