Baby, Be My Last: The Fairfields | Book Three

by Lennox, Piper

  It’s probably the pettiest thing I’ve ever seen in my life: rotting, moss-covered fence posts buried in the creek bed, strung together with rusted chicken wire, over a feud none of us were even alive to take part in. I’m not sure any of us even know what it was about.

  But the fence still stands, simply because no one’s bothered to take it down.

  Arrow splashes into a shallow spot and drinks, then runs back to me before shaking off. I spit the creek water onto the leaves beside us and attempt to shield myself. “Ugh, come on!” He blinks up at me, tail whirring and flinging the last bit all over the bank.

  “Thanks,” I say sarcastically. His tail just wags faster.

  We circle back to the house. Arrow steals a stick I drop when I grab some logs from the bin, then barrels through the door with it when I try and get it back. “Arrow,” I call, “drop it.”

  He stares at me, plops onto the heating grate down the hall, and starts gnawing the stick like it’s his kill. I sigh.

  “Fine, keep it.” I’ll have to pick every last sliver out of the grate and floorboards before we leave, but he looks so content and proud of himself, I don’t have the heart to tell him no.

  I hurry the rest of the wood into the living room and stack it the way my grandpa taught me. There’s only a little paper left in the recycling bin, but it’s enough to get the fire going before Camille wakes up again. She rubs her eyes with her palms and thanks me when I pass her clothes to her, one piece at a time as I find them in the blankets. When I hold out her underwear, she blushes.

  I slide off my shoes and sit with her. “Last night was....” Now I’m the one at a loss for words, sentence ending in a long exhale and smile. Camille smiles, too.

  “Yeah,” she says, as I put my hand over hers. “It was.”

  “Glad you made time to date me, after all?”

  She elbows me, but gets quiet as the fire grows, the crackling filling the room just like last night.

  “I don’t know why I thought I wouldn’t have time,” she says softly. She picks at some skin on her lip, then wets it, adding, “I mean, I didn’t have time, but I thought...that was just the way my life had to be. That it wasn’t a choice. And that it was permanent.” She shakes her head, brow creasing. “But it wasn’t. It was never supposed to be permanent. But when my parents started doing better and didn’t need me, it was like—like that scared me, or something.”

  “You weren’t used to it,” I offer.

  “I wasn’t.” She smiles again, more to herself than me. “Once I let myself believe they were doing better, needing me less...I saw that it had been happening for a lot longer, already. Before you and I even met. Dad got that raise this past summer, which helped. And Mom got a new job, something full-time. Guess I should have seen it coming.” She pushes her hair back with both hands and sighs. “She kept telling me, ‘We’ll catch up, this isn’t forever.’ Every time I gave her some money, she’d say that. And I…stopped believing it, I guess.”

  “That’s good, though, right? That they’re back on their feet.”

  “It’s great,” she says. “She’s started acting like herself again. Completely. And she and dad are getting along better, too.” Camille pauses. “She hated taking money from me.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t them not needing you that scared you,” I tell her.

  “What else would it be?”

  “Things getting better. You told me once that every time life felt like it was going right again, when you were a kid, your mom’s cancer came back.” Her earring is turned upside-down; I right it. “Maybe you thought, on some level, if you took care of everything and life stayed chaotic...your mom wouldn’t get sick again.”

  I see the line in her brow smooth as she nods.

  “I think you’re right.” She rests her head on my chest. “Which is dumb, that I thought that. I know it wasn’t working or cleaning the house that caused her cancer. It wasn’t life feeling normal again that did it. It just happened.”

  “I didn’t say it made sense—just that it scared you.” When she looks up at me, our faces so close I can’t help but remember last night, I add, “The things that scare us most don’t always make sense, because we don’t really think them. We just feel them.”

  “Maybe that’s why I still can’t believe they’re doing fine without me,” she mutters, and laughs quietly when I do.

  “You liked being needed. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

  “Yeah.” Camille places her head back on my chest. “But I like this more. Before, it was like all three of us lived for work and bills. Or around the cancer, technically. Now it feels like...like my life is mine again.”

  “I feel like that, too.” She looks at me again, so I explain, “Not exactly like that, because I’ve never been through what you and your family have. I just mean the ‘life being yours’ part, when things feel like they’re back in your control. For a long time, I thought my bad luck would follow me everywhere.”

  “You?” she smirks. “Bad luck?”

  “No, I’m serious. It’s nothing catastrophic. Just shitty stuff that happens, every time....”

  She waits. “Every time...life starts going right?”

  “Exactly.” I push my hair off my face and stare at the ceiling, trying to word it right. She isn’t the first person to doubt me on this. “Everyone thinks being a Fairfield must be amazing. You get all these opportunities, respect, money—but for me, it wasn’t like that. I got a few good things out of it, like my first job, but I lost a lot of opportunities, too, because I wasn’t ‘Fairfield enough.’” I pause. “Like my dad, or a normal family. I didn’t have that. And I didn’t have many friends. A lot of kids hated me just because of my name. Most people thought I was lying about it altogether, which was worse.”

  Camille pushes off my chest and sits up, wrapping her arms around her knees. “I’m sorry for how I treated you, when I found out.”

  “Trust me, I don’t blame you. After getting to know Tim, I see why the Fairfields have the reputation they do.”

  “If it helps, I stopped thinking of you as one of ‘those’ Fairfields...pretty much right away. You’re different.” She looks back at me. “I know you didn’t get the answers you wanted, and you didn’t get to reconnect with your dad like you hoped. But you coming to the city that week.... I’m still glad it happened.”

  “I am, too. It feels like I’ve finally caught some good luck. With you.”

  We stay there like that for a moment, listening to the fire again. Outside, the weather has returned to its season-appropriate conditions; wind shakes the bare dogwood by the porch.

  “Thank you,” she whispers. “For being my first.”

  I kiss her cheek when she turns. “Thank you for letting me.”

  My fingers catch on something in her hair. I look, then pick it out carefully while she waits. It’s a piece of bark, from the logs I brought in for the fire.

  “A souvenir,” I tell her.

  “Or a good luck charm,” she smiles, closing her hand around it when I pass it to her.

  20

  Silas insists on cooking breakfast for me. We compromise: I make the coffee while he starts on the bacon and scrambled eggs. Arrow plants himself by the stove to beg in his usual lazy way, occasionally tapping Silas’s bare foot with his paw and whimpering, which promptly makes Silas cave.

  “If you keep feeding him bacon when you think I’m not looking, he’s going to have a heart attack.”

  Silas throws another scrap into the air, ordering Arrow to catch it. He lets it hit him in the face before licking it off the tile.

  “Last piece, I promise,” Silas tells me. “Besides, that was only two strips total. Dogs are here for a good time, not a long time.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” I kneel between them and scratch Arrow’s chest. He lifts his head to slobber bacon breath over my chin. “Before yesterday, actually, I thought his time was almost up.”

  Silas holds up a pot lid like a shield when some
bacon pops. “Why? He’s thirteen. Most of my grandma’s dogs made it to fifteen. We actually had one shepherd mix when I was little that lived until he was seventeen. All in pretty good shape, too, right up to their last few months.” He nods at Arrow, who perks up in the hopes of getting slapped with more bacon. “Other than his bum hip and some gray fur, you can’t tell how old Arrow is. I’ve seen dogs on their way out, and that isn’t it. They stop playing, don’t eat as much, just flop around the house all day—”

  “Yeah, well, until yesterday, that’s all Arrow did. So I just figured...he’d be gone soon.” I don’t mean to let my voice quiet on “gone.” Silas catches it, judging by the glance he gives me.

  “This guy,” he says, flinging one last shred of bacon at Arrow with the spatula; he practically knocks me down trying to chase it across the floor, “could easily stick around another two, three years. As long as we keep giving him fun shit to chase and fields to romp in.”

  “And bacon?” I joke, but Silas nods solemnly.

  “And bacon.”

  My eye roll is lost on him. “He does love it here. Much as I hate admitting it, you were right: he’s a farm dog.”

  I lean on the sink, then push myself up to look out the window. Silas said his family has sold pieces of it throughout the years, but it’s hard to imagine the houses in the distance wiped clean, this land rolling on even farther than it already does.

  “It’s gorgeous out here.”

  Silas taps the spatula on the pan. “That it is.”

  “Do you ever miss it?”

  “I never lived here,” he explains, shaking out his hand when the grease catches him, “but yeah, sometimes. I miss being a kid and spending the night, playing with the dogs.... Every Christmas, Mom and I would stay here for two or three days straight. My grandpa would build a fire and we’d sing carols or read books after dark, then Grandma and Mom would cook this giant breakfast, every morning.”

  I smile, refilling my mug at the coffee pot and carrying it to the table. “Sounds like your luck wasn’t always bad.”

  “Nah,” he smiles, “I had some good luck, too.” He points the spatula to the window. “Mom and I lived in a house not too far from here.”

  “Family land?”

  “Once upon a time,” he nods, “but the McIntyres sold most of it in the thirties. No, the neighborhood was actually for low-income families. Tiny houses, tiny plots. It wasn’t bad, believe it or not. I didn’t have to be embarrassed about riding my bike to the store with a pocket of food stamps, because all the kids I knew had to do the same thing.”

  “Still,” I say, sitting back in my seat, “that must have been hard, just you and your mom all those years. Why didn’t you guys move in here?”

  Silas glances at me, hesitating. He turns back to the stove and shrugs. “Pride, I guess, when you get right down to it. My mom didn’t want her parents helping her. Tim would have been one thing, because...he was supposed to. But anything else was charity, in her eyes.”

  My spoon clinks too loudly as I stir an extra scoop of sugar into my coffee, eyeing him carefully for any signs of tension. I don’t want to make him angry or upset him—nothing to ruin these last eighteen hours—but I also can’t help but ask, “Have you talked to her yet?”

  “Not yet. But I will.” He plates our food and carries it to the table, slinging mine to me like we’re in a diner. While he digs some silverware from a drawer, he adds, “I feel okay about it, now. I’ve been dreading it for weeks, just making small talk with her and pretending everything is okay, but now...I don’t know. I think I can do it. Things feels different.”

  “Maybe it’s just you,” I joke, but Silas looks up and smiles.

  “Yeah,” he says. “I think you’re right.”

  He sets down his fork and reaches for my hand, then stands to kiss me, holding my face. There’s something so powerful, so sure in his kiss, that I know what happened between us last night was so much more than “going all the way.”

  We’re both different. The rest of the world might be exactly the same as when we left it—but behind these doors, in just a few hours, we changed.

  We might be the only ones who ever see it. But, then again, that might be all that matters.

  * * *

  “Details. ASAP.”

  I glance at Brynn’s text without answering. When she heard I was going to Filigree this weekend, she’d predicted exactly this: me returning home without my virginity, and with a boyfriend. I’d secretly hoped she was right—but that doesn’t mean I’m ready to give her the satisfaction of gloating, just yet. Spilling the details can wait.

  “Your folks having a yard sale, or something?” Silas asks, when he turns onto my street. My parents are on the lawn, talking to the driver of a haulaway truck. Two college kids secure something with tie-downs in the back.

  “They didn’t tell me about it.” I squint through the streaks in the windshield. “The tenant who rented our basement just moved out, though. Maybe he left some stuff behind.”

  Silas nods as I say this, and I wish I could believe it as easily as he does. It is a rational explanation, and the most likely one. Dad grumbled for days about the trash, busted furniture, and unwanted junk Jeff left scattered in the basement.

  Still, my heart pumps like it’s caught in a clamp, every beat shallow. Something about the furniture in the truck looks familiar.

  When Silas lurches to a stop across the street, I figure out why: they’re hauling our entire living room set into the yard.

  “Shit,” I breathe, rushing to undo my belt.

  “Repo?” Silas ventures.

  “No, our stuff is all paid for.”

  “Maybe they bought new stuff,” he says slowly, in a tone that translates to, “Don’t panic: it might be okay.”

  I take a breath and nod. This also makes sense: more money is coming in, our old furniture was old, and Dad has a penchant for haggling showroom pieces down to pennies on the dollar.

  “You go,” he says, taking the tangled leash from me. “I’ll bring Arrow inside.”

  I thank him and try to exit the car gracefully. Instead, I stumble out and rush across the street, nearly getting clipped by Mrs. Mercier in the process.

  Mom jumps when she sees me. “Cami, what are you doing here? I thought you said you’d be gone all weekend.”

  “I said I might,” I correct, a little too sharply. “Roz asked me to pick up her shift this evening.” I look around; there’s a lot more stuff in the yard than I saw when we arrived. “What’s going on?”

  “We’re just clearing some things out of the house. Making some breathing room.” She smiles, but there’s a tightness to it that kicks my heartbeat up again.

  “Mom.” I take her elbow and turn her away from the truck. “Tell me.”

  She smiles again. Her hands rub my shoulders, up and down, and the gesture hits me like a truck. I take a step back from her.

  “Are you.... Is it back?” I whisper. My voice still breaks.

  “No! Oh, honey,” she laughs, pulling me into a hug, “no, no, I’m fine.”

  “Okay.” I take a minute just to lean into her, a minute to let myself be happy with at least this much, no matter what else is happening around us. When we pull apart, I see Silas at the edge of the yard with Arrow, who’s hamming it up in a shower of attention from one of the haulers. “So what is going on?”

  Mom purses her lips. Her palms stretch toward me, as though she’s trying to explain before I can have a meltdown, so I brace myself.

  “Your dad and I,” she says, voice measured, “are downsizing.”

  “Downsizing,” I repeat, the word tasting brassy and foreign. I know what it means, but in the context of my parents and our home, I can’t make sense of it. “What, like...culling down the stuff in the house? Moving to a smaller one?”

  “Both, kind of.” She pauses, signaling something to one of the haulers; he’s hefting two of our dining chairs across the lawn, the ones with the broken legs Dad
never got around to fixing. When she looks back at me, she takes a deep breath, but it isn’t for her benefit: she motions with her hands like she’s instructing me to take one. I just fold my arms and wait.

  She blinks twice and levels her eyes with mine. “We’ve filed for bankruptcy.”

  “What?” My arms tighten against myself. “Wh—When did you decide this? Why didn’t you tell me? I thought things were okay now, why—”

  “Things are okay. This is a good thing. I know you can’t see that right now, but it is.”

  “A good thing? Mom, do you even know how bankruptcy works?”

  Her face hardens. “Yes, Camille. I’m not stupid. And you’re my child. So as upset as you might feel right now, that doesn’t give you the right to disrespect me.”

  I push my hair back and fight to keep the tears contained. Silas is watching, and I know if I cry, he’ll walk over here. And if he walks over here, the slightest touch from him will undo me. I’ll fall on this grass and never stop crying.

  “But—but Mom, our house. You and Dad love this place. How did you even get him to agree to this? He swore he’d never file.”

  “We do love this house,” she agrees, and only now do I see any real sadness cross her face. “It’s been good to us. We’ve been here since the week we got engaged, and...and I used to think we’d be here until we died. Now I don’t.” She shrugs, like it’s that simple. “Our priorities have changed. We’d rather live in a small place we can afford, have those bills gone, and just move on with our lives.” She quiets and slides my purse strap higher onto my shoulder. “And it’s time you had the freedom to do that, too.”

  “You could have told me. You should have told me. If I’d known things were this bad, I never would have cut back my hours, and I would have made you take my money the last few weeks—”

  “Which is exactly why I didn’t tell you.” Mom looks around. “Come inside with me for a minute.”

  Numbly, I follow. Silas nods when I glance back at him, telling me to go ahead; he’s fine on his own.