Chapter 6
DRAMA AND OTHER FIVE-LETTER WORDS
Heath
I sleep like shit, partially because I keep rolling onto my right side and waking myself up when I squish the bruise around my eye, partially because I’m still stressed about Lav’s arrangements for the summer, and partially because I’m keenly aware that Cricket is in my basement.
Even though I could theoretically sleep in since it’s Saturday, I’m up before the sun.
I make myself coffee, rescue Fluffy from inside a bag of Lava Cheese Puffs that I definitely didn’t buy, then carry the cat out onto the porch with me to watch the sunrise while I ice my eye.
This week was a lot.
But I fall into a rhythm of the breathing techniques I’ve used since childhood, and before long, my shoulders relax, my coffee tastes better, and the first rays of sunlight brightening the sky and illuminating the morning fog brighten my soul a little too.
Lav and I are so fortunate to live here.
Things aren’t easy, but in the mornings, in these quiet moments to myself, I know things will be okay.
That’s what I’m thinking as a blob appears, headed this way through the fog.
I squint at it.
It’s a person.
Did Cricket go somewhere?
Is she lost?
Or—
“Hello?” she says directly below me. The guest apartment’s door and concrete patio are beneath my deck.
“Morning,” Ginny’s voice replies, drifting through the fog. Ah. So she’s the blob. “I woke up and saw your text about breakfast and thought I’d come say hi and see how you slept and if you want someone to walk with you back to the house.”
I start to move, but my cat decides this is the perfect moment to display her love by leaping her hefty self onto my lap and collapsing into a massive, furry pile of purrs.
The cat version of Lavender’s I love you hugs that she gives me at bedtime.
“Obnoxious beast,” I murmur to her.
She purrs harder and rubs her head into my hand as I scratch between her ears.
“I slept well,” Cricket says below me.
She’s lying.
I can hear it in her voice.
She didn’t sleep well.
“When I moved here, I didn’t sleep well for almost a month,” Ginny says. “It takes a lot out of you to be the subject of that much hate.”
“Why do we even have the internet?” Cricket says.
“For cute baby videos and sourdough tutorials.”
I eyeball Fluffy in the growing light.
She has fully engaged her purr-motor and is unlikely to get up anytime soon.
So I need to let them know I’m here.
“And the good news stories about—” I start, but Cricket’s stifled scream stops me.
Dammit.
Not the best way to announce my presence, clearly.
“Morning, Heath,” Ginny calls up to me.
“Morning, Ginny. Sorry to scare you.”
“I always scream like that at least once a morning,” Ginny replies cheerfully. “Good way to get out any lingering frustrations from yesterday before I make today my bitch.”
“That was me,” Cricket says. “Sorry. Sorry. I hope I didn’t wake Lavender. I didn’t know you were outside. I was listening to music down here until I saw Ginny. Hi. Morning. Thank you again for letting me stay here. I’m shutting up now.”
This.
This is the hard part of living here.
If I were one of the women, I’d be invited downstairs to gossip and vent and give hugs.
But I’m not one of the women, and honestly, that doesn’t sound good to me at all.
“Either of you want coffee?” I ask.
“I brought some from the house,” Ginny says.
“I made some already too,” Cricket says. “But thank you. That’s very nice of you to offer.”
“Cricket offered to help make breakfast,” Ginny says.
“I make amazing muffins,” Cricket says. “If everyone eats muffins. I didn’t ask if anyone has any dietary restrictions. Gluten-free, or just trying to avoid processed foods, or whatever.”
“No specific dietary restrictions, and even if there were, you’re welcome to make what you’d like,” Ginny says.
She doesn’t point out that the whole household had cinnamon rolls for breakfast yesterday. And she wouldn’t. Mabel or Olivia might, but not Ginny. Not Samantha either. No idea what Dori or Elizabeth would say. I don’t know them as well as the others, and they likely won’t stay long-term.
“I just want to help out with something I know I can do without screwing it up,” Cricket says.
“No one here expects you to do anything out of obligation.”
“Oh, wait, I’m not stepping on toes if I make breakfast, am I? Is that something Samantha and Olivia like to do? Or they do it because it’s their chore? Or yesterday was a treat?”
“You’re not stepping on anyone’s toes.”
“Do you think everyone would want muffins?”
“Anyone who’s not feeling like a muffin can make themselves something else. The bigger point is, if it’ll make you feel better to make breakfast, if that’ll help you, then absolutely make breakfast.”
“I think it’ll help me.”
My eye twitches, which sends a dull pain straight into my brain.
It won’t help her.
It’ll just help her feel not guilty.
I can hear it in her voice.
I can practically smell it too.
Hey, kettle, this is pot calling, an annoying voice that sounds like Mabel whispers in my head.
Guilt and I are best friends. I feel guilty for asking for help. Guilty for not. Guilty for raising Lav in ways Ava might not have liked. Guilty for not feeling worse that I don’t have that pressure on me.
“Are you sure it’ll help you?” Ginny asks Cricket gently.
“Oh, yes. Absolutely. I like to stay busy. But also, staying busy is why I’m here.
Not that I can’t have a job. Even if I’m pretty sure I don’t have a job anymore.
Or possibly a place to live. Back home, I mean.
My roommate texted yesterday that she’s getting a new roommate to replace me when our lease expires next month, and it’s not like I know how I’d pay my rent for another year anyway, so I can’t exactly argue, and— Yes.
I want to make muffins. Muffins make everything better. ”
“Oh, honey, they really did a number on you,” Ginny murmurs.
I pet my cat and sip my coffee and refrain from agreeing as vehemently externally as I am internally.
“They did a number on all of us,” Cricket replies. “I’m hardly special that way.”
“Did anyone at all reach out to tell you they had your back?”
“You did.”
There’s a long, heavy pause.
I can imagine Ginny’s blinking slowly at Cricket, waiting for her to say and my friend so-and-so from college, and my other friend so-and-so from my office, and my friend so-and-so from my book club, but instead, the long, heavy pause gets longer and heavier.
My heart thumps loudly enough that Fluffy stops purring and peers at me like the rhythm of my pulse has now personally offended her.
“Anyone else?” Ginny asks, softer.
“There were some coworkers who told me they were glad it wasn’t them,” she says quietly with a forced laugh. “And some of the ladies I have Friday wine with were super kind. And a few of my parents’ neighbors asked how they were handling it—”
“The neighbors asked you how your parents were handling what happened to you?”
“Yes, but it’s a tight neighborhood, so of course they did—”
“This didn’t happen to your parents.” Ginny’s triggered by shitty parents. Her mom making her do that show—all that Ginny went through during some of the hardest years of her youth with it—she doesn’t tolerate or sugarcoat it when people’s parents do shitty things. “Were they supportive?”
Cricket laughs another humorless laugh. “I finally did something bigger and better than my two sisters, so you’d think they would’ve been. But they saw some of the comments about how I’d clearly been raised wrong, and—well, can you blame them? Parents always do their best, right?”
“No. No, they don’t.”
“There were some people from my yoga class who checked on me, but I’m pretty sure at least two of them were responsible for hate mail under aliases,” Cricket adds in a whisper.
“Oh, Cricket.”
I squeeze my eyes shut against the heat in them.
This is the other reason I’ve been avoiding the house.
I finally have my footing again.
The past seven years have been a lot.
First it was a shotgun wedding after those two pink lines, then Ava with a rough pregnancy followed by postpartum depression and us with a new baby.
I had a chaotic job and wasn’t around enough to help.
But then she found the corner of the internet where she could talk about using health and fitness as tools for her battle, and she exploded in popularity. Found a community. Found a purpose.
She was happy.
I was happy.
Lav was happy.
Life was good. Not perfect—us happy together was something we were still working on—but good.
And then came the cancer diagnosis.
The final sucker punch in Ava’s short life, made worse by the internet war over us that moved to our front lawn.
We moved here, she died, and my in-laws immediately sued me for custody of Lav, trying every angle and dragging it out when one strategy after the other failed for them.
It hasn’t been a full year since they finally dropped the suit.
So while here is home, where it’s been a haven for me in the worst of times, it’s also a place where the women who arrive regularly remind me of Ava and our own nightmares.
I’ve selfishly needed time to not have that in my face.
Cricket being here, being right here, in the darkest immediate aftermath of her moment of notoriety, with parents like Ava’s—this is not what I want.
I don’t want to feel for what she’s going through.
I don’t want to remember why women come here.
I don’t want to face that I probably haven’t fully processed the toll the past seven years took on me.
“We all get the hate, right?” Cricket says in a small voice that reminds me of Lav when she has a nightmare and then feels guilty for waking me, no matter how patient I try to be about it.
“We do, but we shouldn’t,” Ginny replies softly.
“I’m sorry. I should’ve asked if you’re okay talking about this. I know it happened to you too, and it can be triggering.”
“I’ve had a few years to get over it,” Ginny says wryly.
“But you—you’re still here,” Cricket whispers.
“I came here initially because I was mortified that I busted out my front teeth while trying to stop a wedding and went viral for it, but I stayed because Mabel and Pip are the family I’ve been looking for my entire life. I needed this place regardless of how the internet reacted.”
Fluffy glares at me.
It’s like the cat’s judging me for not chiming in.
I’m here too because I needed this family.
My parents are fantastic, but they’re also retired and travel a lot and deserve to enjoy their lives. And I always feel like I’m not doing as good of a job as they did too.
“My family’s pretty good,” Cricket says. “So long as I don’t play Monopoly with them or disappoint them too much by not being a doctor or a lawyer or a real journalist or get so into playing hide-and-seek with my nieces and nephews that we miss the call for dinnertime.”
It’s like she’s trying to be funny, but the desperation is too strong for me to feel anything but pity.
And anger.
And then more anger that my calm morning is ruined with anger that she thinks her family’s pretty good when clearly, they aren’t.
Not my business.
Except it is my business.
I live here.
These women are my family.
Mabel might not have explicitly asked me to watch over Cricket, but the woman’s living in my home.
She’s my responsibility now too.
Goddammit.
Fluffy grunts, then leaps off my lap and strolls to the cat door. “Don’t—” I start, but she ignores me and tries to fit through it.
“Don’t listen to the haters?” Ginny calls up to me.
“Sorry. Talking to the cat. Fluffy’s being Fluffy.”
“Ah.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, grimace at the dull pain in my right eye, and then stifle a sigh. “Don’t let other people’s expectations and world view define you, Cricket. Family or strangers on the internet. Any of them.”
“I’m…working on that strangers on the internet part.”
“It’s a process,” Ginny tells her. “It won’t happen overnight. But we’re here for you while you work through it. Right, Heath?”
“What this place is about,” I reply. “Excuse me, ladies. My cat’s stuck. Enjoy your morning.”
“I’m making muffins at the main house,” Cricket says hesitantly.
“Muffins?” Lavender shrieks from the open sliding door behind me.
Yeah.
The open door that Fluffy could’ve gone through instead of her cat door.
“Wow, you’re an early bird today,” Ginny says. “Want to come help if it’s okay with your dad?”
I cringe.
Look at the cat.
Look at my daughter, who’ll be sporting those Sharpie whiskers on her face for probably a week.
Longer, if she keeps reapplying them the way it appears she has this morning.
“Meow meow me—can I, Daddy? Please, please, please? I’ll make my bed and brush my teeth!”
“We’re always happy to have her, but if you have other plans, I’m sure she’d love those too,” Ginny calls up to me.
“Thought we’d go to that science museum in Sacramento that you love so much,” I say to my daughter.
She wrinkles her nose. “Is it open this hour of the day?”
“Are you sure she’s only six?” I hear Cricket ask softly.
“She’s six going on her best friends are all over thirty,” Ginny replies.
“You sure you don’t mind?” I ask Ginny.
“We live for fun,” Ginny answers.
I nearly snort, but I keep my reaction to myself.
We live for fun.
I wish.