Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
TWO THANKSGIVINGS AGO
I could always tell Katherine Rosenhoth wished her golden boy had married Allissa Lindale instead of me—all her underhanded remarks made it abundantly clear. But now that I’ve met Allissa for myself, I can see exactly why.
As I set elegant gold-trimmed porcelain bowls on each matching plate, I linger at the dining table, a voyeur studying Charlie and his former high school sweetheart talking in the other room.
She’s obnoxiously tiny next to him, with a chic auburn bob, French-manicured hands, and a dainty pearl necklace that’s probably a family heirloom.
Her career in medical sales is far more practical than my pipe dream of dancing, she goes antiquing for fun on the weekends, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she has a standing volunteer date at a local animal shelter or hospital for sick kids.
She would’ve been the perfect trophy wife to match his perfect trophy life. I duck my head to hide my smirk. Too bad my husband has a thing for girls who bite.
Katherine glides in from the kitchen with yet another stack of matching dinnerware—bread plates. Placing one just so, she clicks her tongue. “Winona, I’ve been meaning to ask you, how’s dance? Charlie mentioned you had an injury?”
“Yes, labral tear. I landed wrong last month.” I force a polite smile, knowing it’s what she wants from me. “Doctor said it should heal up fine with a few weeks rest and PT.”
“What a shame.” She sets down the last plate then tweaks a dahlia stem in her stunning fall-toned centerpiece arrangement. “You were beautiful on stage. But if you’re being forced to take a break anyways, it might not be a bad time to work on grandchildren, hm?”
I’m shocked she waited so long to broach the subject. Inviting the Lindales to Thanksgiving at the last minute after their travel plans were thwarted must’ve thrown her off. But before I can answer with one of my rotating responses, Charlie swoops in, arm sliding around my waist.
“Kids? Already?” He sips his wine, eyes rolling.
“It’s nearly been four years since you got married,” Katherine says. Even all these years later, Katherine still scowls at the word. She’ll never forgive me for stealing her eldest’s wedding day right out from under her—and her chance to do the florals.
“Is it a crime to want to remind myself what it feels like to breathe now that grad school’s over?” His fingertips arc a path over my hip. “And Win’s still job searching. We’ve got plenty of time, Mom.”
Katherine’s smile is pure plastic. “Right, of course. Sometimes I forget how young you both are. The wedding just happened so fast.” She throws a breezy chuckle over her shoulder as she slinks back into the kitchen.
My hands tighten into fists at my side as I mutter, “She hates me.”
Charlie kisses my forehead. “She just doesn’t know you like I do.
Ignore her.” He sets his glass on the table and cups my jaw, thumb stroking my cheek.
“You graduated. I finally got my masters—my dream job. We bought a house!” He laughs.
“Life is really damn good, Winnie. Wouldn’t change it for a thing, no matter what my mom says. ”
I bite back the reminder that his parents helped us with the downpayment for said house, and Katherine referred to it as “the money we’d set aside for a wedding” at least four separate times during the closing process. Charlie’s right. Life is really damn good.
Thanksgiving dinner is merely survivable.
Much to my dismay, Allissa earns a few genuine laughs from me, but Charlie’s dad remarks how interesting my sweet potato casserole is after he takes a bite, and when I cut a slice of cherry pie Katherine reminds me that without dance to keep me trim it’ll catch up quicker than I realize.
The group shifts to the living room, crowding around the football game on TV, as Charlie’s younger brothers clear the table.
Charlie disappears for a refill on his wine, and when he doesn’t return right away, I get up to see what’s distracting him.
I offer to take the last stack of dirty dishes for Max and Luke, but as I stride into the kitchen, I don’t see Charlie.
But I hear him, muffled and tense from behind the half-closed door of the laundry room.
Katherine’s voice bleeds through next. I freeze.
“—so private. Closed off. I just never pictured you with someone like Winona.” My chest pinches as I freeze in the middle of the kitchen. “I thought you’d find someone gentler. Like Allissa.”
I pull my bottom lip between my teeth, waiting for Charlie to speak. To defend me. To say anything at all.
“It’s not that I don’t like her,” Katherine continues, “she’s just very—”
“That’s my wife you’re talking about,” Charlie warns, low and growly. My shoulders sag with relief.
“We don’t even know her family,” Katherine hisses. “She never talks about them. Don’t you think that’s strange? You’ve never even met her parents, have you?”
“I don’t see why that matters—”
“Family is everything, Charlie. Where we come from dictates where we go.”
It’s the thing I’ve feared since I was old enough to see the moth-eaten holes in the cloth I’d been cut from.
My family name is a stain I’ll never wash out.
I flex my fingers wide, the thin gold band on my ring finger reflecting the light back to me—the thread that ties Charlie to a life living with all my baggage.
Even his mom sees the burden and she doesn’t even know me.
I set the dishes in the sink as quietly as possible and dash out of the kitchen. But the world tilts sideways when a rare text from my mother comes through.
Mom
River took too many pills. Maybe on purpose. Ambulance here. Thought u should know
Time stills. My stomach hollows as I read it over and over.
Maybe on purpose? My baby brother?
My hands are shaking but all my thoughts funnel into a singular, steady vision: River.
I’m well into Oklahoma by the time Charlie gets home from his parents’ house and doesn’t find me laid up in bed with a migraine like I told him I would be and instead finds the note I left.
Family emergency. Headed to Kansas.
I send all his calls to voicemail and keep my foot on the gas.
Keep begging whoever will listen that I’m not too late.
It’s 1:52 in the morning when I pull up the gravel driveway I haven’t seen in years. An hour ago, Mom texted me a single word: Home. Dad’s truck is gone; Patrick’s beloved Tacoma is blanketed in leaves. They still leave the front door unlocked.
I walk right into a time capsule. The same knock-off oriental rug Mom bought at a garage sale; same framed retro movie posters hung haphazardly on the wood paneled wall; same glut of houseplants, magazines, DVDs.
And of course, my mother, still curled beneath her favorite quilt on the worn buffalo check couch with an empty wine glass on the coffee table, as if she hasn’t moved since I left.
She stares at me like I’m a ghost. “What’re you doing here?”
“Where’s River?”
“Sleeping. He’s fine. You didn’t have to drive all the way out here.” She waves me off. “Although, it’s nice of you to show your face finally. Nice to know it’s not me you’re willing to come visit, but your brother.”
Years ago, I would’ve said anything to placate her. Now, I fight the urge to scream. To dare her to care about someone besides herself for once.
“He took pills, Mom.”
“You know, we named him after this one.” Avoiding my scrutiny, she turns up the TV and I recognize the music instantly. It’s River Phoenix in Running On Empty, the Juilliard audition scene. “Can you believe he actually learned to play for this role?”
I shrink to nothing under her indifference. Exactly how she likes me. Invisible. A shadow who will bend to her will.
“If you’re going to stand there doing nothing, at least make yourself useful. The floors need mopping in the kitchen, Winnie Jean.”
The name I hated as a girl because I wished I could be someone else. The name my husband helped me reclaim as something good. It sounds vile on her tongue. Revulsion curls my lip and I snap.
“You really think he’s fine? You called an ambulance, Mom!”
“He was trying to get high! It was an accident!” She jerks up on the couch. “That’s what he said. Stole my Ambien. Took too much—”
“How much?”
She falters. “Well, all of it—”
“And you just accepted it when he said he didn’t mean to? Didn’t question it?”
Of course she didn’t. I see it written all over her twisted expression: the truth is so much harder to confront than it is to convince herself everything’s fine.
She shakes her head. “It’s just a drug problem. Like Pat.”
I bark a humorless laugh. “And you think that’s okay? Do you even hear yourself when you talk?”
She rises, anger punching between her brows. “Who are you, assuming you know anything about what goes on here? You’ve been gone. For years.”
My spine stiffens in defense. I hate how much I look like her.
“Have you heard Patrick’s been in county for six months? One too many DUIs. What about how your father left me? He’s living in Kansas City now. Did you know that, Winnie Jean? Did you know any of that?”
I stare at her, reflecting back the brick wall that she is. I refuse to let her feed off my shock, my guilt, the way it churns in my stomach. This is not what I came here for. I’m here for my brother. Wordlessly, I cross to the hallway, not giving her another crumb.
“Welcome home, Winnie Jean,” she spits after me. “So nice to see you, darlin’.”
River’s bedroom door creaks as I inch it open. Everything’s cast in aquamarine, bathed in the light from his lava lamp. He’s curled on his side in bed, the snipped hospital bracelet on his night stand.
“Winona?” he mumbles, rubbing his eye.
“Hey.” The phone calls and video chats don’t do justice to how much he’s grown since I last saw him, how deep his voice is now. It hurts, acknowledging how much I’ve missed.
“What are you doing here?”
“Missed you is all,” I say thickly. “Room for one more?”