Page 262 of Hide and Keep

She drapes her arms on my shoulders, playing with the back of my neck to calm herself.

“I don’t want to think about him and what happens when you’re not around.”

I don’t either. It makes me irrationally angry when I do.

“Just be here with me for now. Be my security blanket.”

“I’m your everything.”

She cracks the kind of smile I would love to feel against my own.

Tearing my eyes off it, I ask, “What can I help with in here?”

Ever leads me around, letting me help with some of her tasks. While we work, she teaches me about the butterfly life cycle, pointing out any chrysalides she spots.

If this is another world, Ever’s another girl in it. She’s intelligent, patient, enthusiastic, and happy. So damn happy. Maybe even happier than when we’re in my room.

That is until we come across a dead butterfly, then Ever’s entire demeanor changes as she stops to pick it up.

“White peacock,” she mutters as she cradles it gently in her palms. I’m not sure if that’s its name or the kind though. It’s white with light brown markings that somewhat resemble a peacock’s, so it’s probably the kind.

“I’m sorry,” I tell Ever quietly, to which she shakes her head.

“It’s natural. Everything dies at some point.”

“It doesn’t make it any less sad.”

Ever doesn’t respond as she studies the dead butterfly.

“Did your dad really kill your mom?” I ask.

“Depends on how you look at it.”

“How doyoulook at it?”

“I look at it…” She peeks at me very briefly before continuing, “As my mother killed herself. Mostly. But my father’s partly to blame, as am I.”

“Why the hell would you think you’re to blame?”

“My mother escaped to Martha’s Vineyard every summer, like clockwork, and at the end of every August, my father and I would go meet with her, stay in our house there for a weekend, maybe take the yacht out, before bringing her back to Connecticut with us. As much as I’d like to think those trips were to escape my father, I know they were to escape me, too. We weren’t close. We didn’t talk about normal mother-daughter stuff. We didn’t really talk at all. We played from time to time, but that was it.”

“Played?”

“She was depressed. Severely. I’m assuming anyway, because no one ever told me what the issue was. But during the rare times when she wasn’t…down, I guess…she was pretty emotionally immature. She never wanted to do anything she deemed hard.”

“Having a kid is hard.”

“She had me, but she didn’t raise me. My nanny raised me. My mother only played with me when the mood struck.”

That’s really fucking weird. Children aren’t toys.

“What would you play?”

“I don’t know. Kid stuff. Imaginary stuff. We would play hide-and-seek in the maze out front for hours.”

“Yeah?”

She nods, a small grin moving her lips. “As long as I was ‘it,’ she would play for hours. She would say ‘look for me,’ then go hide.”

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