Chapter 3 #2
It’s the way she used to listen to me back when I felt like I didn’t have anyone else, when I felt suffocated and caged and under constant scrutiny by my only remaining parent.
Luna never judged me or made me feel small for the messes I created—she was always there, willing to listen.
Willing to offer advice and support about boys or school or my future.
I tell her about law school, about rooms filled with men who couldn’t be bothered to look my way unless it was to ask for my number.
I show her pictures of my first apartment, the couch I thrifted and the cheap yellow rug that unraveled and spread pieces of thread everywhere.
I tell her about the firm where I eventually got a job, about how I kept my head down and worked so fucking hard for every scrap of success, how even after a handful of big wins in court the men in that office still wouldn’t spare me an ounce of recognition.
I tell her about eventually getting a seat at the table with the partners after I caught an error that saved one of their asses.
How I thought all of the work would eventually help me earn a spot for my own name on the building next to theirs.
How, not for the first time in my life, I let men paint me a pretty picture of my place in their world, and I took it in with eager hands.
I don’t tell her about Tobias or the real reason why I left Miami—it would demolish any chance Kasey and I have at pulling off a sincere engagement.
But I want to. I want to tell her everything, to hear her say I didn’t deserve it, that everything will be all right.
Instead, I tell her Kasey and I reconnected over the holidays.
That I don’t think I ever stopped wondering what it would have been like if I’d never left.
At least that part is true.
Later, after inhaling a brownie and a strawberry cupcake, I feel utterly exhausted.
I’m not sure if it’s the humidity from the storm or the overcast sky, but all I want is to crawl into bed and close my eyes for a nap.
I give Luna another tight squeeze and stuff cash in her cupcake-shaped tip jar before trudging back out to my SUV to finally head home.
It only takes me six minutes to get back to the house I grew up in.
I park along the curb in the front and turn off the ignition, looking up at it through my wet windshield.
It looks like it always has: pristine and unaltered outside of the fresh paint that looks to be only a few months old.
It’s the same color green though, like the leaves of the black walnut trees growing in the backyard.
The trim is a startling white caught in this gray afternoon, the tips of the gabled roof pointed high in the storm-filled sky.
Red rosebushes line the front walkway, pruned and manicured.
I remember being nine or ten and losing control on my roller skates down that walkway, falling so deep in the bushes my dad’s new wife had to pull thorns out from my skin and clothes in the bathroom.
It looked like I’d been attacked by a feral cat.
Dad was more upset I hadn’t minded the flowers, that I’d broken half a dozen branches during the tumble.
They were Gloria’s pride and joy, after all. And Dad worked really hard to keep Gloria happy.
I’ve only been back a week and I already want to run away again, hightail it out of here in the middle of the night.
I used to consider it a work of art, the way I’d silently pop the screen out of my bedroom window and climb out onto the roof before using the trash bins to hold my weight as I carefully shimmied down the gutter’s downspout.
It’s a shame I have nowhere to go—no teenage boys in idling cars with the headlights turned off, waiting for me to jump into the passenger seat so we can jet off to some party, or to a quiet creek in the woods.
Now I’m just a grown woman who ran back home to escape her problems out in the real world, where she swore she’d make it. Where she swore she’d create a life for herself that she could be proud of, standing on her own two feet.
My car chimes to signal another text message. I shut off the ignition to cut off announcement, but the words still come: “New text from Tobias—”
Fucking car. I pull the phone off the mount and grab my purse, pretending I can’t hear the words of Tobias’s latest text. I can’t wait to get up to my room so I can shove the phone beneath my mattress and forget about it for at least the rest of the day.
Dad’s cruiser isn’t parked in the driveway, but I know Gloria’s home—she’s always home. I’m hoping she’s too busy organizing her china to notice me coming in. I’m almost thirty years old, and I refuse to explain myself or my whereabouts to anyone ever again.
I hadn’t even planned on staying back at this house when I got here, but Abbott from the inn tipped my father off that I was back in town as soon as I checked in to the room I booked, which led to the good sheriff showing up to escort me home after shaking the innkeeper’s hand in the lobby.
So fucking embarrassing.
Being treated like a kid again isn’t worth the money saved on accommodations, that’s for damn sure. But it’s not a battle worth fighting right now. The real fight has been getting Kasey on board with this marriage, and based on the way we left things this morning, I think I might finally have him.
I have to admit, this ruse was not something I originally planned.
But after overhearing Georgia Moore whispering in the supermarket about Brooks Bennett losing his wife and it being all her husband’s good friend needed to gain access to the land and finally boot out the Bennetts, I knew it was an opportunity laid at my feet.
A means to an end that will hopefully help us both out with the shitty hands we’ve been dealt.
The front door to the house opens quietly, its hinges likely recently oiled—a big win for me.
I can see all the way through the kitchen window at the back of the house thanks to its open floorplan, and there’s Gloria’s pinned-up curls bobbing in and out of view.
She must be covering her plants from the rain—I don’t know and certainly don’t care.
She’s always babied the hell out of her garden.
I smile in relief, closing the door behind me before hurrying up the stairs on silent feet into the safety of my room.