Chapter 12

CHAPTER

TWELVE

J oelle Young dropped her bag as she entered her apartment, automatically turning back to the door with a sigh. She latched the chain and twisted the deadbolt, then faced the living room. The kitchen sat tucked around the corner, a…cozy space only one person could fit in at a time.

“Joey?” someone called. Her roommate, Laney.

“Yeah,” she said. “It’s me.”

Her roommate poked her head out of her bedroom. “The timer on the?—”

Shrill beeping went off, and Joey got the message. “I got it,” she said.

“Good,” Laney said, “Thanks. I’m washing out Paula, and that’s dinner.”

At least Joey wouldn’t have to cook tonight, because Laney never made a meal for one. She’d moved to New York City to go to culinary school, but Joey didn’t want to cook for herself. Ever.

In fact, she’d started doubting she wanted to stay here and finish her education. To what end? she asked herself for at least the twentieth time. So she could go back to Coral Canyon and…make dinner for herself?

She could live with her parents again, but she didn’t want to. She didn’t want to go crawling back to Daddy, though no one would really see it like that. Joey viewed it like that, and she’d have way too many eyes on her for her to feel any different.

In the kitchen, she silenced the timer and pulled out an enormous casserole dish that smelled like fennel and sausage. She hoped it was Laney’s baked pizza pasta, but it could be a breakfast casserole. With it covered with aluminum foil, Joey wouldn’t know until she peeled it back.

And as a chef, she wouldn’t do that right away. Food needed to rest when it came out of the oven, and she slid it onto the stovetop and tossed the potholders onto the narrow strip of counter next to the stove.

She wiped her thin, wispy, white-blonde hair off her forehead, and then scraped it all into a ponytail and secured it with a scrunchie from the bowl on the other side of the fridge.

Voices came out into the main part of the apartment, and Joey turned toward Laney and Paula. “Oh, boy,” she said.

“It’s just a little banana-y right now,” Laney said. “It’s fine. I’m going to cut it, and then we’ll get the dye on.” She smiled at Paula. “It’s pizza pasta bake, Joey. You can eat whenever. I’ll be with Paula for a little longer.”

“Is Jenner coming over?”

“Later, yeah,” Laney said, and Joey smiled politely at her client while Laney got the supplies she needed for the next round of styling. She didn’t do hair every afternoon and evening, but she needed money to supplement her part-time job at a market near where they went to culinary school.

A tug of guilt moved through Joey, because she didn’t have to work at all. Her father paid for whatever she needed to follow her dreams, and Joey wished she knew if that was still what she was doing or not.

She moved over to the couch in the living room and started texting her grandmother. It’s finally starting to get a little warmer here , she said. How’s Coral Canyon? How’s Gramps?

Her granddad had had surgery last fall, and Joey worried over him all the time.

I wish it was getting warmer here , Grams said. But they’re predicting snow this weekend, so we’re not quite out of the woods yet.

A sense of longing and homesickness threaded through Joey, and she tapped to call her grandma. “Hey, Joey-girl,” she said, her voice kind and aged and just wonderful. “How’s the city?”

“Cold,” Joey whispered. “Grams, I just want to come home.”

Grams didn’t say anything right away, which only allowed more tears to form in Joey’s eyes. She didn’t know what else to say. She’d called her grandmother in the past and said similar things. Her grams always seemed to know exactly what to say—and what not to say.

“Maybe you’ll come home for your spring break, then,” she finally said.

“Yeah.” Joey sniffled and wiped her eyes. “I already have airplane tickets.” But another two weeks felt impossibly far away.

“Then you’ll have a whole year done,” Grams said. “You’ll be home for the summer, and we can try all those recipes you’ve collected. I can’t wait to see how good you are in the kitchen now.” She wore a smile in her voice, and Joey really wished she could borrow from it.

“Yeah,” Joey said, drawing in a deep breath she hoped would strengthen her. “I can still live with you and Gramps?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Joey-girl,” Grams said with a sigh.

“There’s room,” she said. “You have a two-bedroom condo, and I won’t take up the whole bathroom.”

“There’s two bathrooms,” Grams said quietly. “It’s just another thing you need to talk to your daddy about.”

“I don’t want to live with them,” she said.

“Lots of college students live with their parents in the summertime,” Grams said. “Look at Matthew and Lynnie. They’re living with Gabe and Hilde this summer.”

“Yes, but that’s because they’re getting married in Coral Canyon this summer,” Joey said. “I could live with my mom, I guess. I just want to be closer to you guys, and I figured we could cook together, and I could help take care of Gramps, and….” She trailed off. “I could get my own place.”

But she’d never lived alone before, and Joey wasn’t super keen to do that. Coral Canyon was small and slow, and if she had to live alone at some point in her life, it might as well happen there. There were houses and apartments for rent, and everything would require a conversation with her daddy.

“There’s room for you with your family,” she said.

“I know,” Joey said. “There’s just so much going on with OJ now, and I don’t know. I sometimes feel like I’m in the way.” She whispered the last several words, almost ashamed to admit them out loud.

“Joelle,” Grams said. “Your momma and daddy would be mortified to hear you say that.”

“Doesn’t make it less true,” she said. “And it’s not their fault. I’m not blaming them. I just—you know it’s hard to be an island. And we act like everyone belongs in the Young family. But the truth is, there are a bunch of us that are just islands.”

Grams once again didn’t respond right away, but now her silence semi-irritated Joey. It meant she was trying to come up with a reason—an excuse—for how Bryce didn’t need to feel like he didn’t belong to his family, or why Joey shouldn’t feel like that, or why Cash had no reason to doubt that his daddy loved him.

And Joey knew none of her cousins felt unloved. But that didn’t mean they always felt like they belonged. Her daddy had gotten remarried, and Joey loved Georgia. She really did. One hundred percent, honestly loved her.

But they’d started a family together, and that family had stayed intact while Joey’s had disintegrated. Uncle Tex and Aunt Abby had three more children, with Bryce almost twenty years older than the oldest one.

Uncle Blaze and Aunt Faith had four children—or would soon—and no, Cash wasn’t fully related to any of them. Though he’d come first, he was an add-on.

That was how Joey felt. Added on. Oh, yeah, don’t forget about Roo.

It was a hard thing to do when she was so forgettable.

“Forget I said anything,” Joey said. She took in a quick breath. “It was just a hard day in the kitchen, and I need to eat.” She tried to smile, glad she wasn’t on a video call with Grams. For she’d have been able to see the pain pinching along her eyes and tugging her mouth into anything but a smile.

“Joey, Gramps and I would love to have you live with us this summer.”

“I’ll talk to Daddy,” she promised, though she wasn’t sure how to bring it up. Her daddy wasn’t exactly intimidating, though he was tall, talented, and world-famous. Joey didn’t always know how to open her mouth and speak her mind, or ask questions, or tell him the things in her heart.

He wanted to fix things, which Joey appreciated. She really did. But sometimes, she didn’t want a fixer. She just wanted someone to listen, and then simply love her, no matter what came out of her mouth .

She let her phone fall to her lap, and she exhaled as she tipped her head back. The window in the apartment sat behind her, and Joey could feel the chill of it touch the back of her neck. “What do I want, Lord?” she asked. “Can You please help me to know what to do with my life?”

She hadn’t liked college that much. So she’d left Wyoming State and come to the Culinary Institute. She’d never felt such excitement, though her daddy had stood out like a sore thumb in New York City. At the same time, he fit perfectly, because he was Otis Young, and he’d traveled the world as a guitarist and singer in the Young family band, Country Quad.

He didn’t care if people looked at him, and he signed autographs and took pictures with anyone who asked. Joey didn’t possess even a tenth of his charisma, and she did feel overlooked and thought about later quite often in her family.

“I know that’s a me-thing,” she said aloud while Laney and Paula laughed about something in the bedroom. “I know I’m only twenty, and I have a lot of life to live yet,” she said. “But I don’t want to waste my time. What’s my next step? Go home to Coral Canyon? Stay here in the city? Keep doing culinary school?”

Joey had been considering a career in nursing lately, or perhaps she’d enjoy being a teacher. Something that got her outside her own thoughts, her own head, and allowed her to serve others. She’d only taken general education courses in Wyoming, because she hadn’t known any better a couple of years ago what she wanted her life to be than she did right now .

God didn’t give her any hints either, as her mind stayed stubbornly quiet and the street noise beyond the apartment glass drifted up to her from below. Joey sighed and opened her eyes. “Okay, I should eat.”

She got off the couch to do that, her thoughts tumbling through her head like clothes in a dryer. If she could get them to sit still for very long, she’d call her daddy tonight and somehow, some way, find the courage to ask him to listen before she opened her heart and let him see the mess inside.

Joey did not find the courage to call her father that night. Nor the next. She endured a brutal weekend at school, where they had to “fabricate a chicken” over and over until it was done perfectly every time.

She could now get a chicken broken down into its various parts, so the thighs, breasts, legs, and wings could be battered and fried in less than ten minutes. She knew where to insert the tip of her knife, how to lay it all out, everything.

As it turned out, Joey didn’t have to find the courage to make a call. She had to find the courage to answer one from her daddy when he called on Sunday afternoon. Her heart pounded shrilly as she stared at the screen, and she swiped the call on at the last moment.

“Daddy,” she said just as Laney banged a pot onto the stove. Joey got to her feet and went into the bedroom. It still smelled faintly like bleach and hair dye, but Joey only caught a whiff of it when she first entered the room. “Sorry, Laney’s cooking. Just a sec.” She closed the bedroom door and moved to the window between the two beds.

She didn’t mind sharing a bedroom, because rent in the city was out of control, and Joey didn’t want to spend more of her daddy’s money.

“Hey, baby,” Daddy drawled. “I’m just calling to see if you got the email about the flight change.”

“Haven’t seen it,” Joey said. “But I’m sure I got it.”

“We might need to reschedule.”

“Yeah? What did they do?”

“Your flight got moved to eight a.m.,” he said, his voice full of teasing. “I just don’t see how you’re gonna make that.”

Joey smiled, partly to the city and partially to her faint reflection. “That’s really early.”

“I’ll rebook it to something later,” he said. “Could you come on Saturday instead of Sunday?”

“Yeah,” Joey said. “Whatever’s fine.”

“Oh-ho,” Daddy said with a chuckle. “We know that’s not true.”

Joey would’ve normally laughed with him and agreed. Now, she simply said, “Yeah. Hey, Daddy? Can you talk for a few minutes?”

“Sure, Roo. What’s up?”

Joey swallowed, the use of her childhood nickname almost undoing her composure. “I—When I come home for the summer, I want to live with Grams and Gramps. Do you—Would you—?” She cleared her throat and turned away from the springtime hustle and bustle of the city. “I don’t want you and Georgia to be upset, but I could live with them and cook with Grams and help with Gramps, and yeah.”

“They are back in their place now,” Daddy said thoughtfully. “They’re doing well there, but I suppose they would like the company.” He spoke slowly, like he was trying to figure out what Joey was really trying to say or do.

“I’m just—there’s so much going on with Bryce and OJ and Bailey, and I feel—” Her throat closed, and Joey struggled to breathe. Panic built in her chest, especially when Daddy stayed silent.

“Invisible,” she whispered.

“Joelle,” Daddy said, and it was a rare occurrence that he used her full name.

“If I live with Grams and Gramps, I’ll be useful.” Joey sniffed, hating the weakness that sound leant her. “I’m okay, Daddy. I’m fine. I just—maybe I don’t want to be a chef.”

She hadn’t intended to let that out, but now her heart felt like it had been slashed with a sharp blade. Blood poured from it, and tears leaked down her face.

“Oh,” Daddy said. Nothing more.

“I feel invisible.” Joey paced to the closed bedroom door and turned back to the window. “And lost. It feels like everyone around me knows exactly where they’re going and how to get there, and I’m just…drifting.”

She pictured the large crowds in New York City, all of them wearing their black power suits and long wool coats as they strode with purposeful steps toward their destinations. She panned back in her mind, and she spotted herself, an island in the middle of them, wearing a bright red coat.

And still, no one saw her. No one approached. No one cared about the blonde girl who didn’t know what to do with her life.

I care.

The voice entered her mind but pierced right through her heart.

I see you, and I care.

Joey collapsed onto her bed then and sobbed.

“Hey, hey,” Daddy said. “Talk to me, Roo. I can’t stand hearing you like this.”

“Can you come to the city?” she asked, not sure where that had come from. “We can just get a big hotel room that overlooks Central Park, and just—escape.”

“I’ll be there tomorrow,” he said, his own voice a little froggy.

“I feel lost, Daddy. I’m not sure I’m a big city girl.”

“I’ll be there tomorrow,” he said. “You’ll get anchored, and we’ll figure out what your next step is, okay?”

She nodded. “Okay.”

“You don’t need to see more than one step at a time, baby,” he said gently. “You don’t have to decide today if you’re a chef or a, a, a marine biologist or whatever. It’s okay to try one thing, then another. So don’t cry, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Don’t feel bad. You’re fine.”

She pulled in a breath and reached for a tissue. She wiped her eyes and nose as she said, “Okay. ”

“And I’ll be there tomorrow.”

“I’m sorry, Daddy. I?—”

“Don’t apologize,” Daddy said. “Feel how you feel. You’re not wrong, and I’m not upset.”

“I love you, Daddy.”

“I love you too, Roo.”

Those words had always made her feel safe and strong, and Joey smiled at her bedspread. “Tell the kids hi, and hug Georgia for me.”

“She’s right here,” Daddy said. “Lookin’ all worried.”

“I’m okay,” Joey said. “Just…I need you for a day is all.”

“See you tomorrow.”

The call ended, and Joey could only imagine the conversation in the house in Coral Canyon. Georgia would want to come too, and Joey did love her. But she quickly sent her daddy a text.

I just want you to come, Daddy. I love Georgia, and I’ll see her at Spring Break, but I just want you to come.

It took him a while, and Laney had already finished dinner before he answered. It’ll just be me, Roo. See you soon.

She finally relaxed, and later that night, as she lay in bed and closed her eyes to fall asleep, she did feel very seen. Seen by her father. Seen by her grandparents.

Seen by God, who’d told her I see you, and I care.