IT TOOK ME THREE weeks of staring at my apartment walls to finally fly down to Georgia. I’d done some work too, like once and for all severing my ties with Isabela’s PR firm, after I made sure she’d do the right thing when it came to Claire. Once that was taken care of, I wrote. I wrote like I’d never written before. Most of it would never see the light of day, but purging my brain onto paper had been a relief.
Now, I was here, in my grandparents’ hometown. For two days, I sat at the end of their driveway, next to the honeysuckle bush that now reminded me more of Claire than all the years I spent suckling honey from it as a kid. For two days, panic wormed in my gut whenever I told myself to get out of the car. To suck it up and go inside.
What got me to open the door was Claire. When I thought about her leaving a husband who’d been her whole world to make her own way. To go on tour with strangers who could barely give a shit after she’d been in a car accident. How she’d confronted me on that last day when I would have done anything to avoid it. The way she held my feet to the fire in the end, telling me it didn’t have to be that way.
I’d never met a braver woman. She was quiet about it. So quiet, it was easy to miss. Maybe most people did, but I’d seen her. She’d seen me too. She saw me for the coward I was.
So, it was Claire I channeled on that first step into my grandmother’s kitchen. Morning light shone through the window over the farmhouse sink. Nothing had changed, but everything was different. It didn’t smell like I remembered, and somehow, the room felt smaller.
I ran my fingers along the Formica counter, a smile tugging at the corners of my mouth. I couldn’t think of a single bad memory that had happened here. Why the hell had I waited so many years to come back?
Snapping a picture, I texted Claire. She was the reason I was here, and I wanted her to know.
It took me two days, but I finally came inside.
My phone rang almost immediately. I stared at it, too stunned to answer right away. We’d texted a couple times, but I hadn’t heard her speak in weeks.
“Hello?”
“Hey,” she answered. “Tell me about it.”
Her husky voice cut me off at the knees. I sank to the floor with my head in my hand. “Give me a second.”
She let out a faint laugh. “I have about five minutes before I have to go back to work. But you can have a second.”
“I don’t know where to start. The last time I was here—” A lump lodged in my throat, so thick, it cut off my words.
“Was Dylan with you?” she asked.
I nodded even though she couldn’t see. “He was five or six. My grandparents were enamored by him, even though their blood didn’t run through his veins.”
“Because he was yours and you were theirs.” Like it was that simple. And I guess it was.
“Yeah. That’s right.”
“Did you bake?”
“Grandma’s arthritis had gotten pretty bad, but nothing stopped her from baking with Dyl. We sang Joni Mitchell and baked a pie. My grandpa taught him how to pick honeysuckle, like I showed you.” I pressed on the aching place in my chest. “My grandmother died a year later, and granddad followed soon after. And then Dylan. Nothing’s ever been the same. Nothing.”
“What do you want to do now?”
I huffed a laugh. “I don’t know.”
“Say the first thing that comes to your mind.”
“Bake.”
“So bake, Dominic. Why not?”
Someone on Claire’s end said her name, then Claire said she’d be right there.
“Listen, I have to go now. I’m really glad you went inside,” she said.
“I’m really glad you called,” I replied. “Can I call you another day? Tell you more about the house?”
She hesitated for a beat before she replied. “This is where I should say no, but I won’t. Don’t ask me why.”
She said she had to go again, and I let her. It seemed like I had a habit of letting her go when all I really wanted to do was hold on as tight as I could.
I still had too much shit to deal with to even consider that, though. I climbed up off the floor, tracing the same steps Dylan’s little feet had. Up the stairs to the bedroom he’d slept in—the same one I’d spent my nights in as a kid. To the bathroom and the clawfoot tub where we’d both bathed. All of it aged and unused, gutting me straight to my core.
This house had once held the lives of the people I’d loved most in the world, and now, it only held ghosts.
I wanted to tear it down.
But I needed to build it back up. To shed some blood and sweat and bring this place back to life. I hadn’t held a power tool in years, but my hands twitched to get dirty.
The words weren’t there yet. The why of it all. But I knew, deep down in my bones, I was right where I was supposed to be.
“Tell me what you did today,” Claire said.
I sat out back on the crumbling patio behind my grandparents’ house, drinking a cold beer and listening to the crickets chirp. Everything hurt, except my soul.
“Tore the kitchen apart. I saved the sink, though. It’s farmhouse style, original to the house. It just needs some TLC.”
“Did you use a sledgehammer?”
I chuckled. “I did. There’s nothing like swinging a sledgehammer through a wall or cracking a cabinet.”
It’d been a few days since I’d last heard her voice. I hadn’t been sure she’d pick up tonight, but when she did, relief coursed through my veins like a drug.
“Mmm…that’s not something I’ve experienced yet. I’ll make it a point to do it once in my life.”
“You’ve got time.”
She asked me my plans for the kitchen, so I told her I was mostly in the destruction phase, but I’d be bringing in professionals to help soon. It felt normal, yet unlike any conversation we’d ever had.
“Are you ever going to tell me about your job?” I asked.
Claire guffawed. “Were you ever going to ask?”
“This is me asking. Marta won’t tell me jack, and I know she’s spending every second she can with your sister, so she’s privy, but her lips are sealed when it comes to you.”
“To be fair, she doesn’t tell me anything about you either.”
“I have a feeling that’s at your request.”
Her sigh was so heavy, I felt the weight of it. “Last week, I was hired to do PR and fundraising at a nonprofit that supports battered women. They don’t have enough to pay me to work full-time, so I’m also working at Anneliese’s nursery. I’m busy all the time, which helps. And I did tell Marta not to talk about you, because when I hear you’re not doing well, it makes me want to drop everything to make it all better for you. But I won’t do that because right now, I need to make it all better for me.”
We released twin exhales. “I’m doing okay. Better than when we last talked. Being here is more right than any place else. At least for now. And, Claire?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m really fucking proud of you. If you’re up for it, I’d like to hear about the nonprofit.”
She paused before speaking. “I won’t tell you the name. You can’t write a big check so they’ll hire me full-time.”
I had to smile. “You know me better than I thought.”
“I’ll tell you about it, though. If you actually want to know.”
“I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t.”
Marta showed up when I’d been down in Georgia for a little over two weeks, wearing steel-toed boots, an empty tool belt hanging from her waist.
I nodded to it. “Planning on doing a lot of work?”
She took the hammer from my hand and tucked it in her belt. “I knew you’d have tools for me. I travel light, baby.”
She glanced around the trashed kitchen of my childhood. “You’ve been busy, huh?”
I rubbed the back of my sweaty neck. “I’m still in destruction mode, but I’ve been taking it slow so I don’t knock the whole house down.” I tapped the farmhouse sink with the toe of my boot where it now rested on the floor. “I’m saving this. Dale knows a guy who can reglaze it.”
Marta mimed gagging with her finger down her throat. “How’s good old Dale Misogynist Lemon?”
Chuckling, I slung my arm around Marta’s shoulders, pulling her close. We hadn’t done much talking since the tour ended. She’d been pretty angry with me, and I’d been wrapped up in my own world of self-hate. I’d finally asked her to come down, prepared to be rejected, but she’d jumped at my invitation.
“Missed you, Mar. Like whoa.”
She let her head fall on my shoulder. “I missed you too, Dom. If you hadn’t invited me here, I would have forced my way in pretty soon. You can only disappear on me so long before it becomes unacceptable.”
“I’ll remember that.”
She slugged my bicep. “You’re not doing it again. We’re going to work on this house and you at the same time.”
I scratched my head, raking my gaze over the piled cabinets and drywall dust everywhere. “I don’t have a solid plan…for any of it.”
“You don’t have to. The point is you’re working on it. And I’ll be here, working with you.” She nudged me with her shoulder. “Show me everything.”
I took her on a tour of the place—it wasn’t big, so it didn’t take long—then we settled in my nightly spot with beers in hand.
“How long are you here?” I asked.
“Until you send me away.”
“Is your girlfriend cool with that?”
Marta tipped her head back, resting on the chair’s cushion, her mouth tugging up at the corners. “My girlfriend…she gets it. I’m going to be FaceTiming the hell out of her, but I’m here with you and she understands that.”
“Look at that smile. You’re fucking happy, Mar.”
Marta had been pretty single for as long as I’d known her. She always fell for the wrong girl, got dragged along, then spit out. I hadn’t seen her like this before. Her happiness was a warm blanket for me.
“I am. I mean, it’s new, but Annaliese is a prize.” She shook her head, still grinning. “The Fontanas know how to make them.”
“Yep.” I took a swallow of my beer while my gut dropped.
Quiet settled between us. It was pretty obvious where our minds went. It’d been over a month since I last saw Claire, and a week since she responded to a text. Her last message said she needed space and to focus on herself, and I couldn’t really argue with that. That didn’t mean I hadn’t taken the sledgehammer to the bathroom mirror after.
It didn’t help. But that was something I was learning. Reacting before thinking got me nothing but a bigger mess than before.
“We hung out with The Seasons Change crowd a couple nights ago,” Marta said.
“Oh yeah? How’s Adam’s face?”
She smirked, playing with the label on her bottle. “Healed. He’s back to being as cute as ever.”
I’d gotten lucky and no one had recorded me beating the shit out of the kid. I’d gotten even luckier when he didn’t press charges and let the whole thing go. I had a feeling that was more for Claire than me, but I wouldn’t say it wasn’t a relief not to be facing a court date.
“Was Claire there too?” I didn’t really want to know. I had no right to her life, so I shouldn’t have asked. But when it came to Claire, I had a lot of trouble doing the right thing.
She nodded. “Yeah. It was a big group thing. She and Adam got to talk. She forgave him when he basically bowed down at her feet. Then Claire and Rodrigo snuck away together and got matching best friend tattoos.”
“What?”
She snorted a laugh. “I’m not even shitting you. Those two kill me.”
I gripped the arm of her chair, dragging it closer. “You’re not going to tell me what they got?”
Her lips pressed in a tight line. “I’m not. One day, if you ever work your way back to her, you can ask yourself.”
I rubbed hard at my gritty face. “You’re holding out hope for that?”
She raised her beer, toasting to the night sky. “I’m holding out hope for you to accept that you can have good in this life. You can laugh without feeling guilty. You’re allowed to stop tying yourself to the whipping post every damn day. Right now, I see a man half-alive, and frankly, you’re doing a disservice to Dylan.”
Thunder rolled through my veins, a storm brewing behind my gaze. “Don’t bring me that shit. You don’t know anything about Dylan.”
“No. Dammit, I’ve danced around this for years with you, but I can’t stand watching you destroy every possibility of having something good. You miss him. He should be alive, and it isn’t fair that he’s not. All of that is true, and it will never be untrue. I might not have known Dylan, but I know you. You screwed up, and so did Chelsea, but you were there. You loved that boy, despite life, despite everything thrown your way. You loved him completely. And now, it’s time to find a way for you to keep living.”
My chest rattled as I sucked in a shuddering breath. Anger would have been the easiest response. Sending Marta away and closing myself off in this rubble of a house was on the tip of my tongue. But I came here for a reason. Standing still had gotten me nowhere. I’d gotten grayer, added a few more wrinkles, but I was still that same lost, raging-at-the-world man I’d been when I walked out of the hospital seven years ago. For a while, for a long while, that had worked for me.
Now, not much was working.
“You’re right.”
Marta sat up straight so fast, her beer sloshed out of her bottle. “No shit?”
“No shit. I’m tired, Mar. Tired of being angry. Tired of working so hard at being a miserable fuck. I’ve let myself fade into this ghost of a person, and now…” I shook my head, “I just know I’m no good for Claire or anyone like this.”
She hit my leg. “I’m not talking about Claire. She shouldn’t even be on your radar, not yet.”
I opened my fists in my lap. “So, I just let her go?”
“Wasn’t that your intention? Isn’t that what you did in Chicago?”
“My intention, yeah. I couldn’t seem to follow through.”
Marta’s brow pinched. “I love you, Dom. And I love her. I think you could be great together, but you were both hiding in each other. You know that, right?”
Heaving a sigh, I nodded. “When’d you get so wise?”
She shot me a smug look. “When I turned thirty, it all became clear.”
“A year ago? And you didn’t want to smack me around back then?”
She swatted the back of my head. “I always want to smack you around.”
The boulder on my chest cracked and splintered. I’d been filled with sorrow and anger for so long, moving on into something lighter seemed nearly impossible. Then again, setting foot in this house again had too, yet here I was.
Nothing is forever,
even if it feels like dying
In my mind, I marked this as the night I decided to really live. I had no idea what that looked like yet, and I couldn’t say I wouldn’t sometimes rage against it, but this was it: the moment, the turning point—my chance to finally get it right.
