3. Now
NOW
M ost people talk about going home with fondness. But for me, even the good memories of home are now tinged with pain, with a reminder of what I’ve lost. That’s one reason I’ve waited seven years to come back, but not the most important one.
The freeway skirts around Haverford, which looks just as shitty as it ever did. Cash would laugh his ass off if he was here now. He’d bring up my “white trash roots” again, after a couple of drinks. He’d never stop bringing it up, most likely.
Donna pats my shoulder as her gaze follows mine. “I check on her occasionally,” she says of my mother. “Not much has changed.”
Meaning my mother is still a woman who will take her husband’s side in any argument. A woman who hates me, though she has no problem asking me for money, time and again.
I pay it simply to buy her silence.
We continue on to Rhodes, exiting the freeway to a two-lane road that heads toward the coast, where the houses are polite and uniform with neatly trimmed lawns and mailboxes that no one has taken a bat to, as different from where I grew up as they could possibly be.
When we finally stop in front of Donna’s yellow clapboard house, my stomach lurches.
The new addition out back is so large that it dwarfs the main house, making it look minuscule and quaint by contrast, but I still remember how fine and brightly lit it seemed the night I first came here, symbolizing everything Danny had that I did not: parents who loved him and a place where he’d be safe. He had everything, back then.
They shouldn’t have let me in the front door.
“Wow,” I whisper as I climb from the car. “It’s…like a different place.”
Donna’s fingers link with mine and she squeezes my hand. “Entirely thanks to you kids.”
All we did was write checks. The real work occurs a few weeks from now when Danny’s House officially opens.
Lots of places—some good, some terrible—offer emergency and long-term foster care, but Danny’s House will have a highly trained staff with psychologists, lawyers, and educational consultants on retainer.
When Donna first suggested the idea, it seemed too ambitious to ever come to fruition.
It’s why I agreed I’d come for the opening if she ever pulled it off—because I never thought I’d actually have to.
I didn’t realize she’d extracted the same promise from Luke.
Stepping into the foyer is like stepping into the past—I half expect Danny to come ambling out of the kitchen, his skin glowing from a day spent in the water, his hair still damp—but the rest of the house has changed.
The family room is enlarged, the dining room now seats thirty, and the kitchen has doubled in size.
Donna proudly shows me the massive, new, walk-in pantry, already stocked with snacks.
“Are you hungry?” she asks.
I shake my head.
Luke snorts. “Gonna be an interesting three weeks for you. No Patron, no lobster.”
The excesses of my lifestyle sound ridiculous off his lips, especially given where he and I both came from, and they aren’t even my excesses. I didn’t create that tour rider, and I’m not the one who released it to the press, but I’ve been paying the price for it ever since.
“That was my manager, not me,” I say wearily. “You really think I’m going to eat lobster before a show?”
He glances at me, the look deadly. “How would I have any idea what you do before a show?”
Touché, Luke . I guess you wouldn’t.
Donna glances at us, quickly covering her worry with a forced smile. “I’m going to put you and Luke in the addition. We’ve got two kids arriving early, so this way when they get here, they can sleep in the main house and you won’t have to move. Is that all right?”
“Of course,” I say, my eyes flickering to Luke and away just as fast. He doesn’t want to be anywhere near me. I don’t want to be anywhere near him. This visit is just getting better and better.
Donna steers us toward the addition, opening a door to her left. There’s a bed, a nightstand, and nothing else. The walls are bare, but the window looks out into the spacious backyard. We had to tear down the house behind Donna’s to make it possible.
It’ll be a good place for kids. A good place for anyone coming from a home like mine. I blink back tears and swallow hard, willing myself to hold it together. One good thing might emerge from this whole fucking mess, but I’ll never stop wishing it just hadn’t happened in the first place.
“It’s not much, I know,” she says.
“You know how I was raised,” I tell her with a small smile. “As long as I’ve got a bed, I’m fine.”
She wraps an arm around my shoulders. “I’ve seen the kind of places you stay now. I imagine you’ve gotten used to much better.”
She isn’t wrong. I’ve become the kind of person who complains when turndown service hasn’t been completed by the time I get to my room, who is put out when a suite isn’t available.
But at the same time, I’m still waiting to lose it all, and there is never a night when I climb into bed without half anticipating I’ll be jerked out of it—my stepfather’s hand wrapped tight around my ankle, yanking me to the floor to punish me for some infraction, or Justin, demanding I come outside so my brother won’t wake.
Maybe that’s why I don’t object all that much when Cash is rough with me—because I’ve lived through worse.
Or maybe it’s just that I know I deserve it.
“It’s perfect,” I tell her, my mouth slipping into a smile. “I’ll just have my assistant forward some six-hundred thread count sheets for the bed.”
I was joking, but Luke rolls his eyes as he heads off to his room, and resentment bursts in my chest. I know I have absolutely earned his hatred, every bit of it, but does he really think I turned into that person so fast?
Sure he does. He’d assumed I was that person by the time I left seven years ago.
“I’ll let you get settled while I start work on dinner. Bathroom’s down the hall if you want to shower.” Donna throws her arms around me, and the familiarity of the action makes my chest ache. “It’s so good to have you home, Juliet.”
I hug her tightly, fighting the urge to cry. I’d like to tell her it’s good to be here, too, but with me, Luke, and all these memories under one roof…there’s just no way to make it sound true.
The memories. I don’t know how the hell to make them stop creeping forward, but I’d better figure it out. I need every last one of them tucked back where they’re safe. Where she—and Luke—can’t reach them.