Too much to breathe.
Mom reached and gathered me to her chest, dropping a kiss on my head. “Yes, you will know when something is eating at your child, and I hope they will tell you what it is that’s eating them so maybe you can help. As it happens, I raised two fiercely independent girls. You, more than your sister. You were always such a spitfire. You helped Persephone before I could get to her—with school, with homework, with her social life. You’ve already been a parent in some ways. You’re going to be a wonderful mother, Belly-Belle, and you are going to realize the most depressing secret of all.”
“Hmm?” I asked, nuzzling into her shirt.
“You’re only as happy as your least happy child.”
She dropped another kiss on my head.
“Confide in me, Belle.”
“I can handle it, Mom.”
She pulled away from me, holding my shoulders, her eyes boring into mine.
“Then do, honey. Don’t run from whatever it is. Face it head-on. Because whatever happens, it’s not just you who you have to think about now.”
I pressed my hand against my stomach.
Baby Whitehall kicked in response.
I got you, girl.
Twenty minutes after my mother went to the farmer’s market to meet with her bridge friends (my youth shriveled into itself just thinking about it), I picked up the empty watermelon bowl and pushed the screen door open, slipping back inside. The house was blistering hot since the air conditioner died a few days before and had yet to be repaired. There was a gaping, sewer-sized hole at the back of the house, waiting to be fixed.
The place felt strange to me still. Even though it was not chronologically new, it seemed that way. It had yet to shape itself around its occupants and was bare of memories, nostalgia, and those home scents that transported you back to your childhood.
I rinsed the bowl, thinking about what Mom had said. Dealing with my problems.
The last couple days brought me clarity.
I didn’t want a million dollars. I wanted Devon.
And I was tired of running away from whoever was after me. I needed Devon to help me with that.
Yes, I finally realized I needed help. I couldn’t do this on my own. And strangely enough, it didn’t feel too terrible admitting that to myself. Maybe I was growing up from the girl Mr. Locken had left to bleed out all those years ago.
The front door opened and shut, and the house filled with my dad’s whistles.
John Penrose could whistle any song that came out between 1967 and 2000 from start to finish. He was good at it too. When Persy and I were young, we’d play name that tune. Sometimes I let her win. But not often.
“Honeys, I’m home!”
He appeared in the kitchen, tall and broad and still kind of handsome—in a more wrinkled less defined Harrison Ford kind of way. He dropped canvas bags full of lemons on the counter next to me, grinning at me ear to ear.
“Hello, sunshine.”
He pressed a kiss to my forehead, hiked his belt up what was beginning to look like a dad bod more than a father figure belly, and swung the fridge door open, on the hunt for his evening beer. “Where’s your momma?”
“Out.” I leaned against the counter, drying my hands with a towel. I didn’t tell him where she went. To this day, I withheld information about my mother from my father, trying to make her appear more mysterious and alluring. There was little point to this exercise. She was an open book to him—always honest, straightforward, and available.
She was all the things I didn’t want to be. He never questioned her love for him.
Dad closed the fridge, popping open his Bud Light, settling against the opposite counter.
“What’s up, kiddo? How’s that baby growing?” He took a pull of his beer.
Fix it, Mom’s voice urged in my head.
Here went nothing and its best friend nada.
“You cheated on Mom.”
The words came out so mundane, so plain, I’d laugh at how easy it was to say them. The smile on my father’s face remained intact.
“’xcuse me?”
“You cheated on Mom,” I repeated, suddenly feeling my pulse everywhere. My neck, my wrists, behind my eyelids, in my toes. “Don’t try to deny it. I saw you.”
“You saw me?” Dad put his beer down on the counter, folding his arms across his chest, ankles crossed. “When and where, if I may ask? We don’t exactly hang in the same circles.”
He sounded amused more than he was worried, but there was no trace of aggression in his voice.
“In yours and Mom’s bed. A lady with dark red hair. I mean, I say a lady, but what I really mean is a skank. Back in Southie.”
And just like that, the blood drained from his face.
He looked pale. Grave. Scared.
“Emmabelle,” he breathed. “That was …”
“Fifteen years ago,” I finished for him. “Yeah.”