Chapter 24
Jack made the right call, even though I wish he hadn’t. Or maybe I do. I’m not thinking clearly.
I need to get out of the cabin. It feels too small with him in it, his presence filling up as much space there as it does in my head.
After whipping up a quick lasagna to take my parents to heat up for dinner, I load it up in the truck to head over to their house.
I texted when I woke up to check in, and my mom said that Grandma was doing better today, but I still feel guilty for not being there to help last night.
The fork in the dirt road leading to the farm is packed with cars heading to pick the last of the pumpkins before they’re gone for the season, but the side leading to my parents’ house is empty.
I could probably make this drive in my sleep, as familiar to me as the back of my own hand.
My parents let me drive their old pickup on the farm long before I was old enough to legally drive on the road, and I can almost feel the peeling leather steering wheel beneath my hands as I roll past the trees lining the drive.
Mom is on the porch when I pull in, dressed in a thick wool sweater and carrying the basket she uses to collect eggs from the chicken coop. For a moment, I think I see her shoulders fall when she catches sight of me.
“Morning,” I yell when I get out of the truck, pulling my barn jacket tighter around my neck, the cold still managing to seep in.
Mom waves but doesn’t say anything back. There’s deep grooves between her eyes, and something about the image makes my stomach twist.
I grab the lasagna covered in tin foil and head across the yard, Mom’s eyes on me the whole time. She waits for me to climb the stairs then opens the door for us.
“What are you doing here, hon?”
There’s something in the tone of her voice that makes me pause as I toe off my boots by the door.
“I brought you guys dinner.”
That groove is still between her eyes as she watches me. “You didn’t need to do that, Stevie.”
“I know,” I say. “I wanted to.”
She sighs, shoulders falling. “Well, thank you. Come on into the kitchen.”
I follow her down the hall, taking in the familiarity of the house.
The candles may not be apple scented any more, and the furniture may have been rearranged, but the photos on the wall are the same—the rare family vacation; my old yearbook photo with braces and a frizzy braid, my cheeks freckled from a summer spent in the sun; my parents’ wedding photo, their smiles wide; them standing in front of the house, Mom holding a set of keys, Dad holding an apple, grinning at her as she cheeses for the camera.
The kitchen is empty when we step inside. I smell coffee warming in the pot on the counter. Dappled sunshine spears through the windows, and I notice the curtains are dusty. I make a mental note to dust and wash them this week.
“Stevie,” Mom says, setting the basket of eggs down on the counter. “We need to talk.”
There’s guilt in her voice, and regret too. It makes my eyes snap from the curtains to look at her face. The expression there mirrors the tone of her voice.
“Let’s sit.”
She motions to the table, and after putting the lasagna beside the eggs on the counter, I sit down in the seat that has always been mine, at least until Grandma moved in.
She has a hard time maneuvering between the wall and table, so I started taking the seat in the corner, but today I sit where I did every day of my life until I moved out, and every time I came over.
There’s crumbs on the table my mom would have never allowed growing up. She’s always been a stickler about tidiness, but things have slipped through the cracks since she’s taken over caring for Grandma.
I watch as she moves around the kitchen, pulling down mismatched mugs from the cabinet and filling them with coffee.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
She comes back to the table and sits across from me, pushing a mug in my direction.
I wrap my hands around it, letting the heat seep into my fingers.
For the first time, I realize how frail my mom has gotten in the last few years.
She’s not old by any means, only in her early sixties, but in the last few years she’s lost weight and wrinkled more.
The veins in her hands are visible. I wonder how I missed it, when she’s been right in front of me.
“Stevie,” Mom starts. “I’ve always appreciated your loyalty, your love for this family and this town.
” She clears her throat and looks down at the tale, picking at a grain in the wood.
“I know you had plans back in high school. Travel, college. And I hate that you had to give that up.” Her eyes focus back on mine, holding steady.
“I hated it, but I was always thankful for the sacrifice you made for us.”
“Mom—”
She cuts me off with a lifted hand. “Over the years, I’ve watched you give us more and more of yourself. And I didn’t know how to change it, if I even needed to. But lately…” she sighs, looking up at the ceiling as if searching for the right words.
My stomach churns, and my palms are slick.
When her gaze lands on mine again, it’s harder. More determined. “Stevie, I need you to live your life.”
It’s not what I expected her to say, and the words hit me like a slap.
“What does that mean?”
She looks even more pained by my question.
“You’re always here, Stevie. And when you’re not, you’re calling or texting.
” She lets out a long sigh. “I know it’s mine and your dad’s fault.
We asked too much of you, and you kept giving and giving and giving, but it has to stop now.
” Her voice sounds choked. “I need you to…” She stops, like she doesn’t know how to finish the sentence.
Heat creeps up my neck and into my cheeks, feeling like a sunburn. I’m still reeling from the moment with Jack last night and the conversation with him this morning, the rejection burning in my chest. My mom’s is worse though, deep and aching, carving out something essential inside of me.
Words stick in my throat, and I struggle to get something comprehensible out.
Finally, I ask, “Where is this coming from?”
She looks so defeated, like this conversation is hurting her as much as it’s hurting me. She rubs at a spot on her chest. “Wren mentioned—”
Blood roars in my ears. “What?” It comes out sharper than I intended, and Mom looks taken aback.
“Stevie,” she says, but I cut her off.
“She had no right.” I spit each word.
“She was just concerned about you. And I am too.”
“I’m fine.”
Her gaze softens, and it makes humiliation flare in my stomach. I can imagine the two of them sitting together in this very spot, talking about me, about the ways I’m not living my life to their standards.
She starts to speak again, but I stand, my chair squealing against the hardwood. “I need to go.”
“Honey, wait.”
“No, I’m fine. I just—” To my horror, angry tears prick at the back of my eyes, and I turn away before my mom can see them. “I just need to go.”
I don’t wait for her to respond, and I’m out the door, the wind whipping at my face a moment later. I let myself into the truck as the first of my tears fall and yank it into reverse, backing out of the driveway.
But I don’t head back to the cabin.
I drive to Wren’s.
Wilder answers the door, clad only in a diaper, after my relentless pounding.
Guilt pricks at me when I see his wide, toothy smile.
He’s two, with his mom’s bright red hair.
He looks just like she did when we were small.
My first memory is with Wren. Us on Halloween, getting into the candy we got trick or treating as our parents drank cups of decaf at the table in my kitchen to warm up.
There’s a picture of when they found us.
I was dressed as Winnie the Pooh and she was a Hershey Kiss.
It’s hanging on my fridge in the Airstream right now.
“Aunt Stevie,” he says, his S’s hissing.
“Wilder,” I hear Wren yell from down the hall.
“I told you not to answer the door.” She comes around the corner and smiles when she sees me, until she notices the look on my face.
She crouches down to Wilder and says, “Why don’t you go to the playroom with Daddy and June. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
He nods and runs off, his chubby legs jiggling with the movement.
Wren opens the door wider, letting me in. “What’s wrong?”
I don’t move, the cool air doing nothing to chase away the anger burning inside me. “You went to my mom?”
I sound betrayed, but I don’t care. I am betrayed.
Her face falls, and a sigh slips out of her. “Stevie, I’m worried about you.”
“Why?” I’m being too loud, on the verge of yelling, but I can’t make myself quiet down.
“You work too much. And when you’re not working, you're at your parent’s house, cleaning rain gutters or doing their laundry. Making them dinner. You haven’t gotten to do anything for yourself in months. A year. You don’t have any hobbies anymore, and you never make time for friends.”
“That’s rich.”
Her head rears back. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re never available either. I’ve barely been able to spend any time with you in the last four years, Wren. Not since you got with Holden.”
She blinks rapidly, taken aback. “I have a family. You have—” She cuts herself off, but the words linger in the air, unsaid.
I have no one.
The humiliation that creeped into me at my parents’ house flares now, burning hotter than a forest fire.
“I don’t need a husband or kids to live a fulfilled life, Wren.”
“That’s not what I’m saying, and you know that.” She throws her arms up in the air. “But hell, Stevie, you need something. You need a life outside of your family.”
“Well, apparently, they’re all I have.”
Her jaw clicks. “I didn’t say that. I’m trying to say that your world has become so narrow, when it could be so big. I just want you to be happy.”
Embarrassment curdles in my stomach. Our whole lives, despite boyfriends or other friends, it was always me and Wren. More than friends. Soulmates. Sisters. I thought it was still like that. But now that she has a different life, she sees mine as somehow less.
“I am happy.”
“Are you?”
The wind pulls at her corkscrew curls, whipping them back from her face.
“Yes, I am.”
“What about Jack?” she asks, and the question is so out of left field that I repeat it back to her. She shakes her head. “I saw you guys together yesterday, Stevie. I saw the way you looked at him at Matty’s. You like him. You want him. But you’re never going to let yourself have him.”
I’m speechless for a moment, but I don’t know why. Wren knows me better than anyone; of course she noticed the feelings I was harboring for him before I did.
“We’re friends. And besides, he’s leaving. It can’t go anywhere.”
“You could.”
“Wren, my life is here. I’m not upheaving it for a guy.”
She shakes her head, jaw tensing, and tightens her arms around her middle.
“What?” I ask.
She only shakes her head again. “Nothing.”
“No, what?”
Her blue eyes fix on mine. “Nothing, Stevie.”
I let out a huff of air, defensiveness straightening my spine. “Tell me.”
“What life?” she explodes, and the words hit me like bricks. “You have no life here. You have nothing.”
I rear back, skin bristling, and she finally seems to notice the way what she’s saying is affecting me. Her face changes, slipping into remorse, but I’m already backing up.
“Stevie, I’m sorry,” she says. “I shouldn’t have—”
I hold a hand up, cutting her off. I’m not sure how I’m able to speak over the lump forming in my throat. “I’m leaving. We can talk about this later.”
I’m not angry enough to think we won’t work through this, but I’m hurt enough to not want to talk to her right now, to have her try to explain away what she said. Not when my skin feels stretched too thin and my throat feels raw. My stomach hollow. In fact, all of me feels hollow.
“Stevie, I’m sorry,” Wren repeats, and I can tell she feels guilty, that she regrets what she said. That she wishes she could take it back. But that's the thing about words, once they’re out, they’re impossible to stuff back inside. “Can we please talk?”
I shake my head. “I’m going to go.”
Her chin dips in a nod, and she crosses her arms more tightly around her. This time, not out of anger, but like she’s comforting herself.
But the thing is, when she goes back in through her front door, Holden can comfort her. When I leave, I’m alone.
And that stings more than it usually would.