Chapter 5
CHELSEA
I took the back stairwell to make sure I didn’t run into my dad and brother.
Just like she promised, Mia was waiting for me in the back parking lot.
She stood next to her car, her red hair done up in a messy bun.
She looked exhausted. But clearly, I looked much worse, because her jaw fell open when she saw me.
She snapped it shut again quickly and put on a smile.
It didn’t matter. I was grateful she was here, no matter what she thought of my appearance.
“Thank you so much, Mia,” I said, giving her a hug. “I owe you one.”
“Of course.” As she moved aside to open the door for me, I was surprised to see she hadn’t come alone.
A fluffy brown dog bounded around in the back seat.
She looked like a chocolate lab, and not fully grown either.
A big puppy. Not that I knew anything about dogs—we could never have them at the staff apartments.
The chef Cass had hired for our restaurant, Jacques, lived there, and was terribly allergic to anything with fur.
Cass said Jacques was irreplaceable, and Reese, our restaurant manager, was always paranoid he was going to quit, so everyone bent over backward to make him happy.
We couldn’t risk a pet in the building, even on different floors, just in case.
The dog opened her mouth and barked, then sat there with her tongue hanging out. I could swear she was smiling at me. My heart swelled, just like it had with the bird. It was ridiculous, but the way the animal looked at me with nothing resembling pity or pain—only joy—made me laugh out loud.
Maybe I was an animal person now.
When I looked back at Mia, she looked quickly away. She’d been staring. And even as she looked back, she was trying not to fix her gaze on my bandage. She pulled her expression into a smile. “You cut your hair!”
“And you got a dog.”
She grimaced. “That’s Lola. Mike’s dog.”
“Mike?”
“The guy I’m seeing.” She blushed, smiling again. “He’s from Greenville.”
Greenville was the next town over, in an adjacent valley.
“I met him the night…” She looked down, her cheeks definitely pink now. When she looked up, her chin was wobbling. “He took me home. But… I should have gone home with you, Chelsea, I’m so sorry…”
“Mia, it wasn’t your fault.”
“But if I’d stayed—”
“You were too drunk to drive, anyway.”
She nodded.
I didn’t actually remember. Only bits and pieces, and what Cass had told me. Mia still looked like she was shouldering all the blame for what happened. As if she had anything to do with it.
“Mia, if I’d gone with you, we might have been the ones to T-bone someone else.”
“I know,” she said quietly. I could tell the thought made her as sick as me. “I haven’t been out since that night. I haven’t even talked to any of the other girls.”
The ones who hadn’t bothered to check in on me like she had.
The dog whimpered and scratched at the glass, bringing me back to the present. Once Eli found out I’d left, he might just throw me over his shoulder. “Should we go?” I asked.
Mia nodded, thankful, it seemed, to have a task.
We got in the car, which smelled like a strange mix of vanilla from the air freshener on the vent and happy puppy. The dog bounded around in the back, dropping into the leg well and then back up onto the seat, whimpering.
“Hey girl,” I said, turning around and scratching her behind the ears.
“Her name is Lola,” Mia said.
Lola gave a little bark, as if in confirmation, and I laughed.
“I like you, Lola.” I was so absorbed in the little puppy, I didn’t realize until Mia had pulled out of the spot that being in a car again after the crash could have potentially been nerve-wracking.
When I’d rushed to Seamus’s with Jude, I’d been so frantic with worry about what Eli was going to do to Seamus, but either the dog, or this runaway act, seemed to have made it a non-issue. I hadn’t had time to overthink it.
As we passed the main parking lot out front, I saw Eli heading toward the main entrance. “Oh shit.” I shrank down in my seat.
Mia grinned, for the first time. “I can’t believe we didn’t hang out in high school,” she said. “You’re doing a perfect impression of me at fifteen.”
Lola barked again.
“Shh!” I said, as if Eli could hear. Then Mia and I both broke out into giggles. It felt good.
“Did he see?” I asked as Lola licked my hand, on Mia’s seat.
I don’t know why it mattered. Eli would know I was gone once he got upstairs, anyway.
“Chelsea, you’re a grown woman,” Mia reminded me. “And we’re out of sight now. He didn’t see us.”
I sat back up in the seat, letting out a breath of relief as Mia turned on the radio.
“So how did you end up looking after this Mike’s dog, anyway? Didn’t you just meet him?”
Mia sighed. “You know how I’m between jobs right now?”
I knew. Mia’d been let go from her last job, working in the office of some insurance company.
It was a job she loudly complained about, and yet didn’t put in any effort to go out and find something new.
Her main focus, like mine up until a week ago, had been going out and partying.
Forgetting about life rather than living it.
“Well, he works full time, and this puppy needs full-time attention. So he asked and… I said yes.”
I tried not to cringe. But Mia’s face was on the road, anyway.
One thing I never had a problem with was setting boundaries with the men I dated. Mom had always drilled into me and my sister that we never had to put up with bad behavior from men. She’d told us once, before she’d gotten pregnant with Cass and Eli, that she and Dad had separated.
“I was madly in love with your father,” she’d said. “But he was nervous about starting a family. He started acting like he wasn’t sure he wanted to commit.”
Mom told him she was leaving him. They’d split up for six months so he could see what life was like on a different path. “If we both decided we wanted to be together again after that,” she’d said, “we’d get back together. But only if he was all in.”
Dad had hated the idea. When he recounted it, he always said he never wanted to see what a different life was like.
He was just nervous. A young man scared to become a father, as his own father hadn’t been the greatest. He’d begged her to reconsider right away, but she’d stayed firm, even kicking him out of the apartment they shared.
It was family lore at this point. Six months they stayed apart.
They even dated other people—on Mom’s insistence.
Dad kept trying to get back together sooner, but Mom held strong.
We all knew the story after that. By the time the six months were over, Dad was back at her door with a giant box.
Not a gift, he said, but a promise. It was a crib, which he’d proceeded to carry straight into their room and assemble before even saying a word.
He then promised her not only did he want kids, he wanted to be a stay-at-home father.
They’d bought the Rolling Hills not long after that.
I knew how to stand my ground with men. My problem was, I never wanted to stay with them.
My longest relationship, which ended only a month earlier, had been three months.
And it was running on fumes for the last two.
The thing with relationships was you were supposed to open yourself up.
Make yourself vulnerable. But I didn’t know how to do that, and as a result, I never connected with any of the guys I dated. At least not more than physically.
Mia was going on about Mike, but then Lola barked and she sighed. “Chels, I don’t know the first thing about dogs.”
“Why does he even have one if he can’t look after it?”
“His brother bought her for his girlfriend, and then she broke up with him! Said something about him trying to buy her love, I don’t know. Anyway, she’s not puppy trained or anything and he can’t leave her at home all day while he’s at work. But I have no idea what to do with a flipping dog!”
I didn’t have any dogs in my life, but when I looked back at Lola once more, she seemed to smile at me, her eyes full of hope. She wagged her tail so hard her whole little body shook, and I felt a swell in my chest. “Let me sit with her.”
Mia frowned. “You want to sit in the back?”
“Yes, pull over.”
After I hopped out and crawled into the backseat, Mia took off again, talking now about Mike and how amazing he was. Even though I felt like he was taking advantage of her generosity with this dog in a big way, I smiled and nodded.
But I was only half listening. As soon as I’d gotten into the back, Lola had jumped onto my lap. She was big—not full-grown but still good-sized and heavy—and she now stood with her hind legs in the wheel well, her paws on my chest, and was aggressively licking my exposed cheek.
I laughed. Mia had paused in her anxious chatter, so I said, “She’s so cute!”
Mia nodded. “I guess.” She was clearly angsty about her boyfriend situation. I probably should have said some words of encouragement, but honestly, I didn’t have any.
The puppy licked me again, then yapped loudly in my face.
She was more than cute. She was perfect.
Such unadulterated, unconditional joy. I’d never really been one for love at first sight—or even dogs.
I couldn’t sort out how else to explain this blooming in my heart at the way she was snuggling up to me.
After a few minutes, we pulled up to a red light. While Mia continued on about how great Mike was, how handsome and how good in bed, Lola went for my cheek once more. I turned my face sideways, laughing.
My eyes landed on a girl in the backseat of the car next to us.
She was maybe four or five years old, with pigtails and a pink sweater.
She was staring at me and Lola. I smiled at her, like I always did with young children.
But she didn’t smile back. It was only then that I realized she wasn’t staring at the puppy, or my smile.
She was staring at me, her eyes not bright, but wide.
She was scared.
My stomach dropped. The mom, in the passenger seat, said something to her daughter without looking at her, and I could tell that it was because the daughter said nothing—she was frozen—that the Mom looked my way.
She said something—snapped maybe—at her daughter.
Don’t stare. It’s rude.
My throat tightened.
I looked down, my throat burning.
“Anyway,” Mia said as the light turned green, “It’s good timing, except this dog needs so much attention I barely have any time for myself.
” Mia went on about what I’d missed with all our friends, who weren’t really my friends.
I’d seen a few brief mentions of me on social media, followed by the latest gossip reposts.
But no one had texted or called, except Mia.
A heaviness sunk over me, pulling me like a weight underwater. The only thing keeping me from drowning was Lola, her warm body now curled against my chest as if she knew I needed the comfort. Don’t cry. Not now.
It was only when I realized we’d already crossed the bridge from town and were heading up toward the Rolling Hills that I remembered I hadn’t wanted to go home yet.
But it was too late now. Mia had pulled over and was looking at me expectantly.
I gave Lola one last stroke, wishing I could keep her with me. Instead, I kissed her on the top of her head and lay her on the seat.
“I’ll call you, okay?” I told Mia as I got out of the car.
“Want me to help you upstairs?”
I shook my head. “I’ll be fine. Thank you again.”
After she drove away, I stood for a moment in front of the door, my keys in hand.
That little girl’s face flashed before me, then my nephew’s. Eli crying in the mirror, and my dad, sobbing by my bedside when he thought I was asleep.
Then I saw one face, unbothered by mine. One person who talked to me like I was just… me, and not some broken, ruined version of me.
As if driven by something other than my own conscience, I turned and went to my car, parked in the corner of the little lot.
I’d just gotten the car turned on when there was a knock on the window.
I shrieked, my heart jumping.
Griffin, my other brother, holding a trash bag in his giant hand. I remembered he’d been here cleaning out my place.
He looked like a mountain man with his big barrel body, reddish hair, and ruddy, under-shaven face. Griffin was the surly one. The one who acted like he didn’t care much for people’s feelings. Not in a bad way, but in a never-beat-around-the-bush kind of way.
He didn’t look sorry he’d startled me.
I rolled down the window.
“What do you want me to tell them?” he asked.
Relief ran over me. Of all my siblings, Griff knew what it meant to want to be alone.
While Eli, and Cass, and I lived in the staff apartments here, and Jude in a rented mansion in the hills, Griff lived in an austere cabin in the woods.
He was a part-owner in the hotel and came to the most important meetings if he was in town, but didn’t work there.
He disappeared for long periods of time, and none of us knew where he went until he called us on crackling phone lines from the other side of the world.
I considered. Then I landed on the truth. “Tell them I just needed a bit of time alone.”
He stood there a moment longer. He wasn’t hesitating, I knew. He was assessing. Finally, he said, “Don’t do anything stupid, Chelsea.”
I didn’t say yes or no to that, mostly because I didn’t know whether what I was planning to do was smart or stupid. What I did know was Griff could easily stop me if he wanted to. But he didn’t. And I loved him for it. “Thanks, Griff.”
He grunted, and I backed out of the lot, going to the only place I could think of where I might be able to breathe.