Chapter 26
June, Four Years Ago
The thing about Folly’s reappearance in my life is I’d imagined it only a million times.
I imagined going on vacation somewhere tropical and catching sight of her across the tiki bar, laughing with some guy. Maybe even the one she’d been dating before they left town.
I imagined getting a text from someone in Bristol and finding out she’d been back home, unannounced, for months.
I even imagined her famous on the television, or as a shampoo model on the side of my bus stop.
What I never imagined was Folly showing up in Knoxville to find me.
It’s like the universe coordinated the whole thing: as soon as Zara moves to Manhattan, drop Folly back into the mix.
Liam and I are headed into my apartment—half empty now that Zara has cleared out, and soon to be completely empty when our lease ends in less than a month—when I spot Folly Lancaster sitting in front of my door.
My immediate reaction, following shock, is to assess her head to toe to make sure she’s okay.
But as soon as I ascertain that she’s fine—put together, in fact, with her hair and makeup done, her outfit freshly ironed, smelling like a spring breeze and smiling wide, as if I’m her favorite person in the world—my concern slices into anger.
“Are you fucking kidding me, Folly?”
She sighs. “Let it out.”
“I hate you!” I scream, the floodgates behind my eyes opening wide.
She flinches, and it feels good. “It’s been almost two years since I’ve seen you, a year since you’ve texted me back.
You missed Zara’s graduation, when we were all here, and choose to show up now when it’s just me? If you want money, I don’t have any.”
“I don’t want money, Paige—”
“Then what do you want?” I cry. “Because this isn’t fair.
” Peripherally, I’m aware Liam is holding me somehow, but I’m not cognizant enough to feel the constraints of it.
“You don’t get to come here and smile and expect me to hug you and say I missed you when I never wanted to miss you at all.
You left me, the sister who always stayed near you and talked to you and looked up to you and—”
“I was not worthy of being your role model, Paige.” She stands up, her voice steady. “If anything, it was the opposite.”
“That’s not a good enough reason to abandon somebody,” I seethe. Then, my heaviest blow: “You turned into Mom.”
Her hands go up, her eyes flashing to Liam’s behind me. “I’m gonna do a lap around the building. Why don’t you go inside, and I’ll come back when you’re ready?”
The meanest part of me wants to insist she shouldn’t bother. But I can’t say it out loud, not even when I’m like this.
I don’t want her to leave again.
She walks past us, and then Liam’s fiddling with my keys for the door. As soon as we’re inside, he leads me toward the couch. Then I’m crying against his chest like some incensed, inconsolable, dramatic child. Nothing about it is dainty or reserved.
It’s like my heart knows: Now that Folly is here, I’m allowed to experience the full range of emotions I suppressed when she wasn’t. Confusion, abandonment, rage. Even guilt. For carrying on with my life, trying not to think of her.
Liam doesn’t offer a flimsy excuse on her behalf or mutter instant-release words of consolation. He just holds me until my sobs quiet, my sniffs go steady, my breath becomes regular. I don’t even have the capacity to feel embarrassed.
In fact, I’m not embarrassed, because that wasn’t an overreaction. It was just my reaction.
A knock on the front door comes a while later. My chest floods with relief.
I whisper, “I don’t want you to leave.”
I know how desperate that sounds right now, but I’m too overcome to care.
An hour ago—while we shared a Wendy’s Frosty in his truck and listened to the whole Lemonade album with the windows down—Liam talked me through which professional teams are openly considering him. Then he offered his opinions on each city, in between words like we and you and together and with me.
He pulls back to look at me, a reflective pain in his own eyes. He pushes my hair off my forehead. “Then I won’t.”
Shakily, I get off his lap and go to the sink, splash some water on my face, towel it dry. Then I go to the door, fling it open, grab Folly by the wrist, and hug her tight.
Which makes her burst into tears.
She tries to apologize for—I don’t know, all of it?—while crying but can’t get the words out, and I guide her over to the couch and put her in the corner with a blanket and glass of water.
“I’ll be in your room,” Liam says, standing and pressing his mouth to the side of my head. I nod at him, smiling quickly in thanks before sitting on the opposite end of the couch.
“Is that your boyfriend?” Folly asks with a sniffle.
“Um, sort of,” I say, glancing at the cracked door of my room. “I mean, yeah, I guess he is.”
She nods in understanding—Folly has experienced every variation of the word situationship—and takes a large gulp of water.
“Who gave you this address?” I ask.
“Zara,” she admits, shooting me a guilty look. “I talked to her on the phone this morning. Candice and Maren, too. I wanted them to hear from me directly before they found out I came to see you.”
I arch an eyebrow. “How’d that go?”
“About as well as this has been going.” She tries to hold a straight face, but it morphs into a smile. Folly’s never been good at holding on to one emotion when she starts to feel the next one. I watch the humor of her situation settle over her.
“The prodigal sister,” I say.
“I’ve talked to Dad every now and then. He’s the one who told me you were living here.”
I roll my eyes. “Just like Dad to hear from you and respect your wishes not to tell us.”
She shrugs. “He said you and Zara never asked.”
I’m suddenly remembering all the times when we were small, and Zara and I would ask the rest of our family questions about Mom. They’d shoot us down, tell us to stop bringing it up.
“I think we’d sort of been conditioned not to,” I whisper.
She nods. “I’ve come to realize I was subconsciously modeling Mom’s behavior by running off.
At the time, the guy I was dating told me my family was toxic and I should cut myself off from them.
” Folly rolls her eyes, like she’s over this, but I frown anyway.
“It took me a year and a half to realize the full extent of what I’d done—what he’d convinced me to do—and by the time I got out of that relationship, all I could think about was how I didn’t want to be anything like our mother. ”
My comparison outside must have really sliced her.
“Where’ve you been for the last six months?” I ask. Though I know the answer, even before she says it.
“I drove around out west in a camper van for a little while. And then I tracked Mom down,” Folly whispers. “Just so I could—find closure, I guess?”
My stomach twists.
“She’s a manager at a jazz club, in a hotel in San Diego. She has a husband. He’s a car salesman. They have a dog. No kids.”
I’d always wondered, though we all pretty much knew she was done with children.
“I saw her across the street from the hotel,” Folly goes on.
“It wasn’t a busy street. We locked eyes, and I knew she recognized me.
We both just sort of stood there for a minute, staring at each other, and when it was clear she wasn’t going to cross for me, that I’d have to be the one, I decided not to cross for her. ”
Folly’s eyes lift back to mine. “I turned around. Went to the airport. Flew here. Chose my family, prayed you’d all forgive me, and vowed to never let the woman who birthed us influence my decisions again.”
“As if your sisters wouldn’t forgive you for anything,” I grumble, pulling her into a hug.
“Maren?” she counters.
“Well, Maren is…”
“Maren,” we say together.
“I’m still working on Maren,” Folly admits. “But she did say she was proud of me for walking away.”
“I would have, though,” I say, so quietly. “Forgiven you for anything. You could have come to me at any point, and I would have taken you back in. No questions asked. No conditions. Didn’t you know that?”
She rubs away a tear on her cheek. “It was different with you, Paige.”
“What do you mean?”
Folly looks off, her eyes glazed. “I was so lost. Depressed, probably. Constantly heartbroken. Looking for my purpose in all the wrong places. I wasn’t driven like Maren, or loveable like Candice, or a quiet genius like Zara.”
“Well,” I say, smiling as I gather my knees against my chest, “neither was I.”
She smiles back, though it’s sad. “But you were only eighteen, Strawberry. You had every chance in front of you to figure your life out. If I’d stayed in it, I would’ve just messed you up. I knew that when I left for Portland, and I knew it when I left Portland.”
A curious, frustrated part of me wonders if Maren ever said a similar thing to Folly. If ever Maren’s warnings to don’t be like Folly were also don’t let Paige be like you.
“For the record, Fol, I didn’t figure much out about myself without you. I just found a different sister to follow,” I admit despondently, gesturing loosely around the room. “But Zara is gone now. And Maisy and I don’t talk anymore. So.”
“Zara mentioned,” Folly says with a frown. “What are you planning to do now?”
My eyes flick to the cracked door of my room, then away. “I’m not sure yet.”
She bites her lip and says, “Me either. I just knew it was time to come back and decide on something.” With a wry grin she adds, “Dad raised five daughters who are as different as can be—who’ll go anywhere, do anything—but can’t forget about home.”
“Is that true?” I ask.
She shrugs. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
In a lot of ways, Folly is my soul sister. She’s a person with way more questions about herself than answers, and when we’re together, she reminds me it’s okay not to have a crystal ball for my future.
We talk for almost an hour. I convince her to cancel her hotel room and grab her things, then come back to my apartment for dinner. Folly departs after sheepishly introducing herself to Liam, who acts like the perfect gentleman.
“Why’d you tell her you hadn’t figured much out about yourself?” he asks when we’re alone, rubbing his hands up and down my arms.
“Oh. Because I haven’t?” My laugh is brittle. “But that’s the thing. Folly gets it. She doesn’t expect me to have a five-year plan. She and I aren’t built that way. Not like Maren and Zara and you.” I smile up at him, but he doesn’t match it.
Liam’s lips push down at the corners. “What about your songs?”
I shake my head. “That’s just a hobby, Liam. It’s just for fun.”
He blinks at me, eyes serious. “I think it can be for fun, and also something about you that’s important. Important enough to share with your sister when she asks you what you’re planning to do now.”
“Where is this coming from?” I ask, stepping back. “I thought you wanted—”
I thought you wanted me to come with you.
He may as well have yanked the rest of the words from my throat. It’s obvious where I was going with that.
Something he overheard from my bedroom is freaking him out. This is the same look Liam gave me on the blanket in the park. As if he’s realizing he’s in over his head.
It’s gone in a blink, and he’s kissing me hard. Like an apology. Like he’s sorry he ever made me doubt him. But I can feel the conflict in the warmth of his lips. In the shakiness of his fingers on my throat.
“So, I’m your sort-of boyfriend?” he asks with a smirk, pulling back.
“You got a better word for it?”
He shakes his head. “Not yet. We need to figure out where we’re going first,” Liam murmurs against my mouth.
There’s that we again.
I know I’m not crazy when he talks like that.
“Less than a month until the draft, Bristol. If you still want me then, I won’t be your sort-of, kind-of boyfriend anymore. I’ll be whatever the hell you need.”
I see forever in his eyes. I can see it in his eyes. I see it when he makes love to me, feel it when he texts me first thing in the morning, hear it in his laughter, taste it on his skin.
So why, when he said where we’re going, did it sound like he really meant where each of us is going, where the other one of us won’t be?