Chapter 10
Arielle had cut through the yards from behind the church where she’d parked her car.
It wasn’t the most sophisticated operation, but it would do the job, which was to avoid seeing Jason.
She ran through the Gardner’s woods and around Mrs. Atkinson’s garden.
Once she climbed over the rock wall, she was in Patrick’s backyard, and she safely went inside the house through the back door.
“There you are,” Crissy said, just as Arielle walked in the door. “Your brother has been texting you all night.”
Arielle hadn’t used her phone in two days. “Sorry. I lost it.”
“You lost your phone?” Crissy stopped washing the dishes, slammed her hands on the counter, and immediately became stressed. “Are you serious? Of all the days to lose your phone. Have you looked at Auntie’s? The restaurant?”
Arielle nodded and walked through the kitchen. She mouthed a sorry to Brady, who ate cereal at the table. He shrugged. “I was hoping you could pick me up and we could get lobsters before the fireworks.”
There was no way she was going to go anywhere near lobsters. “Why didn’t you ask Jason?”
She wondered whether Jason had told the family about their breakup.
Brady shrugged and looked at Crissy, who started washing dishes again. Then he locked eyes on Arielle, the situation made clear through the silence. He knew, but her mother didn’t.
“Have you talked to Jason?” Crissy asked from the sink. “Did he say how much they sold today?”
Not many locals attended the annual Fourth of July lobster bake; that usually happened at the Christmas play. The summer lobster bake was for the lobstermen to sell their fresh catch to the tourists. The event garnered hundreds of people from all over the country.
She shook her head. “No, I haven’t.”
She widened her eyes at Brady, who shook his head. “We haven’t seen anybody around here today.”
“Is Jason meeting us at the fireworks?” Crissy asked her.
Arielle tried to think of an excuse for why she wouldn’t meet up with Jason but decided to change the subject. “Hey, guess whose house I surfed at this afternoon.”
Her mother shut off the water and turned around. She tilted her head as she wiped her hands with the dish towel. “You went surfing?”
She shook her head. “Not really, but almost.”
Brady took another chomp of his sugary cereal.
No one guessed, so Arielle gave them the answer. “Ryan Mathers’.”
She did dance hands to lighten the mood, but no one seemed to care.
“You know, defensive lineman Ryan Mathers.”
“Shut up!” Brady dropped his spoon into his bowl. “The Ryan Mathers of the New England Patriots, Ryan Mathers?”
She shrugged, but she knew exactly who he was, because she’d looked him up for the rest of the afternoon. “Yeah, and I met his cousin.”
“Seriously?” Brady jumped up from his chair. “Where?”
“I went to his house with Auntie,” she said. “She sold him a bunch of surfboards, and they didn’t know what they were doing, so we went there to teach them. He’s really nice.”
“You don’t even know how to surf!” Brady’s excitement immediately ended. “That’s not why you broke up with Jason is it? For Ryan Mather’s cousin?”
“Brady!” Arielle couldn’t believe her brother. “No.”
“He’s not going to recover from this, you know.” Brady shook his head at her. “I can’t believe you.”
Brady pushed his chair back and left his cereal bowl on the table, getting up and leaving the kitchen.
Arielle’s heart pumped with anger. Ever since their father’s court case, they had created a pact not to go against each other.
Ever. They were the only two people who knew what each other had gone through, living in their crazy family.
The only two people who knew what it was like to have to live homeless with a felon for a father.
They knew what it was like being told to live like nothing had happened to them, that their father hadn’t disappeared from their life, and to be grateful for the life they had after losing everything.
“Look at all the blessings they had been given,” was the beginning of every speech given by her mother. Brady knew what it was like to be a Gagnon on an isolated island. Not even Crissy knew what they’d gone through and continued to go through.
They promised they’d stick together.
“You broke up with Jason?” Crissy looked at her daughter just like Arielle had expected. Panic drained her face. “Is everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine.” Arielle held up her hands. “No need to worry. We just agreed to take time apart while I head off to school and he gets his fisherman’s license. We’re kids, after all.”
She threw her mother’s words back in her face.
Crissy looked at Arielle. Even Arielle didn’t believe her performance. Her mother would see through this. All the red flags flew in her face as she stared at her in silence—staying at her aunt’s house, no phone, no plans with Jason.
“You broke up?” Crissy wrinkled her forehead. “I don’t understand.”
“Well, that’s the neat thing,” Arielle said before she could bite her tongue. A wave of bitterness rose in her throat. “Our relationship isn’t any of your business.”
Crissy’s hand hit her chest as if Arielle had stabbed her in the heart. “Wow. Okay then. Have fun at the fireworks.”
Her mother walked past Arielle and gave her the cold shoulder when Arielle said, “Mom, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to?—”
But Crissy was climbing the stairs as she spoke, and Arielle didn’t raise her voice so she could hear the rest of her weak apology.
“So?” Brady suddenly walked back into the kitchen. “Did you break up with him for this new guy?”
Arielle’s face heated up as she looked at Brady, but she ignored his question. “Did you want to go to the fireworks?”
She and her brother always saw the fireworks together. Even before their father had gotten arrested and sent to prison.
He picked up his cereal bowl and took it to the sink. “I think I’m good.”
“Are you serious?” She dropped her arms at her side. “You’re going to be this way?”
He stuffed his hands into his pockets. “Yeah, I think I’ll go see if Jason’s alright.”
She rolled her eyes. “Figures you’d take his side without knowing anything.”
She knew Brady adored Jason. The two had bonded over the past year more than Arielle could have imagined.
She almost considered them more like siblings, with the way they acted.
They always made each other laugh, told each other secret inside stories, but she never thought he’d choose Jason over her.
She shook her head. “Go have a blast and make sure everyone else in the world is okay before your own sister.”
She rushed to the door before the tears broke out.
She swallowed down the lump lodged in her throat as she slammed the door so hard, she heard something break in the background.
She pounded off the porch. She didn’t go through the woods.
She didn’t care who saw her at this point.
She had no one she needed to report to anymore.
She was eighteen. She would have no one else’s money or kindness being held over her head anymore.
She’d stay with her aunt until she left for school and then live at school, get a job, and save as much money as she could to find her own place, get her own life.
And never come back to this island.
She looked back at the house and saw Brady through her mother’s bedroom window. He went in and walked to her bed. Even from the street, Arielle could see he was checking in on their mother. He hadn’t even bothered to see how she was feeling. Neither had her mother. They never did.
It felt like a betrayal. Arielle used to be annoyed by the affection Brady and her mother showed toward each other, but now she just felt numb. She didn’t even want affection from anyone anymore.
The truth was, Arielle was a daddy’s girl. She’d adored her father and his attention. Crissy was a wonderful mother and she loved her, but she didn’t crave her attention from her like she had from her father.
And now it was gone.
It was exactly why she couldn’t marry someone. She never wanted her happiness or even her sadness to depend on someone else. Did she want to marry a lobsterman? No, she didn’t. But could she tell Jason that? Ruin his dreams so she wouldn’t have to worry about him?
She had lived on the island long enough to know the dangers of fishing in the Atlantic Ocean.
The cold waters brought violent storms that appeared out of nowhere.
Snow Squalls that could turn a boat upside down in a heartbeat, leaving its sailors dizzy and disoriented.
Hot days brought wicked thunderstorms with waves taller than a lobster boat.
She had been to plenty of funerals of her friends’ fathers to know fishing wasn’t for just anyone. It took bravery but also luck and faith that they’d come back to shore in one piece. There were territory wars, drug dealers, and worse out in the waters.
And that wasn’t even the business side of things. A lot of her friends in school had fathers who made a great living during the good seasons but lost everything in the bad. Whatever she ended up doing with her life, she would never purposefully go through financial stress again. Ever.
Jason didn’t understand. Love trumped everything, in his mind.
“Why can’t you accept me for who I am and do what you want?” he’d asked her when she’d first started to explain things.
“It’s not that simple.” She thought, of all the people in her life, Jason would have understood her feelings about leaving and finding her own way.
He hadn’t had the amazing childhood experience either.
He had been shuffled between his mother and his grandparents until his mother had met Patrick, who’d given him the only stability he’d had in his life.
Now, it seemed glaringly obvious. Of course he wouldn’t want to leave the island. Of course he wouldn’t see a problem with losing things, because he had Patrick to fall back on. He had his mother to fall back on. He had Sophia and even her mother and the restaurant.
Arielle didn’t have that luxury, because everything in her life was borrowed.
The house they lived in wasn’t theirs, but Patrick’s.
There were restrictions on her scholarships and loans for school.
If she messed up or broke her body in some way, she’d lose her scholarships.
Even most of her clothes at this point were hand-me-downs.
Most of the food she ate was from the restaurant or from her Auntie. Nothing was hers.
And she didn’t want to live that way any longer. A modern-day beggar.
By the time she reached her aunt’s place, Arielle couldn’t shake the bitterness that grew inside her. How could her mother and brother get upset with her when they knew she had just broken up with her boyfriend of a year?
Not only had they put their own feeling first, but they expected her to be perfect about everything and act like everything was okay and pretend that the nightmares had only happened in her sleep, not in real life. But she wasn’t that Arielle anymore.
That Arielle was a memory. That Arielle believed in princes saving the day, and that life always delivered happily-ever-afters. But reality had hit harder than an icy winter wave. Now she knew it was all a lie. Villains weren’t ugly ogres, but fathers that tucked you in at bedtime.
The only reason she would attend college was because that’s what everyone expected her to do when she was offered a full scholarship, even though she’d never wanted to go to a four-year school.
Of course she would cheer for one of the best schools in the country, even though she’d never wanted to pick up a pom-pom again.
Of course she would follow through with everyone’s else’s expectations, because she was so lucky to even have such an offer.
She should be thankful, and grateful, and all the things. But she wasn’t. She wanted to run away and never look back.