Chapter 3
Chapter Three
T he Nantucket Island Juvenile Detention Center wasn’t a well-trafficked building. When Noah pulled his car into the lot, he was one of only five others, and when he sat in the waiting room, he was the only one in a tiny plastic chair with his shoulders hunched. He hadn’t imagined how lonely this experience would be. He hadn’t imagined how hollow his heart would feel.
It wasn’t his first time in the juvenile detention center. In his line of work, the center was a regular stop. He’d been here six other times during the month of February alone. But this was the first time he’d been called here for personal, non-work-related reasons. And the emotion of it was far different. It put him in line with his clients. It put him in line with the families he spent every day of his working life helping. He’d always understood their anger and frustration and fear. But now, he felt it deep in his bones.
He couldn’t cry. He couldn’t reveal himself like that. Not here.
The woman at the front desk was named Bethany. Like every other time he’d seen her since she’d started working here, she wore her blond ponytail way up high, so tight that it pulled at her forehead. Noah got up and forced himself to smile at her when she called him back. Naturally, she thought he was here for work.
“It’s been a pretty active month, hasn’t it?” she said, making light small talk.
“Sure has,” Noah said.
“But you know how the kids get over the winter. They get all pent-up,” Bethany said. “They need to get outside, run around.”
“Sure do.” Noah had no interest in giving Bethany anything more.
“This one’s a real fighter,” Bethany warned him. “Be careful.”
“Thanks for the heads-up.”
Bethany led him down the hall and unlocked a wooden door. Inside the room was a security guard and a teenage girl with long dirty-blond hair, loose-fitting blue jeans, and a black shirt that was purposely revealing. She was a teenage girl experimenting with boundaries and how she wanted to reveal her body to the world. She wore black makeup and looked up at Noah as though she hated him and wanted to curse him.
She looked so much like Noah’s sister had when Noah’s sister was sixteen.
She looked that way because she was Noah’s sister’s daughter, Avery.
Noah told himself again not to cry.
Noah looked at the security guard, a guy he recognized from his numerous visits, and said, “I can take it from here.”
The security guard looked as though he didn’t want to leave Noah alone. “I think I’d better stick around, chief,” he said to Noah, although Noah wasn’t the chief of anything.
Clearly, he thought Avery was too dangerous for Noah.
Maybe he was right. But there was no getting through to Avery with a stranger around.
Noah hoped his look expressed how much he needed time alone with her. “Five minutes,” he said. “You can check on us then.”
The guard sighed and gave Avery a strange and dark look. “You better behave with Mr. Carson, you understand? If you don’t, you’ll spend another night in juvie. Won’t she, Mr. Carson?”
Noah knew he needed to play along, at least a bit. “We’ll see about that.”
The guard gave Noah a stiff nod and left the room. Noah turned to lock the door, but he remained with his back to Avery for longer than necessary. He was trying to compose his thoughts.
“Did you come all the way over here to stare at the door?” Avery demanded. “Or did you come to turn me into a good kid? Like you do to all the others.”
Noah bristled. In his working life, he was accustomed to teenagers speaking to him like this, like he was the dirt between their toes and not the only person in the world fighting for their rights. But when those insults came from Avery, memories accosted him, reminding him of his early years as her uncle, when she couldn’t get enough of him, and when they’d laughed and laughed in the sunshine.
“I’ve been looking for you,” he muttered. “For nearly three days, I’ve been looking for you. I’ve had the cops scouring everywhere. All over Boston and New York. Everywhere in between. I’ve been worried sick.”
Avery’s cough transformed into a strange laugh. Suddenly delirious with anger, Noah whipped around to look at her: this dirty and too-skinny teen who’d disappeared after the funeral. As far as he’d been able to tell, she’d only packed a small backpack. How much cash had she had? How had she even survived?
He knew she was upset. He was upset, too. But why did she have to make everything that much harder? Why did she have to put his heart in a pressure cooker?
“I’m here now, aren’t I?” she said.
Noah sighed and looked at his hands. Never had he assumed he’d come to the Nantucket Island Juvenile Detention Center and be up against his own niece.
She didn’t even live here. Not officially.
“What? Are you going to make me sleep here?” Avery put pressure on him with a sinister smile.
Noah pulled a chair out from the corner and sat down with his head in his hands. He felt a migraine coming on. “Avery,” he said, his eyes on hers. “Why are you doing this?”
Avery looked on the verge of laughter. “Uncle Noah,” she retorted, her tone daring, “why wouldn’t I do this? I’m basically an adult. I should be able to live the life I want to live.”
“You’re sixteen.”
“Almost seventeen,” she said. “I would have been out of the house in a year. What’s the difference?”
Noah closed his eyes and counted to ten. He remembered one of the last phone conversations he’d had with his sister when she’d said, “Avery is having a hard time. I think a boyfriend broke up with her. Maybe? And I think she’s been skipping school.”
But his sister had sounded exhausted. She’d sounded on the brink of a nervous breakdown. Noah had said, “I’ll come to Boston and visit soon. We can hang out together. The three of us. We can figure out what’s going on with Avery.”
Because he hadn’t seen Avery in a couple of years at that point, he couldn’t imagine anyone but the bright and sunny blond and freckled niece he’d loved so much.
This Avery was a stranger.
This Avery had snuck out of the house during her mother’s wake—and fled.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Sounds like you just did,” Avery sassed.
Noah didn’t let that deter him. “Why did you come to Nantucket?”
Avery went pale but kept up her smirk. “Why shouldn’t I have come to Nantucket?”
“I mean, I’m here,” Noah said. “Your uncle Noah. Your only family in the world. Is that why you came?”
Avery cackled. “No, stupid. I came here because I was born and raised here. I never wanted to move to Boston. You remember. That was Mom’s big idea.”
Noah did remember. He remembered July four years ago when his sister, Mona, met Greg at a beachside concert and fell madly in love with him. He remembered his sister calling him and saying, “I think I’m really going to be happy this time, Noah. I can’t believe it. Greg’s the one.” He hadn’t believed her. He hadn’t believed in “the one.” But not long after that, there he was, helping Avery and Mona pack up the truck and waving goodbye as they drove off to their brand-new life in the Boston suburbs.
He’d had a horrible feeling. But every time he’d brought it up to Mona, Mona said, “Stop being my protective older brother and let me live, dang it.”
He remembered where he was when Mona called to say Greg had hit her and thrown her and Avery out.
“I’m calling the police,” he’d told her.
“You are not,” Mona had barked. “I swear, if you call the cops, I will never talk to you again. We’re out of Greg’s life now. It’s over.”
“You have to come back to Nantucket,” Noah had said. “I mean, there’s nothing for you in Boston.”
“I have a job here. Avery’s going to school here,” Mona reminded him.
“You could get your old job back. Avery can go to school here.”
“No,” Mona had said over and over. “I’ve yanked her around too much as it is.”
And now here they were at the Nantucket Island Juvenile Detention Center.
Now, Mona was dead.
It took over an hour to get Avery out of there. There was paperwork to sign; there were difficult questions to answer. It wasn’t till seven that Avery was in front of Noah’s truck, her arms crossed tightly over her chest, her backpack thrown in the back. Noah’s radio played old songs from the nineties that Avery thought were “stupid,” so he’d turned off the radio, and they sat in a strained silence.
“Are you going to tell me where you were?” Noah asked then, squeezing the steering wheel harder.
Avery coughed. “I’m here. I’m literally right here. What else matters?”
Noah didn’t have it in him to fight. He’d just lost his sister. He’d nearly lost his niece.
He felt broken.
The sky over his little house at the outer edge of Siasconset, the area where the multimillion-dollar houses stretched on glorious sun-drenched beaches, was a grayish purple that suggested it was going to rain. Noah parked in the garage but left the door open because he wanted to step out in the chill and breathe fresh air for a second. For hours, he’d been fighting a panic attack. Instead of joining him, Avery grabbed her bag and stomped inside.
From the driveway, Noah could see the ocean. It was a welcome relief, watching it froth in and churn back out, rolling in grays and blacks and greens. He’d been twenty-seven when he’d bought this house, and he was thirty-eight now, which meant he’d lived here ten years of his lonely life.
When Mona had died, he’d known he would have to make space in his house for Avery. But he hadn’t imagined it like this.
Noah went inside to find Avery in the fridge. In fact, she was so deeply entrenched, searching through drawers and behind milk cartons, that he could see nothing but her legs and the back of her head. Noah wanted a beer—badly—but he guessed that wasn’t the kind of thing he wanted to drink in front of a troubled teenager so soon after she got out of juvie. Had she been drinking? Had she been using drugs?
She’d been brought into juvie because she’d been caught sleeping in someone’s boathouse. Rich folks in Siasconset didn’t take kindly to strange teenagers using their expensive stuff. They’d locked her in the boathouse and called the cops. Noah guessed Avery had spewed enough insults their way to last a lifetime.
As teenagers, Mona and Noah had broken into a swanky boathouse, too. But they hadn’t gotten caught. They’d returned home before dawn, giggling madly, promising each other they wouldn’t tell a soul. Back then, Mona had been his best friend and confidant. When Noah’s life exploded, he’d turned to Mona for help.
Now, Mona was gone.
Noah had nobody.
Avery had nobody but Noah.
When Avery was in the fridge for longer than two minutes, Noah finally said, “Take whatever you want,” and made Avery jump. Emerging from within, she carried orange juice, yogurt, cheese, hot sauce, and mini sausages in her arms. She looked sheepish and starving.
“Come on,” Noah said with a sigh. “Let me order pizza, at least.”
Avery looked like she wanted to protest. She wanted to shove his kindness in his face. But her hunger won out. “Okay.”
Noah got on the phone and ordered two big pizzas: a meat lovers, and one with sausage and green peppers, which was Mona’s favorite. Avery collapsed on the sofa with a can of Diet Mountain Dew and two slices of cheddar cheese. Noah could smell body odor and the mustiness of unused boathouses on her. Something else, too. Was it alcohol?
He needed a beer!
He’d never seen anyone gobble up a slice of cheese so quickly. It was impressive, really. In a flash, Avery was back on her feet to grab more. Noah said nothing.
It was strange to have Avery in his house. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had anyone over—not even for a beer or to watch a game. His male friends, the ones who might have gone for that, were all in the chaos of raising children and needed at home, telling him, “Maybe in a few years I’ll find the time.”
He knew they thought he was a fool for not having children. Sometimes Noah thought he was a fool, too. Who would deny himself so much joy? Other times, he thought he was brilliant for stepping away from such a “pivotal part of life.” Noah saw how difficult it was for so many children. He saw the terrors of life: kids in juvenile detention, kids with parents who didn’t love them, and kids who were hungry or who’d had to take jobs at the age of thirteen, lying on their applications to make ends meet at home.
Noah knew the darkness of life. So maybe it was better that he hadn’t brought anyone new into the world.
That was what he told himself on his loneliest nights.
The pizza arrived. Noah pulled a card table out of the back closet and set it up in front of the sofa so they could eat and watch television. He let Avery choose what to put on, and she opted for the reality TV show Love Is Blind , where people tried to make romantic connections on the phone without ever seeing each other first. Noah found it ridiculous. But within just a few minutes, he was captivated. Was this how young people talked to each other? Was this how people fell in love? He’d been out of the game a long time. And then another question occurred to him. When had Noah become an “older person”? Up until recently, he’d thought of himself as rather young. He’d thought of himself as a man who still had time left. But now that he was nearing forty, he realized that wasn’t so.
Avery was sixteen. But she seemed so world-weary. She was still so hungry, too. She gobbled up an entire pizza and drank another can of Diet Mountain Dew. After that, Noah found a package of cookies in the cabinet, and she ate five of them.
Noah was glad. Although it was all trash food with very little nutrition, he felt good that he was filling her up. Maybe she would sleep through the night.
How often had she slept since she ran away? How much sleep had she gotten in that musty boathouse?
He wondered if Avery would ever tell him where she’d been the past few days. How had she gotten to Nantucket in the first place? What had made her run away from the wake?
But he was too exhausted to beg her for details.
Wordlessly, Noah and Avery watched two hours of Love Is Blind . Avery eventually fell asleep on the sofa, and Noah didn’t know whether to wake her up or let her sleep in her clothes. He tried to think of what Mona would do in this situation but couldn’t find Mona’s voice in his head.
Why, Mona? he begged the universe. Why did you leave me like this?
He suddenly felt the black abyss of the future creeping closer and closer. He was trapped.