Chapter 6
Sawyer
Ivy stands up and pulls on her coat as soon as book club is over, skipping the pleasantries and post-discussion chit chat and heading for the door. I catch up with her in the soaring atrium, en route to the exit.
“You can stay if you want to,” she says as I fall into step beside her.
“I invited you out for a drink.”
“I know, but your family—”
“Don’t worry about them. I came separately.”
When we step outside, she pauses, taking a deep, long breath of cold air before looking up at me and smiling.
“Was it stuffy in there?” she asks, obviously relieved to be outside.
Or was it my family being snotty to her? I wonder.
Thank God for McKenna’s warmth and kindness, but I’m feeling a little ashamed of my sisters. I think I need to have a word with them about the way they treated Ivy tonight. I get it that they were witness to the way she hurt me, but I want them to give her another chance. I don’t like the way they ignored her when she walked into the conference room. I’m embarrassed, and I don’t say that about my family very often.
“My sisters were…”
“Fine,” she says. “They’re protective of you.”
“Yeah, but they could’ve said hello. My Gran taught us that there’s always room for civility, especially in a small town.”
“I guess they know how things ended between us that summer.”
I nod, shoving my hands into my pockets as we walk south together along Broadway. “I was hurt. I drank a lot after you left. And I tend to vent when I’m drunk, so…”
“They must have heard a lot of choice tidbits about me, huh?” She chuckles, but it’s a sad, sour sound. “No wonder they hate my guts.”
“They don’t!” I insist. Yes, they do. “They just…like you said, they’re protective. I’ll talk to them. Ignoring you when you walk into a room is totally unacceptable.”
“You don’t have to say anything,” she says, her voice small and soft. “I spent that whole summer with you. And then I left without a word, went back to Fairbanks, and never returned any of your calls.”
“We had an agreement,” I remind her. “You were clear with me at the beginning.”
“We both broke that agreement,” she says, the first admission of its kind.
“What do you mean?”
“Sawyer,” she says, pausing in our walk to look up at me. “I fell just as hard for you as you fell for me.”
Oh, my heart.
These words.
I’ve been waiting to hear them since the morning she left Skagway four hundred and twenty-five days ago.
“Then why?” I ask her. “Why’d you leave? Why wouldn’t you talk to me that fall?”
“Leaving was nonnegotiable. I had to go back to college,” she says. “I wanted to get my degree. No matter what, I was always going back to Fairbanks.”
“But why didn’t you say goodbye?”
“It was hard enough just to leave. I cried all the way to the airport and the whole flight home,” she confesses. “If I’d seen your face and heard your voice that morning? I don’t know if I would’ve had the strength to go.”
It’s like a punch to the gut to know that she suffered as much as I did. But at the same time, it feels so good to know I wasn’t alone—that what I felt for her was silently reciprocated. No matter how it may have seemed at the time , my feelings didn’t exist in some sort of alternative-reality vacuum. She cared about me, too. It’s a relief.
“Aw, Ivy…”
“Same goes for talking to you once I was back at school. I knew that if we started talking again, it would make everything harder,” she continues. “It hurt like hell at first, but I knew if I made a clean break when I went home, I would survive leaving you. So, I didn’t look back. I only moved forward.”
“No offense,” I say to her, “but that’s a little terrifying. How do you compartmentalize like that?”
“I don’t know. I think it’s just raw self-preservation.”
“I think it’s a learned skill.”
“A learned skill?”
“Yeah,” I say. “A survival skill you learned out of necessity.”
“You’re probably right,” she says. “I know how my life looks on the outside. Lucky Ivy Caswell! Her dad owns a coal company! She’s so rich! She’s got everything! But my life isn’t perfect like that. My mom left when I was a child and never came back. She literally chose a life that didn’t include me. Do you know what that does to a kid’s self-worth? Self-esteem? It was decimated. And my father? He was away from home more than he was around, but he was all I had. I…I just wanted him to…you know…”
“Be home?”
“Love me,” she says, her voice breaking on a quiet sob.
“He’s your father,” I say. “Of course he loves you.”
She shakes her head. “No. You don’t know him.”
What she’s saying is so profoundly sad, my heart clenches with sympathy.
“Parents love their kids,” I say, but deep inside I’m questioning whether or not this is true. My mother loved me, and my father still does. I’m certain of it. But maybe not all parents are as loving as mine.
“My father’s not wired like that. I don’t even know if he feels love.” She shrugs, her little shoulders hugging her ears before sinking back down. “I know he feels pride and satisfaction. I’d identified those emotions. He feels pleasure, like from drinking a fine wine or making a deal happen. But love? Real love?” She shakes her head. “I don’t know.”
“Your Uncle Alan loves you,” I point out.
“He does.” She looks up at me with a sad smile. “Thank God for Uncle Alan and Aunt P. Without them…God, I don’t even want to consider what my life would’ve looked like without them.”
“How could two brothers turn out so differently?” I muse aloud.
“They were born ten years apart,” she says. “But probably more importantly, they’re half brothers. Same father, different mothers.”
“Different genes,” I say. “Did you ever meet your grandparents?”
She shakes her head. “No. They were gone by the time I was born. I have met my uncle’s mother, though. Jackie Caswell. She lives in Anchorage but visits sometimes in the summer. She’s super nice.”
“I wonder what your grandmother was like.”
We’ve been walking slowly toward the cruise dock. As we come to Congress Way, I take Ivy’s mittened hand to pull her down the street that leads to the southernmost bars in town—The Salty Siren and The Skagway Fish Company.
“I’ve seen pictures of her. She looked…hard.”
“Mean?”
“Austere. Unhappy. Stern,” says Ivy, her hand still in mine. “Yes. Mean.”
“Explains things,” I say. “Your father had an unhappy mother. His father divorced her and married Jackie, who’s ‘super nice.’ Your grandmother probably raised your dad on her own because your grandfather started a new family. My guess is that your father didn’t have a very warm and happy childhood.”
“My guess is that you’re right,” says Ivy. “There are patterns in families. My father married my mother and made her miserable, and then she left. Two generations of abandonment and dysfunction.” She laughs again—that sad, hollow sound I’m really starting to hate. “Steer clear of me, Sawyer. I’m a black hole of ugly family dynamics.”
“I don’t believe that,” I say. “You have your aunt and uncle in your life and their example of a happy marriage. You were loved by them. You are loved by them, Ivy. You’re warm and kind. You’re here, caring for your aunt. Would your grandmother have done that? Would your father? You’re different, Ivy. You can break the chain.”
“Not if I marry Clark,” she mutters.
“What?” “Nothing,” she says. She clears her throat and gestures to the two establishments before us. “Siren or Fish Co?”
“Fish Co is open later,” I say.
She drops my hand and heads for the door.
***
Over drinks, we shift our conversation to lighter topics, chatting about the play.
She tells me she’s excited for the party/fundraiser that Bruce is hosting at the Parsnip next weekend. He needs to raise a couple thousand dollars for costumes, props, and scenery, so he’s donating surplus summer food and beverage to the event and charging thirty bucks a head for folks to attend. A local band has already donated their services for free, and McKenna and Reeve will oversee decorations. The whole town will turn out for it. Skagwegians are a supportive bunch.
“I can’t remember the last time I went to a party at the Parsnip,” says Ivy.
I finish my beer and gesture to our waitress for another pitcher.
“Bruce can’t do too many events there in the summer. He’s open from ten until ten and it’s packed with tourists. We party more in the winter.”
“Off-season benefits, huh?”
I grin at her. “Is Skagway everything you hoped it would be during the off-season?”
“Truth? I’ve been pleasantly surprised.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah.” She finishes her second beer and refills both of our glasses. “It’s probably because your performance is so phenomenal, but I think Wuthering Heights is really good. As good as any college production I was in. I’m serious. And the book club today was good, too. There were some pretty insightful comments about the book. There are movies every weekend—I took Jenny to see Practical Magic a few weeks ago, and Vix to see Hotel Transylvania the weekend after. Uncle Alan promised to take us cross-country skiing and snowmobiling as soon as there’s enough powder. There’s a lot more to do than I thought. I’m staying busy.”
“So we’re not just a bunch of provincial clodhoppers, huh?”
“I never thought that.”
I tilt my head to the side, a gentle challenge to her bullshit.
“Okay,” she says. “I might have thought that. My bad.”
“It’s okay. We’re used to it.”
We pick up our glasses and gulp, looking at each other over the rims.
“I’m sorry it hurt so much to leave that summer,” I say, sliding my hand across the table, palm up. “I didn’t know.”
She bites her lower lip before placing her hand in mine, and I feel a tremor of possibility shake my soul as I braid my fingers through hers.
“For the record, I missed you like crazy after you left,” I tell her. “I was a mess.”
“If I’d faced my feelings for you,” she says, “I would’ve been a mess, too. Instead I packed them away and let Clark’s promises and my father’s hopes fill the emptiness.”
She pulls her hand away, glancing at her ring for a moment before picking up her beer glass.
I lean back and cross my arms over my chest. “You’re really going to marry him?”
“That’s the plan,” she says without meeting my eyes.
“You love him that much?” I ask. “More than anything else?”
More than anyone else?
The phone in her purse buzzes, and she reaches for it. Glancing at the screen, her eyebrows furrow, and her lips tighten.
“Everything okay?”
“I have to get going,” she says.
“Is it your aunt?” I ask, feeling concerned.
“No. Not my aunt, thank god. Something else.”
“Anything I can help with?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “No.”
I pay for the beers, and we walk back to the library in uncomfortable silence, likely compounded by my asking, three separate times, if she’s okay.
“I’m fine,” she answers every time, her voice smaller and smaller.
She’s not fine, and it kills me that she won’t let me help her with whatever is hurting her. But as we walk, I remind myself what I’ve learned about Ivy tonight—that she compartmentalizes her pain. I’d love for that to change, but realistically, I know that change like that takes a while. It’s a process. And it must be supported by time, space, and love.
So I walk beside her
And I give her room.
Because I love her.
***
Ivy
I’ve been cut off.
The text I received while I was with Sawyer was from my father and informed me that my credit cards and bank accounts have been frozen. I have been removed from my father’s health insurance plan. Further, if I don’t return to Juneau by January 1, he will evict me and Clark from the apartment he purchased for us, find a renter, donate all of my belongings to Goodwill, and sell my car.
His message ended with the warning that should my “disappointing and wayward behavior” continue, he had no problem disowning me. He’d remove me from his will, leave his company to his shareholders, and instruct his lawyers to give his vast fortune to the Catholic church.
While I’ve been subject to my father’s emotional neglect since birth, he’s always taken care of me financially. And, to some extent, I’ve equated that care with love. (“ Maybe he doesn’t tell me he loves me, but he shows it by taking care of me! ”) I’ve never been the target of his renowned ruthlessness until now. And while it saddens me, I’m not entirely surprised.
What does that say about me? And my relationship with him?
You’re warm and kind. You’re here, caring for your aunt…You’re different, Ivy. You can break the chain.
The summer before last, when I was falling in love with Sawyer, I cut off contact with him, in large part because my father had already given his stamp of approval to Clark’s and my relationship. He’d impressed upon me the potential usefulness of the Rupert family’s political influence for the benefit of Caswell Coal.
Sawyer Stewart, a tour guide from Skagway, didn’t fit into my father’s plans for me, and defying my father for the sake of my heart felt both selfish and dangerous—selfish to put my wishes and feelings above my father’s, and dangerous to my fragile self-worth to risk his approval for a boy who loved me but couldn’t offer me the sort of financially sound and politically powerful future that Clark could.
I returned to college and buried my feelings for Sawyer. Per my father’s wishes, and despite the warnings of my heart, I forgave Clark and started dating him again.
I allowed my father’s plan for my life to take precedence over my feelings.
And yet, just over a year later, when faced with Aunt Priscilla’s diagnosis, I somehow found the strength to follow my inner compass. This time, I didn’t defy my heart. I defied my father instead, and I can’t help but wonder if what happened with Sawyer is at the very crux of my new-found courage. Perhaps the agony I felt when I left him—the utter terribleness of cutting him out of my life despite my feelings for him—was something my heart simply wouldn’t tolerate again.
This time, I didn’t ignore my heart or my conscience. I couldn’t pretend that my aunt would be “just fine” without me. I knew she needed my help, and I knew I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t offer it.
I also know the debt of gratitude I owe her for a lifetime of love—not that she’d ever dream of collecting on it—and how much I love her in return. I was motivated by love and gratitude, by my conscience and my heart, to make the right decision this time. And yes, I knew my decision to leave Juneau would anger my father and jeopardize, if not destroy, the positive footing we’d finally found. I knew that any love he felt for me, real or imagined, might be revoked as a result of my decision.
But I did it anyway.
Maybe because I also know—deep in my heart—that my father doesn’t know how to love me ( or anyone else, for that matter ). And maybe, because of that, there was even a little defiance in my choice to leave Juneau and Clark and my apartment and my internship. I feel that same sense of rebellion rising up within me now, stronger and more stubborn than I ever could have expected.
I won’t let you push me around , I think. I don’t care what you take away from me. I’m your daughter to be loved, not your chattel to be browbeaten. And I will no longer accept less from you.
Sitting at the kitchen table at my aunt and uncle’s house, I open my father’s texts and hit the Respond button.
IVY:
I am in receipt of your text.
I think about writing more…about how I understand why he’s chosen to cut me off, and how sorry I am to have disappointed him so bitterly. Then I sway the other way and write a furious paragraph about how he drove my mother away and is doing the same to me. I erase that message and write something else about how sorry I am for him—that I know he grew up feeling unloved, and that I don’t blame him for not knowing how to love me.
In the end, however, I add nothing else. Mostly because there’s nothing left to say that would help or heal or pierce the block of ice that encases my father’s heart.
Wishing I was completely out of fucks for him but finding many fucks still sitting hopefully in my stupid heart, I bury my head in my pillow and cry myself to sleep.
***
Over the next few days, I realize that while my basic needs (food, a place to sleep, a car to use, etc.) are mostly met by living with my aunt and uncle, there are other things, like my preferred brand of tampons and favorite deodorant, that are quite expensive. I don’t want to add to my aunt and uncle’s financial burden, so I’m determined to find a job and make a little spending money of my own.
To my surprise and satisfaction, most off-season jobs in Skagway offer a competitive hourly wage. I interview for a job as a part-time office assistant at city hall which pays $29.32 per hour. Bearing in mind that minimum wage in Alaska is $11.73 per hour, this is a really good salary.
When they offer me the position—which dovetails perfectly with the hours the girls are in school and only requires my presence four days a week—I take it without a second thought. And right away, I like it. I like greeting visitors and directing phone calls to the appropriate department. I like managing the bulletin boards in city hall ( and adding a little fresh pizzazz to them! ) and helping the other city hall employees with mailings and other administrative tasks. While it’s true that I studied political science at UAF, I’ve never seen how a small-town government works, and I find myself fully engaged on a daily basis. And best of all, I still have time in the afternoons and evenings for errands, laundry, picking up the girls from their after-school playdates and activities, cooking dinner, and getting to rehearsal on time.
Speaking of rehearsals, they’re getting intense now.
Really intense.
“Cast!” cries Bruce, standing center stage and clapping his hands to get our attention. “We’re a month into rehearsals, which means we’re just five weeks out from the show. Can we give Aaron a round of applause for the progress he’s making on our sets? Aren’t they wonderful? Thank you, Aaron! Cast, it’s going to start getting real now! We have the fundraiser at the Parsnip this weekend—yes, Mr. Hedgely, your attendance is mandatory!—and I need everyone off-book by the eighteenth. We’ll do our first full run-through the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, so plan to stay late. Any questions?”
Vera raises her hand and asks what happens in the event of a snowstorm the nights of the show.
“Are we Hawaiians or Alaskans?” asks Bruce with a theatrical scoff. “A little snow is no match for us. The show will go on! No matter what! Any more questions? No? Then, I need everyone in the engagement party scene first—Wyatt and Ivy, front and center, please—and then I’ll need Sawyer and Ivy for the death scene. Thank you, everyone! Places, please!”
The engagement party scene breaks my heart—at a celebration hosted at Wuthering Heights, Quinn Morgan, as a perfectly recast Hindley, tells Heathcliff that he is “allowed” to say hello to Miss Catherine and wish her well on her impending marriage. Sawyer’s eyes when he looks into my face, so full of love and betrayal and frustration, give me a glimpse into his pain when I left him and returned to Clark after our summer together. I find myself tearing up and use that emotion to be extra mean to him. When he tries to take my hand, I yank it away and haughtily thank him for his well wishes. Then I smile adoringly at Wyatt’s Edgar, and we move away from Heathcliff to greet other party guests. I feel Sawyer’s eyes on my back, watching as I make my rounds. I can feel his pain, and have a fleeting thought that the lines of art and life are blurring. Or converging. It’s unsettling.
After running the scene several times, Bruce dismisses everyone but me, Sawyer, Vera, and Wyatt. It’s time for us to start rehearsing the death scene. Catherine’s death, which is, perhaps, the most passionate scene of the entire play. The stage direction calls for kissing—a lot of kissing. My stomach fills with butterflies as I lie down on a bed and pretend to be dying.
“Wyatt, you start the scene by Catherine’s bedside, but you’re called away on business. Vera, as Ellen, the maid and Catherine’s only maternal figure, you recognize the importance of letting her see Heathcliff before she dies. Knowing that Edgar will be away from Catherine for a little while, you bring Heathcliff into the room, then quietly leave. Sawyer and Ivy, I need not impress upon you the importance of this scene. Give it your all.” Bruce steps down from the stage, taking a seat beside McKenna in the front row. “Action!”
Edgar kneels on the floor beside Catherine, clutching her hands.
Ellen enters the room.
“Forgive the intrusion, Mr. Linton,” she says, “but one of your tenants waits in the library. He insists on speaking wi’ you.”
“Tell him to go away!”
“I did, sir, but he won’t go. There’s a dispute ’twixt him and another farmer, and he says you must settle it.”
“Damn these provincials!” cries Edgar. He leans down to kiss Catherine’s hand before standing up. “I’ll return soon, my love.”
Ellen opens the bedroom door for Edgar, then pantomimes closing it. She crosses the room, pretends to open a window, and leans her body out of it.
“Heathcliff!” she whispers loudly, cupping her hands over her mouth. “Mr. Heathcliff! Come now. I’ve left the scullery door unlocked! Make haste.”
“Heathcliff?” asks a groggy Catherine, trying to sit up straighter. “Has my Heathcliff come?”
Ellen opens the bedroom door, and Heathcliff races inside the room, rushing to Catherine’s bedside and kneeling down beside her. Ellen leaves them alone, pulling the door shut as she goes.
“Catherine!” says Heathcliff, covering her face with little kisses. His lips press against her skin and hold. “My life.” His lips on her cheek. “My soul.” His lips on her forehead. “How can I bear it?”
He leans away, seizing my eyes with his, and no matter how hard I want to stay in character so I can excuse what’s about to happen, I know that it isn’t really Heathcliff kissing Catherine in that moment.
It’s Sawyer kissing me.
And God help me, I want him to.
He reaches for my face, cupping my jaw with firm but gentle pressure, his eyes seeking permission for what he’s about to do. I lean into his touch, rotating my face just enough to brush the edge of his hand with my lips, before catching his gaze with mine. Though Heathcliff would never smile at such a moment, Sawyer does—just for a quick second, his lips quirk up in a tiny smile—and I have to work hard not to answer it with one of my own.
And that’s when I feel it.
That’s when I know.
Those feelings I had for Sawyer? That I worked so damn hard to forget and ignore and bury? They aren’t forgotten or gone or dead. They are just as vibrant and alive as they ever were, and they return to my heart, fully formed, in a rush of love.
Real love. True love.
Love that I have never felt for anyone else on earth but Sawyer Stewart.
“Ready?” he whispers, the word barely audible.
“Yes,” I murmur, closing my eyes as they fill with tears.
His lips are somehow new and familiar at once. Tentative only for a second, he wraps his arms around me, sealing his mouth over mine and breaking the seal of my lips with his tongue. There’s an urgency to his touch that I want to meet and match. I want this just as much as you do . My tongue tangles with his, an old dance that we’re both eager to learn again. The taste and heat of his mouth brings back a rush of memories, and I sigh with pleasure, struggling to free my hands, which are trapped between us. I reach blindly for his scalp and run my fingers through his hair, swallowing his groan as our kiss deepens.
“Cut!”
Through a haze of lust, I hear someone yelling something.
“Cut! Cut! Cut! Heathcliff! Catherine! CUT!”
My lips are suddenly abandoned, left exposed to the cool air of the theater. I open my eyes to find Sawyer jerking away from me, his own eyes wide and dark, his lips red and slick. My chest heaves with choppy, shallow breaths, and I stare at him, amazed, astonished…and terribly in love.
“Good Lord!” cries Bruce, fanning his face. “Is it hot in here or is it me? Does anyone else need a frosty beverage to put out these flames? Whew!” He rises from his seat and steps onto the stage. “Catherine, darling, you’re dying. Dying. I love the passion, but you can’t be moaning and raking your hands through his hair.” He turns to Sawyer. “Heathcliff, I like the intensity, but again, she’s dying . You can’t look like you’re about to jump on her and make babies, no matter how much you love her. Okay?” Bruce leaves the stage and resumes his seat in the front row. “We’re just going to have to keep running it until we get it right. Start from Heathcliff’s entrance and…action!”
***
When I walk home from rehearsal an hour later, my lips are tender, but there’s a bounce in my step that hasn’t been there for a long, long time.
( Fifteen months, to be exact .)
I just spent an hour kissing the man I love—the person I have likely loved since childhood—and I don’t know how to carry on with my life if kissing Sawyer Stewart isn’t a part of it. I’m pretty sure a life that doesn’t include him isn’t a life I want.
His tenderness.
His intensity.
His love.
My god, how did I turn my back on him? How did I ever find the strength to leave him?
Fear.
The word slides through my brain, at once the perfect and only reason.
Fear.
I was afraid.
But I’m not afraid anymore.
I unlock the kitchen door and step into the warm house, surprised to find my aunt and uncle sitting at the kitchen table together. They’ve been spending most of their evenings in their bedroom so Aunt P. can rest.
“Hey!” I say. “Look at you two!”
“How was rehearsal?” asks Uncle Alan, getting up to pour me a cup of decaf.
I take off my boots and mittens and hang my coat and scarf on the hooks by the door.
“Intense,” I answer, joining them at the table.
“Good intense or not-good intense?” asks Aunt P.
“Good intense,” I say, plopping down in the seat beside her and warming my hands on the mug my uncle places in front of me. “Kissing scenes.”
“Kissing scenes,” says Aunt P., raising her eyebrows. “Heathcliff and Catherine?”
“Yeah,” I say, feeling my cheeks grow warm.
My uncle glances at my engagement ring. “How’s Clark going to feel about that?”
“Stage kissing in a community theater production doesn’t count as real kissing,” I say quickly, even though I know that’s a lie. The kisses that Sawyer and I shared on stage tonight had nothing to do with the play we’re in. And even though we didn’t talk after rehearsal, I’m pretty sure we both know it.
“Well, speaking of Clark, we have some good news to share with you,” says Uncle Alan, taking my aunt’s hand and grinning at her. “Why don’t you do the honors?”
Aunt Priscilla squeezes his hand, then turns to me.
“We got my blood work back this afternoon,” she says. “And everything’s looking great. Only one more round of chemo, and then I’ll move into a maintenance phase.”
“Aunt P.!” I cry. “That’s amazing!”
She swipes away tears, beaming at me.
My uncle blinks his eyes hard, then clears his throat, adding, “Looks like she’ll be done in December, just in time for Christmas.”
“The best Christmas present ever!” I say, jumping up to give them both a big hug from behind. I kiss them both on the tops of their heads. “I’m so happy for you! Do the girls know?”
My aunt nods. “We told them tonight…and you know how Jenny’s been so tough the last two or three months?”
I nod.
“She melted like a candle in the sun. Just burst into tears,” says Aunt P. “Couldn’t stop crying for a good twenty minutes. Poor kid, she had so much anger and fear pent up inside.”
“She did,” I agree, sitting back in my seat and taking a bracing gulp of coffee. “I’m so relieved. For you guys. For the girls. For me. This is the best news ever.”
“It sure is,” says Uncle Alan, kissing his wife’s hand before turning back to me. “You know, we’ve felt just terrible about derailing your future, honey. We want you to let Clark and your father know that you’ll be back in Juneau right after the holidays. No need for Alexander to make any more threats. We’d love for you to stay for Christmas, but then you can fly back down to Juneau and get on with your life and—and your wedding plans. We’re so grateful for your help, Ivy. We couldn’t have gotten through this without you. But we’re also relieved that you can get on with your life now.”
“Oh,” I murmur, my uncle’s words hitting me like a ton of bricks and just as unwelcome. “Oh. Right.”
Aunt P. tilts her head to the side. “Ivy?”
“Yeah?” I look up at her, forcing a smile that feels deranged. “Yeah. My…life. That’s—that’s…great.”
( It’s not great. Nothing about it is great .)
“Are you okay, honey?” asks my uncle.
( I’m not. I’m definitely not .)
“Just tired,” I say. “Long rehearsal.” I lean forward, covering their joined hands with mine. “But I’m so happy for you. So happy.” I pull my hand away, stand up and put my cup in the sink. “Good night.”
They look at me, bewildered expressions on their faces.
“’Night, honey.”
“Good night, Ivy.”
I walk quickly back to my room, getting there just in time for my deluge of tears to fall.