by Lexi Ryan
Her skinny arms squeeze me tight and she squeals. “I never thought I’d see you again! You disappeared off the face of the fucking Earth, girl!”
My throat grows thick, and I swallow back unexpected tears. As far as my former life here was concerned, I did fall off the Earth, and not for any of the good reasons. “I know. I suck.”
Lizzy steps back and shakes her head. “Don’t say that. You were entitled to live your own life. You needed to cut ties here in order to move on.”
She’s probably the only one who saw it that way.
I look around the grocery store, scanning the faces in produce.
“Hanna’s not here,” Lizzy explains, knowing I’m looking for her twin. “But I cannot wait to see her face when she sees you. We should totally surprise her.”
“I’d like that.” Again, I’m swallowing, and there’s an alarming burning behind my eyes. I shouldn’t have worried that the girls would hold my rare and overly brief communication against me. The Thompson girls are the best kind of friends—the kind who never made me feel less-than, never required me to pay my dues, never asked anything of me, actually.
Lizzy’s green eyes light up. “Will you be here next week? We’re having this giant end-of-summer bash at Asher Logan’s place. It’s going to be fucking epic.”
I choke on my coffee. “Not that Asher Logan, though, right?”
She wriggles her brows and grins. “Yes, that Asher Logan.”
“He lives here? In New Hope?”
“Right next door to my mama,” Lizzy says, raising four fingers. “Girl Scout’s honor.”
I fold her pinky down, and she giggles. “Christ,” I mutter. “I told my mom New Hope wasn’t boring.”
“And get this! Maggie’s dating him. Practically living with him, actually, though she still has her old place by campus.”
“Maggie is dating Asher Logan.”
“I swear to God! And if she didn’t deserve every ounce of his sweet, sexy ass, we’d hate her for it.”
“Go, Maggie!” My smile drops away when I see Drew approaching us, arms crossed, a scowl on her face. “Drew, do you remember Lizzy?”
“Vaguely,” she says in a bored tone.
Lizzy’s jaw unhinges at the sight of my beautiful little sister. “Drew? No way! You’re way too grown up!”
Drew rolls her eyes, no doubt sick of hearing those words from everyone we’ve run into. “They don’t have any veggie burgers.”
“Don’t be rude,” I warn.
Lizzy waves away my concern. “You’re at the wrong grocery store if you want a good vegetarian selection. Go to Horner’s by campus. They’ll have everything you need. Fancier stuff for a fancier girl.”
I wince. No doubt my picky sister would prefer the swanky high-end grocery, but I came here on purpose. Namely, I don’t have cash to waste on designer veggie burgers. I also came for the free coffee but mostly for the prices.
“Thank God,” Drew breathes, turning up her nose as she looks around the store.
She’s become such a pretentious snob in the last few years. It was one thing when Mom was around to coddle her, but I’m sick of her acting like she used to live some posh life when that’s never been the case. Given our circumstances now, I can hardly stomach her attitude. And when I think about the sacrifices I made so she could have the things she did—food, clothes, a roof over her head—I want to smack her.
Lucky for Drew, I’m only a shitty enough sister to think about smacking her and not enough of one to actually do it. I know she can’t comprehend our situation. Truthfully, I wouldn’t want her to.
“Oh my God,” Lizzy squeals. “Is that little Gabriella?”
Gabby scoots to my side and leans away from Lizzy.
“I used to help babysit you, little stinker!” Lizzy says, clapping her hands. “My God, you’re all so flipping dark and gorgeous. Where’s your mom? How’s she doing? Are you just visiting or back for good? So much catching up to do. We should—” Suddenly, Lizzy seems to register the horror on my sisters’ faces and she cuts herself off.
“My mom passed away last month,” I tell her softly. “I’m here to get the girls settled in with my dad.”
“Gabby wants to wait in the car,” Drew says, grabbing her little sister’s hand and throwing a bitter look at Lizzy. “I’ll take her.”
“Jesus,” Lizzy breathes as they walk away. “I had no idea. Are you guys okay? I mean, considering?”
“It was unexpected,” I say, which is true. Mom had really shaped up her life. I can’t say she ever let go of her precious orange bottles, but in the last few years she’d at least been a functional addict. Her overdose came out of the blue. “They’re taking it pretty hard. The move doesn’t help.”
“I feel like a total bitch.” Lizzy draws her bottom lip between her teeth as she watches my sisters push through the double doors to the parking lot. “I’m talking about rock stars and parties and you’re here because you lost your mom.”
I try to take a deep breath, but all this aching pressure in my chest keeps it shallow. “It feels good,” I confess. “To talk about something fun for once.”
“Well, it’s next week. Seriously, you can bring your sisters if you want. Or you can come alone and drink yourself stupid. I’m cool either way.”
Tempting. It would be nice to pretend to be a normal young twenty-something. I never got that experience.
“Give me your phone.” She’s already snagging it from where it was sticking out of my front jeans pocket. Before I realize what she’s doing, her fingers are tapping buttons, and she’s handing it back to me. “I just sent myself a text from your phone. Now we can get a hold of each other.”
“Great,” I say weakly. I know it would just hurt her if I tried to explain why I hesitate to do that. Keeping up with the people from my old life will only remind me of all the things I can’t have. All the ways I’ve failed. I don’t like to dwell on that shit. “I’d better get these groceries and get out to the girls.”
As I walk away, I hear her call, “Think about the party!”
I pile my minimal groceries onto the belt at the checkout—peanut butter and off-brand wheat bread, ingredients for beans and rice, spaghetti, marinara sauce, bananas, apples. If my parents taught me anything growing up, it was how to eat cheap. I sprung for the fresh strawberries since they were on sale and Gabby’s eyes got that sad, hazy look when she spotted them.
This will all have to go on the credit card, but it should be the last major expense before Dad returns. God, what I’d give to get into that house before then. No doubt it needs a good cleaning, and his piles of notes on the nature of the Universe or whatever else the hell it is he’s always poring over probably cover every flat surface in the house.
I’ve already made long lists of the supplies I’ll check his house for before leaving. I brought as much as I could—clean sheets for the girls’ beds, some basic cookware, all their clothes and personal items. They weren’t exactly living the high life with Mom, so the pickings were slim.
The clerk is ringing up my items when I hear someone call my name again. This time I know who it is and turn to a smiling William Bailey. His gaze is already at my feet, taking in my hemp wedge sandals and inching up my bare legs.
I really have no respect for men who do that elevator-look shit in public. So why is it that when Will does it, I want to strip for him and invite a repeat performance?
I’m trying to play it cool—to pretend the look in his eyes has no effect on me, but I think we both know better. “You’re not used to girls telling you no, are you?” I ask with a raised brow.
He grunts, “You’d be surprised,” then takes something from his pocket and hands it to me. “I saw Granny downtown, and she told me where your dad is. This is the number for The Center. I was on my way to the hotel to give it to you when I saw your car.”
I take a piece of paper from his hand and stare at the number that will get me in touch with my crazypants, absent-minded
, insert-twenty-other-shortcomings-here father. “Oh. Thanks.” The fact that I’m disappointed Will isn’t just here to talk me into that date? Ri.dic.u.lous. “What’s The Center?”
“It’s a Spiritualist camp a couple of hours from here.”
“Spiritualist camp. Of course.”
Behind me, the cashier is clearing her throat, trying to get my attention.
“Oh!” I fumble through my purse and pull out a credit card. “Here. Use this, please.” The woman takes the card, and I turn back to Will. “Your grandmother knows the number to a spiritualist camp?”
He shakes his head. “No, not my grandmother. Granny—the Thompson girls’ grandmother.”
That makes a little more sense. I vaguely remember my father going to the woman for readings of some sort from time to time. “Well, I appreciate it.”
“It’s declined,” the cashier says apologetically. “You want me to run it again?”
I close my eyes. That was only a matter of time. “Let’s just try this one.” I pull out my only other credit card and hold my breath as she slides it through the reader.
“Do you need some money, Cally?” Will asks softly.
The woman bites her lip. When she turns to me, she doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t need to. Her face says it all: Declined.
I can’t look at Will. Mortification is climbing up my neck and into my cheeks, hot and red. “I’ll pay you back.”
I pick up my three bags of groceries while Will pays, and I want to crawl under a rock and disappear and a hundred other clichés all at once. When he takes the receipt, I head for the door, but he cuts me off and takes the bags from my hand.
“Let me.”
“I can carry my own groceries.”
“But then I can’t show off my manly muscles and charm.”
Oh, God. He’s too freaking good and sexy, and I have a serious case of want-what-I-can’t-have.
The ring of my cell breaks the tense silence of our motel room. A quick look at the screen shows an unknown number.
“Hello?”
“Cally?” It’s my dad. I recognize his deep, scratchy voice. I called the spiritualist camp Will told me about and asked them to please have him contact me. I’m impressed it took him less than two hours.
“Dad? Why aren’t you here?”
“Tell him he’s earned Worst Father of the Year award already,” Drew says.
I narrow my eyes at her and slip out of the hotel room so she can’t add her two cents to our conversation.
Dad clears his throat. “Where are you?”
I squeeze my eyes shut. He’s so absentminded. “The girls and I are in New Hope. Remember?”
“I thought you were coming on the tenth.”
“It’s the eleventh, Dad.”
“No, it’s not. It’s… Oh.” He clears his throat again. “Are you okay? Was the drive okay?”
“We’re fine. When will you be home?”
I wait through the long silence. My father is a thoughtful man. Intelligent to a fault. When I was a child, time and again I’d ask a question and just when I’d be convinced he hadn’t heard, he’d finally answer me. “I have a class tonight. Is it okay if I get in late? There’s a guest speaker in from Seattle, and I don’t want to miss this if I don’t have to.”
“That’d be fine. But Dad, are you really up for this? Raising two girls? Having them under your roof? Being responsible for them?” I wait. Listen. Wait some more. I hear him breathing and I wonder what he’s thinking.
Finally, “It wasn’t a responsibility I ever intended to give up. I’m glad to have my girls back.”
Tenderness wells in my chest, spilling over, even as anger still boils in the pit of my belly. They crush together and make me feel childlike and helpless. Because despite all his faults, he’s my father, and I love him. He means well, even if he falls short. I have to swallow back emotion before I can speak. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then?”
“Yes. I’m sorry I wasn’t there, Cally. I won’t let you down again. I promise everything is going to be fine.”
“That’s good to hear,” I whisper, and whether I should or not, I kind of believe him.
“Holy shit, Dad. Nineteen seventy-two called and it wants its house back.”
Inside and out, the house cries for maintenance, and Dad has an explanation for every shortcoming. From green shag carpet that needs replacing (“I had it professionally cleaned before I moved in.”), to the gutters that are full and falling off the house (“With the pitch of this roof, we don’t really need gutters.”), to the barely functional kitchen (“That’s what the hot plate is for.”).
I met Dad at the house midmorning, setting the girls up with a movie and some snacks at the motel so I could get their rooms pulled together here.
After Mom left Dad and took off for a “better life” (oh, sweet irony), Dad quit his job at Sinclair University, sold my childhood home, and went all Eat, Pray, Love on his life. The girls were young, so I don’t think they care that Dad doesn’t live in the old house, but they will care if they see they’re expected to live in a madman’s hovel.
“Did you do anything to prepare for them?” I ask, peeking into the bedroom the girls are supposed to share. “You’ve known for a month they’d be moving in with you.”
“What do you mean?” His question is followed by a long coughing fit. His third in the ten minutes I’ve been here.
“We have to move these bookcases out of their bedroom. Little girls don’t need their bedrooms filled with The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna and the Tao te Ching and whatever else you have piled on those old shelves.”
“That’s my collection of religious texts signed by spiritual leaders from around the globe. There are over two-hundred autographed books. I think they’ll find it cool.”
I gape at him. Crazy. Pants.
“You think they’d mind?”
I grab a book at random to prove my point. “Learning From Your Past Lives: Enlightenment through Deep Meditation. Yeah, that’ll make a nice bedtime story.” I prop my hands on my hips and stare at him. He starts coughing again. A violent, angry cough.
“Okay, okay,” he says when the fit passes and he’s catching his breath. “I can move them to the attic.”
“Have you talked to a doctor about that cough?”
He nods. “A healer.” Then another coughing fit.
I raise a brow. “A healer or a real doctor?”
“I don’t like Western medicine. You know that.”
“You don’t like it? You sound like you’re ready to cough up a fucking lung, but you don’t like it?”
“I’m working with a very talented healer. I just need some time to meditate on our healing mantra and—”
“No! Uh-uh. You are not leaving your health in the hands of a fucking mantra.” He flinches at my second use of the f-bomb, but I don’t even care. I need him to hear me. “Jesus, Dad, you’re responsible for two girls now. Don’t you get that? They need you.”
“I see your mother’s skepticism finally rooted itself in you.”
The little girl still living somewhere inside me flinches at those words. I was once so special to my father because I, too, believed in the magical things he did. I, too, believed everything happened for a reason, wishes came true, and good would always overcome evil.
Part of me wants to be his special princess even now. And even though I don’t believe any of that crap anymore, part of me wants to, just so my father will be proud.
Fuck. Shit. Damn. “I want you to see a doctor on Monday before I leave. I want you—”
“Okay.”
“—to take care of yourself. What?”
“I said okay,” he says softly.
Maybe I should just pack up the car and take the girls back to Vegas with me. If I thought I could make a life for them, I probably would, but I can see it in his eyes—my dad is ready to do right by his girls. And I know New Hope is a better place for them than my world will ever be.
“Thank you,” I say softly. Then I grab a box and start packing up books to take to the attic. Tonight, I’ll call my boss and tell her I won’t be back until the end of the week. If I’m going to make this house a home for those girls, I have my work cut out for me.
I NEED to get back to the hotel, but instead I’m sitting on my dad’s front porch, looking up at the stars through the trees and listening to the river run beyond them. The house may be shit, but I’ll give him credit for the location.
When my phone rings, I’m so sure Drew is calling to ask when I’ll be back that I don’t even look at the screen before taking the call. “Miss me?” I ask with a smile.
“More than you can imagine.” That voice is definitely not Drew’s.
Cold dread steals through me at the sound of the deep, familiar voice. “Brandon? Is that you?”
“Guilty.”
Fuck. I swallow, preparing to tread carefully. “What a surprise. How did you get this number?”
“Baby, you know you can’t hide from me.”
“I wasn’t trying to.” Not a complete lie.
“I miss you,” he murmurs, dropping his voice to that low whisper he used to use in bed. Four years later and I still remember.
“Surely you’ve found someone better than me by now.” I force a smile to my face as if he can see me.
His low hiss slithers through the phone line and then I hear a hard clunk, as if he just threw something against a wall. “Jesus, Cally. You know I don’t want anyone else.” His voice softens, the anger floating away as quickly as it came. “You’re my girl.”
I don’t reply. There’s no response I could live with that won’t just piss him off.
“I thought you’d come to me when your mom died. I know you need money. Your sisters need money. Let me help.”
At what price? “We’re fine,” I lie.
“I blame those college classes, making you think you’re less of a woman if you take money from your man.”
