Page 38 of As the Rain Falls (Sainte Madeleine #1)

RUN, BOY

Beckett

The sound of thick glass shattering against the floor pierces through my sleep.My eyes fly open, and calmness evades me, replaced by a feeling of anxiety that rises from the bottom of my stomach to the middle of my throat.

A beat later, my head snaps to the right, just in time to watch as my father raises his arm up to the sky and drops a bottle of whiskey against the coffee table in slow motion.

The wood splits, shards of glass scattering all around him.

He kicks what’s left of it with his feet, sending the pieces skidding across the floor.

“The papers are signed! The bills are paid! I even made a donation to that stupid nonprofit they’re talking about creating!” He gestures wildly at himself, his voice breaking. “I did that!”

Whiskey seeps into the carpet, the strong, sour scent hitting me in the face. It yanks me awake and gets my heart racing, an alarm ringing in my head.

“What’s the name again?” he snorts bitterly, stumbling towards me. “What kind of nonprofit doesn’t even have a name?”

This one, I’m guessing.

“They’re trying to tell me how to raise my kids and how to spend my money! My-fucking-money!” I sit down slowly as he staggers closer, trying not to make any abrupt movements so as to not set him off. “I know how to raise my kids. I. Know. How. To. Raise. Them.”

I don’t contradict him, even though I do feel some type of way about his statement. Trying to reason with a fool just makes you sound twice as foolish, and right now he is wounded. Blood drips in tiny dots next to him, a cut splitting his palm in half.

I start to get up, but then I realize that I’m barefoot, and our living room is completely trashed.

“You don’t think that’s true?” He glares at me with angry eyes. “Well, I raised you, didn’t I?”

I take a deep breath, searching for my flip-flops.

Gregory takes a step forward, then another, and crashes against my shoulder, knocking the air from my lungs. I hook his arm around my shoulders and neck, letting most of his weight fall on top of me. He steps on my foot, hard, and I feel the sting of a broken glass poking at my heel.

“I raised you!” his sentence breaks into laughter, stinky breath reeking on my face like a curtain. “Really, Beckett. I made you. How fucking amazing is that?”

“Jesus, you’re stepping on me!”

We walk side-by-side, me trying to avoid all the glass, him ranting about something I can barely pay attention to.I open the door to the master’s bedroom, turn on the lights with my elbow, and walk him to his bathroom. My arms burn, but I keep going.

“You’re the best, Beckett. The best fucking son I could have ever asked for!”

I close my eyes and count.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Te—

“I mean, besides the fact that you came out of your mother’s cunt, which made you a complete retard sometimes,” he laughs openly, forcing my head down and pressing a sloppy kiss to my forehead, his blood staining the front of my shirt. “But I really wouldn’t have it any other way.”

I shove him inside the bathroom, clothes and all, and crank the shower from warm to cold.

“Stay put,” my voice sounds dead to my own ears. I’m so tired. “I’m getting, uh, a towel.”

“Get the fuck away from me!” he yells, thrashing against the wall.

Blinking hard to keep myself awake, I walk back to Lucia’s room next door and steal one of her clean towels.

My vision swings as I glance down, noticing there is blood underneath my feet, marking the floor.

Pain shoots up my right leg, and I try to let out a moan, but nothing comes out.

It’s like my vocal cords are being squeezed out.

“Beckett!” my father calls for me. “Come back!”

Run, boy.

Just run.

I don’t. I force myself to walk back to the bathroom instead.And when I open the door again, I notice that I made an obvious mistake.

Gregory is curved on all fours, spilling his stomach’s contents over expensive shampoo bottles.My immediate response is to not have any reactions at all.

I mean.

Jesus-fucking-Christ.

“You’re acting like a—” I stutter, trying to haul him to an upright position. “You’re acting like a child!”

Gregory hides his face behind his hands as I stare him down. Then, he peeks at me with one eye open. The next thing I know, he bursts out laughing.

“I want—” I pause, trying to find a way to express myself freely, but nothing comes out. My lips part, taking the shape of words, but my tongue is stuck at the bottom of my mouth. “I want you to stop! Stop laughing… Stop laughing at me!”

“There it is,” his smile is wide and cruel. “That’s my boy.”

It’s 4 A.M and I’m completely exhausted. Drinking is all my father seems capable of doing, besides annoying the shit out of Le Port’s police department. I can’t deal with him anymore. It’s too fucking much.

“I’m sorry,” Gregory wheezes through another broken laugh, his face getting all red. “It’s just so fucking hilarious.”

I stop pacing, wrapping my arms around myself for comfort. I need to feel something other than this emotion rising up, taking over me, threatening to spill. If I have a meltdown right now, I won’t be hearing the end of it tomorrow.

“Your sister is really dead, isn’t she?”

And then, he laughs again. Louder this time. Downright cackling. I wish I had other words to describe it, but all I feel is distraught by his behavior.

“Yes, fa-father.”

Gregory holds his palm, pressing against the cut, trying to keep it from bleeding some more. I blink, astonished that he even noticed the cut in the first place. Maybe he isn’t that drunk, which only makes this worse.

“She is,” I whisper brokenly, unable to say her name, at least not right now. “She’s dead.”

Lucia is dead .

My nails start picking at the sides of my thumb, ripping the fragile skin apart. I can’t stop. It’s too soothing.

“What a fucking joke of a brother you are, I mean,” Dad slurs. “Couldn’t even look after your own sister.”

The words should hurt, but I’ve heard a lot worse coming from him.

I had a lifetime’s worth of insults directed at me by the time I was seven years old.

He can’t stand my fucking brain—not unless it’s working perfectly.

But it’s been a hard fucking month, and for what it’s worth, I miss my sister.

I keep turning my head to the side, expecting to see Lucia standing next to me.

I love her. I love her so fucking much; it kills me that she is gone.

The care I have for her, I mean.

It’s like carrying around a parasite.

“I booked a flight,” Dad prompts, out of nowhere. “Can’t stand to sleep in this house anymore. Don’t know how you can do it without her.”

“Yeah.” I smile weakly, the ache in my chest going numb. “Neither can I.”

***

“You look like you haven’t slept in days.”

Old Well hands me a warm mug, his face doing that thing it often does when he disapproves of something but won’t stay silent about it.

“Funny enough, that’s because I haven’t.” I shrug, whistling so the cows keep trailing after me.

“Really?” He pauses, one hand on his hip, the other braced against the fence. When I don’t give him an answer, Well slaps the back of my head, bringing me back to the moment. “Boy, I’m talking to you.”

“I did.” I rub the spot, running a hand over my recently shaved head. The buzzcut is making me look like a junkie. “It’s just… There’s a lot going on at home right now.”

“I hear you,” he nods thoughtfully. “I assume you mean your father?”

“He’s been drinking a lot. I don’t think being here, as in living in Le Port, does him any good.”

I pat the back of our youngest calf, Rosie, and she answers with a soft noise that’s not quite her final moo-moo yet. She’s too small to keep up with the rest of the group, but at least she’s trying.

“Go back to your mom, sweetie.”

Rosie trots away from us, happily rejoining her family. Well smiles sarcastically, his crooked teeth flashing. “Oh, and you’re the one who’s supposed to fix that for him, are you?”

“I’m not.” My lips part as I point out the obvious, breathing in the humid air as I check the sky for any sign of heavy clouds. A few are gathering further away on the horizon; it might rain again before the night comes. “But he’s miserable.”

“Well, of course he is. Your father just lost another cow to milk, if you know what I mean.” Well picks up a piece of weed from the ground, chewing the edge of it lazily. “You can’t let him get in your head.”

I glare my eyes at him, but he just grabs my elbow, forcing my attention back.

“You can’t.”

“He’s not getting to me.” I pull my arm from his grip, checking to see if all the cows are around us. “Antony and you need to trust me a little more. It’s annoying to constantly have to explain myself to you guys.”

“You don’t need to explain yourself to me, Beckett. Just as long as you know that you don’t need to look after your father. He’s a grown, rich bastard. He’ll survive.”

I answer with a noncommittal hum, pretending to agree, but his words don’t feel right.Well eyes me with suspicion.I sigh, getting on my nerves about it.

“You know, I want to believe you,” he admits slowly. “But you sort of start looking like him when you lie to me, which does make me wonder.”

“Like him?” my voice is sharp. “I’m nothing like him.”

“You’re running.” Well shrugs. “Running from becoming like him. But life’s not a straight track, kid. It’s more like a circle. The things you fear always come back to bite you.”

I clean the sweat off my forehead and watch him stare at the wilderness around us, his gaze admiring. Something about his last sentence sticks, but I don’t know why.

“There’s a new commission,” Well says after a moment of silence. He spits the weed out and waves his hand around dismissively. “Not a big one, but I figured you’d like it. The client asked for engravings. Thought of you immediately.”

“Engraving could be fun.” I jump over the fence, my feet landing in a puddle. “I’ll check it out when we get back.”

“Yes, son.” He yawns and smiles. “Meanwhile, I’m taking a nap.”

Well keeps the important commissions pinned to a whiteboard in his office. Most orders are too advanced for me, which means that I’m left to watch him work and help where I can.

I don’t mind having to grovel. I’ve only been training consistently since April—and all things considered, that’s not a lot.

Before that, all I did was work around the farm and help Lucia with her college applications.

My father raised me to be a scholar so my sister would get to do whatever she wanted, and I was damn good at keeping up with the charade.

Yes, I sucked at being socially extroverted and couldn’t visit a supermarket without freaking myself out, but I could solve any equation and remember every historical date I cared enough about, and my teachers were impressed enough to forget that I was odd.

I was this skinny, quiet kid who felt overwhelmed all the time.

Now that I’ve abandoned academia, my worth is reduced to nothing.

I glance at the design. A jewelry box. Small space for engraving, which means that I’ll have to spend a lot of time making sure everything fits. The client requested certain doodles on a crumpled piece of paper.

The pattern is what looks quite familiar to me, but I can’t exactly figure out why.

I set the right tools on the table so I don’t have to look for them later and pick up the piece of paper one last time, unable to shake away the feeling of familiarity.

Halfway through my work, the feeling nags at me enough that I pick up my phone and scroll through my gallery, looking at old pictures.

My stomach drops when I finally find what I’m looking for.

The planets have this fragile look, drawn messily all over the paper, just like —

Lucia’s drawings. The very first few sketches she’d made. She thought they could be turned into jewelry later, but unlike me, she had no talent for handmade work. They’re the exact same.

I’ll make something out of this, Beckett , Lucia used to say. Even if Dad thinks drawing is stupid. I don’t care .

“What the—”

We used to talk about it all the damn time. How didn’t I…

I quickly check our client’s details, which always come logged in with the rest of the order, and recognize everything almost immediately. The house number. The street name. Not random. Not a coincidence. The address is next door to mine. My neighbor’s. Cassandra’s.

“How did she get her hands on this?”

It has to be a misunderstanding.

Without saying another word, I slide the sketches in my bag and grab my keys to the truck. Well is snoring loudly now, and I know he won’t wake up until the evening comes. After I’m done checking on everything, I leave him a note and head back to the city.

I need to ask Cassandra about this, because if she meant it as a joke, it sure as hell isn’t a funny one.