He came closer. “Won’t you say hi?”
I shot up, pumping adrenaline into my veins. “How dare you come here?”
He raised his palms. “I came to say hi.”
Luna barked at him.
“And I want you out of here.” My cheeks were on fire. Pure anger. “While I’m in town, you’re not welcomed here.” I ran into the house and he came after me. “Mama!” I found her in the living room with Aunt Cadence. “Tell him he is not welcomed here. Not while I’m here.”
“Son,” Aunt Cadence started, disappointment washing over her words. “We’ve talked about this.”
“I had to try,” he said.
I pointed to the door. “Out!”
“Please, Luke,” Mama said, low but firm.
For a couple of tense seconds, Luke stood his ground, and Luna, who had followed us inside, growled at him. Then, his wide shoulders slumped, and he dragged his feet out of my house.
“I don’t want him here,” I said, my breathing loud and rapid.
“He’s family, honey. You won’t be able to avoid him,” Mama said.
“If you want me to stay here, he has to stay away.”
“Jess,” Aunt Cadence called me, her voice gentle and careful. I was already shaking my head. “Luke is sorry about the past. I wish you two could talk about it. I wish you could forgive him.”
Blood pumped through my veins. I would explode at any second. “He helped that … that jerk.” My knees gave out, and I leaned against the wall. Mama darted toward me, but I raised my hand to keep her from touching me. I didn’t want her pity. I didn’t want anyone’s pity. “Luke was there. Luke helped him.”
“Honey.” Mama tried holding me, but I slapped her hands away. “Ryan is not—”
“Don’t say his name!” I interrupted her. “Don’t ever say his name again.”
Aunt Cadence held Mama’s hand. “Give the girl some time, Corrine,” she said, pulling Mama back. She gestured to me. “Let her be. It’s her problem. It’s her way of solving things.”
Solving things? Was she really talking about solving things? I wanted everything to explode. Jesus, I shouldn’t have come. I really shouldn’t. How the hell was I supposed to support Mama if everything around me was messed up?
I ran upstairs and entered my room. Without meaning to, I slammed the door on Luna’s face, and she whined.
My heart squeezed and I fell on my knees.
While trying to run away from the problems downstairs, I had encountered another. My bedroom.
The white and lilac wallpaper, the purple comforter and pillows, the notebooks, the sketches on the corkboards on the wall, the photos in the picture frames. Everything was filled with memories, a few good ones, a lot of bad ones.
I crawled to the bookshelf, picked up all the portraits, and shoved them inside a drawer. Then I took down all the sketches of people and friends, balled them in my fist, and threw them in the trash can beside my desk. Next, I ripped down the photos without frames. I hated portraits. I hated pictures. I hated photo albums.
Exhausted, I inched to my bed and lay down, hugging my pillow.
Impossible. It still smelled of him. I buried my nose in it and took a deep breath. Very faint, but it was still there. His scent on my bed.
His scent …
I remembered him opening the window in the middle of the night and crawling in bed with me. The first time he did it, I screamed, thinking it was a burglar or something. He had to hide under my bed when Papa and Jason barged in my bedroom. I lied I had a nightmare, but it was all okay now. As soon as they closed the door behind them, he slipped under my covers and pressed his warm body against mine.
“Sorry,” I whispered, burying my face in his neck and savoring his intoxicating scent.
“That’s okay.” He chuckled. “At least I had time to hide before they got here.”
I laughed, a hand pressed over my mouth to contain the sound. “Sorry.”
He rolled over me, positioning his wonderfully heavy body over mine, pressing against me in the right places. I gasped. “Stop apologizing and kiss me.”
Somehow, I found the strength to pull myself out of that memory. Like I had done on the plane, I pushed it to the back of my mind, but I knew, I just knew, it was going to be harder and harder to keep them away.
I threw the pillow to the floor, hugged my knees to my chest, and cried.
Chapter Four
Jessica
My eyelids would need surgery of some kind to shrink back to their normal size. After crying in the afternoon, I cried again before sleeping.
I washed my face several times with cold water, hoping it would do the trick. Then I put on gray yoga pants, a white tank top, white running shoes, pulled my hair into a tight ponytail, and descended the stairs.
Mama was in the kitchen, baking two cakes and some butter cookies, Luna at her feet.
I leaned in the doorway. “Did you open a bakery again?”
Luna ran to me and circled my legs.
“Hi, honey.” Mama turned, wearing a sweet smile, with her hand filled with dough. “Good morning. I hope you don’t mind preparing your own breakfast. I’m busy.”
I caressed Luna’s ears and walked in.
“I can see that.” I grabbed milk from the fridge and a slice of the sweet homemade bread, then sat on the chair at the table in the center of the kitchen. “You didn’t answer. Did you open a bakery again?”
Mama had sold her bakery when I was twelve because she was stressing over it more than enjoying cooking, which was her primary purpose. But Mama never stopped cooking or baking cakes for close friends and family. It was what she liked to do and what she was good at.
“No, but I’ve been accepting more orders than usual.” She pushed hard against the dough. Cakes didn’t need that kind of beating. Perhaps Mama was making more bread. “It helps keep me busy.” I thought I heard a sob coming from her direction. “And I need to do something. I’ll have too much time on my own after …”
She didn’t finish. She didn’t need to.
I stood, approached Mama, turned her around, and embraced her tightly.
Mama resisted crying at first, and then she let it go and sobbed like a child on my shoulder. Luna whined beside us.
“I’m not ready for this,” she whispered. “I’m not ready to say goodbye to your father.” Gently, I pulled away. I empathized with Mama, but not with my father. Not anymore. Not for the last four years. “I’m sorry. I know you resent him, but I honestly hope you can forgive him.” She put her hand over her mouth. “You can’t let him die without forgiving him.”
“Mama,” I started. I didn’t really know what to say. “I can’t forgive someone who doesn’t want to be forgiven.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Did he ever tell you otherwise?”
“No—”
“See.”
“But you know your father. He never says too much.”
“Oh, he does. He said a lot that night.”
Mama washed her hands under the sink faucet. “Oh, honey. If we could go back in time, things would have been different.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think they would.” Because I knew I wouldn’t have acted differently. And one thing led to another, ending with me moving away to live with my grandma in Cleveland and never speaking to my family again. Until now.
“Well.” Mama wiped the tears from her eyes. “We have time. Your classes start again in three months. Until then, you can stay here. I won’t give up hope.”
That made one of us.
***
Ryan
I was late for my community service. Again.
At this rate, I would end up before the judge much earlier than expected. Damn it.