41. Natalie
Natalie
When Luke parks the car outside Juliet’s house, he grabs my hand.
“It will all work out,” he says.
I wish I had as much confidence in myself as he does, but I nod along anyway, hoping it’s true. “I know.”
Cam opens the door a few seconds after we ring the bell. He looks flustered, with his brown hair slightly askew in the front and his green dress shirt hanging open to show the white undershirt beneath.
“Hey, come on in.” He motions for us to enter the house and closes the door behind us. He’s barefoot, and the boys behind him don’t look much better. Levi and Archie are tossing pillows at each other in the living room, shirtless.
At least they have their jeans on.
“Is everyone almost ready for the photos?” I ask slowly, peering around at the mess of socks, shoes, and matching shirts on the carpet. The boys don’t even notice us as they loudly continue their pillow fight.
Cam smooths his hand over his frumpy hair. “Jules isn’t really in a good headspace today. I don’t know.” He shrugs on an exhale. “She hasn’t been doing well the past few days.”
If she’s been struggling with a torrent of emotions like I have, then I know exactly how she feels. Being here in Maple Lake again makes me hopeful for a future with my family, but it’s also been tossing me around like a kite in the wind. Some very rough, harsh, unforgiving wind.
“Should I talk to her?” I ask. I don’t know what I’ll say exactly, but at this point I know we need to hash it out. Nothing will get better until we both try to talk through our frustrations.
I might come out of this with a black eye, or a cat scratch at best. If I’m being completely honest with myself, I’m a little scared.
Cam’s eyes light up. “Would you?”
Luke’s hand presses gently against my back. I feel his strength seep into my skin.
I nod at Cam, unsure what I’ll say. “I can try. We have a lot to work out.”
“She’s upstairs. I’ll keep the boys down here so they don’t bother you.”
Luke’s hand falls away, and he takes my camera bag from my shoulder as I place my foot on the first step toward the bedrooms. I haven’t had a reason to go upstairs before, so heading up the staircase to uncharted territory makes my chest twist into knots.
I wish the knots were cute ribbons, like the ones on kite tails, but the one inside my body is a tangled lump that threatens to squeeze the air from my lungs.
Not cute at all.
My feet reach the landing, and I can already tell which room is Juliet’s without even looking at the other rooms stretching down the hall.
The white door on my right sits ajar, offering me a view of a brown dresser with framed wedding photos arranged on top and a potted snake plant that sits on the floor by the window looking out at the lake below.
I poke my head in, rapping my knuckles softly against the door. I hear sniffling, like Juliet’s been crying, and then she calls out, “Come in.”
When I push the door open, I’m met with a large bed in the center of the room—upon which Dax lies with his head perked as he watches me enter—and a vanity against the far wall.
Jules sits in front of the mirror in a plush white robe that looks old and worn, her hair pulled into a claw clip and a makeup brush in her hand like I’ve interrupted her blush application.
“Oh, it’s you,” she says, not unkindly. Her voice falls tiredly as the carpet muffles the sounds of my footsteps. “I didn’t know you were here yet.”
She doesn’t turn around, only watching me in the reflection of the round mirror before her.
“Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?” I recite. It’s terrible timing to try to be funny, but I want to make her laugh.
She doesn’t.
“We both know that’s always been you,” she points out, swiping the makeup brush across her cheekbones.
“That’s not true,” I say back.
She hums, a dismissal of my words, and I sit on the edge of her bed.
The flowery comforter shines yellow, a bright smack of sunshine that contrasts with the glum mood in the room.
Dax crawls toward me on his belly, pressing his wet black nose into the side of my leg.
I pet the soft white fur behind his neck and scratch under his chin.
“Sorry I wasn’t ready when you got here,” Jules says, speaking to me through the mirror. She puts the blush applicator on the vanity and reaches into a drawer, pulling out a tube of mascara.
“That’s okay. I know family photo days are rough. Everyone’s usually late, so I’m used to it. Plus, you get a pass because you’re my sister.”
Her hands drop to her lap. “No, I don’t mean today. I mean the day you came to Maple Lake.”
I frown. “What do you mean?”
“I wasn’t ready,” she states. She says it so simply, like I should know what she means.
“Ready for what?”
Her eyes leave the mirror, and she turns in her plush cream-colored chair to look at me. “I wasn’t ready for you to come back.”
My brows sink, much like the rock in my stomach. “But I thought you were waiting for me. Isn’t that what you said?”
She bites at her lower lip. “I’ve waited for you all these years, yeah.” She shrugs. “But I lost hope of you coming back and didn’t expect anymore that it would actually happen. I was caught off guard.”
I scan her teary brown eyes. “Do you have to keep your guard up?” I ask softly, wondering if she’ll ever really let it down for me.
Her brown eyes, exactly like our dad’s, search mine in earnest. “I don’t know how to let it down.”
Her sincerity cuts me to the core—honest, raw, letting me in. But it also hurts because I did this to her. I made her unable to trust people, especially those she should have been able to trust the most.
“I meant what I said in my text, Jules. I’m not leaving like I did before,” I say.
“You were right that I don’t live here and that I have to go back to Florida.
That’s where I live and where I work. But I’ll come back to visit all the time.
I’ll call and FaceTime, I’ll even send you emails and postcards, and you’ll be so annoyed by me that you’ll wish I hadn’t come back at all. ”
A choked sound escapes her, and when she smiles, I realize with relief that she’s laughing. Sliding off the bed, I move to her side, kneeling by her chair and taking her hands in mine.
I forge ahead. “I’m sorry my leaving ever made you stay here to wait for me.
I’m sorry I didn’t say goodbye. And I’m so, so sorry I didn’t keep in touch with you or anyone else.
” My voice breaks, and when I feel a tickle on my cheek, I know I’m crying.
“I was stupid, Jules. I was young, and I didn’t see what I had here—that it was all so good.
I felt like Maple Lake was too small, that I was never going to get to see the world if I didn’t grab my one chance to leave.
I know it sounds dumb to someone who loves it here, but I always felt like it was a circus—all the tourists coming to see our home and then leaving again like we weren’t worth staying for.
I felt like this old place would always be a circus, just another tourist trap.
I looked for a way out, and Luke was everything I could have hoped for at the time. ”
I sink back on my heels, my shoulders drooping.
Jules watches me intently as I continue to talk.
“Luke and I have a lot to work through, but we’re doing better.
I can only ask, and hope, that you’ll let me work on this too.
” I point a finger between the two of us.
“All these years I needed my sister more than I knew, like I need you now.”
I think of the nightmares, of being lost with no way home. And for a second I let myself imagine the relief I may have when I’m no longer scared to move forward.
So I tell her about my nightmares. I tell her of how I felt lost and scared every time I went to bed, and I tell her about the therapy I quit going to and the alcohol I used just to fall asleep.
I tell her every dark part of me and hope she can still see the little girl she knew behind the messy shell of myself.
I don’t know what she’ll say or what she’ll think of me, but I don’t hold anything back.
As I talk, Juliet’s eyes glimmer, filling with tears. Moisture spills from them, and I watch her process my story, my reality, praying she’ll let me back into her life.
“I always had this—this feeling,” she says between her moments of weeping, “that I had to be doing something. That I should be helping you somehow. But I had no idea where you were. I felt so helpless, so empty not being able to do anything. I couldn’t even call you … You changed your number.”
“I never meant to make you feel that way,” I say.
“I didn’t leave to intentionally hurt anyone, least of all you.
” I squeeze her hands in mine. “I truly just got scared I might lose Luke, and I was blinded by the anxiety I felt. Clearly, I haven’t made many good choices in my life, but I’m trying to now.
I want to make it all better. I want us to be a family again, to be sisters … and friends. Can you forgive me?”
There’s a moment of silence before Jules takes a deep shaky breath and dives forward, draping her arms around my shoulders. “Yes,” she says into the ends of my hair, hugging me. “I forgive you.”
Like a second skin I’d grown used to wearing, the weights of regret and self-blame shed themselves from my body.
I hug my sister tightly, and our bodies shake with choked sobs as we cry with one another.
Guilt had its ugly grip on me for almost ten years, and it feels better than I could have imagined to finally release the ever-present remorse from the deep caves of my heart where I’ve carried it.
“Thank you,” I whisper, my voice stifled by the collar of her thick bathrobe pressed against my face. “Thank you for letting me back in.”
She nods against my shoulder. “I missed you, baby sister.”
I cry more. And between sobs I can barely get out, “I missed you too.”