14. June
JUNE
The knock is soft enough for me to almost disregard it as a figment of my imagination, and three glasses of sauvignon blanc. But it sounds again while Meredith excuses herself to the bathroom, and I reluctantly get to my feet.
It takes me a second to register who it is when I open the door.
Sophie, standing there on my porch, bundled in a too-big coat, cheeks pink from the cold. In her hand, balanced like some kind of white flag, is a paper plate with a single slice of chocolate birthday cake wrapped in a bright red napkin.
“Happy birthday,” she says weakly when I don’t say anything.
I lean against the frame, arms crossed. “Wow. You shouldn’t have.”
“It’s,” her expression does something, twists around so she looks all guilty. “Danny’s. We threw him a party at the Shack and I figured, well…”
“Nothing says ‘celebrating my sister’s existence’ like leftovers from a seventeen-year-old’s party.” My tone comes out drier than I mean it, but she doesn’t flinch. If anything, she looks relieved I’m still capable of sarcasm.
“Can I come in?” she asks finally, holding the plate out like a bribe.
I hesitate just long enough for her to notice, then step back. “Sure. Why not. Let’s make it a real party.”
She does, brushing dirt from her boots onto my mat, looking around my living room like she hasn’t been here before. Which is laughable considering she lived here for the first few months of summer.
The silence stretches as we enter the living room. The telltale sign that I have company (in the form of a second half-empty glass of wine) broadcasts an awkward tension between us. Had Sophie really thought I’d be celebrating alone?
I nod toward the couch. “You can sit. If you want.”
“I don’t want to intrude.”
“Mere should be back in a sec,” I shrug as I settle back into my previous perch. Though I’m not entirely convinced of my own words. If Meredith heard Sophie come in, there’s a good chance she’ll hide out in the bathroom just so that we’re forced to talk to each other.
It’s all she’s wanted since Thanksgiving.
We settle on opposite ends of the sofa, the cake exchanging hands between us. Sophie tucks her legs underneath her, looking smaller than usual, younger, though I know she’s been running herself ragged since September. Running the Shack, corralling Trent, keeping everyone else afloat.
I wonder if she’ll judge me for eating the cake with my fingers.
“So,” she says finally, far too casually. “Have you had a nice day? Get anything nice?”
“Another year older,” I pick at some of the frosting. “Mom sent me a gilet.”
It’s an ugly gilet, Meredith and I had a good laugh about it earlier. But with the reminder of Sophie’s half-hearted birthday present getting squished between my fingers, my youngest sister looks more than a little sheepish.
“I’ll have to… er…” she swallows. “Take you out for dinner or something.”
“So we go to dinner together now, do we?”
“June, please. I’m just trying to?—”
“Yeah,” I cut her off without thought. Still needing a moment to brace myself for whatever niceties Sophie’s guilt will make her say next. I know an apology brewing when I see one, and it’s all just very exhausting. I don’t need this feud with Sophie on top of everything else.
I glance toward the hallway. The bathroom door is firmly shut, though I can still see the light on through the crack at the bottom.
“Meredith hiding?” Sophie asks, following my glance.
“Of course.” I snort. “She’s been dying for us to make nice. Probably has her ear pressed to the door right now.”
“June, I need to apologize to you.”
Screw it. I pick up a chunk of cake and unceremoniously shove it into my mouth. It’s sweet, artificial, cloying. But I’d be lying if a small groan didn’t escape me.
She smiles carefully as she watches, tactfully deviating the conversation. “I would have bought a pie, but I still haven’t got the hang of it. Trent’s the star baker, thankfully. Plus, it’s your birthday, not… you know…”
A breakup, I finish for her mentally.
“Yeah, well. Maybe it should be.”
There’s a beat of tense silence that I fill with another sickly sweet bite of cake.
“Have you…” Sophie starts, shifting in her seat. “Is that the plan?”
My sister nervously tucks a strand of blond hair behind her ear, and I’m suddenly struck by how much younger she is than the rest of us. With Trent around, it’s easy to forget she’s not his mother, that she’ll only be thirty come spring.
“To divorce him, I mean,” Sophie clarifies to my silence.
I stare at her a beat longer. “You really want to know?”
“Of course, I do, June.”
And isn’t that just the question of the hour?
“I imagine he’s got enough on his plate right now,” I say, tone sharper than I intend. “I don’t think he’d answer any of my paperwork any time soon.”
It’s meant to shut her up, to make her nod and move on. But Sophie just tilts her head slightly, eyes narrowing like she can see through me. That unnerves me more than I care to admit.
“You don’t want to,” she says gently. Not accusing, not smug. Just… quiet truth.
I scoff, lean back into the couch. “What, now you’re a mind reader?”
Her lips twitch, but she doesn’t bite. “No. But I know you. And I know when you’re hiding behind sarcasm because you’re scared to actually answer the question.”
And maybe it’s because she’s the first to voice it out loud.
Maybe it’s because I’ve been ignoring it, or at least been trying to for so long.
But Sophie is sitting here, legs tucked under her, watching me with that open, unblinking expression of hers, an apology on the tip of her tongue and suddenly…
“I don’t know what to think,” I blurt, and once the words are out, there’s no pulling them back.
“Some days I wake up and I convince myself Ashton set me up, right? That he knew what was happening, that I was just some pawn, an easy mark who didn’t know better.
That’s what we argued in court, that’s what the judge believed.
So it has to be true, and yet… Other days…
” My voice cracks, and I hate it. “Other days, I look at all these articles about him and I just want to scream at whoever is writing them. They don’t know him, he’s…
he’s not like this. He was never like this with me.
He was always just so… but that’s the thing, right?
What if it was all just an act? What if none of it was real? ”
Sophie’s brows knit together, confusion sparking in her eyes, but she doesn’t interrupt.
“I keep going in circles.” The words tumble out faster now, jagged and sharp. “If he’s guilty, then I’m a fool. If he’s innocent, then I’m still a fool, because I didn’t trust him. And all the while, I’m stuck here in this damn house with nothing but my laptop and goddamn stupid Mark and…”
The tears that are never all that far away decide to make an appearance. I swipe at my face angrily. “I hate him for putting me through this. I hate myself for still loving him. I just. Hate. All of it.”
There. It’s out. The ugly, raw, pathetic truth.
Sophie shifts closer, cautiously, like I’m some feral animal that might bolt if she moves too fast. “June…”
“I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” I whisper, even as my chest heaves like I’ve run a marathon.
But that’s a lie too, isn’t it? Because I haven’t been able to talk about this with anyone else.
Not with Mark, not with Meredith. The two people who’ve stuck by me through it all and got me out of the worst position I’ve ever been in.
Admitting to my feelings like this feels like stabbing them in the back.
Sophie’s hand finds mine, gently removing the remains of my cake and placing it on the side. “You’ve been through hell. No one could blame you for being… torn.”
I close my eyes, take a breath. “You don’t have to be nice about this. Sophie, you were furious with me. You had every right to be.”
“I was scared, June. I lashed out because I didn’t know where else to put it.
And I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have piled that on you.
” Her voice wavers, and I crack open my eyes only to be overwhelmed by her earnest expression.
“But I never stopped caring. Not for one second. Even when I was angry, even when I wanted to scream at you. You’re my sister. You’re my June.”
The dam breaks. My chest caves inward, my face crumples, and the sobs finally push past my stubbornness. Months of fear and exhaustion and doubt pour out, unstoppable now that the first crack has split me open.
Sophie doesn’t flinch. She doesn’t recoil. She just pulls me against her, arms strong, chin resting on the crown of my head.
“I’ve got you,” she murmurs, over and over. “I’ve got you.”
I cling to her like I’m drowning, because maybe I am.
But for once, I’m not drowning alone. And for the first time since Ashton was taken away, since the charges, since the endless carousel of lawyers and hearings and sleepless nights and open tabs and frustrating phone calls, I don’t feel so overwhelmingly alone.
The bathroom door creaks open. I lift my head from Sophie’s shoulder, hastily swiping at my damp cheeks, as Meredith slips into the living room with that knowing, cat-that-got-the-cream look plastered across her face.
“Oh, don’t you look pleased with yourself,” I say, voice scratchy but dry enough to carry a bite.
Meredith says nothing as she comes to sit on my other side. Sandwiching me into a sisterly embrace on both fronts, her dark, straight hair temporarily blinding me as we all squeeze onto the couch.
I groan under the weight of two sets of arms restricting my airflow, half-laughing through the remnants of tears. “What part of this made you think I wanted a pile-on?”
“Shut up, June,” Sophie says from somewhere near my chest.
“You two…” Meredith (I think) squeezes harder. “God, I’ve been waiting months for this.”
I roll my eyes, heat creeping up my neck. “Well, congratulations, you got your birthday wish. Stop making it weird.”
“I heard what you said… about Ashton.”
And just like that, my chest tightens again. I sit up straighter, pulling away, and this time my sisters relent. “I knew you were eavesdropping.”
“June…”
“Is there anything you can do?” It’s Sophie who asks, her hand reaching out to play with the section of hair that got caught on her as we separated.
The mindless ministrations do wonders for my poor, broken chest. “If she could see him, maybe she could get a confession out of him. Would the prosecution go for that?”
Meredith sucks on her teeth. “Probably not. You can’t really side-step a no-contact order, even if June agreed to work with the feds.”
My laugh is barely a whisper. “Yeah, not likely.”
“But if she could just talk to him…”
“I know,” Meredith’s eyes have glazed over, the way I now associate with her in ‘work mode’, when she’s thinking through a hundred different scenarios at once. “There has to be something.”
I put a hand on her knee to draw her out of it. “I’ll find out either way when the trial ends, right? It’s just, you know. Torture until then.”
“You deserve happiness too, June,” she says suddenly, firmly, as if declaring it makes it true. “We didn’t get your charges dropped so you could come back here and waste away wondering. You deserve answers. You deserve to look him in the eye again.”
My smile is watery and weak, but I’m so touched by it all, I can’t help it. “You’ve done enough.”
Her arms are suddenly around me again, pulling me close enough to whisper in my ear. “I’ll figure something out. I promise.”
I squeeze her tighter. “Thank you.”
“Happy birthday, June.”