He kissed each kneecap, his curls brushing against my outer thighs, tickling ever so slightly.

Continuing upward, his fingers rested on my inner thigh. “Here?”

I craned my neck out of its twisted position to see him. “Especially there.”

Jack guided his lips to my thigh and gave it little kisses all over. His mouth was wet and warm. His face was strawberry flushed in small, concentrated blotches.

“I’ll be right back.” He stood, extending his pointer finger before disappearing around the corner. “Don’t you dare move,” he called, out of sight.

I felt like molasses dripping on the couch, amorphous and sticky.

Jack returned with my wooden hairbrush in his hand. He shifted me into a seated position, sat down behind me, and began brushing my hair in long, fluid strokes.

I was suddenly staggered and deeply touched. Saddened without fully understanding why.

“Jack?”

“Hm?” He stopped brushing and I turned toward him.

I realized the room had gone dark. I reached for the lamp’s chain and tugged, illuminating the space. “Did I tell you about my mother?”

He chewed his bottom lip again, then shook his head. “What about her?”

My throat was dry, my lip trembled as I tried to curl it open. I knew what I had to say. But as I dug to find my voice, a forceful gust hit the front door, rattling the knocker, as if someone were trying to get in.

Chapter 17

My mother often disappeared. It was her greatest act, like a lady who volunteers to enter the box at a magician’s show before being spun round and round until the curtain drops, and everyone’s amazed to see that she has vanished.

Early in the morning, I’d hear the disruption of gravel in the driveway as she made her escape. Lying in bed, my stomach gnawing at itself, I would trace the trim on the ceiling with my index finger, straining to listen as the sound of her engine faded, wondering if she would ever come back.

Those days were spent in a quiet, crystalline state. My father would recede into his office and I’d stand outside his door, braiding the long, wiry hairs of the angry-faced mask that was tacked to it, or press against the door, holding my breath. Most often, though, I would wait on the front lawn, sitting on the swing, clutching its bristly ropes with two hands, straining my ears for the sound of a car in the distance.

When she finally returned, just after bedtime, she’d push our half-shut bedroom door open with a gentle greeting and perch herself on the end of my bed. As my eyes followed the ember tip of her cigarette in the darkness, she would tell us about her adventures out in the world, filled with a vibrancy that was almost alien to me. I would learn to cherish these glimpses of her. I loved her best when she was this way.

“I went to an abandoned community,” she explained one evening over plates of roast beef and mashed sweet potato, my father still entrenched in his office. My mother’s eyes were marvellously blue in the candlelight. They reminded me of a swimming pool, reflecting everything that dared to come close enough to gaze down, searching for the bottom.