by Piper Lennox
Worst part is, I don’t know what to feel guiltier about—that I pushed Juniper to talk about something that was so hard for her, or that I didn’t push her enough. And way, way sooner.
“Can’t fault her for that,” Dad sighs. He passes my phone back. “God. And to think that was the first thing you suggested, Howie.”
I lean around my dad to look at him. “It was?”
“Oh, for sure. Remember what she was wearing? That long, weird dress? Hair past her waist, no makeup, not even earrings...the way she spoke. Just every last thing about her, it screamed ‘cult’ to me. Or at least one of those intensely religious households where the same kind of stuff happened, just on a smaller scale. And the kissing? Knew it came from some kind of abuse.”
Dad draws a sharp breath and elbows him.
“Ow, what? Van already knows she kissed me, we talked it out.”
“She kissed you, too,” I add, staring at Dad.
They watch me like I just lit the fuse on a bomb. I look down at my hands, too clean and healed after days without a trail.
“Van….” Dad clears his throat. “It wasn’t—”
“I know. It wasn’t what it looked like.” My eyes land on my phone, the documentary credits still rolling. “It’s okay.”
All three of us cough in the silence. I think mine are the only real ones.
“Anyway,” Dad says to Howard, after a moment, “I guess you were right.”
“Guess so. But damn…I really didn’t think I would be.”
“Why didn’t you tell her doctors you thought that’s what she came from?” I ask. The guard dog’s up, pacing his chained circle. I remind myself it’s not Howard I’m mad at. It’s not Juniper, either, for not telling me.
It’s that Reverend Barton guy. I halfway hope the asshole’s still alive, just so I might one day get the honor of killing him myself.
“I did. They couldn’t get any answers out of her.”
“We had her in therapy,” Dad reminds me. “Her social worker took her...what, four times? I have no idea what she told the shrink, though.”
“Probably nothing,” Howard says.
Yeah, I think, because of me.
When her social worker came to take her to that first therapy appointment, I told her to watch what she said—that the state could put her in a psychiatric hospital, if she wasn’t careful.
“And you don’t want that, right? You want to stay here. With me.”
She’d told me yes, of course she wanted to stay. Squeezed my hand and breezed through that door, just a few yards from where I’m sitting now, ready to lie her ass off.
The guilt burns again, but I douse it with some cold truth: Juniper didn’t lie to her therapist or dodge questions because of me. She just knew it’d be easier to escape the ranch than a hospital.
“Poor girl.” Dad sighs again and stares at the ceiling. “Wish we could’ve helped her.”
“I think we did,” Howard says, but we brush him off. I’m with Dad on this one.
We did save Juniper’s life, the night she came here. We equipped her with the basics to survive on her own, once she left.
But we didn’t help her half as much as we could have. She wouldn’t let us.
While I drag myself upstairs to rest until dinner, I hear my dad ask Howard how Juniper even entered the picture again.
Briefly, I think about calling, She shoved my whole life into a lake and couldn’t get it back, so she offered to share hers.
And when that crashed and burned like the disaster we both knew it would...she gave me her story, instead.
Forget the laptop and all her equipment. That’s where her Post-It should’ve gone: right on the cover of that book.
Thirty-Four
“Must have been one hell of a break-up.”
I start, almost falling off the swing when Dad appears. “Jesus, give a guy some warning.”
“Slammed the porch door,” he chuckles, “but I didn’t realize you were so engrossed in that thing.”
My hands flip the book shut and turn it back and forth in the dim light. “Just some kids’ novel Juniper said she used to read,” I shrug, like it’s not the last tiny piece of her I’ve got left.
She blocked me on all social media, but a dummy account revealed she hasn’t posted anything in days. The last photo was a shot of some oatmeal we made together one morning. A bunch of her followers went nuts, because you could see my arm in the background. They adored the thought of Juniper meeting someone on the road.
Dad’s initial greeting registers when he sits in the rocking chair across from me. “Why do you say that?”
“What, the break-up?” Sipping his after-dinner coffee with one hand, motioning lazily to me with the other, he says, “I just mean it must’ve been awful, given how you look.”
“Uh, I had pneumonia, but thanks for the ego boost.”
“Was it serious?”
“Is it ever serious?” I laugh, but the joke feels like it slithers back down my throat. I stare at the moonlit fields behind him.
“Then why do you look so miserable, now that she’s gone?”
Good question. Why do I keep reading this book like Juni herself will pop out of it? How come I keep waking up, every single night, with this urge to go find her that’s a thousand times stronger than what I felt in the Hamptons?
“I think I loved her.”
Dad winces, dramatic as shit and clutching his heart. I throw my receipt-turned-bookmark at him while he laughs.
“There’s no ‘thinking’ involved,” he says. “If you think you loved her, I’ve got news for you: you absolutely loved her.”
I sit back with a “pfft” kind of noise, but don’t look away. “Is that how it was with you and Mom?”
He nods and pulls one ankle over his knee, rocking steadily and smiling like we’re in some Country Time commercial. “Your grandma called it from Day One, when I came home from work and wouldn’t stop complaining about her.”
“Hold up.” I plant my feet, halting myself mid-swing. “You always told me you asked Mom out the day you met her.”
“Oh, I did.” He cracks up. “I wanted her right away. But that didn’t mean I liked her.”
I shake my head, but not at him—at both of us. At whatever resides on the Durham Y-chromosome that makes us all so fucking stupid.
“She drove me insane,” he goes on, “and I couldn’t get enough of it.”
Yeah, sounds about right. Even I saw plenty of that, growing up. Dad’s days of being an asshole were done, but he was still wound too tight, and an expert at mood swings.
Mom smiled even brighter when he scowled. She’d kiss his ears and tell him all the good, sweet thoughts flitting through her head: It’s such a nice day, let’s take Sull to the park. Take a break from all those numbers, Sterling—dance with me. She wouldn’t stop until his mood reset.
“Our entire first date was nothing but arguments,” Dad laughs. “I came home cursing at everybody, slamming cabinets, and swearing I was done with her. I didn’t know how she got under my skin like that…but she did.”
“How’d you get a second date, if the first one was so awful?”
“That,” Dad breathes, “was your grandma’s doing. She figured any girl that riled me up that badly was a keeper, because that meant I couldn’t scare her off. Said I’d finally met my match, and that she’d be good for me.”
“Guess she was right.”
“She was. But of course I didn’t want to listen, so she took it upon herself to come to the store the next day, announce that she was ‘there to talk to her future daughter-in-law,’ and tell your mom I was worth all the trouble, if she was up for the challenge.”
“Oh, my God,” I laugh. “I’d say I can’t believe she did that, but...I totally can.” Grandma Durham was too damn extra for everyone’s good, especially her own.
Dad smiles and kneads the bridge of his nose behind his glasses. “Yeah, really should have seen it coming. But in the
moment, I was too horrified. And pissed.”
“What did Mom say?”
“Nothing. She just smiled and excused herself to the backroom until my mother finally left, then didn’t talk to me the rest of the day. When we finally ran into each other at the time clock, it was so awkward all I could think to do was blurt, ‘Go out with me again.’”
“Very smooth.”
“Always.” Dad spreads his arms and leans back. “It worked, though. We went out again, argued even more...but this time, I liked it. She called me out on things nobody else would. When I’d get angry and start yelling, she’d just touch my arm and quietly explain why I was being an ass, and then I’d stop. I don’t know how she did it. It was like magic.”
My smile fades. Low blow, universe.
Guess I can’t be too angry. I’ve earned that karmic jab.
“She fixed you,” I finish, nodding to remind him I already know this part of the story.
“I wouldn’t say ‘fixed.’” He brushes some dirt off his shoe, then picks the pilling off his sock. It’s got Polo logos all over it, in frat-boy colors my dad would never choose. Megan must have gotten them. “It was more like...she showed me how screwed-up I was, and that I needed to work on myself if I wanted to be with her.” He smiles to himself. “And God, I’d never wanted anything more.”
“People don’t fix each other. They just help each other see something needs fixing.”
Juniper thought I didn’t hear what she said, that day. I pretended the storm drowned her out, because I wanted to fuck, not bicker. But when the words settled in my head a few hours later, I kind of saw her point.
Changing locations, adopting new lifestyles—falling in love with somebody: none of these things really fix our problems the way we hope they will. That’s asking just a little too much of them.
They do highlight the flaws, though, and nudge us to finally improve them. We just have to breathe, and do it.
Dad tongues his cheek a moment, looking at me from over his glasses. “Candace told me you haven’t been eating or sleeping much.”
“Too busy nursing a broken heart, apparently.” I say it like the joke I couldn’t make earlier, all flimsy sarcasm and bitterness, but it’s almost a relief to know that’s what’s wrong with me. Finally, a diagnosis.
That’s why my chest still hurts so fucking much, even though I’m breathing just fine. Why basic human functions like sleeping and eating feel totally optional, lately. I was in love.
You still are.
But there’s nothing I can do about it. If and when I find her again, what would I even say?
“Hey, remember how I disrespected your boundaries and pushed you to tell me shit you weren’t ready to share? How I couldn’t trust you until I learned you’d been through absolute hell? Yeah, let’s put a pin in that and get back together, because I’m a goddamn mess without you.”
Ah, yes. So romantic. If she doesn’t already hate me, she would after that little speech.
I rub my face and sigh, desperate for a topic change. For once in my life, I think I’m tired of talking about myself.
“Is it starting to feel real yet?” I ask Dad, and nod toward the door. “The baby, I mean. Now that Megan’s picking names and stuff.”
“Very. But the weirdness is going away, so that’s good. I’m mostly just…excited. It feels like a second chance.”
I nod, my expressionless face coming to the rescue: he can’t see how it guts me to say, “Yep. Second chance at being a dad. Clean slate.”
“What?” His laugh is twisted up, the way you’d react to a kid saying something equally precious and stupid.
When he realizes I wasn’t kidding, he stops.
“I meant it like…falling in love again,” he says. “Getting remarried. Why would you think I meant that?”
I shrug. “Can’t imagine I was the son you expected to get, that’s all.”
“Actually, you were exactly the son I expected.”
I raise my eyebrow at him. “Sure.”
“Really.” He motions to me. “Stubborn, quick-tempered, confident on the verge of arrogant—”
“As is Durham tradition.”
“—so much like me,” Dad finishes, “that I could predict all the trouble you’d make for yourself every time I so much as glanced at you.”
“Like looking into the future?”
“Like looking in a damn mirror.”
I almost smile. Dad rests his chin in his palm.
“In my defense,” I tell him, “I wasn’t that bad. I could’ve been out there snorting coke, robbing banks, mugging people....”
“Not the best defense.”
“And,” I add smugly, inspecting my nails, “I didn’t knock a girl up.”
“Ouch.” Dad smiles again and gets up, walking to the far railing. I follow.
He shifts his jaw. “You know that was one of my biggest fears for you, when you were a teenager? That you’d get a girl pregnant?”
“You don’t say.” I squint past the barn and find the carriage house. “Funny, since I didn’t lose my virginity until after that. I was twenty.”
Also funny: I can’t even recall that girl’s name. Some friend of a sister of a movie star who knew my cousin Delaney, during a visit to Burbank. I was wasted, and barely remember the experience at all.
But I remember every last detail of Juniper’s first time. I think I always will.
Dad pulls a face; he doesn’t want to hear about my exploits. He can deal, though. I’m the one about to get a brother or sister at age twenty-three, some little bundle of living proof my dad has exploits of his own.
“Seriously?” he asks. At first, I think he’s talking to the Jurassic Park mosquito he just slapped on his shoulder, but he turns and stares at me. “You never did anything with all those girls you went out with in high school? All the ones who’d call or show up at the apartment, crying their eyes out?”
“I mean, I did stuff,” I smirk, and he cringes again, “but nothing that could get a girl pregnant.”
“Then what happened to those condoms I put in your bathroom for you? Remember that?”
“Vividly. Thanks for undoing almost a decade of repression. As for where they went, I carried one in my wallet. Keeping up appearances, you know.”
“And the rest?”
“Blown up like balloons and sent to the streets of New York from the penthouse balcony,” I say proudly. “Wes and Theo’s idea, for what it’s worth. Not mine.”
“Why didn’t you just tell me you weren’t doing it? All that crap I gave you, all those speeches—”
“You wouldn’t have believed me. Hell, you don’t even believe me now.” I wave my hand at the disbelief stamped on his face. “And even if you had? You would’ve kept giving me crap over it, figuring it was just a matter of time. Am I wrong?”
Dad stares out at the land again. I wonder if he misses it here, or if it seems too much like Howard’s now.
“All right, so I probably wouldn’t have believed you. Or, like you said, assumed it was going to happen soon regardless.”
“Exactly. You kept demanding to know, so by that point I was like, ‘He doesn’t even deserve to know.’ What good would your trust have been, if I had to give you proof first?”
My own words slap back to me on the breeze. All right, universe: irony, noted.
But again—not a damn thing I can do about it now.
“Well,” Dad sighs, “not that it means anything this far after the fact...but I’m sorry.”
Huh. Maybe Juni was right about apologies being helpful, even if they can’t change what’s been done. Hearing my father say this does make me feel a little better.
“Apology accepted,” I tell him.
Actually, I say it to the boards under my feet; Dad technically aimed his apology into the darkness ahead. We’re still getting used to this whole “sorry” thing. Eye contact is too advanced.
He pushes off from the railing like he’s heading back i
nside, so I know I need to make this quick. One more confession.
“Dad?” Hard as it is, I face him. “I’ve got something to tell you.”
I almost chicken out. How he’ll react is beyond me. Maybe put me through Howard’s dining room wall.
“I wasn’t there when it happened.” My stinging eyes, another empty threat from my body, drag to his. “When Mom died.”
His silence rattles me worse than his yelling ever could. There’s nothing on his face. No hint of what he’s feeling.
I used to think it was a good thing, the Durham mask of ice and stone. Now I’m thinking we were cursed.
Maybe that’s why it was so easy for my feelings to vanish in the first place. The numbness spread from the outside in.
“She and I got in a fight about something,” I add, swallowing. “I don’t even remember what...but I left. Hung out with some friends for a while, then went home because I realized she hadn’t called me. I thought, like, ‘Okay, she must be really mad at me this time.’”
My throat tightens. I touch my inhaler underneath my shirt, but I know that’s not what this feeling is. It’s something much harder to fix.
“Then I got home,” I finish, “and found her on the floor. I called the ambulance and tried waking her up. I tried so hard, even when I knew she was gone.”
Guess that sting in my eyes wasn’t an empty threat, after all.
I touch my face and stare at the tears on my fingertips, the way you’d inspect your own blood after getting stabbed. They don’t make sense.
They scare the hell out of you.
“Hey, it’s okay,” he whispers, when I accept his hug because shit, I don’t know what else to do. I thought my crying days were long over, much less needing hugs and back pats.
The only grown-up thing about it—besides towering a good six inches over my old man—is that I don’t have to force my apology out. For the first time ever, saying “I’m sorry” happens easily.
It feels like hours before I pull myself back together. I heard the screen door open at some point, then swiftly shut; probably Candace, doing a U-turn the second she saw this anomaly.
