Chapter 17
Seventeen
Lou
“Only in the darkness can you see the stars.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
We slept under blankets of wool and stardust. The four of us, as once the idea was born, we all wanted a part in it. Grady and I under one blanket, Juliet and Mac under another. Everyone slept chastely, held by something bigger than rushed intimacy.
One star ran, shooting itself quickly across the sky until it was lost to us forever. Secretly, I named her Kindred. Secretly, I hoped to never have to be in those shoes again. Secretly, I dreamed of growing old in Stowaway, Oregon.
I loved every moment of discovering another missed childhood experience. Pierre never had much interest in such things. If I’d told him I wanted to sleep outside, he’d have suggested it was uncouth and uncivilized.
Apparently, hitting the woman he claimed to love was completely civilized. I never did understand his rules.
On the other hand, Grady isn’t only comfortable with my whims; he actively encourages them.
This morning, Juliet woke with a somber smile. Whether for me, Mac, or herself, I’m unsure. She stayed quiet and closed-lipped, keeping her thoughts to herself, until it came time for her to drive away.
“Keep me updated every step of the way,” she’d said before leaving. “If you need anything, Luke and I have your back. Though, something tells me you’ll have coverage here, too.”
She’d looked over her shoulder at Grady and his family waving from their front yard.
Three sets of eyes on Juliet, one on me.
His stare melts my insides. Not in the way that Pierre did when I first began dating him.
That was addicting in a different way. Like a craving. Like a drug. Like a quick fix.
Grady melts me in an ooey-gooey way. He’s like the first sip of the perfect cup of coffee early in the morning and you know it’s just what you need to make it through the day.
Sleeping in his arms all night was bliss.
Waking up, my face cradled in the crook of his neck, was the most serene wake up I’ve had in my lifetime.
I closed my eyes and wished for time to still.
It didn’t, of course. I realize the only way for those feelings to last is to make a life here.
Grow roots. Settle in. The idea warms me.
Then, all the doubt bombards me. All the questions, the what-ifs.
What if it isn’t different here. What if it’s me?
What if I’m the problem? What if I’m unlovable, or unworthy of love?
After my perfect morning, the afternoon was bleak in my lonely pity party.
There was another email from my mother, claiming she’d never speak to me again if I didn’t call soon.
As if I was giving her the choice. Which I am not, since she was also very clear that I was ungrateful and evil for not contacting Pierre and ending his worry, as well.
Pierre emailed me again. Despite a no contact order. He’s the type to play by his own rules, always.
Are you whoring it up with someone else, now? Is that why you haven’t come home or even called? His dick will never be as good as mine. He’ll never love you like I do. He can’t. Nobody else could love you.
He knows how those words sting. How they linger and fester, from a burn, to a blister, to a long-lasting scar.
Nobody else could love you.
I’ve believed it for so long. But why? What’s wrong with me? I’m too tall. Too skinny. My breasts are on the smaller side. One eye sits farther from my nose than the other. My demeanor tends to the quieter, shier side. Unless I’m too drunk. Then, I’m obnoxious and talk too much.
I’m not sure what my personality is anymore. Whoever I was on the road to becoming was stalled when I met Pierre. Then, I was only his.
Now, I can’t seem to have even an afternoon inside my own head without becoming some morose shell of a human.
Though, I’ve found a lost part of me since living in Irma’s house. I’m baking again, a hobby I missed and love. I’m allowing myself the space and time to simply exist. To have a quiet moment here and there. To sleep in without guilt that I’m being unproductive or lazy.
Lazy bitch.
His voice is so clear, I step outside to let the sound of the rushing waves help chase it away.
It’s late, now, later than I realized. The sun is descending, and soon, it will dip its toe into the sea.
Not long after, she’ll take her evening dive.
If the world were flat, would she be illuminating the deep sea?
I sit on the sand, my toes curling in it, finding the cooler version below the sundried grains.
There’s a breeze that will have my fine strands of hair twirling into little knots that I’ll have to carefully undo later.
It doesn’t matter. The last moments of today’s sunshine on my face make it worth it.
Tiny diamonds sparkle on the water, a trail from the shore to the glowing ball in the sky.
I almost believe I could walk on them, dancing my way to another world.
One without self-disparaging thoughts. Or without abusive ex-boyfriends that haunt the dark recesses of my mind.
“Can we join you?”
I look up from my whirlwind of thoughts to find Maggie and Paige hand in hand, a couple of blankets thrown over the elder’s arm.
“Of course,” I say, happy to have the company. Since I don’t know how to be alone with myself today.
Maggie drapes a blanket around my shoulders before donning one herself.
Paige climbs into my lap, lounging with her face toward the sun and her fingers spinning twists in the ends of my hair.
Maggie smiles at how comfortable the girl is with me, and my heart does that thing it always does when I sense that Paige approves of me.
“It’s going to be a pretty sunset, Lulu,” she says.
“How can you tell?”
“Because the clouds are already pink.” She points south, where the thin strips of clouds are already changing colors in the watercolor sky.
We sit in peaceful silence as the orb dips slowly lower and lower, until she’s blinked out of the sky, and Paige’s happy sighs turn to a soft purring snore.
“She’s wiped out.”
“You seemed to be, too,” Maggie says. “Is everything all right?”
“I think so,” I say. “Just one of those days when the world is too quiet and my head is too loud.”
“It will take time, I imagine. For the other voices to quiet and your own to find her strength again,” she says. “Give it the space it needs.”
That resonates. Because I haven’t wanted to do that.
When I left home, I wanted to push and push until I couldn’t hear my mother’s disapproval of me.
Forcing it to quiet like I was muzzling it with duct tape.
So desperate that I let another voice replace it, and now I’ve been trying to do the same with him.
I can’t muzzle it, though. I need to let it fade.
“I think I needed to hear that.”
“I’m happy to provide,” she says, her hand reaching out to rub my shoulder. “My family is quite taken with you, Lou.”
“It’s mutual,” I say, peering at the small girl whose fingers still sleepily worry at the ends of my hair.
“Do you think you’ll stay in Stowaway after returning to work?” Now, the same worry from Paige’s fingers shines on Maggie’s face. It wasn’t a comfortable question for her to ask, I suspect. A mother, a true mother, never stops concerning herself with her child’s happiness.
My mother never learned to care to begin with.
Or not past the bare minimum, anyhow. What direction would my life have taken if I had a Maggie in it?
Or an Irma. I bet if I’d grown up in a small town like Stowaway, my mother wouldn’t have so easily hid her disdain toward me and motherhood.
Perhaps a neighbor would have made some meaningful difference in my life.
As it was, not a single adult in my childhood showed they cared.
Except for that one teacher in the ninth grade whose eyes lingered longer than I liked, none of them seemed to notice I existed.
I was just another body in a full classroom.
A faceless name on a long list. Someone they had to get through the day with.
Not all of those things changed when I started modeling.
What career would I have chosen if I’d been encouraged to have such ambitions as a child?
What will Paige be, I wonder, as I look down on her innocent face. I’ll encourage her to be whatever she dreams. I’ll foster them, build a nest for them to grow larger in, protect them when others try to tear them down. If she ever needs a warrior to stand by her side, I’ll be one.
“I’d like to,” I finally answer, smoothing the hairs tickling Paige’s face away, not wanting them to wake her from whatever dream is dancing in her head. “It’s the only place I’ve ever been that calls to me.”
“And what does it say?”
“Dig your toes in, Louisa. The ground is solid, the roots deep, the air healing,” I tell her. “Would you…disapprove if I did? I don’t mean to bring them any harm.”
“Oh, you sweet girl,” she says quietly, again rubbing my shoulder. “I don’t mean to lay that on you. Only, I worry about them. The divorce has been harder than I think either of them let on.”
“And you don’t want a strange woman bringing them more turmoil,” I say. “I understand.”
“I don’t think you do, as I’m not explaining myself very well,” she says with a small laugh.
“Every place I’ve been in town, this week, people talk about you.
Or want to talk about you. They want to know more about you, how you are.
They want to know you, the same way Grady and Paige do. The same way I do.”
“I don’t, I mean…why?” I ask, confused, because I don’t find myself interesting. My career is, maybe, but nobody here knows what I do for a living.
“You don’t see what others do,” Maggie says with a soft smile.
“You don’t see how you smile through your dark moments.
Or how you swallow it down so that those around you won’t feel it.
There’s a light about you, Lou. You’re a soft amber glow with burned edges that everyone wants to warm themselves next to. ”