Chapter Sixteen
Sixteen
Josie
“And now that my first paycheck just hit my account, I can finally say it—I’m moving out!
” I announce, doing a little happy dance with my shoulders.
But Mom and Alan just stare at me, stone-faced, across the kitchen table.
Not exactly the reaction I was expecting.
“This is good news, folks! This is what you wanted?”
I don’t know why I phrase it like a question. They’ve been super clear about wanting to turn my little garage apartment into an Airbnb for extra cash. Which is fair. I’ve been mooching for way too long.
The microwave pings, and, as if awoken by a trance, Alan stands up. “Who’s up for chili-cheese waffles?”
“No, thanks,” Mom and I say at the same time.
“More for me,” he grunts, which I think might be his love language. Not chili-cheese waffles, of course, but grunting. Both Mom and I are words-of-affirmation people, so it seems strange that she ended up with someone so uncommunicative.
“I don’t understand, Josephine,” says Mom, which is what she says when she fully understands something but doesn’t like it.
“Mom, you’ve been hinting for months that you wanted me out of the guesthouse! I thought you’d be thrilled to finally rent it out for real money. You could use that cash to pay off the new dishwasher or these kitchen chairs you just bought…and whatever else is on your list,” I say.
“But we’re doing the fundraiser!” she says, her lips pressed so tightly they’ve disappeared, and I feel something ignite inside me. Like one of those feverish nights in the hospital, when my temp was 104 and I was begging for blankets, sure I’d never feel warm again.
The memory slams fiercely, dragging up that old helplessness.
I try to shake it off, but it grips me like a fucking vise. Anger burns too hot in my chest. Rage at this memory, at them, at everything that kept me trapped in that bed, shivering, while they looked on like my life was some kind of tear-jerking Netflix drama.
“Nope. I returned all the payments and took it down. I don’t want to take fundraising money that I don’t need. Sorry, Mommy.” I can hear my voice turning little-girlish, and I hate it. “It was the first thing I did when I got paid.”
Actually, it was the second thing I did.
As soon as Axe’s signing bonus hit my account yesterday, I went apartment hunting.
Found a studio perfectly equidistant between Grace & Honor and SynthoTech and just ten minutes from Golden Leaves, where Nonna lives.
I took it on the spot—it’s basically a shoebox with a corner kitchen that fits a bed, a love seat, and maybe a tiny desk if I’m lucky.
But like Nonna always said, The bigger the house, the smaller the home.
Which means this place is gonna be all home. I don’t need a lot of stuff. Fairy lights, some framed photos of me and Nonna, a dash of sparkle, and it’ll feel like mine in no time. The best part, Mom and Alan don’t know about it. I plan to keep my new address on the down-low for as long as possible.
I need some breathing room from them.
Mom’s face reddens as her eyes narrow. “How could you do that without telling us? We’ve been working so hard on updates!”
Alan steps back into the conversation, clutching his Yuengling plus a plate of chili-cheese waffles, while their cat, Buster, follows behind him, hoping for dropped scraps.
When Alan’s angry—and he looks pretty angry now—his whole face darkens so that I can see every splintering capillary vein like a road map to nowhere across his face.
“You’re always so ungrateful, you know that, Josie? After everything we’ve done for you, you go behind our backs like this,” he says.
“You won’t have to do anything for me anymore.
That’s the whole point,” I say. The smell of Alan’s food hits me like a brick, and I try not to gag.
Why is he always snarfing down the rankest stuff—tuna casseroles, blue cheese toasties, salmon steaks?
At least he’s talking in whole sentences for once, since his preferred language is caveman.
Like right now, when he pauses his berating of me and looks at my mother and grunts, “Salt.”
“Sure thing, honey,” she says.
No wonder I got engaged to Bryan. This is the blueprint I had for marriage.
“I’m collecting my things. I’ll be packed and out in a couple of hours,” I say.
Mom’s eyes well up immediately, while Alan looks like he’s about to pop a vein.
“You’re leaving us today?” Mom asks, and her voice is dangerously quiet. She blinks a few times, her fake lashes catching her tears. “This is how you repay me?”
“Mom, no. This is a good thing. This is me saving myself. I don’t want to be JosieFightsOn forever.
I want to just be…me. Grown up, on my own.
I’m done with the pity party. I have to start living for myself.
I can’t keep living…” My voice trails off.
I can’t say it. I can’t tell her I can’t keep living for her.
For whatever weird thrill she gets from the endless drama of my medical mess.
Even if this is exactly how I feel. But I learned a long time ago, you can’t tell people exactly how you feel. That’s the quickest way to lose everything.
Mom shoots a look at Alan, who’s chewing like a chipmunk. He nods at her like I’m some bratty teen who needs her phone confiscated.
“Josie, you can’t do this,” Mom says, blinking hard as the tears start their usual slide down her cheeks, mascara running while she keeps wiping at it, making it worse.
It’s all so over-the-top and absurdly dramatic, like her old live streams when she’d bawl for donations.
I bet it’s muscle memory by now. An uncharitable thought, and yet I wish she wasn’t so quick with the waterworks.
It’s not like I’m moving to Australia. Just out of their sad guesthouse.
“Nope,” grunts Alan for emphasis. “Can’t. Not now.”
“What is going on here?” I ask, glancing between them. They’ve clearly had a whole conversation I’m not in on.
Alan nods again, and grunts, “Tell.”
“We knew money was coming in, so we already spent it,” she says, her voice flat.
“The GoFundMe money? Are you kidding?” My mind races. Is Mom sick? Does Buster need surgery? Some kind of emergency I don’t know about? But Alan just wipes his mouth with his arm, smearing chili over his skin, while Mom looks at me, defiant.
“No, of course I’m not kidding. Why would we give the money back?” she says. Her knuckles are white against the table. “We earned it.”
“Earned it?” I repeat, stunned.
“You can get off that high horse anytime, missy. We used the money. Same as always,” Mom says. Her tears dry up as fast as they came.
“Except this isn’t the same as always. I’m not sick. I do not need money from strangers.” I take a breath, glaring at my stepdad. “What did you buy, Alan?”
He looks slightly sheepish.
“Boat,” he says.
“Bryan convinced us to buy that old pontoon boat of his,” says Mom. “He said he had unexpected expenses after you canceled your wedding, and I felt bad for him. Plus, we love to fish, honey.”
“Oh my God.” I feel sick. Bryan? They used the money to buy a boat from Bryan? “And you didn’t think I should know? Or that it would matter to me?”
Alan lifts his chin stubbornly. Grunts.
“After everything we’ve sacrificed for you, don’t you think we deserve something fun for just the two of us? Alan’s naming the boat Ship Faced.” Mom smiles at me. “Isn’t that funny? I already bought the stencil. You can come on board anytime.”
“I don’t care how you feel about Bryan or your boat,” I say, my voice shaking with rage. “If we had to keep it, that money should have gone toward paying for my diabetes meds.”
“And since you’re buying your own meds now, with your fancy new job, then you shouldn’t tell us how to spend our money,” Alan says, suddenly fluent in full sentences. I’d clap if I wasn’t so furious.
“The GoFundMe fund is not your money, Alan!”
These two have controlled my life for way too long, and they’ve been absolute crap at it.
I didn’t have a choice before, but now I do.
Alan’s clueless about finances—actually, Alan’s clueless about everything.
And he’s always loved Bryan. They’d get drunk on the porch, and then he’d tell me I was lucky to have a guy like Bryan since I was so challenging.
I’ve never liked a single thing Alan has liked—other than my mom, and I’m not even sure about her right now. His fart hits like clockwork. What if Alan is the Devil card? His gas alone opens a portal to Hell.
I stand up from my chair so fast, it falls backward with a clatter.
“I’ve got to get out of here,” I say, and I leave the house and am in my car before they can say another word.
For the first time ever, I’m rooting for JosieFightsOn to die. That’s the only way for me, the real Josie, to live.
—
An hour later, I find Nonna in the common room of Golden Leaves. She’s in a circle of silver-headed seniors in wheelchairs, all of them hanging on every word of their favorite rock star, Judge Judy, who is laying down the law from the television screen.
“Josie, my butterfly!” Nonna’s eyes crinkle in recognition. The nurses have told me she mixes up the names of nearly all the staff and residents and can spend days not knowing quite where she is, but she never gets my name wrong.
I know this miracle will not last forever, but for now, I lap it up every time.
“Nonna!” I bend down and give her tiny body a gentle squeeze. I kiss her on the top of her puff of white hair. She smells like she always does—rose water and my warmest memories of home.
“Hard day for your gran,” whispers one of the nurses. “She got one of her ‘visions.’ Why don’t you take her outside?”
I arrange a blanket on Nonna’s lap and push the heavy, creaky wheelchair down the narrow hall and out onto the back patio.
A horrible stench seems to cling to this whole place, indoors and out, even worse than any of Alan’s meal disasters.
It’s like the smell of death and decay is baked into the walls.
I lean forward and sniff Grandma’s head again, like she’s a newborn baby, and feel comforted.
She may not be in the most beautiful facility, but she’s well taken care of.
I think. I hope. Though I did see that nurse back there roll her eyes when she mentioned my nonna’s visions.
For the millionth time, I wish I had the money to give Nonna the comfort she deserves in her final years. I can’t imagine who I’d be without her always in my corner, cheering me on, reminding me I’m stronger than anyone else thinks.
Come to think of it, for all his flaws, and there are many, Axe also looks at me in a similar way. Like I’m formidable. Not a pushover. Like I’m a force to be reckoned with. A worthy opponent to him and a worthy ally to Nonna.
“Nonna,” I say, taking a seat and reaching for her hands.
I can’t wait to tell her my good news. She’s probably the only one who’ll be genuinely happy for me other than Honor.
Nonna’s been telling me for years to move out of my mom’s house, though I always thought that was more about how she couldn’t stand my mother than her believing I needed independence.
But maybe I got that wrong. “Guess what? I got a new job!”
But Nonna doesn’t smile.
“Cards,” she says, and so I dig out my deck from my bag.
Normally, I love a reading from Nonna, but I don’t want anything else to dampen my good mood. Before I know it, three cards are laid out before me, and my heart plummets.
“You’re in danger, Josie,” she whispers, her voice shaky but urgent as her fingers clamp around my wrists tight enough to make the veins on the backs of her hands bulge.
Her eyes are wide, full of a fear I haven’t seen in years.
The hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
I glance around at the weed-choked garden and cracked patio tiles, anything not to stare at the cards.
“No, Nonna,” I say, brushing her off. “We’re misreading them. Everything is great. I got a new place, I’m getting paid—”
“Someone wants to harm you.” Nonna starts muttering in Italian, low and fast, and while I don’t know the words she’s saying, it’s disturbing. “You must do all the things I have taught you, my Josie. Burn sage. Tie a red ribbon. Watch your back—”
My grandmother is superstitious, and I’ve always heeded her warnings, even when they felt silly. But this is next-level. Sure, the cards…aren’t great, but there are plenty of other reasonable ways to interpret them. Dementia really is the worst.
“Nonna!” I cut in. “You’re scaring me.”
After her last MRI, the doctor showed me the dark spots on Nonna’s brain. Another sort of tarot altogether. The cards no one ever wants to be dealt.
“Trust your instincts,” she presses. “Promise me.”
“Of course I will. I promise. I always do.” A lie, of course. I haven’t always trusted my instincts (case in point: getting engaged to Bryan), but starting today, I’m working on a new policy.
“Are you reading your deck? Every day?” Nonna asks.
“ ’Course, Nonna,” I say, dodging the truth about my recent pulls. No need to fuel her paranoia. “Everything is good. I’m good.”
“You’re healthy, butterfly. You’re so strong and healthy,” she says, and a faint smile plays across her lips. I’ve heard this mantra a hundred times, and it always soothes me like a lullaby.
“I am. I am strong and healthy, Nonna,” I echo back, just like she used to make me do when I was little.
“Don’t drink the Devil’s brew,” she says, and though I feel a sharp pang of trepidation at the mention of my recent pull—that damn Devil card, twice now—I have no idea what she means. What’s the Devil’s brew?
Nonna’s grip tightens around my hand, her eyes going wide and unblinking—like she’s seeing something just over my shoulder. Something I can’t.