Chapter 58 ALEX
ALEX
Boston feels strange to me – the familiar sights and well-traveled roads feel foreign. I check into my hotel and order room service, spending the rest of the night in the bathtub with a bottle of wine.
The next morning, I take a rideshare to the house, and when I pull Danny’s keys out of my bag, I’m shaking so hard that I can barely open the door.
The door swings open and walking into the house feels like stepping back into a different version of my life, and it’s so overwhelming that I sprint upstairs for the big guest room, my old childhood bedroom with the Alice in Wonderland murals long since painted over, and I hide in the closet and cry the way I used to when I was a kid.
When Theo calls, I talk to him as I walk through the house, and he helps me keep a handle on my anxiety until I step into the bedroom I shared with Danny. I run to the bathroom and vomit immediately, and when Theo begs me to go back to the hotel, I do.
The next morning, I go to the cemetery near my old house and visit my parents’ graves for the first time since I buried them. They were two miles away for nine years, but I never visited them because I thought they would have hated who I’d let myself become.
I sit on the grass with my coffee and tell them everything that happened after they died, about Danny, about running away, about my life in Astoria, about Theo, about wanting to see them when I was dying, all of it.
I cry on and off for hours as I talk to them, feeling lighter with everything I tell them.
By the time I leave the cemetery, I feel unburdened.
Theo calls as I walk to a nearby restaurant that my mom used to love, and Theo starts to lose his cool when he hears the sounds of cars and people in the background.
He begs me not to walk anywhere alone again, sounding close to a panic attack.
I don’t want to lie to him, but I know he needs to look at me to tell if I’m lying, so I agree.
What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him, in this instance.
***
Going through the house is overwhelming. I never realized how many things Danny and I had, and I have to decide what to do with all of them.
I’ve been in Boston for a few days when Danny’s family realizes I’m there, and his brother David shows up and tells me that if I were a decent person, I would give Danny’s family Danny’s house and Danny’s money.
When I laugh at him and tell him he’s insane, he turns an ugly shade of red and tells me it’s my fault that Danny’s dead, that I’m an ungrateful whore, and that I never deserved him.
I stand in the doorway and watch him try to push me around and manipulate me the way Danny used to, and a savage joy spreads through my body when I tell him to fuck off and slam the door in his face.
David, his aunts, and several of his cousins show up the next day, so I answer the door with one of Danny’s guns, which scares all of them enough that they don’t try to push their way into the house.
The gun is unloaded, which is for the best, because all the rage I suppressed for a decade wells up and I start screaming at them.
I tell them about what Danny did to me in the cabin, what he did to me when I was a kid, everything he’d ever done to me, and I tell them to get away from my house, my parent’s house, that they’ll get fucking nothing, that they can all rot in hell with Danny, and I’ll send them there myself if they show up again.
They’re all so shocked that they don’t say anything before I slam the door in their faces.
I’m so furious when they leave that I destroy anything personal of Danny’s that I can find in the house, anything he loved, anything I can get my hands on.
The house is a fucking wreck by the time I’m done, and so am I.
When Theo calls an hour later, I sob through telling him what happened.
He says he’s proud of me, that he loves me, and then he offers to send Danny’s family copies of the crime scene photos so they can see that Danny got exactly what he deserved.
I laugh and tell him he’s insane, but that I love him and I’ll think about it.
I take myself to a nice dinner afterward and walk around Beacon Hill, soothed by the familiar old, red brick buildings, happy to be a different person than I was the last time I was here.
The next day, I hire cleaners to deal with the absolute mess I made.
While they clean, I spend the day selling all the jewelry and watches at a pawn shop, selling the cars for much less than they’re worth to a used car dealership, and sticking Danny’s motorcycle and all the paperwork out on the street with a FREE sign, mainly because all of it would have pissed Danny off to no end.
I take a break from dealing with everything and go to Cape Cod for a few days, staying in Hyannis, as close to my grandmother’s old house as possible.
I walk along the beach, taking photos of everything to show Theo the beaches I grew up on.
He calls when I’m tide pooling, and I spend the time describing it to him, telling him how much I wish he was with me and that I’d like to bring him out here someday.
It’s the first phone call we have where Theo sounds even remotely calm, and I know it’s because it’s the first call we’ve had where I’m not a nervous wreck.
By the time I head back to Boston, I’m ready to leave, so I hire movers to donate everything in the house that didn’t belong to me before I met Danny. The only things left in the house after that are my books, a few boxes of my keepsakes, some of my parents’ things, and my mother’s paintings.
I stand in the mostly empty house, waiting for the movers to come pack and ship all my things back to Astoria, and I stare at the painting of me and the rabbit. I refused to look at it before now, but it seems different from the painting I looked at before I left Boston.
For the first time in my life, it feels good to look at, because I can finally see all the pain and the joy and the love that my mother put into it.
As the movers take the boxes of my parents’ things downstairs from the attic, they find the fireplace grate with the long spikes tucked away in a corner under a tarp, and I start to cry.
When Theo calls, I tell him we can have a real Christmas when he’s out, with the ham and the grate and the aluminum tree and French toast and whatever other insane bullshit he wants.
He asks if we can skip the life-altering panic attack, and I tell him maybe, but only if he’s good.
He’s quiet for a long moment before he tells me that he likes being good for me, and a small wave of heat courses down my spine for the first time since the day he got acquitted.
I want that back.
I have almost everything else back.
I finally have access to my identity, my past, and my life, but with a few exceptions, like my bank accounts and my keepsakes, I don’t want it.
It’s not mine anymore.
On my last day in Boston, I donate Danny’s entire life insurance policy to a local domestic violence organization, find a realtor to sell the house for me, and go to the cemetery to say goodbye to my parents.
I schedule my flight so I can drive directly from the airport to Salem to see Theo, but I don’t tell him I’m coming.
The second he walks into the visitation room, his face relaxes into relief, and he holds me so tightly I can’t breathe.
“Is this why you didn’t answer the phone this morning? I wish you would have told me, I was freaking out. How was the flight? How are you?” I lean forward over the table and smile, trapping one of his ankles between mine and lacing our fingers together.
“I’m just happy to be home.” He blinks, his face blank for a moment before a broad, crooked smile spreads over his face, filling my chest with warmth.
***
Once my childhood home sells and nothing legally ties me to my old life anymore, I change my name to Alexandria Marie Shearer.
I chose it, and it’s mine.
“It’s so annoying,” I complain to Theo, sipping the piss-poor excuse for coffee the visitation room vending machine serves.
“It’s so much effort to change a name. I have to get a new driver’s license, a new passport, a new social security card, my bank accounts changed over, all of it, and it’s a fuck ton of paperwork.
” He shrugs with one shoulder, his other arm tight around my waist because the guard on duty is less strict and we can sit next to each other.
“That sucks, honey. I don’t remember the process of my last name getting changed, but I was a kid,” he says, sipping his own coffee.
“Yeah, well, I should have changed my last name to Anderson. It would have saved me the trouble of doing it later,” I say, sipping my coffee to hide my smile as Theo’s body goes rigid next to me.
I glance up at him, and his head tilts slightly to the side as he pulls me closer.
He smiles at me slowly, one side of his mouth picking up more than the other, and he’s unable to speak for a minute.
“Um, you don’t have to change your name again,” he says finally, and I raise my eyebrows in surprise.
“Really? I thought you’d be thrilled about that.” He shrugs, trying and failing to seem nonchalant, and I feel his thumb tracing circles on my hip.
“I mean, yeah, but I’m thrilled either way. I want you to be happy, so it’s your choice.” I’m the one who can’t speak for a minute after he says that, and then we get yelled at by the guards because excessive displays of affection are not allowed.
“I fucking hate it here,” he mutters as he lets go of me, shooting the guard a dirty look as I begrudgingly move to the other side of the table.
***
The year passes quickly. I rebuild my life in Astoria in a more permanent way. I’m not hiding here anymore, and everything truly is my choice, so for the first time in my life, I feel like I’m standing on solid ground.