19. June
JUNE
I wedge myself into the narrow airplane seat and tell myself it’s fine.
A puddle-jumper, barely half full, that rattles every time we hit turbulence.
My knees press into the seat in front of me, my elbows bump Meredith’s every time I shift.
She doesn’t complain. Just glances over with that steady look she’s been perfecting since Christmas.
It makes me feel queasy.
Across the aisle, Mark already has his case files out, glasses perched on his nose, highlighter in hand. A caricature of himself. He smirks when he feels me looking and mouths something obnoxious… nervous flyer?
I flip him off. He grins and goes back to scribbling.
We’ve barely talked about it. I haven’t thought about it.
If I were to think about it, I’d probably be thinking something along the lines of he did it on purpose to piss me off.
He did it to take revenge on me for siding with my sister.
He did it because I kept bringing up Eddie and how Mark would never be good enough for her.
It was a cruel, messed-up punishment designed to torment a woman already on the edge of insanity.
But I’m not thinking about it.
For almost two weeks, Mark was cooped up in my spare room waiting for this to all come through.
I avoided him as much as I could. I swear, I tried.
But I’m not thinking about it.
Instead, I’m thinking about this tiny plane.
I’m thinking about how the last time I traveled in one, I was coming back from New York, and how I barely remember a thing from that journey.
Now, we’re doing the same journey in reverse, and I’m so very aware of every second that creeps by, every inch we crawl closer to our destination.
Because every moment now is just leading up to the bigger one.
To Ashton.
That’s the thought that really keeps circling.
The postcards are folded carefully at the bottom of my hand luggage.
The sketches of the Tom Nevers lighthouse are already burned into my brain, but I couldn’t bear to leave them behind.
Clinging to them like they’re a sign that my hopes aren’t so far-fetched.
That my husband would go so far as to reach out to me, with a promise of some kind of future sketched out across the inches of card.
I need it to be true. We can’t discuss the logistics of the case, that much has been hammered into me over and over – and will likely be repeated again before the day is over. But I need that much to be true. I need to know that he wants that future.
It’s like a game, really, bargaining with myself like this.
By the time the pilot’s voice crackles over the intercom, conveying our imminent descent, I’ve also decided that I need confirmation of his feelings.
I need him to look me in the eye and tell me that he loved me, that he always had, with no ulterior motive.
Do I need that more than knowing he wants a future with me?
We have thirty minutes. I can get both things. Surely.
LaGuardia is chaos. Gray January slush coats the sidewalks as people attempt to pile home after their holiday celebrations.
I thought New York might feel at least a bit familiar by now, after my short-lived college career and three-month stint as a shut-in.
But by the time we’ve collected our bags, I’m numb and detached.
Only aware that I’m moving forward at all because Meredith has looped her arm through mine.
Mark arranged a car; the driver was waiting with ‘The Perezes’ on a sign that made Meredith roll her eyes. The ride into Manhattan is a blur of billboards and ice-crusted bridges.
Meredith sits beside me, arms crossed tight. Mark takes the front seat, narrating another tedious anecdote to no one in particular. I stare out the window and let the city rise up around me, tall and sharp, like it could cut me if I touched it.
I decide I need Ashton to tell me that he didn’t set me up.
It’s a cold sort of realization, colder than the frigid air outside.
That maybe I only want, but do not need, his love or his assurance that there’s a future.
Because maybe the most important thing to me is that he didn’t lie to me.
Maybe I need that more than just romantic fantasies of rebuilding our life together.
Maybe I need higher, taller, sharper ambitions than that.
Knowing he’s innocent… knowing he didn’t do this on purpose… knowing he never would have humiliated me like this.
It’s a big ask. A huge improbability.
But that’s what I need to move on in any positive way.
Anything less? Even if he sits there and cries and tells me it was a mistake and that he loves me…
I.
I think I deserve better than that.
Even if it hurts like all hell.
“Once we’re at the office,” Mark says suddenly, half-turned toward us, “we’ll have about twenty minutes before Ashton’s team brings him in. Use the time to settle. Hydrate. Breathe. Don’t?—”
“I’m not going to faint,” I snap.
“I wasn’t going to say faint. I was going to say vomit. But sure, keep aiming high.”
Meredith groans. “Mark.”
He lifts a shoulder, unapologetic. “Better she gets it out of her system than in front of her husband’s defense team.”
I bite back a retort. Because, as much as I hate it, he’s right. My new resolution, my new goal from this conversation with Ashton, is making my stomach churn something fierce.
Meredith leans in close, speaking softly enough so only I can hear. “You need to use the bathroom, you signal me. I’ll cover you.”
I can only squeeze her hand gratefully in response. Even if doing so squeezes something raw in my chest.
We pull up to the lobby of Ashton’s law firm both too soon and not soon enough. Everything is glass and chrome and impossible to feel warm in, settled in.
I perch on one of the low sofas while Mark checks us in. Meredith sits beside me, a deliberately steady presence. There’s guilt there that I squash quickly, despite the gnawing discomfort of my churning stomach.
I will tell her about Mark. She will understand because she hates him just as much as I do. Then, we’ll laugh about it. We’ll drive away from New York and Boston forever, not bothering to see if Mark is still there in the rearview. Because we’re adults, and it was Mark’s fault, and I never…
But it’s a conversation that doesn’t need to happen right now. Shouldn’t, not when my head is the way it is, when anger or distress or vomit could leave my mouth at any given moment. Not when we still need Mark to facilitate the meeting.
Afterward. When this is over. I’ll sit down and let her know, and then lean back satisfied as I watch her lay into her ex-husband on my behalf.
Something to look forward to, regardless of how this meeting goes.
“Do you want me in the room?” Meredith asks softly at my side.
I shake my head despite my words. “I don’t know.”
Her eyes soften. “You don’t have to decide now. We’ll take it minute by minute.”
That’s the thing about Meredith. She doesn’t press. Not the way Sophie does, acting like my answers to her questions are her right. Meredith gives me space to fall apart and offers up the choices that make me feel like I have some semblance of control.
I wonder, vaguely, if she’s always been like this, or whether it’s a side effect of our estrangement. Of her guilty conscious, doing whatever it takes to make up for lost time. It’s been so long, it’s difficult to remember.
“What if he’s guilty?” The words slip out before I can stop them.
She hesitates. “Then at least you’ll know.”
I swallow down bile.
“Do you think he’s guilty?”
I know the answer, I do. Too many late nights all those months ago speculating, Meredith asserting that he had to assume he was. That we couldn’t be lulled into best-case scenarios when there was so much on the line.
To my surprise, Meredith thinks about it. Our father’s eyes—another guilty man—stare past my shoulder at something I can’t comprehend.
“Either way, he’s hurt you, June. That’s not something I can forgive him for.”
We’re ushered into a side room, something like a conference chamber with beige walls and water bottles lined on the table.
Mark runs through the rules again. “No touching, no private communication, no discussing the case, no longer than thirty minutes. No touching.”
“You said that,” I snap, nerves fried.
“Bears repeating,” he begins to pace. “This isn’t a conjugal visit yet.”
I glare at him. “You’re a terrible lawyer.”
He flashes a grin. “And yet, here we are.”
Meredith sighs. “Mark, maybe less snark and more reassurance?”
“Reassurance is for Hallmark cards.”
I close my eyes instead of opening my mouth to snap back.
The clock ticks. My mind spins.
I picture Ashton waiting in the next room. And then the fantasies start.
Best case: he looks at me and his eyes are raw with apology, his hands twitch to reach for mine, but he holds back because of the rules. He swears he never meant for me to be hurt, that someone else set this all up, and he can prove it. We laugh at the absurdity, and then cry, and then start over.
Worst case: he smirks. He admits it. Maybe not outright, maybe not in words, but in the way he leans back, smug and satisfied. He lets me know I was just a pawn, that the lighthouse was just a proverbial carrot, that he only ever drew those sketches to keep me docile.
Somewhere between those extremes are a thousand shades of gray.
I want the impossible. I want to rewind time. I want the man who pulled me into his life and promised me that he’d stay.
The only thing that steadies me is the knowledge that I’m not the same woman he first met. The woman who’d been alone for fifteen years with enough familiarity with heartbreak to know when to run a mile. The woman who believed that those who didn’t stay would never come back.
But Meredith came back. So did Sophie. And with them, they brought Trent and a reconnection with our Mom, a relationship that I never expected to enjoy again.
They stayed, and we built something together.
We raised the Shack out of the ashes of our father’s memories and turned it into something just for us.
I’ve got hands ready to catch me if I fall. And maybe that’s why I can do this. Maybe that’s the only reason.
“June.” Meredith’s voice cuts through the spiral.
I blink. She’s staring past me, toward the door. A young woman in a neat suit has appeared, clipboard in hand.
“They’re ready,” she says.
Mark straightens his tie. Meredith goes to stand but hesitates at my expression.
“I’ll stay here,” she decides for me—the choice too large and incomprehensible for me to make on my own.
I push myself to my feet. My legs feel ready to shatter beneath me, but they carry me forward anyway.
The paralegal waits patiently. My breath grows louder in my ears, shallow and sharp.
Then the door is pushed open.
The air changes.
The conference room is brighter than the room we were just in, windows spilling weak January light across the table.
He sits at the far end, hands folded, head bent as though he’s been waiting forever with the weight of the world on his shoulders. When he looks up, his eyes meet mine.
And the world stops.