by Piper Lennox
Table of Contents
Part One
Part Two
Epilogue
Part I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Part II
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Also by Piper Lennox
Sneak Peek
About the Author
Stay in the Loop
The Road to You
Piper Lennox
Copyright © 2018 by Belienne Press
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
For Freeman
It is a risk to love. What if it doesn’t work out? Ah, but what if it does.
Peter McWilliams
Contents
Part I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Part II
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Epilogue
Also by Piper Lennox
Sneak Peek
About the Author
Stay in the Loop
Part One
One
Lila
“I’m so sorry for your loss.”
I nod, tight-lipped, as yet another of my father’s coworkers shakes my hand. His suit stinks of mothballs.
“Thank you,” I tell him. Then I let go, straighten my shoulders, and prepare myself for the next mourner in line. Twenty down, forty-something to go. Today feels like it will never end.
Before Dad died, I wouldn’t have guessed he had this many people who would miss him. He was a great guy and all, but not exactly the life of the nightshift.
Finally, everyone in the chapel has given me their condolences and taken a seat. I slide into the front pew beside Aunt Betty and promise myself I won’t ugly-cry. It doesn’t work.
“It’s all right,” she assures me, even though she’s weeping worse than I am. Dad was her baby brother, plus she’s an easy crier. Every family event, from weddings to funerals, even christenings, features Betty sobbing.
I feel the heat of the crowd’s pity on my back as I double over and put my face in my hands. Old ladies behind us cluck their tongues and whisper, “Poor thing.” Crying in front of other people is bad enough, but knowing they feel sorry for me is even worse.
Adding insult to injury is the fact Donnie decided to show up. He slips in during a boom box rendition of “Amazing Grace,” sitting in a pew by himself at the back. I feel his stare the most.
At the graveside, he stands near his car. I put my sunglasses on and try to peek at him through the crowd, but everyone’s bunched together under the tent, and I lose sight of him.
Oh, well. It’s not like I care what he does, now.
“Richard’s family would like to thank everyone for coming to pay their respects,” the pastor says at the end, after a moment of silence. I stare at the rose I put on the casket, missing the way the thorns stung my fingers. It was the only thing that distracted me from crying. “They’ll be hosting a reception at Richard’s sister’s house, for anyone who wishes to attend.”
Betty wipes her eyes with her handkerchief and jumps into Hostess Mode, waving it in the air. “Yes, yes, it’s 1402 Maple—just take a left at this light, follow it down about a mile, make a right, then a left....”
I decide, if I want any privacy at all today, now is my window. I slip out of the crowd while everyone’s listening to Betty’s rambling directions, too interested in the location of free food to notice me duck through the rain towards Dad’s car.
My car now, I guess.
The station wagon smells like him. It should make me feel better, the scent of Old Spice and his daily breakfasts of fast food, but it just creeps me out. When someone’s gone, shouldn’t all traces of them vanish, too? How am I supposed to accept he’s dead when his presets are still on the radio, and his safety vest from the power plant is still across the backseat?
Calm down, I urge myself. No use sobbing my way through the reception, too.
Besides, it isn’t like I’m not accustomed to this. When Mom died, Dad left the house exactly the same for years. He wouldn’t even let me take down the Christmas lights from our porch, all because she’d put them up. When I was seventeen and refused to bring my prom date over for pictures unless they were gone, Dad finally relented. I took a pair of hedge clippers to them when he was at work.
The street is slick when I pull out of the cemetery. I head for Aunt Betty’s house, but turn off onto a cul-de-sac a block over. It’ll be twenty minutes, at best, before she realizes I’m not there.
I crack the window and light a cigarette. I’ve been trying to quit again, but today seems like a fair exception. The smell of tobacco replacing Dad’s grease-and-cologne trademark helps me ground myself.
He’s gone, I think. You need to accept it. You’re alone, now.
Granted, I’m not really alone. I’ve got Aunt Betty and Uncle Wayne, at least. This is just how I make myself feel better in bad situations, strange as it seems: repeat the truth until it sinks in. The sooner I accept it, the sooner I can start to move on.
There’s a knock at the back windshield, which scares me so much I drop my cigarette butt. I curse and find it just as it singes a hole in my one black dress.
Donnie appears in my side mirror. He doesn’t have an umbrella, which could be a genuine oversight on his part—like most of my exes, he’s not exactly responsible—or a manipulative move to get me to let him in the car. Unlike most of my exes, Donnie is clever.
“Hey,” he says, leaning close to the gap in the window. “What are you doing here?”
“Betty doesn’t approve of my smoking,” I mumble around the fresh one in my mouth. My lighter sparks, but doesn’t catch. I shake it. It’s empty.
“Here,” he says, reaching through the gap with his own to light it. I thank him. He stands there, half-smiling with rain dripping down his face.
Great. Now I have to invite him in.
He shudders, a big, full-body one, when he gets in on the passenger side. “Thanks.”
“How’d you find me?”
“I didn’t. I took a wrong turn and just kind of...ended up here.” He smiles again. I scold myself for thinking he’
s sexy, with his sleek new haircut and same old lip ring.
He might be lying. It wouldn’t be unheard of for Donnie to follow me. But I’m so drained, I decide not to challenge it.
“I’m sorry,” he says, cupping his hands around the vents to warm up. “Your dad was a good guy.”
“He wouldn’t have said the same for you,” I quip. Part of me hopes I hurt him, but as always, the criticism rolls right off his back.
He laughs. “Yeah, well. I’m not.”
“True.”
This time, his laugh sounds fake.
“Donnie.” I wait until he looks at me. “Why did you show up?”
“We dated for two years. Don’t you think it would have been shitty if I didn’t at least...I don’t know, offer my sympathies? I know your dad wasn’t my biggest fan or anything, but I did know him pretty well.”
“I don’t want your sympathy.”
“Lila.”
“I’m serious.” I notice his feet are tracking mud everywhere, a giant footprint in the middle of my apron from Hampton’s, the specialty store where I manage a team of cashiers. My bereavement leave goes on for four more days, but it already doesn’t feel like enough. “And you know what? I don’t think that’s why you showed up, anyway.”
Donnie watches me exhale, a plume of smoke sitting still in the air between us. “Why do you think I did, then?”
“I think,” I say slowly, “you want to get back together. I know you and Valerie broke up last month.” I glance at him. “Can’t blame you for trying, I guess. You’re just playing the odds. A girl’s pretty vulnerable after her father’s funeral.”
He smirks, staring down at his muddy dress shoes. The last time he wore them, I’m sure, was for a court appearance. Dealing drugs, breaking and entering, public drunkenness: his record has a nice variety, I’ll give him that.
“Val and I weren’t serious, you know.” I feel him look at me again. “It was a rebound.”
“Right.”
“No, really. I want to be with you, Li.” He puts his hand on my leg, wasting no time in sliding it under my dress, all the way up to my bra. For some reason, I let him.
“Donnie,” I protest, but I don’t know what else to say. I guess I could, and probably should, tell him he’s scum. If he really wanted to be with me, he wouldn’t have cheated (with eight girls, that I know of) in the last two months of our relationship. Once Dad was too sick to work, I moved back in to help him out. Apparently, Donnie took that to mean it was open season for us.
The words are there on my tongue, too, ready to strike when I flick my cigarette butt out the window and turn back to him. But I don’t say them, letting his kiss snuff my anger, at least for now.
“I know you missed me,” he whispers. He reaches into the cup of my bra and pinches my nipple. It makes me wince, but he interprets it as pleasure. Either that, or he doesn’t care. Tough call.
“No, I didn’t.”
“Sure,” he laughs, as his hand trails back down my ribcage, my stomach, and past the waistband of my pantyhose and underwear. He pushes his fingers into me and laughs, so arrogant, when I gasp.
Outside, the rain picks up. It sounds like a million BB’s, every ping so insignificant, but deafening when combined.
“Get over here,” he says, sitting back against his seat and freeing his erection from his dress pants. He strokes it, just once, and waits. Like he knows I’m going to take care of it, no questions asked. God, I hate him.
I hate myself even more, though, when I lift my hips off my seat, shimmy out of my tights, and climb over the center console to join him, just like he wants.
Shepherd
“Twenty bucks? You’re kidding.”
“Alloy pricing. Take it or leave it.”
I look at the necklace again. I’m pretty sure it’s solid gold. Not a lot of weight, but something. Definitely more than twenty dollars’ worth.
“Thirty,” I counter, closing my hand around it.
“Twenty-five. Final.” He spits some sunflower shells into a foam cup by the register. One sticks to his bottom lip. Disgusting.
Then again, it’s not like I can complain about the lack of decorum in a pawnshop.
“Deal.”
He pulls cash from the register and hands it to me. I try not to dwell on how shitty it feels to fold the bills up and stuff them in my pocket with one hand, while the other drops the locket into his palm.
“See you around,” he says, spitting into the cup again.
Not if I can help it, I think. But he’s probably right. I thought the locket would bring a lot more money than this, and I could leave the rest of the stuff in peace. After the stereo with bad wiring, some lava lamps missing their bulbs, and even the vintage harmonica, I figured I’d have enough.
I like to think I’m not totally cold-hearted. I mean, I feel bad pawning stuff that isn’t mine. That doesn’t stop me from doing it, apparently, but at least I know I’ve got a conscience.
The door chimes as I leave. I dig my keys from my pocket and tell myself I’m not going to look across the street. I’m not, I’m not, I’m not.
I look. The balcony is empty, but I think I can make out a shadow through the blinds. Maybe it’s hers. I can’t decide if I want her to look out and see me, or if I want to duck into the car and gun it out of this neighborhood, this city, altogether.
The rain picks up. My county is dry, and I manage to pinpoint the very edge of the storm: everything halts, all at once, and the sun fractures the clouds like acid.
Back at the house, I pull the photo from my pocket again. It was in the locket; it felt wrong to leave it in there, knowing the shop owner would’ve just thrown it in the trash.
It’s a baby. A girl, I think. Maybe it was Tillie. It could be some generic kid. Maybe the whole locket was a random junk sale find, something she just saw and liked, instead of a family heirloom.
Either way, you’re still a dirt bag, I tell myself. Admitting it makes me feel a little better.
Two
Lila
After the reception, I find Aunt Betty upstairs with some old, distant relatives I haven’t seen since my mother’s funeral. They’re sitting on the floor, poring over photo albums from a chest at the foot of the bed.
“Oh, that’s Richard helping Pa fix the car,” Betty smiles. She dabs at her eyes with a tissue, crying again, before noticing me. “Lila, sweetie! We’re looking through the family albums. Care to join?”
I don’t, really. I’ve seen these photos and heard the stories more times than I can count. There’s not much else I can do, though, unless I feel like cleaning up the remnants of the buffet, so I sit.
Betty passes me a photo that, by now, I’ve memorized in both sight and backstory. It’s of my father when he fell asleep waiting for Santa. She says, “That’s your father when he fell asleep waiting for Santa. Isn’t it sweet?”
I nod as I pass it around. While the ladies veer off on a tangent about Christmases I wasn’t alive for and people I’ve never met, I grab another album. Shockingly, it’s one I haven’t seen before.
“Is that when your mom was pregnant with you?” one of the women—I think my great-aunt, or a cousin thrice-removed, or something—asks, pointing to the first photo.
I nod, automatic: Mom’s dress is shapeless and loose, but there’s no denying she’s pregnant, so it must be me in there.
“Well, I was just wondering,” she adds, “because it looks like that was Carl’s 50th birthday.” She looks at Aunt Betty. “You remember, Betty. We went to that ski lodge in...oh, what was it....”
Betty cuts her eyes at me, then says, “Greenpark.”
“Yes! Greenpark.” The woman nods and leans closer to the photo. There’s a cough drop in her mouth; the smell makes my sinuses burn. “Oh, but that can’t be right,” she mutters. “Carl turned fifty in...1977.” She looks at me. “When were you born, dear? You don’t look a day over twenty-five.”
“I’m not.” I look at Betty. She g
lances away, pretending she’s busy with a loose page in another album, so I peel back the film and pry the photo off the adhesive.
Sure enough, the other side has the date on it, scribbled in Betty’s handwriting. “Richard and Evelyn, 1977. Carl turns 50!”
“Oh, how about that!” the woman laughs. “I was right!”
I flip the photo back over. Now I notice how grainy the film is, how dated their clothes are. How young they look.
“Aunt Betty.” I hold the photo out to her, aimed at her chest like a gun. “What is this?”
She presses her lips together. I can tell more tears are on the way.
“Lila and I need some privacy,” she tells the group. They nod understandingly, or at least pretend to, and hobble to their feet. I help them downstairs and manage to bite my tongue until the very last car has left the street.
“Okay,” I say, as soon as the door shuts, “what’s going on?”
Wayne, never one for conflict, busies himself cleaning up the leftover food. I hear him rattling dishes in the kitchen, louder than necessary.
Betty sighs. She motions for me to join her back upstairs.
“You know your parents were older, when you came along,” she says, almost a question. I nod. It embarrassed me, when I was a kid: everyone else’s parents were in their thirties and forties, while mine were pushing sixty. In fact, the night Dad died—exactly a week after his 72nd birthday—every single nurse mistook me for his granddaughter.
