Chapter 12
Waterfall Braids
June
June woke in Melissa’s bed.
Not her bed—Melissa’s. The sheets were higher thread count than anything June had ever owned, and they smelled like cedar and distant rain and something warmer underneath that was just Melissa, and for a few seconds June lay there in the grey morning light and let herself have it.
The indent in the pillow beside her. The silence of a house where someone had already been up and gone, leaving behind only warmth in the sheets and the faint sound of a car pulling out of the driveway below.
She pressed her face into the pillow.
Brilliant move, Hollis.
It had been eight days since the first kiss.
One night since everything else. And Melissa had kissed her forehead in the dark before five a.m. and whispered I have to go, don’t move in a voice that was still rough with sleep, and June had said okay and listened to her get dressed and leave, and now she was alone in Melissa’s room with the rain starting up against the windows and absolutely no idea what any of it meant in the daylight.
She knew what it had felt like. That was the problem.
She rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling, cataloguing the ways she was already in too deep: she knew the small scar on Melissa’s left wrist and the sound she made when she was trying not to make any sound and the exact spot below her ear that made her breath go unsteady.
She knew these things now. She couldn’t unknow them.
You’re in over your head, she told herself. You know that, right?
She knew.
The rain continued through breakfast, drumming against the kitchen windows while June made pancakes and Lila worked on a drawing at the island. Melissa had texted at six-thirty: Committee session all day. Don’t wait up. Professional. Clean. The same text she might have sent to her aide.
June put her phone face-down on the counter and flipped the pancakes.
It’s fine, she told herself. She’s at work. This is what her work looks like.
But the doubt was already there, low and familiar: the knowledge that she spent her days playing nanny and her nights playing—what, exactly? Melissa’s girlfriend? Her secret? Something in between that didn’t have a name yet because naming it would make it real, and real things could be lost?
Would you even know if she was hiding you?
She pushed the thought away. It wasn’t fair. Melissa wasn’t Ember. Melissa was—
Someone who kissed you in the dark and left before her daughter could see.
“Miss Hollis?” Lila looked up from her drawing. “Can you braid my hair?”
“Sure, sweetheart. What kind?”
“A waterfall braid. I saw a video.” Lila produced her tablet, showing June a tutorial. “It looks hard, but I think you can do it.”
“That’s a lot of faith you’re putting in me.”
“You’re good at hair things.”
They settled on the couch after breakfast, Lila on the floor between June’s knees, the rain soft and grey outside. The waterfall braid was trickier than it looked—lots of starting over, lots of losing track—but Lila was patient, sitting still in a way that most seven-year-olds couldn’t manage.
“Miss Hollis?” Lila’s voice was quiet. Thoughtful.
“Hmm?”
“You stay longer than the other people.”
June’s hands stilled mid-braid. “What do you mean, sweetheart?”
“The other babysitters. They came and went.” Lila was staring straight ahead, her voice carefully neutral. “You stay. You eat breakfast with us. You watch movies with us. You know what I like on my sandwiches.”
“Tomatoes on the side, not in the sandwich,” June said softly. “And absolutely no cucumbers.”
“See? You know.” A pause. “Are you going to go away too?”
The question landed like a stone dropped into still water.
She thought about Ember. About how certain she’d been that she understood what was happening, that she could trust her own judgment, that she was building something real. She’d been wrong then. She’d been so sure and so completely wrong.
What are you mistaking now?
“I can’t promise I’ll never leave,” June said finally. “I don’t think anyone can promise that, because life is complicated and sometimes things change in ways we don’t expect.”
Lila’s shoulders stiffened. June hurried on.
“But I can promise I’ll always tell you the truth.
And right now, the truth is I want to stay.
I like being here with you. I like our mornings and our cooking projects and the way you teach me things about otters.
” She finished a section of the braid, let her hands rest on Lila’s shoulders.
“I’m not planning to go anywhere, Lila. Not if I can help it. ”
A long pause. Then a small decisive nod. “Okay. I believe you.” She tilted her head. “Can you finish the braid now? I want to see what it looks like.”
June smiled despite the ache in her chest. “One waterfall braid, coming up.”
The rain stopped by early afternoon, leaving the world washed and gleaming. June took Lila to the library to return their books, then to Bean There, Done That for hot chocolate even though it was July, because Lila had declared it a “cozy day” and June couldn’t argue with that logic.
Lina was behind the counter, blonde and bright, grinning when she saw them come in. She was June’s age, beautiful with her sparkling blue eyes, with an easy laugh and no reason to be complicated about anything.
“The usual?”
“Two hot chocolates today,” June said. “Extra whipped cream.”
“Big spender.” Lina winked at Lila. “Love the braid. Very fancy.”
“Miss Hollis did it,” Lila said. “It’s called a waterfall.”
“Gorgeous.” Lina slid the order through and leaned on the counter while the machine ran. “You’re in here a lot this summer. Nannying?”
“Yeah. For the season.”
“Nice gig if you can get it.” Lina handed over the cups with a smile that was warm and uncomplicated and entirely directed at June, and June smiled back and thought, not for the first time, about what it would be like to be someone like Lina.
Same age. Same world. Someone you could text without calculating what it meant, go out with in public without it being a statement, fall for without the ground constantly threatening to shift beneath you.
Someone whose life fit neatly alongside your own instead of running perpendicular to it at every angle.
She took the cups and found their table, and told herself it was a useless line of thinking.
They sat by the window. Lila drank her hot chocolate with careful sips, trying not to disturb the whipped cream. The streets outside were wet and quiet, the light still grey and soft.
This is what my life has become, June thought. Library runs and braids and hot chocolate with a seven-year-old. And waking up in sheets that smell like someone I have no business wanting this much.
It wasn’t what she’d planned. A year ago she’d been in Portland, working sixty-hour weeks in a kitchen that demanded everything and gave nothing back. She’d been in love—or what she’d thought was love—with someone who’d made her feel small in ways she was only now beginning to fully understand.
You’re too soft for this, June. That’s your problem.
She could still hear Ember’s voice. Still see the angle of her expression when she said things like that—like she was doing June a favor, telling her the truth everyone else was too polite to say. June had believed her. For a long time, June had believed her.
What are you mistaking now?
The question was a familiar one by this point.
Melissa said the right things—about wanting June, about this being real, about figuring it out together.
But Melissa also went to galas alone and tensed when anyone mentioned the live-in nanny in public, and this morning she’d left before five without waking Lila, which was practical and necessary and also felt like something June wasn’t supposed to examine too closely.
She wasn’t being hidden. She didn’t think she was being hidden.
She just wasn’t sure what she was instead.
“Miss Hollis?” Lila was watching her over the rim of her cup. “You look sad.”
“I’m not sad. Just thinking.”
“About what?”
About your mother. About what I’m building and whether it’s real or whether I’m just warm and convenient and here. “About what to make for dinner. Any requests?”
“Can we do pasta again? The kind we made together?”
“Otter pasta?”
Lila almost smiled. “My otters turned into blobs.”
“The most delicious blobs I’ve ever eaten.” June finished her hot chocolate. “Come on. Let’s go home and make some blobs.”
She had the television on in the kitchen while she prepped, volume low, not really watching—just filling the silence. She’d been slicing tomatoes for about ten minutes when the local news made her set down the knife.
“—Senator Brandt’s infrastructure bill faces renewed pressure this week as Thornfield Development formally disputes the broadband allocation provisions.
Meanwhile, questions persist about the senator’s focus ahead of the crucial committee vote, with sources close to the process suggesting Senator Brandt has been, quote, ‘distracted by personal matters’ this summer.
Senator Brandt’s office declined to comment—”
A file photo of Melissa filled the screen. Immaculate. Composed. Standing at a podium somewhere, every inch Senator Brandt.
June stared at it.
She understood, intellectually, that people were trying to dismantle what Melissa had spent years building.
She’d known about Thornfield, about the pressure, about the way politics chewed through people who couldn’t maintain the performance.
But hearing it on the news—seeing Melissa reduced to a file photo and a rumor about her focus—made something cold settle in June’s chest that the rest of the evening couldn’t quite shake.
Distracted by personal matters.