Chapter One
One Month Earlier
“Carter Hathaway.”
I bounced in my seat, my phone high over my head and capturing everything. I was cheesing so hard, my face hurt, and they hadn’t even gotten to—
“Adora Hunter.”
“Whoo!” Leaping to my feet, I whooped and cheered my head off. “Dora! Dora! Dora!”
The camera got the exact moment she blushed bright red and slapped her hands over her face, trying to pretend she didn’t know the crazy shouting woman. But when she got to the stage, she spun and held her diploma up high—beaming from ear to ear as applause filled the auditorium.
I ran up to her after graduation, pouncing on her as she came out of the double doors.
“Whoa!” She tried and failed to catch me and the flowers I was holding. Shrieking, we tipped over into a bush. “Char!”
Cracking up, all we could do was lie there tangled in bush and limbs, and laugh as worried people swarmed and helped us up.
“What is going on with you, woman?” Dora cried, brushing the flower petals off her dress. “All I did was graduate from high school. It’s hardly a presidential inauguration.”
“Oh, but don’t worry.” I presented her with her now ruined bouquet. “I will scream and cheer just as obnoxiously when it is your presidential inauguration.”
“Thanks for the warning,” she teased.
Squealing, I surged forward and hugged her again—bursting with so much excitement I couldn’t handle myself. And why wouldn’t I be excited? This was a good day. Good days were hard to come by when your parents die in a car accident with your younger fourteen-year-old sister in the backseat.
Dora was in the hospital for two months.
When she came out of the coma, I had to tell her that our lives had changed forever, and nothing would be the same.
And of course, it wasn’t. We grieved, and raged, and cried, and broke down, and fought, and made up, and held each other together more times than I could count in the last four years since we lost our parents, but now... we were here.
My little sister had graduated from high school with the third-highest GPA in her class, and acceptance to Johns Hopkins. She wanted to be a doctor like the ones who saved her life, and there was no doubt in my mind she would be.
She looked at me and sighed. “Argh, you’re doing it again, aren’t you? Getting all misty on how far we’ve come, and how much you nailed this big-sister/second-mom thing? Don’t worry, sis, I know this is your day too.”
“Stop it,” I replied, flicking her nose. “This isn’t about me at all. I’m just proud of you, D, and... I know Mom and Dad would be crazy proud of you too.”
“Heavy on the crazy,” she shot back. “Dad would’ve shown up in head-to-toe black, white, and blue body paint—running around and hollering at everyone that his girl had gotten into Johns Hopkins U.
And Mom would’ve spent the whole ceremony bawling her eyes out because her baby was leaving home.
I would’ve had to throw a paper bag over my face and sneak out the back just to get away from all three of you weirdos. ”
We busted up again, and I marveled that we did so.
For a solid year after the accident, neither of us could think of Mom or Dad without crying.
Now, we could talk about them and laugh and smile.
And it felt really good to do so. They were the best parents in the world.
I didn’t want thoughts of them to bring pain and sadness anymore.
I wanted to remember them and be happy, because happy was what I was all the eighteen years I’d been lucky to have them in my life.
“Are you meeting up with your friends after this?” I asked, throwing my arm around her. Our matching butterfly heels click-clacked on the concrete, sounding our final retreat from Rocky Springs High School. “Celebrating before you all go your separate ways?”
“We’re not leaving for college tomorrow.
” Dora dropped her head on my shoulder. “We’re all staying for the summer, except for Lena, whose parents are taking her to Italy as a graduation present, but even that’s only for two weeks.
I’ll have plenty of time to celebrate with my friends this summer,” she said.
“That’s why tonight, I’m celebrating with you. ”
“Still, it’s your eighteenth birthday.” I rested my chin on the top of her head. “You’re allowed to spend it partying it up with your friends instead of your big sis.”
“Aren’t we going to be partying it up too?”
“Only if you think three-dollar streamers, ice cream cake, Hunan chicken with hot and sour soup, and me singing ‘Happy Birthday’ loudly and off-key is a party?”
“Actually, I don’t.” She broke free and turned on her heels. “I think I will meet up with my friends after all.”
“Too late!” Chasing after her, I attacked her sides with tickles—making her shriek and run off laughing.
She beat me to the car and we were soon on the road headed for home.
Our parents both used to be high-powered lawyers who worked for a firm that specialized in malpractice cases. That’s where they met, and according to them, that was the only good thing that came from their time there.
They both hated their jobs. They hated sitting across the table from some poor, grieving family who lost someone they loved due to a doctor’s mistake, and making them name a price that would make them go away.
When the whoopsie that was me put two lines on Mom’s pregnancy test, she saw her future. A new future filled with joy, love, and new adventures. Not one where grieving mothers spat in her face and called her a dead-eyed bitch with ice in her veins.
She immediately put in notice at her job, and then told Dad he could be in our lives or not, he could pay child support or not, but she was more than prepared to raise me on her own if that’s what he took.
Mom told us that Dad listened to her speech, stood up, and just walked out. She broke down crying right there in his office until he came back a little while later, told her he just quit too, and that, “I don’t know where we’re going to end up, but will you marry me on the way?”
Mom said yes to his proposal... after beating him up for scaring the crap out of her.
Anyway, it turned out Dad only became a lawyer because his parents pushed him into it.
He grew up working construction jobs with Grandpa, but Grandpa wanted more for his only son than a life doing back-breaking work for not enough pay.
But with me on the way, Dad went back to his dream job—builder and architect.
And he started by draining his lawyer savings and building his pregnant bride her dream home in Rocky Springs.
I smiled as that home crested the horizon, welcoming us back. No one could miss the Hunter House. In a sea of cookie-cutter sameness, it was the oddball of the pack.
My mom, Renee Hunter, was a massive book nerd and fantasy-lover. It had always been her fangirl dream to live in a hobbit hole, so Dad made it happen.
We’re talking the big, circular doors. The sloped, mossy thatched roof.
The cozy wood-and-stone interior with a big roaring fireplace, rain showers, huge circular bay windows in every room with cushioned bottoms that we’d curl up in on rainy days, and book nooks in all our bedrooms—designed just for us.
Mom’s nook had dragons, elves, and wizards painted and carved into the wall.
My nook had hearts and goofy meet-cutes because I loved romance, and Dora’s nook had spy glasses, fingerprints, and crime scene tape painted on the bookshelf because she was just starting to get into mystery books when Dad built hers.
After we lost them, the social worker suggested I sell the house. She said a home like this would clean up on the housing market, and I could take the money to buy us a little apartment near NYU. The money would tide us over and pay for tuition, so I wouldn’t have to drop out for good.
It was solid, practical advice, but I wouldn’t have done that in a million years.
My dad built this home with his bare hands. He poured all of his love for Mom, then me, and then Dora into every beam and floorboard. I was born in the living room because Mom fancied herself a homebirth, and Dora was carried in over the threshold from the hospital because never again.
Nearly every happy memory we made as a family, we made within those four walls. The Hunter Hobbit House—as dubbed by our neighbors—might as well be part of the family too. I would never sell it.
A truth that hung heavy over my heart as Dora ran on ahead and I paused to empty the mailbox.
“Final notice, final notice, final notice,” I whispered, rubbing my temples. “Yeah, yeah, that’s what you said the last time.”
My attempt at levity didn’t loosen the band around my chest. Who knew why I even bothered?
Yes, my parents paid for the land and the house in cash—which saved me from having to pay off a mortgage, but didn’t help with all the other costs of running a home.
There were the utility bills, the property taxes, insurance, the maintenance requirements, the HOA fees, and all of that’s before I’ve fed, dressed, and paid for all of my sister’s school supplies and activities.
The truth was all of the money my parents saved and left for us was wiped out a long time ago.
Adora was in the hospital for two months.
Everything went into paying her medical bills.
When she was discharged, the only asset we had was the house, and as I told the social worker, selling it was a non-starter.
My sister wasn’t going to lose her parents and her home at the same time.
Which left me working my butt off for four years to make ends meet, but a waitress working out of the Rocky Road Grill could only make her wage and tips go so far.
“Char?”
I snapped up, quickly shoving the bills in my purse. “Yeah?”
“You coming?” she called, laughing. “The ice cream cake must be melting, and those off-key ‘Happy Birthday’ lyrics aren’t going to badly sing themselves.”
My smile came bouncing back. There would be no frowns or stress on my sister’s big day. All of that could wait until tomorrow.
“Coming!”