Being back in Tacoma was easier than I thought, but I had no intention of staying. It didn’t feel like home anymore, not with Gran gone.
“Thank you,” I said to Charlie, stopping him on the sidewalk. “I couldn’t have done this without you.”
“Wouldn’t be anywhere else, gorgeous,” he replied easily, putting an arm around my shoulders.
The front door was unlocked, but the minute I stepped inside, I froze.
“Vera,” my mother said, barely looking up. She was on her hands and knees scrubbing at a huge bloodstain on the hardwood floor. “I’m not surprised to see you.”
“Mom,” I greeted, taking a few steps inside.
“Your father would hate this,” she said, gesturing at the floor. “I need to get it cleaned up.”
“Let someone else do that,” I said, suddenly feeling very sorry for the woman who’d given birth to me. She looked completely lost.
“No, I’ll do it,” she said. “You know he doesn’t like other people to see a mess.”
A hundred memories raced through my mind. My father screaming in her face because he’d found a fork with dried food on one of the tines. A slap because he’d come home and found her in curlers in the middle of the day.
“His opinion no longer matters,” I said sharply.
“I’m sure you’re happy about that,” she snapped back.
Charlie squeezed my shoulder and walked back out the front door, giving us a few minutes alone.
“I’m happy that he can’t hurt you anymore,” I replied.
“He didn’t hurt me,” she scoffed. “He had high standards. He just liked things to be perfect.”
“No one is perfect.”
“Well close to perfection, then,” she said. “Honestly, Vera, you’re so dramatic.”
“Are you shitting me?” I asked, Charlie’s words falling out of my mouth easily.
My mother scoffed. “I see you’ve decided that you’re going to be trash just like your boyfriend,” she said nastily. “After everything we taught you—”
“Everything you taught me?” I asked, laughing. Her words stung, but they didn’t matter. “You didn’t teach me anything except how to duck when someone’s trying to hit me.”
My mother made a disgusted noise in her throat.
“Gran is the only one who taught me anything worth remembering,” I said, forcing myself not to yell.
“She’s not the saint you think she is,” mom replied.
“Oh, fuck you,” I said, making her gasp. “You’re not even half the woman Gran was.”
“Watch how you speak to me,” she yelled shrilly. “You’re still seventeen and I can—”
“I’m married,” I said, cutting her off. After the absolutely awful day I’d had, the satisfaction of watching her mouth fall open in surprise was great. “So you can’t do anything.”
“You stupid girl,” she said, shaking her head at me. “I’m sure that was Nadine’s idea. Your father was afraid she was filling your head with nonsense. He was so relieved when he found out where you were so we could bring you home.” She sniffled.
“He knew where I was?” I asked, fear rushing over me in a wave even though logically I knew there was nothing he could do to me anymore.
“He found it in Nadine’s things,” my mom said smugly.
Suddenly, the reason Gran had shot my dad became clear. I should have guessed it. She’d protected me until the end. She’d died for me. I swayed a little and put my hand against the wall to keep myself upright.
Jesus, I needed to get out of here. The house that had made me feel safe my entire life just by stepping through the doorway, no longer felt comforting the way it used to.
I hurried up the stairs while my mom continued to scrub at the floor. In my Gran’s bedroom I went straight to her dresser and opened up her jewelry box, pocketing the ring her father gave her on her 16th birthday and the pearl necklace she always wore to church. I didn’t bother with anything else in there. My mom could take what she wanted. Out in the hallway, I pulled down the stairs to the attic and climbed up. When Gran and I had gone through her things, there were a few pieces that I’d known I wanted the moment I’d seen them. The lamp was sitting on top of a couple of boxes, right where I’d left it, and the blue dress I’d fallen in love with was hanging neatly from a nail on the wall as if it was waiting for me. Gram must have known I’d come back for it.
“Now you can come home,” my mother said as I came down the stairs, carrying my keepsakes.
“No, I can’t,” I replied, staring at her back. “I’m married.”
A sense of relief hit me when I said those words. Married. We were married. After everything we’d been through, somehow Charlie was my husband and he seemed perfectly happy with that. God, even with my heart broken, knowing that I’d be going home with Charlie gave me a sense of calm that even my mother couldn’t touch.