Chapter 27

TWENTY-SEVEN

I slam the front door shut so hard the photos on the wall sway in the resulting current of air. I’m too pissed off to care that it’s one a.m. and everybody else is probably sleeping already.

Over the course of the past few days, I’ve been getting steadily more and more angry. Or maybe I’ve been the same level of pissed off since the moment I walked out of Sutton’s place. It’s hard to say.

All I know is that I’m angry all the time.

I’m also helpless and hurt and I don’t know what to do.

I toe my sneakers off, and they slam against the wall as I kick them away from me. It’s childish behavior, but I can’t seem to stop, so inanimate objects will suffer and that’s just how it’s going to be.

There’s something cathartic about being angry. Maybe because I don’t have to think. Because when I start to think… Well, there’s nothing good there.

It’s not a good sign when you tell somebody you love them, and in return, they completely lose their shit.

In the kitchen, I grab a bottle of water from the fridge and slam that door shut, too.

Then I lean my ass against the counter and unscrew the cap with more aggression than strictly necessary.

I’m trying to keep the momentum, because with anger comes a shitload of determination, and that’s exactly what I need right now. I’m not even that tempted to go to bed, even if I’ve had a long day, because there’s a part of me that’s scared I’ll wake up the next day and cry, instead of being angry and determined, and I need to be angry and determined.

When I’m angry and determined it feels like there’s a way out. Lose that, and you’re screwed. Lose that, and you’ll give up.

It’s too bad I don’t have anywhere to direct all this attitude. The logical direction—Sutton—is out of the question for now. I can’t just march into his apartment and tell him he has to love me back. So for now, I’ve resorted to keeping myself busy to postpone whatever fallout is sure to follow Sutton.

I think it’s called denial.

If I don’t face or process what happened, it didn’t.

And then there’s still hope.

I have a few weeks to go before I can start my internship, which will swallow a sizable chunk of my day, so until then, I have to keep moving. Mindlessly. With just one goal. Do not, under any circumstances, stop to think.

As a result, the house has been cleaned top to bottom multiple times, including the windows, the stoop outside, and the sidewalk in front of Remy’s house. I’ve lost to Theo in every video game he owns. I’ve painted the walls in the kitchen and the living room and am eyeing the bedrooms next.

I should be exhausted, but I still can’t seem to fall asleep at night.

It’s just that there’s this persistent ache in my chest, and it doesn’t go away no matter what I do.

I slam the bottle down and clutch the edges of the counter while I hang my head and close my eyes.

Shut up! I tell my brain. Shut up, shut up, shut up!

“Is that a temper tantrum?”

I snap my head up at Remy’s voice. He’s standing in the doorway, dressed in his usual battered pair of khakis and one of those flannel shirts he likes so much.

“More or less.” I straighten my back and eye him warily. “Why are you still up?”

“I’d be very surprised if anybody’s managing to sleep through the racket you’re creating right now.” He steps into the kitchen, flicks on the coffeemaker, and puts a cup underneath it. A minute later, he shuffles to the table and takes a seat.

“That’ll keep you up all night,” I say with a nod toward the cup.

He holds my gaze pointedly and takes a long sip.

“I’m retired, kid. I can do whatever the hell I want with my time.”

I roll my eyes and salute him.

He takes another sip.

“You’ve been off lately,” he says.

“Have I?”

He sends me a look that says ‘Don’t even’ more effectively than he could with words.

He takes another sip, eyes still on me.

“You know, I never was a believer in fate and coincidences. Stella? Stella loved that stuff. Everything has a reason. Every move cements a path. That kind of poppycock.” He shakes his head fondly.

“But now you are?” I ask.

“Not until recently. Not until you came home one day with a boy.” Another sip. “A boy I found on my doorstep one night fifteen years ago or so.”

It’s…

It should be a shock.

But it’s not.

When I was eavesdropping… They knew each other, didn’t they? I just turned a blind eye back then, all my faculties preoccupied with ‘keeping Sutton for now.’

“How?” I ask.

He looks at me without saying a word.

I don’t expect him to say anything.

But then…

He tells me a story.

After… After, we’re both silent for a long while.

Digesting.

Waiting.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” I finally ask.

“I don’t like to meddle. Never have. And in a situation like that… How does one decide where their loyalties lie?”

“But you’ve decided now?” I ask.

He merely shrugs before he drains his coffee and gets up. He grabs paper and a pen from the pile on the corner of the counter and scribbles something on it before he hands it to me.

I glance at the paper and what at first glance seems to be an address.

“You have the day off tomorrow. Rent a car. Take a drive. It might clear your head.”

And then he walks out of the kitchen and leaves me there, clutching the paper in my hand.

I park on the street in front of a large white colonial. There’s a two-car garage attached to the side of the house, and a white picket fence around the property. Large trees create spots of shade on the grass in the front yard. There’s a porch with wicker furniture and a flowerbed in front of it. Somebody’s parked their red open-top Jeep in the driveway.

I pull the keys out of the ignition, get out of the car, and lock it behind me.

The house is quiet. So quiet I’m not sure anybody’s even home.

But I make my way to the front door anyway.

Once there, I press my thumb to the doorbell and wait.

For a few moments, everything’s silent.

But then there are footsteps on the other side of the door, and a second later, it’s being pulled open.

“Tiny, I swear to God, if you don’t behave, I will lock you in the backyard. Sit.”

A humongous great Dane wags its tail so hard its whole butt is moving left and right.

“Hello,” the woman says. “How can I help you?”

“Your dog is named Tiny?” I ask. I’m pretty sure Tiny would be taller than me if he stood up on his hind legs.

The woman looks down at where the dog is sitting next to her and pats the dog on the head affectionately. “My husband likes Elton John, and when we brought Tiny home from the shelter, ‘Tiny Dancer’ was playing on the radio. The dog went nuts with excitement. My husband said it was a sign. I figured it was fine, until my son thought it would be funny to convince his nine-year-old brothers that Tiny Dancer is a long name and should be shortened to Tiny D.”

I hide my smile. Sutton would think it was funny to do something like that.

The woman—Sutton’s mother—straightens up once she’s decided Tiny can behave. “How can I help you?”

“I…” I lick over my lips, not sure what to say anymore. “My name is Wren,” I say.

The woman stills. Her lips part on an exhale.

We stand in the doorway, staring at each other.

“Wren,” she finally says, and then she seems to gather herself as she smiles at me, tightlipped, but not unfriendly, per se. “Amy.” She sends me a thoughtful look. “I think you’d better come in, Wren.”

She opens the door wider and steps aside.

I stop next to Tiny and hold out my hand. The dog sniffs the back of my hand enthusiastically before he pushes his nose into my palm and starts to lick it.

“He’s a fierce guard dog, as you can see,” Amy says drily. “Something to keep in mind if you ever want to steal a TV, because Tiny Dancer will personally help you carry it out to the van and will also throw in a free dinner and all the laptops in the house.”

She motions for me to follow her, and we end up in her sunny kitchen. Everything is bright and white. A lace curtain flutters in front of a cracked-open window. There’s a fruit bowl set in the middle of the kitchen table and a big vase with sunflowers next to it.

“Can I get you anything to drink?” Amy asks, startling me.

“Umm. Water would be nice.”

She takes a glass from one of the cabinets, opens the fridge, takes out a decanter where strawberries, slices of cucumber, and oranges are floating around in water, and pours two glasses.

“Please.” She motions toward the table.

We both take a seat on opposite sides.

Silence.

I study her, and she studies me. Her eyes linger on my arms for a moment too long before they move away. She doesn’t ask.

I try to find similarities between her and Sutton. Eyes. Hair color. Shape of the nose. But there’s barely anything. Her eyes are gray to Sutton’s amber. Her hair is strawberry blond as opposed to Sutton’s dark blond. She’s pretty short, and there’s something almost birdlike in her sharp features and fragile build, while Sutton is tall, lean, and tough.

“So you’re Wren,” Amy says.

“You say that like you know me.” I take a sip of the water to have something to do with myself to ease the intense scrutiny she still hasn’t let up on. A spark of hope lights up my insides.

“I keep in touch with Remy.”

Disappointment makes the water taste sour.

“You can stop glaring at the table,” Amy says. She looks out the window, and when she glances back at me, there’s sadness in her eyes. “My son would never share anything as intensely personal with me as you are. I’ve let him down one time too many over the course of his life.”

I have more questions than answers, but I don’t know where to start, so I stay silent.

Amy sighs and twirls her glass between her fingers.

“I got married when I was nineteen years old,” she says. “I was born in Mississippi, the youngest of nine. Dirt poor. I resented my life and my family’s financial situation. I resented that once I was out of high school, I couldn’t go to college but was expected to go work at a poultry processing factory like most of the rest of my family. I resented the lack of prospects and the expectation that I’d settle down with the boy I was messing around with in high school and start having babies, because my dreams were chock full of big city lights and glamour. So I packed my bag and left for New York. I was young and pretty with a head full of unrealistic dreams. The fall to reality was swift and harsh. It became clear quickly that it was one thing being a big fish in a small pond and a whole other thing being a tiny fish in a huge pond. Imagine my surprise when after the first few days nobody still hadn’t offered to make me a star? I started working as a waitress and found a crappy room in a crappy apartment that I shared with seven other crappy people, and you know what?”

She looks at me expectantly like she actually wants me to guess.

I just shake my head.

“I was miserable,” she says. “Still poor as ever. Still working a job I hated. And now, on top of everything else, lonely. I had this idea that New York was going to be a fairy tale. I’d come here, and it’d mean instant success because this is where dreams come true. Six months in, I was ready to quit.”

She looks into the distance, eyes fixed on some point on the wall just above my shoulder.

“And then I met Everett.” The glass keeps twirling between her fingers, and she glances at me. “You know how sometimes a situation seems too good to be true, so you shouldn’t trust it? That was Everett. He set his sights on me and used every play in the playbook and every weapon in his arsenal. Flower deliveries of dozens of long-stemmed red roses became a daily occurrence. At one point I had to bring them to work, where they decorated tables with them because there were so many that I couldn’t physically fit them in my apartment. Then gifts. Expensive handbags. Jewelry. Designer dresses. Trips. I had to go get a passport for the first time in my life. We flew on a private jet, and he took me to Vegas and Italy and Paris, and I pinched myself early in the morning each day because I was sure it was a dream. How did I get so lucky?”

She takes a drink and sets the glass down with a soft thud.

“In four months, we were married. The first time he hit me was three months into our marriage, when I wanted to apply to college.”

My heart is already too loud, and I suspect she’s just getting started.

“He bought me diamond earrings the very next day. Tiffany. And I forgave. The next time it was a Cartier bracelet. And I made excuses.

“He started calling me names, and I called it just a fight. Everybody has fights. Everybody has bruises. And besides, I was living the dream, wasn’t I? I had a handsome husband, we lived in a luxury apartment, and I was dressed to the nines. An occasional backhand to the face… I could swallow that down. He was stressed, after all. Working hard to provide for us. Well, his team lost a football game. It was my own fault I wasn’t a good enough wife. All I had to do was try harder. I gave him every password and every code because I wanted to give those to him. And suddenly there was a calendar on the wall, and I marked all of my comings and goings there because I chose to do that. And when I was eating lunch with my girlfriends, and he just happened to step into the same restaurant and join us, it was because he loved me so much.”

She takes another sip of her water and dabs her lips with a napkin. Almost daintily.

“I didn’t tell anybody. Shame is an extremely powerful incentive to shut a person the hell up. I knew something was very, very wrong, and I was ashamed. So I told nobody. Instead, I cut people out of my life and learned how to apply makeup so that it’d hide the bruises, and always, always answered on the first ring when he called.”

She falls silent for a little while. Lost in memories, before she looks up sharply.

“I thought about leaving once. Then I found out I was pregnant. And a child has to have a father, doesn’t he? A child wants to live in luxury and have all the toys he can imagine, right?”

It’s not a question, so I don’t even think about answering.

“The fancier the penthouse, the darker the deeds behind the doors,” she says. Wistfully. With the look of somebody who’s been through hell and back and knows what she’s talking about.

“Sutton was five the first time he called 911 by himself. And then I smiled at the two police officers who came by and told them everything was okay. That my child was just playing around. And nothing changed.”

She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes.

“The first time he hit Sutton was the first time I left. We went back to Mississippi because I had nowhere else to go. He found out where we were probably an hour later. He followed us the next day. Then more long-stemmed red roses and jewelry. It was a hell of a contrast to my parents’ trailer. I was back in less than a week. I went back twice more after that.” She meets my gaze again. “I took Sutton back, even though I knew what I was getting him into. There’s very little in this life that’s more heartbreaking than a child who’s decided to save somebody who cannot save themselves. Whenever my son visits us here, he doesn’t sleep. He can’t. Even the slightest thump or creak anywhere in the house and he’s up, because when he’s near me, every noise means I need to be saved.”

She clutches the glass between her fingers until her fingertips turn white. “Sutton was fifteen, and he was late coming home that night. It had happened more and more often. He had new friends. Quinn and Rubi. The rest of their family. I encouraged it. The less time he was here, the better. We were supposed to go to a cocktail party that evening, but I had a migraine. I could barely stand up from the pain. Everett wasn’t having it. Sutton walked in to the sight of his father’s hands around his mother’s neck. Something snapped. He was taller than Everett by then, and he just… pulled him off me, and started hitting him. Again. And again. And again. There was blood everywhere. On Sutton. On the floor. On me.

“I finally managed to pull him away. He staggered out the door and ended up on Remy’s doorstep.”

She takes a deep breath and pushes the glass away.

“That was the last time I left. That was the time that stuck.”

Silence falls over the bright, sunny kitchen. The story is done.

“He thinks he’ll hurt me,” I say slowly, finally, finally getting what he meant when he said it.

Amy’s eyes snap up from where she’s been studying her fingers. She opens and closes her mouth like she’s looking for words.

“Sutton looks a lot like his father,” she says slowly. “People have commented on that a lot over the years. ‘You’re just like your father.’ Over and over again. Year after year.”

I rub my hands over my face and stare at the polished wood surface of the table.

We’re both silent for a long, long time. Remembering. Digesting.

“What does the Holland Foundation do?” I eventually ask.

She eyes me calmly. “Supports children who grow up in violent homes. They pay for therapy, have twenty-four seven helplines, fund projects that are aimed at helping, and give out grants. They have people who go to schools and youth centers to talk to kids because there is so much silence that surrounds domestic violence. Suffocating, malicious silence that covers everything like a weighted blanket and makes you believe that what’s happening to you is somehow normal when it’s anything but. Sutton’s trying to break that silence. Because it’s not just the victims who are silent. The silence is part of the fabric of our society when it comes to domestic violence.”

“He said he inherited his money,” I say.

Amy nods. “Everett’s parents. Sutton went to them once, and they didn’t believe him when he told them what was happening at home. Or maybe they didn’t want to believe him. They tried to contact me after it was all said and done.” She shakes her head. “I couldn’t. I had to cut them out of our lives to have any chance of moving on. When they died, they left everything they had to Sutton. Money. Real estate. Shares in the company.” She looks out the window for a moment before she faces me again. “Guilty conscience, I suppose. Or something else. To this day, I’m not sure.”

Once she’s done speaking, I blow out a long breath before I push myself up.

“Thank you for telling me,” I say.

I’m already in the doorway when her voice stops me.

“Do you love him?” she asks.

I turn to look at her.

“More than anything.”

She nods.

“Good.”

Yeah.

Good.

Only I’m still not sure what to do with this.