“You don’t think I know that? The day you were born, I swore I would never let anyone get to you.” Dad lowers his head. “And I failed.”
My heart splinters. I put my hand on his shoulder and squeeze. “Daddy, you can’t protect me from everything. And I can’t be perfect, either. If that makes you ashamed of me—”
His head jerks up. “Is that what you think? Why you left?”
“No. I just needed to figure some things out. It was about me, not you.”
He finally lets out the breath he was holding. “You might want to tell your mother that. She hasn’t forgiven me yet.”
“I’ll try.”
“You really making a go of it out there?” he asks.
“Yeah, I really am. But I miss you all.”
Dad nods and shifts his weight onto the other foot. I’m not sure this conversation has fixed everything, but it’s a start. I watch him as he puts away his tools, setting each one neatly in its place. He seems unsettled, like there’s more he wants to say but can’t. I know the feeling.
“I better go see what Ryan’s doing.” I turn to go, but Dad stops me.
“There’s one more thing we need to get straight. I was never ashamed of you. Any man would be a fool not to be proud that you’re his daughter. I should have made that clear before.”
His words flow over me, healing places inside that I thought I’d already patched up. I should have known better. Nothing can stop my tears now.
Dad grabs me up in a hug, probably to stop my bawling. He holds on for longer than usual, and then I step back and clean up my face.
“Well, I’m glad we got that done,” he says as we head back into the house.
“Yeah. Only took us a year.”
His laugh is rusty but warm.
Ryan
Lizzie’s brothers look nothing like I pictured them. I can see now that David is a shorter version of her dad, Carl—brown hair, coffee-colored eyes, long face. At seventeen, Carson is still gangly and growing, and has their mom’s, Sherri’s, green eyes. And Michael is the spitting image of Lizzie and her mother but has the physical signs of Down syndrome and is the shortest of the bunch.
They all corral me into watching football with them, which makes me feel welcome. A commercial comes on, so I ask where the bathroom is and take the opportunity to check out the house. It’s two stories—a decent size, but it probably felt small to a family this large. There aren’t a lot of frills in the house. The furniture is basic and well-worn, the style dated. But it feels comfortable and lived-in. A real home.
Lizzie is wearing a big smile when she comes back into the house. She pulls me away from the game, and we haul our bags upstairs.
“Will we be staying in the s-same room?” I ask.
She laughs. “Not unless you can wrestle a gun out of my dad’s hand.”
There are four bedrooms, and Jeff has a condo in the city, so Lizzie and the boys are sleeping two to a room to make space for me.
“The benefit of being the only girl: I never had to share a room,” she says as I put my stuff next to Carson’s bed. He’s bunking with David.
“Show me around the property so I can s-see where all of your nutty stories went down.”
“You should put on your thicker coat, because it could snow at any time. This isn’t like California cold, which would be T-shirt weather here.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She takes my hand and we head to the “back forty,” as Lizzie calls it. Most of the land behind the house is rocky and untouched, but there is an expansive patio with a barbecue and an enormous shed. There are slushy piles of leaves here and there, and I kick at them as we walk. It’s so much quieter than what I’m used to, and I can hear the birds chirping and squirrels chattering. We pass an old dilapidated swing set and a huge trampoline with a cover on it.
“We’ve replaced the trampoline three times. Let’s jump, but be careful not to bottom out too hard. This thing’s a death trap,” Lizzie says.
“Awesome.”
We remove the cover and then kick off our shoes and start jumping. Lizzie is much better than me, which she demonstrates by doing flips and twists—her blond hair flying as she laughs. I manage to do a pretty good flip, but only after falling on my ass a bunch of times. Then we jump together until I tackle her to the canvas. She’s breathing heavily, her cheeks pink from the cold. I kiss her, and she giggles against my lips as our bodies continue to bounce. I reach down to play with her hair.
“I love seeing you in your natural habitat. You’re so h-happy here.”
“Because you came with me.” She kisses me again, and then we hear someone yell out, “Gross.”
Michael is standing there watching us. Lizzie gestures him over, and we jump and laugh until we’re all sick to our stomachs.
The Mormon temple is beautiful, with its golden angel blowing his horn at the top. It’s the highlight of our day of sightseeing in Salt Lake City. As Lizzie, Jeff, and David show me around the town, it looks prettier than I expected, but unnervingly clean and organized—sort of sanitized, like a structure built out of Legos if Jude were the engineer.
The next day, we go see the Salt Lake, if you can call it that. It’s a strange, barren body of water that’s too salty for people to do much with—unlike any lake I’ve ever seen.
“Alright, get ready for the big reveal,” Lizzie says as we leave the lake and head to “downtown” Centerville. As we drive through the town center, Jeff does a dramatic drumroll. We pass a hardware store, a school, a market called Dick’s, and we’re done.
“Thank God for the trampoline,” I say, and Lizzie cracks up.
The rest of the trip is spent hanging out with the family, doing nothing in particular. It’s incredible watching Lizzie interact with her family, because she’s so at ease. She falls into her role without missing a beat—and it’s a side of her I’ve only seen glimpses of. She tells Carson and Michael to take their feet off of the furniture and reminds David to clean up the dishes. She even questions her dad about his secret stash of beer in the shed, to which Carl says, “If they didn’t make it so damn inconvenient to buy alcohol here, I wouldn’t have to hoard it.”
When I see Lizzie standing next to her mom as they cook in the kitchen together, it clicks into place that she was a second mother to her brothers, and that she feels a deep responsibility for everyone. She spends a lot of time with each of them and adores them all, but it’s a lot of pressure. I can see why she wanted to go to California to spread her wings.
“What’s it like to be in charge of your younger brothers?” I ask her when we get some time alone later that night. We’re sitting in the front room, and she has her feet up on my lap. I like touching her soft legs. That’s about all I’ve been able to touch over the last couple of days.
“It’s not all it’s cracked up to be. It’s sort of a sore point that Mom had to go back to work when I was little. But they needed the money. Mom secretly liked it because it got her out of the house, gave her more independence. But it meant they needed my help a lot.”
“Hard to imagine, because I’ve been following after Jude for so l-long, or taking orders from him.”
Her brow furrows. “You don’t have to do that. You’re all grown up now.”
“Hard to break the habit. And he has a way of m-making me feel like he has all the answers.”
“Yeah, well he’s probably making it up as he goes, like everybody else.”
“Your b-brothers really care about your opinion, too. They listen to you.”
“When they feel like it.” She smirks. “I guess I’m glad I got to help raise the boys—makes me love them even more. But it can also feel like I’m on the outside looking in. Jeff gets it. He thinks of me as a person, rather than as the nag, or a pseudo parent. Thank the Lord he’s the oldest.”
I wonder whether Jude feels the same way—like he can’t completely confide in me because he has to be the responsible one all the time? That makes me feel sad, so I don’t examine i
t too closely.
“Your f-family is all really nice. They seem worried about you, though. What exactly d-do they think you’re doing in California?”
“I guess it’s just that I’m their little girl. They were shocked when I left.”
“Why did you? I know you wanted to s-strike out on your own. Was that the only reason?”
She goes quiet and her legs stiffen. “My school advisor recommended it.”
“Why?”
She stares at me for a second, like she doesn’t know where to begin—or doesn’t want to.
“I needed to start over. I had a bad breakup, and my ex . . . he made life difficult for me.”
I can hear all the things she’s not saying. “What do you mean by ‘d-difficult’?”
She bunches the bottom of her shirt with her hand. “It was a long time ago.”
I rub her leg from ankle to knee to soothe her. “Will you tell me?”
She nods. “When I met him, I wasn’t that experienced. I’d dated guys, obviously, and I had a really nice boyfriend in high school. I wasn’t a virgin. But he was in a whole other league. I was a sophomore. He was a senior—captain of the football team.
The minute we got together, he became possessive. I was an idiot and I convinced myself it proved how much he really cared about me.”
I’m surprised to hear her talk this way about herself. “You’re not an idiot.”
“Not now, but I was. He accused me of flirting with other guys. Started to put me down a lot. Nothing was ever good enough—my clothes, the way I acted. The more he did that, the more I tried to make him happy. It got so bad that I was scared to breathe wrong.”
“Jesus.” I wish I could go back in time and kick this guy’s ass. “Good thing you’re n-not the type of girl to put up with that bullshit.”
She rears back and crosses her arms. “Well, I did actually. For too long. I told you—I was gullible, and I started to believe the things he said. My parents didn’t like him. My friends tried to tell me to stop dating him. I even lost one or two of them because of him, and that helped me come to my senses. I finally broke it off with him.”
“Of course you d-did. You’re the strongest woman I know.” It’s hard to imagine Lizzie any other way.
She pulls her legs off of me. “That’s the thing. I wasn’t strong. Because I let him tear me down. ” She takes a deep breath. “After I broke up with him, he passed around naked pictures of me to his friends. I didn’t even know he had them.”
“That asshole. I’m so sorry that h-happened to you, and if I could undo it, I would.” I reach for her hand, but she’s too far away. “You don’t let anything k-keep you down too long, though. That’s one of the things I l-love about you. You’re like Wonder Woman.”
She frowns. “No, I wish. I’m only human. I was devastated, and it changed me.”
“Of course. What he did was sick.” I can’t understand how any man could do something like that to a woman. “But you’re a fighter.”
She shakes her head, hard. “I didn’t know who to turn to. When my parents found out, they were so disappointed in me.”
I try to put her leg back on me, but she’s moved farther away.
“But they r-really love you. I’m sure they understood eventually.”
“I guess.” Her voice is hushed and sad.
“So you left Utah to g-get away from him?”
“I just needed to prove something to myself.” She stops talking and closes her lips so tightly they turn white.
I scooch in closer to her on the couch. Her body is stiff, but she lets me put my arms around her. It feels so right—like she belongs there. I’m so happy she confided in me. How did I land such an incredible, resilient girl?
She looks out the window and I follow her gaze. I wonder what she’s thinking.
The snow is falling in earnest. The window is becoming blanketed in white fluff.
“Have you ever been in the snow?” she asks, her voice returning to normal. She seems eager to end the conversation.
“I’ve gone to Lake Tahoe a few t-times in the winter, but that’s about it. It’s b-beautiful.”
“Ever made a snowman or been in a snowball fight?”
“No.”
Lizzie springs off the couch and becomes a blur of motion—gathering her brothers, grabbing gloves from David’s room for me.
“C’mon,” she says, and I follow.
We all head outside, and the guys immediately start packing snowballs. Lizzie shows me some basic techniques, and before I know it, I’m dodging snow missiles. It’s exhausting work running around in the cold, but it’s a blast.
I manage to hit Lizzie on the chest with a snowball, but it just bounces off her big jacket.
“Watch out, dude,” David laughs.
No surprise to anyone, Lizzie gives as good as she gets and nails me right in the forehead. I get her back by scoring a hit to the back of her neck.
“Aah! That’s cold.” She shivers.
She’s got a pink wool cap on, and her braids trail out the bottom, past her shoulders. Her cheeks are a matching shade of pink. I want to picture her like this forever, so I grab her and kiss her and revel in the feel of her cold nose against my cheek.
After the snowball fight, we file into the back of the house and throw our wet stuff into the mudroom. Sherri calls us to dinner, so we gather around the big oak table. There is a huge roast dinner laid out, complete with mashed potatoes with bacon, vegetables, salad, and rolls, and I eat until I’m stuffed.
“Save room for apple pie and ice cream,” Sherri says as she heads back to the kitchen to refill the gravy boat.
“Ryan, what do you do for work?” Carl asks, and Lizzie tenses up.
“I work part-time at a coffee shop. I’m starting the credential p-program next year so I can go into t-teaching.”
“Teaching’s a good, solid job. Important,” he says, and I exhale.
“Ryan’s also a writer,” Lizzie says.
Carl shrugs. “Yeah, well, I guess that’s a good hobby.”
Lizzie sets her fork down and I squeeze her knee. I see why she’s irritated, but she doesn’t understand that, for me, it’s comforting to be grilled and inspected, like I’m being considered for entrance into this family.
“Why don’t you just make him give you bank statements?” Sherri asks Carl as she puts the gravy boat back on the table. She sets a hand on his arm and some message passes between them. He drops the subject.
After dinner, everyone gives Lizzie her Christmas presents and makes her open them. She squeals and starts to rip into the first one, when I feel a tug on my arm. Michael hands me a gift, and before I know it, there’s another one from Sherri and Carl. I look around this run-down living room filled with people, with its lopsided Christmas tree in the corner and the pile of presents underneath, and I can’t catch my breath. My face gets hot and my eyes sting, but I keep it together as I open my gifts—a Utah Jazz sweatshirt and a framed drawing of the mountains from Michael. I can tell by the family’s expressions that this is a small gesture to them—just the norm. Every holiday of every year of their lives has been this way.
Lizzie has finished opening the mound of gifts in front of her, and there is red and green paper strewn over the floor. She smiles at me but must read something in my face, because she asks me to go outside to the patio. She grabs a thick blanket from the hall closet, and we pull two chairs out of the shed so we can sit huddled under the stars. The snow has stopped—the night sparkling clear. The air is cold and crisp, so we can see our breath when we exhale. The darkness is absolute, unlike back home, where light pollution turns the night sky gray. Billions of stars hover over me, twinkling like a sea of diamonds. It reminds me of my first date with Lizzie. I didn’t know then we’d get this far together—probably thought it was too much to hope for.
“It’s b-beautiful here,” I say.
“Thanks so much for coming. And for fitting right in with my crazy family. Will
you be happy to leave tomorrow?”
I just stare at her and then the tears come. They start as a trickle but turn into a flood, and I cry harder than I have in years. Lizzie grabs me and holds me close to stop me from shaking, and I don’t need to say a word, because I know she understands.
“You’ll make your own family someday,” she says.
I hold her tight and try to believe her.
CHAPTER 12
Jude
Ryan won’t stop talking when I pick him and Elizabeth up from the airport. As I predicted, he took a liking to her family, but it doesn’t seem like he has come back brainwashed or threatening to leave the state, so I figure I worried a lot for nothing. He does seem different though—calmer, maybe.
When we walk into the house, Elizabeth stops and frowns. “Tomorrow’s Christmas Eve. Where’s the tree?” she asks.
“We don’t always d-do a tree,” Ryan says. “We barely have any ornaments, and it’s too much w-work.”
She scans the house. “Decorations?”
“You guys weren’t here last week, so I didn’t bother,” I say. “I have a killer meal planned for Christmas day, though.”
Elizabeth is frowning but trying to hide it, which is ridiculous, because you can read every thought running through her head. Or, at least, I can.
“If you’re that worried about it, you can try the hall closet. There’s some stuff in there,” I tell her.
Ryan goes to put his bag away. I hear Elizabeth rummaging around in the closet, and I realize the box she needs is on the top shelf, out of her reach.
I move behind her and stretch over her shoulder to grab the box. She smells good, and I can’t help but lean in closer. “Everything’s in this one,” I say, and my voice sounds gruff.
“Thanks.” Her voice is a whisper, and I bet if I put my hand on her heart right now, it would be beating fast. Like mine. It will always be this way between us.
I want to move but I can’t, so we stand like that longer than we should—long enough that both of us probably have time to regret it.
I finally step away and put the box on the floor. We sift through it together—what little there is of it. My uncle always bought a mini tree, because he hated pine needles getting everywhere. There are a few old ornaments, some tinsel, and a string of lights that are about fifteen years old—and probably a major fire hazard. There’s a candle, a small angel, two Christmas stockings for me and Ryan that we don’t put out anymore, and that’s about it.
Tell Me How This Ends Page 15