Private Property (Rochester Trilogy 1)

There’s another pause, and I know he’s taking a drag of his cigarette. I hate that he feels like he needs them. They’ll only make him sick, but I manage not to say that. “Sometimes I think it’s better if you don’t come back.”

I stop walking. Only dimly I register that I’m stopped in front of a chowder restaurant with a giant clam on its hanging sign. “You don’t mean that.”

“You never fit in with us anyway.”

I blink hard to fight the tears. “Stop it.”

“It’s true. We’re all going to be on drugs or dead in fifteen years. Not you. You’ve got your eyes on something bigger. I want that for you.”

I don’t honestly know whether he’s saying something he thinks will help me. Or if he’s trying to hurt me. It wouldn’t feel good to have your friend tell you you don’t fit in, but as an orphan, as someone who’s struggled with the concept of home for years, it’s hell.

“I’m coming home to Houston,” I tell him. “In six months. I hope we can still be friends then, but you need to stop acting like this. I don’t miss this. I miss my old friend. I miss my brother. The one I could talk to about anything.”

There’s quiet. “What do you need to talk to him about?”

About Mr. Rochester. About Paige. “What do you think it means if a little girl is scared about the way her parents died? If she’s worried they’ll come back for her?”

“Sadness sometimes comes out as fear. Or anger. Remember that kid who thought his parents were astronauts who died in a secret mission to Mars?”

“But I just kept thinking, what if he was right? And no one believed him?”

A soft laugh. “Only you would possibly think that.”

“This family has so many secrets, Noah.”

“All families have secrets.”

At the end of the street there’s something large and gray bulging out from the grassy hill. A submarine, I realize as I get closer. Someone put a giant submarine in the middle of a park. USS Albacore, says a placard. I take a seat on a picnic bench nearby. “I don’t know what to think. What to believe. I just need someone I can trust. I need you.”

“You have me, Jane. I was talking shit because I was jealous.”

“There seems to be a lot of that going around,” I mutter.

“What?”

“You need to go, probably. Don’t give Miller any excuses to dock your pay. And stop smoking.”

“What would I do without you, Jane?”

I hang up, my heart still beating fast from the echo. What would he do without me? He’d get along fine if I never came back. Or maybe he’d be better off.

Sometimes I think it’s better if you don’t come back.

Mr. Rochester and Paige would be fine without me, too.

Which leaves me to wonder where I really belong.

My chest squeezes.

It’s only here, with the breeze floating through my hair, a submarine rising at my back, that I realize why I actually took this day off.

Not because I wanted to get away from Mr. Rochester or Paige. Because I wanted to know who I was without them. As I sit here alone and slightly afraid, I know the answer.

I belong nowhere.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Jane Mendoza

When I get back to the house, it’s past dinner time. From the foyer I can hear the strains of the sea shanty. Instead of the haunting lullaby, it’s coming out bright and sunny from a six-year-old’s mouth. “There was a light far away,” she sings off key, “I followed the water’s gift. But when the night turned to day, I ended up adrift.”

I find them in the kitchen, dancing around the table. Paige waves a dish towel like a flag while Beau makes grave ballroom steps around the kitchen. They stop when they see me.

Paige grins. “You missed spaghetti.”

“Oh no,” I say lightly, ignoring the squeeze in my heart. Imagine coming to this every night. Imagine belonging in this scene. I don’t, I don’t. “And I’m so hungry.”

“There’s leftovers in the fridge.” Beau sounds sardonic. “Compliments of the chef.”

I glance at the clock on the oven. “It’s time for bedtime.”

“Ah ah,” he says. “Not on your day off.”

“We have plans,” Paige says, very serious. “Bedtime stories.”

Another compression in the vicinity of my chest. It’s a good thing they’re spending time together. A good thing they’re getting along. They may not need me, after all. “Okay.”

Paige prances out of the room, waving her dish towel in precise movements only she understands. That leaves me alone with Beau. The day yawns between us, only a few hours apart. They felt like days. Weeks. Months. I’m getting too attached to him.

It makes me want to back away. For my own safety. My own protection.

Too late. I’m already in too deep.

“What’s wrong?” he murmurs.

This family has so many secrets, Noah. “Nothing.”