Chapter 39
PRESENT
TILLY
I don’t know why I wind up at my parents’ house, but here I am.
The lights are on in the living room, casting a yellow light across the front yard. Mom’s always hated having the curtains open at night, but Dad loves it. It seems he won the argument today.
Standing on the bottom porch step, I tuck my hair behind my ears and hesitate to go any closer. The tug that led me here was too damn stubborn to deny, but now that I’m this close, I don’t know what I’m searching for. What closure is this place going to give me that I haven’t already found myself?
The flare of light grows dim as a shadow cuts through it.
Slowly lifting my gaze, I find my mom staring out the window at me.
She’s got her hair back in a low bun and is wearing the fluffy yellow robe that I sent her for Christmas last year.
It was a pathetic gift. Something you could get any woman in her late fifties and know she’ll make use of it.
The heated slippers I sent the year before were just as lame.
She purses her lips and waves at me to come inside. I hesitate, digging my heels into the wood like that’ll do me any good. My mother is as stubborn as I am, which is obviously where I get it from. There’s no chance she’s letting me stay out here or turn around and walk away now that she’s seen me.
With a quick rise and fall of her shoulders, she turns out of view. A beat later, she’s opening the front door and stepping aside for me to enter.
“Come inside before you combust on the front lawn.”
I reluctantly do as she says. Each step I take feels jilted until I’m walking through the doorway. My anxiety slips from my shoulders once I’ve inhaled the scent of clean laundry. A wall of emotion smacks me square in the face. Its attack is ruthless, yet I manage to shove it to the side for now.
“What’s wrong, honey?” she asks after coming to terms with the fact that I’m not going to answer her previous statement.
I hardly manage a pathetic shrug. Dropping my eyes, I stare at my boots while tugging each one off. Leaving them on would have been best for a quick escape. Still, I move them against the wall and lift my head.
Mom’s worry is written all over her face. From the lines crinkling across her forehead and the slight tremble in the fingers that sweep back the loose hairs framing her face. There’s pain there too. One that I’ve felt every day for eleven years.
“Are you leaving?” she asks, her voice shaky.
I frown. “No.”
“Alright, sweetheart. Come with me.”
Her hand takes mine in a warm, steady hold.
I squeeze her fingers and follow her through the halls.
We pass the living room with that same wood panelling on the walls that Mom refuses to let Dad pull down, then the kitchen she did allow him to renovate.
The back door isn’t latched properly and swings in the breeze, clattering softly.
It’s dark outside, the sky so black I can only make out the shape of the trampoline that they still haven’t sold.
Mom releases my hand and wraps her arm across my back instead.
It’s a comfort that I took for granted when I left.
Her hugs were always the cure to everything when I was growing up.
Between Ash and me, she probably thought we were just completely inept at soothing ourselves as children.
It wasn’t that, though. There was just something special about having your mom there when it felt like the world was crumbling around you.
I’ve gone without that for so long that I think I’ve forgotten what it feels like.
“It’s late. You should be asleep,” I murmur.
“No, Tilly. This is exactly what I should be doing.”
I clear my throat when it grows thick with moisture. “Where’s Dad?”
She hesitates for so long that I turn to look at her. There’s a slight twist to her mouth that gives her away. Before she can change the subject or try to lie, I say, “Tell me the truth.”
“He’s just driving around.”
“At midnight?”
“We’re not eighty years old, Tilly.”
A weighted realization drops on my chest. “He’s checking on the campsite, isn’t he?”
“Don’t blame him for it. The last time the group of you were here . . .”
“The night ended with red and blue sirens,” I finish when her voice stalls.
She stops walking, tightening her arm around my back when we reach the closed door of my old bedroom. I hold myself perfectly still and wait for her to twist the handle. Despite being back here only a few weeks ago, the space still feels alien to me.
“How about we just sit together for a bit. Talk to me about what’s upsetting you. I assume that’s why you came, right? If anything bad had happened, you wouldn’t be so calm.”
I take a seat on the edge of the bed, feeling the memory foam sink beneath my weight. The same floral scent of laundry soap Mom’s always used wafts up from the comforter, and I inhale deeply. It’s painful to look around at the brightly painted walls and see that everything is still the same.
The mattress dips again when she joins me, staring straight ahead at the tall dresser and the gold-framed photo resting on it. It’s one of Ash and me from our high school graduation. Our grins are wide as we stare at where Rowe stood behind the disposable camera.
I remember that day too clearly for it to be healthy. He wore a black suit with his cowboy boots and hat, while Ash chose a deep blue and shiny loafers. I had my corsage that Dad forced Ash to buy me on my wrist, and I wished so damn badly that it had come from Rowe instead.
We all went escort-less, and thank God for that, because if he’d brought a date with him, I’d have dunked her head into the prom punch bowl and made her choke on it.
“I wasn’t expecting to fall in love with him again, Mom.” The admission falls from my lips before I can stifle it.
Mom’s immediate shock is short-lived. From the corner of my eye, I catch her running a nail along the underside of her chin before pressing three fingers to her jaw. She turns at the waist, facing me. The gleam of guilt in her eyes wasn’t what I was expecting to see.
“I need to show you something,” she whispers.
I hold my breath, watching as she stands and pauses.
“I’ve always known that you were my brave girl, Tilly.
You didn’t ever need anyone to take care of you, but as your mother, it hasn’t always been possible to sit back and watch you handle life all on your own.
Not when you were at your happiest, and not when I held you in this very room and witnessed you at your lowest.”
I fist my hands in my lap, scratching the back of a knuckle. “Why does this sound like you’re about to tell me something terrible?”
She’s reaching for me now, stroking the side of my face like she used to when I was little. Her shoulders roll back slightly before she retreats and taps her thigh.
“I’ll be right back.”
I watch her retreating figure with a handful of stones sinking into my gut.
The silence is loud enough to make my ears ache as I wait, avoiding staring at the graduation photo.
There are dozens of other things to focus on in here, but I don’t let myself look at the black horse figurine on the nightstand or the wicker basket still overflowing with teen magazines either. Instead, I glance up at the ceiling.
Soft footfalls signal her return. I drop my head and see her in the doorway, hesitating to enter. The yellowing, wrinkled envelope pinched between her fingertips sends a cold rush running down my spine.
“You should know that I’ve never opened this.
When it arrived, I saw his name and tucked it away.
It was always my plan to give it to you, but it never felt like the right time.
You were starting a new life for yourself, and I didn’t want whatever this said to suck you back into the hurt you’d escaped from. ”
I push to my feet and rip the envelope from her hands. It’s cruel the way I turn away from her and stalk over to the window beside my bed. I can’t care about that. Right now, nothing matters besides tearing through the top of it and pulling free the crinkled, ink-smeared letter trapped inside.
A sob sticks in my throat when I struggle to unfold the paper. The corner catches beneath my nail, leaving behind a slight sting and a droplet of blood that soaks into it. I ignore it and stare at the first word on the paper that’s been scrawled in the same charcoal as all the others were.
September 3rd
Hellcat,
Fuck. It’s been months since I’ve written that name. I haven’t stopped thinking it, though. Or saying it. I’ve been repeating those two syllables to myself every single day so I don’t forget what they sound like. Maybe that’s stupid, considering it belongs to you, and I’ll never forget you.
I do wish I could forget what I’d said to you in my last letter. The lies I wrote haunt me when the lights go out and I’m left here on this shitty fucking mattress all alone with nothing better to do than hate myself. Not to say I don’t deserve it, because I do.
If there’s one thing I’ve always known, it’s that I’d hunt down and make every single person who’s ever hurt you pay for it.
Each tear you’ve shed, every broken nail you’ve lost punching some jackass who couldn’t keep his mouth shut, has made this part at the very core of me demand retribution.
It was always easier to convince myself that was just me looking out for Ash’s sister.
You’re his family, but you’re mine, too.
That was a shitty fucking lie.
In case you weren’t counting, that makes two so far.
I don’t regret what I did to Ezra. He deserved every fucking hit I gave him, and every breath he took that felt like ice chips stabbing his lungs.
One second of that video was enough for me to make the decision I did.
I didn’t hesitate, didn’t consider the consequences.
All I knew was that he needed to be taught a lesson for the way he betrayed you.
My third lie was telling you that I would have done the same for Lacey. I wouldn’t have.
There would have been retribution. She’s still your closest friend, and we all know what she means to Ash. But she isn’t you. Nobody could ever fucking be you.
Everything you think you know, or that you saw, is right. I’m begging you to give me the chance to prove just how right you were.
That’s three lies, Tilly. I refuse to make it four.
Tell me you still want me, because the only thing I know right now, trapped in this box, is that I want you, too. I’ll take the risk with you. If I don’t, I’m going to spend the rest of my life hating myself for it.
I’m yours if you want me to be.
Rowe
Pain ripples through every inch of my body.
I fall back on the bed. One hand grips the letter so tightly I fear it might rip while the other clutches the duvet beside my thigh. Tears make the messy words blur on the page until I’m blinking so quickly to clear my eyes that more are falling, soaking into the paper.
A decade of resentment and blooming anger was wasted on the words he wrote in the last letter I had received. Longer than that, considering how desperately I tried to push him away when I got back to town. So much wasted time.
“You should have given this to me,” I bite out, unable to smother my temper.
“And if I had? Neither of you were ready for what I thought would happen if you’d read what you just did back then.
I had no way of knowing if he had sent an apology or another letter that would have broken your heart further.
I’ve made peace with knowing you may hate me for keeping this from you, but it’s the choice I made after having been the one here consoling you through the months you grieved him. ”
My flinch is instant. The heartache I lived with during the months leading to my move was the kind that stuck like a sliver caught too deep beneath a fingertip.
It was sharp and jarring at first, and then once I thought I’d forgotten about it and could move on, it would get pressed on again when I least expected it.
The nights I spent curled up in bed crying for myself and everyone I loved while my mom held me together were accompanied by a guilt that I never want to live through again.
Not only had I lost my best friend, but also the man I thought would have been mine for .
. . well, ever. Ash lost a brother, and it was all because of me.
Far beyond my ill-timed admission, I knew I was the reason he was locked up.
Life hurt. It was fucking miserable.
I flick my eyes up at her, letting the letter fall to my lap. “I didn’t grieve him. He didn’t die.”
“Death isn’t the only reason we grieve, Tilly.”
“Do you want me to say thank you for keeping this a secret?” I swallow what would have been a bitter, detached laugh. “He told me he sent this, and I didn’t believe him. I tried, but after the last few words he ever said to me, how was I supposed to?”
“He won’t hold this against you. This has been a long, long time coming, sweetheart.”
But that’s the thing. She doesn’t know that.
I ran from him tonight the same way he’d run from me a decade ago, only this time, I had him the way I’d wanted then. What does that make me?
I’m goddamn terrified to find out.