Chapter 1
I loved everything about my grandmother’s house, including the creepy garden gnome who stood like a sentinel by the front door. Even though it had been years since I last saw him, he still leered at me with his one remaining eye and dared me to enter the cinder-block house in the middle of the woods. I carried the box I had so carefully color coded and marked as fragile past him on my way to the front door.
“You need to end this farce now.”
For a crazy moment I thought the gnome had spoken to me. But the comment came from my father, the Honorable Thomas Lively, who stood inside the doorway with his hands on his hips.
“Your mother says if we don’t get her out of here soon her migraine will start up again.” He removed his glasses and gazed at me with the same no-nonsense, flinty expression that had helped him win reelection to the U.S. Congress six times.
I didn’t have to turn around to know that a rigid figure sat in the front seat of the Lincoln Town Car. My mother hadn’t left the car since it had pulled between my Honda and a drainage ditch an hour ago. Some things never changed.
After I left a message with my parents telling them I was moving to Grandma’s vacant house in the north woods, my cell phone erupted with a stream of incoming calls. Mom and Dad thought the idea was ridiculous. I hadn’t expected them to drop everything and rush away from their vacation home in Harbor Springs with my little brother Elliot in tow. But here they were, not a half hour after I arrived.
Readjusting the weight in my arms, I stepped past my dad and tripped over a fake fern. I lost my grip and the box somersaulted across the room with a jarring crash. As a tightness spread across my chest, I had an irrational thought: If I never opened it, maybe nothing inside would be broken. I could just keep the packing tape on it and imagine that all the pieces were whole.
I shoved the box behind the fake fern and turned to my dad. “I’m not changing my mind.”
“I know the situation is bad, but people have short memories, Elizabeth. You don’t have to move here,” he said, running his palm across his thick gray hair. His eyes darted back and forth like they did when he was getting ready to outmaneuver a political opponent.
“Even the lawyers said I need to disappear for a while, Dad. You’re just lucky that you won’t have to resign because of me.” I hugged my arms across my middle and tried to avoid touching the nicotine-stained walls. “You agreed that I should get away before the national press targets me. And being here will give me the one thing I need: A quiet town where nobody knows me and nobody cares.”
My little brother Elliot stomped through the door, dumping one last box in the middle of the living-room floor. A cloud of dust rose from the dingy carpet and caught the day’s last rays of sunlight.
“This crap is heavy,” he muttered, lifting his black T-shirt and scratching his pale, hairless stomach as he looked around the stark room. “Jeee-sus. I can’t get over the fact that this place hasn’t changed since Grandma lived here. Shi—”
“Don’t talk like that, Elliot. And why are you helping her unload her car? We’re trying to convince her to come back with us.”
“She wants to stay. I would too if everyone in Ohio thought I was a bitch.”
Disappointment from my parents I was used to, but Elliot’s words knocked me off balance.
Like I had done a dozen times since March, I studied him for signs that he was hiding something. But he wasn’t looking at me as he continued to scratch his belly button. He was gazing up at a crack on the ceiling. “This place is a shit hole.”
“I said, watch your tongue young man,” Dad said as he started to sit down. He lost his footing and sank into the springless interior of Grandma’s orange plaid couch. He landed between the two couch cushions and they made a V from his weight. “What the hell—?”
Elliot snickered. “Watch your tongue, Congressman.”
My father reacted the way he always did when Elliot challenged him. He zeroed in on me. “Since your bank account has been wiped out and you have no job anymore, how are you going to get by?”
“I actually have some cash that wasn’t used to pay off legal fees.”
Dad’s face turned red with the effort of extricating himself from the couch. Elliot laughed out loud and I offered my hand, but he waved me away. When his feet were finally underneath him and he was free, Dad looked back at the couch and frowned. “Cracks in the walls, peeling paint. What a mess! No wonder we can’t find someone to buy this place. We should have bulldozed the house and sold the property.”
The horn of the Lincoln blared from the driveway. Dad ignored it and kept talking. “Listen, I know you don’t spend like your sister and mother, but even you would hate to go without your fancy haircuts and yoga classes. I doubt they have a Starbucks near the bait shop.”
“Maybe I’ll live like everyone else.”
Dad leaned down and scrutinized me as if I were still ten years old. “They don’t use hand sanitizer and three different kinds of soap around here. I’m not paying for more therapy.”
I took a suggestion from my psychotherapist and pictured his words rolling off me like water on wax. “I am staying, Dad.”
He disregarded me as usual. “I’ve been thinking and I don’t believe this is quite as drastic as we thought. I know a family in South Africa who needs an au pair. They owe me a favor or two and would be happy to take you in.”
That sounded just like my father. It was always about favors and money. “Are they serious? Besides the fact that I’m twenty-seven and too old, what kind of person would take on an au pair with a criminal record as a favor?”
“No, no, Elizabeth. They aren’t from Ohio. They would never even have to know about the incident. And remember, the lawyers have said that because it was a first-time offense, it was a misdemeanor. They used that logic to persuade the judge to let you keep your driver’s license. The probationary period is over, so whether you are out of state or out of the country, the incident is no longer an issue.”
The incident.
I hated how the family called it that. Sometimes I wished they would just come out with it: drug possession.
It was my first offense. Marijuana. In my father’s car. The same Lincoln Town Car that sat in the driveway. The one subsidized by the good people of Ohio.
I was innocent.
“It has been almost a full week since the local newspaper printed a story about you. Except for that one parasite, reporters have all but disappeared from my office and my staff only fielded one call from the media yesterday afternoon. Given the circumstances and my position, that is a very hopeful sign. I’ve even been advised by my public-relations staff that in another year or so my name might be at the top of a short list for the Energy and Commerce Committee.”
As my father rambled on about his political plans, my attention drifted out the window to the gnome in the front yard.
How old had I been when I bought my first gnome? Seven? Eight? My father was a newly elected state congressman from the 9th district back then. He and Mom were spending the summer meeting constituents and glad-handing donors. I had just been kicked out of summer camp for repeatedly ignoring the rules and feeding the raccoons that raided the trash bins each night. It was decided that I would stay with Grandma. On my first day in Truhart, Grandma took one look at my long face and declared that it was time that I started a collection like every self-respecting Michigander. She drove me to an antiques store on the edge of town and let me choose anything I wanted. It didn’t take long before I had planted myself in front of a cluster of strange little people frolicking on the shelf. I could have chosen the pretty lady figurines with billowing dresses and graceful white necks next to them. But the funny little gnomes enchanted me. I began my collection that summer.
Years later, my little sister, Alexa, and her friends snuck into my room and drew obscenely graphic pictures of body parts all over them with permanent markers. Mom told me I was silly to cry over my tacky collection and t
hrew them in the trash.
Dad was now on to my least favorite subject. “—things with Colin can be worked out. The pressure of all the publicity surrounding your arrest and the media frenzy in Ohio after that was really hard on him. But he is a reasonable man, and once he sees that the fury has settled down he’ll be ready to take you back.”
Take me back? Everyone assumed we broke up because of my arrest. If Dad knew the truth, he would stop bothering me about Colin. Alexa didn’t deserve my protection. The only reason I had never told anyone that I caught my sister in bed with my boyfriend was that by the time I had recovered from the shock of my arrest, I realized that the family didn’t need another “incident” to deal with. It wouldn’t have helped my case. And as Colin pointed out, it would probably have just given a judge more reason to think I was using drugs to escape my problems.
“You and Colin can work out a long-distance relationship, but it is more likely he would want to visit you overseas or on the east coast rather than Truhart. You and Elliot were the only ones who could ever stand it here.”
“I know you hate Truhart, but this is the perfect place for me right now, Dad.”
“I’ll admit you have to get away from the public eye. But you don’t have to do anything this drastic. You’ll hate it.”
“Grandma lived here and she loved it.”
“You just proved my point.” A bitter grunt escaped his lips. “You won’t last a week!”
I hated it when he talked that way. I didn’t stand up to him very often, but being in this house gave me courage. I stepped in front of him and steadied my voice. “Try me!”
Dad straightened and raised his eyebrows. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought I saw respect reflected in his blue eyes. But I must have been mistaken. That was something Dad saved for campaign donors.
I didn’t have long to savor my triumph. Dad turned toward the door and shrugged his shoulders. “At least come say good-bye to your mother.”
Following him outside, with Elliot trailing behind me, I picked up an overturned plastic chair on my way to the Town Car. The gravel driveway bit into the thin soles of my shoes and combined with the sharp sting of the cool air to clear the numbness that had set in.
I smoothed my hair behind my ears and straightened my sweatshirt as I paused beside the passenger door and waited for my mother to roll down the window. When nothing happened, I opened the car door to reach her rigid cheek.
“I’m sorry you came all this way for nothing, Mom. I’ll call you to let you know how I’m doing.”
My mother, once known in Truhart as Becky Blodget—but now referred to only as Mrs. Thomas Lively—barely shifted as my lips touched her icy skin. I could smell the familiar odor of alcohol on her breath.
“I’m trying to ignore the irony that you are ending up in the very place I spent my life trying to escape,” Mom said. Her sunglasses were slightly askew on her face and her dark lipstick was crusting on her lower lip. Other than that, she was perfect.
“Grandma liked it here.”
“Ask your father to get my medication out of the trunk.”
I looked down at the travel mug cradled in her hand. At least Grandma had never been afraid to leave her alcohol at home.
Dad opened the driver’s door and leaned in. “Your medication is right here,” he said, handing her a small container. “Do you want to come in and get a glass of water before we hit the road, Rebecca?”
“I’d rather buy water at the gas station than set foot in there.”
Elliot snorted. “God, Mom, you need therapy.”
“In the car!” Dad ordered.
Elliot ignored him and walked over to me. He stood with his hands in his jeans, caught somewhere between boyhood and manhood, trying to look like he didn’t care about good-byes. Where was the little boy I used to make Mickey Mouse pancakes with? His shaggy hair hid the beautiful blue eyes and long lashes that made him look girlish when he was young. I missed his blond locks that curled ever so slightly when they were short and clean.
My father started the car and the headlights flashed on, illuminating the peeling paint on the front door of the little house. For a moment a band of panic tightened in my chest.
“Stay out of trouble, Elliot,” I said, reaching out for him.
He stepped backwards. “Me? Mom and Dad wouldn’t have overreacted about my grades and I wouldn’t have to go to summer school if you hadn’t screwed up like you did. Thanks to you, my whole summer is going to suck!”
I smoothed a strand of hair that caught the evening breeze.
“Elliot, just try to be good and make Dad happy.”
“That will never happen. You of all people should know that.”
He was right, of course. Instead of arguing, I pulled him into an embrace despite his resistance.
“I love you,” I said.
He said nothing, but I felt the touch of his hands on my back and swallowed past the boulder in my throat. Elliot ducked his head out of my arms and yanked open the back door of the sedan. He folded his gangly form inside and slammed the door.
I walked around to the driver’s side as my father rolled down his window. “I’d tell you to come back to the condo in Harbor Springs with us and get a job there this summer, but I guess that would be expecting too much.”
“I’m sorry I’m such a disappointment.” How many times had I said that in the past few weeks? He avoided my eyes and shifted the car into reverse. I stood next to the gnome with my fists balled at my sides, my fingernails cutting into my palms.
At the end of the gravel drive, the car paused and Dad rolled down his window. “Clean this dump up while you’re doing nothing, will you? Maybe then we can finally sell it.” The tires spun on the gravel and kicked up a murky cloud of dust.
I stood for a long time, watching the tail lights fade to nothing.
Cynthia Tennent believes that when life gets tough, the tough should pick up a book. She is especially partial to stories in which a girl can be a hero and her trusty sidekick can be good-looking. In her Truhart Series, she writes about life in a small town, where love is plentiful and all dirt roads lead to happy endings.
Cynthia lives in Michigan with her patient husband, their three strong-willed daughters, and her collie dog, Jack. When she isn’t writing, Cynthia volunteers, pretends to exercise, laughs with her friends, and tries to understand technology.
Visit her at www.cynthiatennent.com
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