by Adrian Stark
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© Copyright 2019 - All rights reserved.
It is not legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited, and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locations is purely coincidental.
Table of Contents
Book Title Here
Table of Contents
Chapter One: Chapter 1 Title
Chapter Two: Chapter 2 Title
Chapter Three: Chapter 3 Title
Chapter Four: Chapter 4 Title
Chapter Five: Chapter 5 Title
Chapter Six: Chapter 6 Title
Chapter Seven: Chapter 7 Title
Chapter Eight: Chapter 8 Title
Chapter Nine: Chapter 9 Title
Chapter Ten: Chapter 10 Title
Chapter Eleven: Chapter 11 Title
Chapter Twelve: Chapter 12 Title
Chapter Thirteen: Chapter 13 Title
Chapter Fourteen: Chapter 14 Title
Epilogue
About the Author
Other Titles
Free Gifts /Email List
Dedication
Acknowledgment
Chapter One: Chapter 1 Title
The key had twisted easily in the lock, and I felt a surge of relief flood through me. I’d half convinced myself it wouldn’t fit. The house still wasn’t mine and leaving Andrew… leaving the job halfway through meant no payment. No payment meant the for sale sign at the end of the driveway had to stay put. But, for now, at least, I could still get in.
Inside, not much had changed at all. The furniture was gone, placed into storage until I could bring myself to go through it all, but the realtors hadn’t managed to get rid of dad and me just yet. There were still the scorch marks on the kitchen ceiling from failed attempts at cooking exotic food and pencil marks on the door frames showing how much I’d grown each year.
Dad’s room still smelled like lemon soap. Mine still smelled like the countless lychee candles I used to burn.
It was comforting, knowing that we’d made our mark.
I ignored dad’s room. I stood in the doorway for what felt like years, staring in at the empty shell, but it felt like there was some kind of force field preventing me from going in. Don’t think about it. I reminded myself. That’s how you got through this up until now. Just ignore it if it’s too painful.
In an effort not to dwell at the threshold, I ended up in my old room on the other side of the house.
My old footboard used to sit right underneath the window. I’d crawl out from under the covers and sit there with my eyes closed, tracing the patterns the sunlight made on my eyelids. Sometimes I’d read the books mom had kept in the little bookcase in the hallway or pull down old family albums and flip through the pictures.
The bed was gone, but I lay down anyway with my eyes closed. A tiny piece of my soul settled when the light filtered through the window and sent kaleidoscope patterns spinning behind my eyes.
True to her word, Charlie had booked flights back to New York the morning after Michael was arrested. She’d slept in my room that night, her arm slung protectively around my waist while my heart thundered in my rib cage. I didn’t sleep at all that night.
Andrew had lied to me. I knew I should have focused on the job, focused on getting the house back, and getting my life on track. After Michael, I’d swore I wasn’t going to fall in love again, and here I am. Andrew’s face swam into view with that soft, hesitant smile, and every part of me ached for him. Shame twisted in my gut. This was the man responsible for my dad dying. All those nights, I’d sat awake in the hospital room, holding his hand and watching him waste away until he was nothing but a skeleton with my dad’s face. It had taken him four months to die. And I’d leaped into bed with his killer within what? Three days?
Stupid. Couldn’t keep it in your pants, could you? Had to throw yourself at the first man you saw. Are you that lonely? That desperate?
I clapped my hands over my ears, trying to block out the voice in my head, but it was right. I’d decided so long ago that the best way to get through life was to block everything out. Never get other people involved. People are unpredictable, they hurt you and leave you, and then you’re stuck with yourself again. And I was never particularly good company.
I thought Andrew would be different and, god, how cliche that sounded now. I’d felt good with him and safe—like I could tell him everything. Everything that had happened, everything I’d been through, and maybe he’d be willing to put up with me anyway.
“Josephine?” At the sound of Charlie’s voice, I rolled over, pulling my hands away from my head. She looked as tired as I felt, a small weary smile appearing when she saw me from the doorway. “It’s been a little while, hun; just wanted to check you’re okay?” I took out my phone. I’d been here for an hour and a half, at least—a pang of guilt lodged in my throat.
I’d been pretty useless on the way back from Switzerland, my mind too preoccupied to do anything but follow Charlie’s gentle coaxing through security and onto the plane. The flight from Bern back to New York had been a long one, and I couldn’t remember much of it. The first coherent thought I’d had was when we got back into Charlie’s beat-up old Sedan, and I was overcome with a need to see the old house.
“I’m sorry,” I croaked, pushing myself to sit up and curling my hands around my knees. “We can go now. I just wanted to see it again before…” The sentence drifted unfinished across the room between us. I didn’t want to cry again. It felt like crying was all I had done the past few days.
Charlie must have heard the wobble in my voice. She made her way toward me, dropping down next to me on the hard wooden floor.
“Hey, hey, it’s okay. I know how much this place means to you.” She put an arm around my shoulder, rubbing her hand up and down my arm comfortingly. “You’ve been through a lot, Josie—you can do whatever the fuck you want, okay? Focus on what will make you feel better.” I leaned into the touch, suddenly so tired I could barely keep my eyes open.
“Love you, Char,” I mumbled.
Charlie huffed a fond laugh.
“Alright. Come on; there’s still another two hours until home.” Charlie pulled me to my feet, letting go long enough to stretch out her back before leading me from the room and out into the afternoon sunshine.
The last two hours were quiet. Charlie kept trying to start a conversation—talking about things I’d missed while I‘d been away and how fun it was going to be living together again—but I didn’t have it in me to respond. After a while, she stopped trying, lapsing the car into a gentle silence, save for the sound of the radio.
Chapter Two: Chapter 2 Title
When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time alone. I always found that was the best way to process things, and I never minded my own company. The idea of going back to my apartment in New York alone sent a tidal wave of anxiety crashing over me.
I hadn’t been able to sleep that night, fighting the urge to march across the deck and demand to talk to her. I made it as far as the door more than once, but thinking about the look on her face as Charlie had taken her away drove me back to bed.
When I woke up the next morning, I knew she was already gone. When I joined Chrissie for breakfast in her cabin, she slid the resignation letter across the table.
“We’re going home,” she said when I finally looked up from the paper. It was crumpled around the edges from
where I’d gripped it too hard.
“What?” I didn’t think I could handle Chrissie leaving me now. Home for her was Virginia. It would be months before I saw her again.
Christine had canceled the rest of the cruise, promising to reimburse everyone, and booked us a flight home immediately, ignoring any protests.
“The whole point of this trip was to get you out of the public eye and back into dad’s good books,” she mused as she pulled a suitcase out from under the bed and opened it up. “Do you really give a shit what he thinks anymore?” I scoffed. If there was one thing about the past few days I was willing to stick by one hundred percent, it was that conversation with dad.
“No, I do not.”
Christine shrugged and returned to her packing.
“There you go, then. We’re going home.”
It was an unspoken agreement between us that Chrissie was going to stay with me, though neither of us was sure how long for.
The first night came and went, both of us too tired to do anything but order food and go to bed. I gave Chrissie the bed, unwilling to struggle with an air mattress so late, and dragged a spare comforter from the closet.
The leather couch was soft and warm, but no matter how long I tried to fall asleep, I couldn't.
She’d looked heartbroken. And it was all my fault.
I thought again about the reasons I hadn’t told Josephine about my father, her father. I wasn’t in charge when it happened; I’ve only just found out. I’m trying to fix it.
Those three sentences went round and round in my mind, and the longer they did, the clearer it became. They weren’t reasons; they were excuses.
I had known. It didn’t matter for how long, or whether it was his fault in the first place. Dad was more to blame than I was, but that didn’t mean I was innocent. Far from it.
It had taken me two months to do anything at all. And all that time, I’d been with Josephine knowing how much we’d ruined her life. I knew that, and I couldn’t let her go, couldn’t face what might happen if she found out that my father had as good as murdered hers. I couldn’t face a world without her and with her seeing me for who I was rather than who I was expected to be. It wasn’t an excuse.
But it was the truth.
When the clock on the side table told me it was three in the morning and I still couldn’t sleep, I gave up and went to get myself a cup of the herbal tea Chrissie had bought for me the last time she was here months ago. She’d bought it after proclaiming that I couldn’t drink coffee or liquor with every meal.
“Get me a cup?” Chrissie stood in the doorway, my dressing gown draped over her shoulders. It dwarfed her, making her look so much smaller than she was, and, for a second, I felt like an older brother cooing over his younger sister.
She took the offered cup and inhaled, a fond smile creeping across her face. “Is this the stuff I got you last year?” I nodded sheepishly. “You haven’t had a single cup since then, have you?” She was laughing, and I felt a small part of me settle. Things would be okay if Chrissie was still laughing.
Not that she needed to know that just yet. Instead, I took a sip, pretending to sulk.
“I like my coffee, okay?” It did taste nice - the packet had declared it was lemon balm flavor, and the soft citrus soothed away some of the tension in my shoulders.
We stayed like that for a few minutes, leaning against opposite sides of the kitchen counter, sipping lemon balm tea and gazing at nothing.
It felt like the first time I’d gotten to breathe in the past few days and, despite not being able to sleep, I could feel how tired I was. But thoughts were whirring. What can I do? I’ve wasted so much time already. Dad will never talk to me about it. Not after the conversation, we’d had. I’d have to figure things out on my own. I’ll have to get Josie back on my own.
“I can hear you thinking from here.” Chrissie’s voice was teasing, but there was an edge of worry. I looked up at her, wanting suddenly, desperately to throw myself at her, wrap myself in her arms, and cry. And I couldn’t put into words why. I just needed to know she was still there, that she wasn’t going to leave me alone.
She looked back at me with wide eyes, and then she pulled me into a hug, one arm going around my waist while the other went to the back of my head, fingers carding through my hair.
“You know what’s good with lemon balm tea?” She whispered into my ear quietly. I said nothing. The tension bled from me and I felt like I was going to collapse any moment. I could feel tears prickling in the corners of my eyes.
Chrissie pulled back, keeping one hand on my shoulder as she started rooting around in the cupboard. The soft clattering and scraping as she moved things around were the only sound in the quiet of the apartment until she made a soft sound of triumph and placed a small jar of honey on the counter between us with a smile.
Chapter Three: Chapter 3 Title
Since the lease on the apartment Charlie and I were sharing ran out just before I’d received the invitation for the cruise, I hadn’t thought at all about what could happen if I came back sooner than I thought. At the time, I was so confident, so convinced that the Wright’s would get me my home back. It wasn’t until we were on the plane about half an hour from JFK that I’d turned to Charlie with wide, panicked eyes. Charlie’s eyebrows furrowed.
“You’re staying with me. Obviously.” She said, eating a handful of chips.
“But, you’re staying with Monica!” Charlie was lucky enough to have an older sister with a heart of gold that she was staying with until she could find somewhere of her own. I’d only been to her apartment a handful of times and, though it was well decorated, it was absolutely tiny.
“Yes? And now, so are you. I’m not seeing where the confusion is coming from here.” She could obviously see the panic on my face because she paused her movie—some rom-com starring an actor I recognized but could not for the life of me name—and turned in her seat to look at me. “Josie. Please please know that I love you, okay? I would never leave you on your own. Not after something like this, not ever. Monica is fine with it. I am fine with it. I just want you to be okay. Okay?” I nodded, swallowing the lump in my throat. I had cried too many times already.
Monica Robinson was maybe the most amazing person I had ever met, bar her younger sister. The two looked almost uncannily alike, but Monica had an air that she had her life totally together, a quality that had escaped Charlie completely.
Monica worked as an elementary school teacher, so there were a billion homemade trinkets and drawings all over her tiny apartment from overeager children.
There was only one bedroom, which Monica and Charlie shared, I refused to take it off of them, and a couch in the front room that folded down into a comfortable bed. It was all very homey and kitch, which made me feel even worse for forcing myself on them.
I knew the best thing to do was hit the ground running, get out and find a job, find an apartment, and put my life back together on my own. But every morning, I’d wake up, and the thought of getting out of bed, even for food, was too much to bear. I couldn’t focus on anything, thoughts slipped away before I could grasp them and the tiniest decisions became impossible to make.
Panic attacks I could handle. I had been having them since I was nine years old, but this nothingness terrified me. I felt like I was falling all the time, plummeting down this huge abyss and not knowing when I was going to hit the bottom.
Monica was up before me most days, but when I woke up, Charlie would already be there, laptop or hot cocoa or TV remote in hand. And every morning, I would clamp up, not sure how to act. She never got angry with me, even as the days turned to weeks, and I still barely moved from the couch.
“Do you need anything?” She whispered to me one morning. The curtains were drawn, but soft shafts of sunlight lay across the bed, and I let the patterns trace across my eyelids, reaching out blindly until I found her hand. Mine was clammy, but she didn’t pull away.
“Just this is enough.”
I made sure to take advantage of the good days—packing the bed away to give Monica her front room back and showering before tidying the place as best as I could, an old collection of soft “chill-out” music playing in the background.
“Hey! You’re up.” I rushed to grab one of the shopping bags from Charlie as she shouldered her way through the door. “Was I gone long?”
I honestly didn’t know. I’d only managed to get to sleep at three in the morning. Charlie had been gone when I woke up, but that was at nearly one in the afternoon. I shrugged.
“Not sure. Don’t think so.”
Charlie smiled, somehow pleased with my monosyllabic answer and set about unpacking the groceries, reaching over to turn up the music.
“You want a hand?” I asked, but Charlie shook her head.
“It’s okay hun, I know where most of this goes.”
I nodded, content to sit at the tiny breakfast bar and watch Charlie as she flitted about the kitchen, singing along with the radio. After a minute or two, she reached into her pockets. “Oh!” She took out a letter that was folded in half. “This was in the mailbox for you.”
I took the letter and felt my stomach drop at the sight of the familiar elegant cursive on the front. I didn’t want to open it. I’d done so well not thinking about him, and now here he was glaring up at me from a heavy envelope. What could he want? He had a cruise to enjoy, lives to ruin. I tore open the paper, no longer afraid but angry that he’d dare to get into contact after everything he’d done and lied about.
There’s no letter, which I am not disappointed about, but there is a check for five hundred thousand dollars. This is… five hundred thousand dollars! That’s enough to buy back dad’s house, more than enough. But why would Andrew send me this? I didn’t even stay for the full six months.
“Uh.”
“What’s up?” Charlie stood next to me, leaning over my shoulder, “it’s not a bill, is it? We’ve got literally nothing left after all that shopping I just did-” she read the number on the check, and her eyes went comically wide. “Holy shit.”