Chapter 1
Sash is sat on the patch of grass at the front of her apartment block when her dad comes to pick her up. She is surrounded by possessions stuffed hastily into bin bags and suitcases, dragged there over the course of the day. From behind what was once her curtain, Martin watches the sorry scene, more than satisfied to finally see the back of his trouble-ridden tenant.
“Running away?” Henry asks from the lowered window as he pulls up alongside her. He’s a wiry man with Sash’s delicate frame, a thin face difficult to age, and a handlebar mustache that makes him look like a cowboy, even though he’s never ridden a horse in his life.
Sash raises her head. “Thinking about it”, she says, more pleased than she thought she would be to see him.
“Hello, Sash.”
“Hello, Dad.”
It takes them about ten minutes to load everything into the trunk of the car. Her dad makes jokes about the weight of her suitcases, while Sash fights to stop herself from crying. When they are done, and Sash is sat in the front seat of her dad’s beaten up Sedan, toying with the broken ashtray nervously, unsure what to say to him, or whether she needs to say anything at all, he takes a moment to roll a cigarette and check to see if she’s ok.
“You should have called earlier”, he says eventually, putting the cigarette behind his ear, the act of constructing it enough to satisfy his need.
“I didn’t know I needed to”, Sash says.
“We haven’t heard from you kids for a long time”, he says. “It’s kind of nice to hear once in a while, you know.”
“I’m making my own way”, Sash says.
“I can see that.”
“I lost my job, that’s all. I’ve been looking for another one. I didn’t think it would come to this.”
“You seen your brother?”
“He’s not my brother. And no, I haven’t seen him”, Sash lies.
“If there is anyone who can help you out, it’s him”, Henry says. “Trace reckons he’s making more money than a third world country, not that we see any of it mind. I thought you two got along. You used to.”
“Yeah? Well things change”, Sash says.
“Evidently”, her dad remarks.
“I don’t need his help”, Sash says.
“Of course you don’t. You’re independent, just like your mother. As stubborn as an ox.”
He turns the key in the ignition, and with a series of coughs and splutters, the car fires up.
“I can’t believe this piece of shit is still working”, Sash says, happy to change the subject.
“Hey”, Henry complains. “This piece of shit has feelings, I’ll have you know. That’s no way to treat an old war horse.”
He swings the car back out onto the road, turning back the way he came in, rocking Sash about on the near spent suspension, the chassis creaking and groaning as he goes. In the wing mirror that’s held onto the housing by a length of electrical tape, she watches her block of apartments get smaller and smaller, until they eventually disappear completely over the falling sky line behind her. The end of yet another era for her. A comprehensive full fucking stop.
“It’s good to see you, Dad”, Sash says.
Her dad looks at her suspiciously and smiles.
“Yeah”, he says, grabbing her knee fondly. “You too, honey.”
The car putters as it fights to climb a hill, the back end sagging so much with the weight of Sash’s belongings, the exhaust scrapes along the tarmac and sends sparks flying up into the sky.
“You still dancing?” he asks, but Sash doesn’t answer. Instead she just stares at the city rushing away to the side of her and then down to examine her hands. Henry reaches over and takes them in his.
“There’s no shame in starting again, honey?
??, he says. “We’ve all got to do that from time to time. Even the most important of us have had to set the clock back to zero and just get on with it. I know I have.”
Sash appreciates the sentiment, but still feels like a complete and utter failure. With the sun melting away in the distance, her dad takes the cigarette from behind his ear and sparks it up. “Just to warn you”, he says, sucking the acrid smoke down into his lungs, “we’ve changed things around a little at home.”
Sash turns sideways in her seat. “Changed things how?” she asks.
“You’ll see when we get there”, her dad says, taking care to avoid her eyes. “It’s easier than me explaining it.”
The rest of the journey is spent largely in silence. Her dad smokes, or concentrates on the road ahead, or comments on what they are listening to on the radio just to fill in the gaps in conversation, while Sash drifts in and out of everything, happy to let her mind wander to the possible whereabouts of her missing stepbrother, remembering more frequently than is healthy, to check her phone just in case Dante’s decided to leave a message. She does it so much that Henry asks her if she’s waiting to hear from someone important, not that Sash bothers to answer him.
When they get home, and the familiar facade of Sash’s adolescent house comes into view, sinking her mood even further, night has fallen completely and he still hasn’t called.
At first glance, Sash can’t see what might have changed. Tracy comes out to greet her with Ghost, their albino Labrador by her side, gives her a warm hug and heads back inside to finish preparing dinner.
When the trunk of the car has been unpacked, her belongings stored temporarily inside the front door until she has more energy to shift them further, she heads on up to her room, her father climbing the stairs slowly behind her.
“What the fuck?” Sash says when she sees it. “Are you serious?”
Henry shrugs his shoulders, as though relinquishing himself of any responsibility.
“I told you there were changes”, he says.
What was once her bedroom, is now an office. Her posters have gone, her bed has been removed, even the book shelves have come down. In their place, a chunky printer stands proudly, a huge flat screen monitor mocks her from the desk on which she used to do her schoolwork, the remnants of her stickers still clinging desperately to the surface the only indication it has lived another life. An office chair that looks like it doubles as a lazy boy spins easily as she turns it, while the door ripped off her walk-in wardrobe to house folders and files of someone else’s information feels like a sword in her side.
This was where she danced for him, where they first kissed. Seeing it like this, makes her feel like the memory is being pulled away from her again, obliterated into nothingness. As though it didn’t happen at all.
This day couldn’t get any worse. First that ass-hole Dante leaves, then she gets kicked out of her apartment, and now this, a home office where her bedroom should be.
“Dad?” Sash complains, stunned by what they’ve done. “These are not changes. These are-. This was my room.”
“It’s been a while, Sash”, her dad says, defending himself. “We didn’t think you were coming back.”
“Where am I meant to go?”
“We’ve put you in your brother’s room. You can have that for as long as you need it. Or until he needs it back. Or whatever. You’ll work it out.”
He turns and heads back down the stairs.
“Dante’s room?” Sash says. “You turn my bedroom into an office, and you leave his alone?”
“You get yourself comfortable”, Henry says, keen not to continue the conversation. “Come down when you’re ready.”
Dante’s room is almost completely untouched. It is exactly as she remembers it. Clean, ordered, precise. She dumps her rucksack on the floor, and collapses into the bed. The sheets even smell of him. She twists over and screams into the pillow, suddenly overwhelmed by the result of what’s just happened. Her fucking stepbrother. This is why she wanted to stay away from him in the first place. She knew this would happen, even if she didn’t believe it. This was low even for him, however. To trick her into fucking him finally, getting exactly what she denied him all those years ago, only to run at the very first chance of freedom. She wasn’t going to let him get away with that.
“Coward”, she says aloud. “Fucking coward.”
Dinner is depressingly bland. She manages to eat half and then has to give up. She’s neither hungry nor in the mood to be with other people. Despite having grown up in this house, Sash doesn’t feel like she belongs to it. Looking around now, she has trouble finding anything that might indicate she was once a resident. There are no pictures of her or her brothers, none of her artwork from school or any of her awards from the various different dance competitions she dominated in her youth. All she can see is a picture of Dante and a collection of crap that must be her stepmothers. Ghost curls up at her feet. Henry chews his meat. Tracy stares at her over the top of her wine glass.
“It’s good to have you back home”, she says eventually, and with that, her food already cold and forgotten on her plate, Sash can do nothing else but excuse herself quickly, rush upstairs two steps at a time, curl up on Dante’s bed in a fetal ball, on sheets that have the temerity to still smell of him and breakdown into an explosion of deep, guttural tears.
She cannot escape him, wherever she goes. She is destined to be forever reminded of the man she can’t help but love, and hope desperately that one day he might show her that he feels the same way too.
Chapter 2
In 2006, when Sash was eleven, her father and mother sat her down, and told her they were getting a divorce. Sash remembers the day as though it were yesterday. It’s one of several defining moments in her life, which she can picture with crystal clear, almost high-definition clarity. If she closes her eyes, she’s there again, sandwiched between her two brothers on the worn leather sofa, her favourite blue dress on, and a glass of water held tightly to her chest as though the thing might run away if she let it.
Sash knew things had been difficult between them, but didn’t stop to think for a single moment they’d ever fall out of love. She had school friends whose parents had divorced. She had her older brother telling her exactly what was going to happen, the pair of them sat up night after night listening to the arguments below. Every single sign was pointing to it, but still she didn’t want to believe it.
Her mother moved to a new house, and then a new city, and then eventually she moved out of state. Her older brother blamed her father, hated him for what he imagined he’d done, and went wherever she did, until he was old enough to find his own way. Her younger brother was too young to be too far away from his mother, and because of that, his mind was made up for him. Sash was torn between the two. She was closer to her father, but she didn’t want to have to choose. She didn’t blame either of them for what had happened, and neither of them tried to make her take sides.
Her mother took a temporary apartment up the road, while her dad stayed at home and the house went on the market. Sash decided to stay with him, simply because her brothers didn’t. Half a year later the house was sold, her mother and brothers had gone, and Sash and her dad moved to where she would would eventually spend the rest of her childhood. Almost ten years later, she’s still only seen them a handful of times since. Her younger brother is at University in Chicago, her older brother an engineer and her mother remarried and spending her time traveling the world. Somewhere, on another side of someone else’s life, she apparently has more stepbrothers. The thought sends a chill down her spine.
Sash’s dad took the divorce badly. He was always a bigger than average drinker, but in the years that came after Sash’s mother left, he took it to a completely new level. For a long time, Sash was too young to realize what was going on. She just didn’t have anything else to compare it to. When she was old enough to know that not everyone had a bottle stashed away in the car, to drink every day at work,
she knew she had to do something. She tried to get them back together, but her mom had already moved on. Even though she told her about the extent of her dad’s drinking, her mother decided it was nothing new and certainly nothing to worry about. She tried to talk to him about it, but he just pushed her away. She phoned helplines anonymously, cutting the calls as soon as they asked for more information, worried they’d send her dad away, and she’d have to go and live with her mother. She even threw away the bottle one time, but he just bought another and hid it in a different place. She waited, and it didn’t go away.
Eventually, left with very few other options, she decided to take another approach. It wasn’t getting worse. He wasn’t violent with her. He still had his job, still had the house, still managed to cook food every night, pick her up from dance class and keep the house relatively clean. He may have been drinking way more than he should have, and he may have been depressed, but he never drank in front of her, never forgot his duties as a father and never once let his responsibilities slip. Sash lost herself in dance class, carried on as usual, forget about her father and let the rest take care of itself.
It took him a long time to get over it and move on, but eventually, four years after they’d decided to split up, when Sash was an awkward fifteen year old girl, more grown up then many of her friends, he met and married Dante’s mother, Tracy.
Tracy had been widowed two years earlier when her husband died in a helicopter crash, coming back from a business meeting in Boston.
By all accounts, he was a womanizer and generally a nasty piece of work. Upon hearing the sad news, the only thing that Tracy was upset to hear was that his life insurance was destined not for her, but for their only son. A bountiful payout to be gifted to him as soon as he turned twenty one. Tracy had stood by him through thick and thin, despite the fact she knew he was cheating on her, not because she loved him, but because he had a well paid job and a company credit card, which had provided for a life she was happy to grow accustomed to.