It looks more like a grimace, but it’ll do. I can fake this so-called family dinner, and the minute it’s over, I’m out.
I need to find Summer.
If she even wants to be found.
Forty-Two
Summer
I arrive at my mother’s apartment late in the evening, exhausted from today’s emotional events, the long train ride, all of it. I enter the darkened living room, thankful I kept my keyring on me so I can get in here in the first place.
I realize fast I’m not alone. I can hear other voices, coming from down the hall. In the bedroom. A male and a female’s. My mother and…whoever.
She’s back from the Caribbean, and she didn’t bother telling me. Didn’t wish me a happy Thanksgiving either.
Typical.
Dropping my duffel on the floor in the living room, I start for the hall, calling out as a warning, “Mother! I’m home!”
The voices go silent. And then, “Summer, is that you?”
“Yeah.” I go to my closed bedroom door and open it, flicking on the lights. It’s the same as I left it, though the air is stale. As if no one has been in the room for months, which I’m sure is the case. I flop onto the edge of the mattress and chew on my thumb, glancing up when my mother appears in the doorway, clad in a white silk robe and nothing else.
“What are you doing here?” she asks, breathless, pushing her hair away from her face, her cheeks pink.
I frown. “You aren’t happy to see me?”
“I didn’t expect to see you.” She smiles, but it’s fake. “I’m so glad you’ve come home, but don’t you have school Monday?”
“I’m not going back.” I’d made that decision on the train ride home, after my phone died and I realized I left my charger behind in the guest room. I’ve had a lot of time to think. And I realized there was no way I could go back there and face everyone. Sylvie.
Whit. Especially Whit.
“What do you mean, you’re not going back?” Mother frowns, her hands tugging absently at the belt cinched around her waist.
“Too much has happened—I want to graduate early. I have enough credits, so I think I can,” I tell her, flopping backwards atop my bed. “I can’t do this anymore.”
“Do what?” She sounds confused.
“Go to school. Pretend I’m normal. I’m not. I’m messed up. I can’t deal with the repercussions of what I’ve done. I need therapy,” I tell the ceiling, my throat aching with unshed tears. “I feel so much guilt over the fire. What happened. What I did.”
She glances over her shoulder before fully stepping into my room and pulling the door shut behind her. “You promised we would never discuss that again.”
“It’s eating me up inside,” I practically wail to the ceiling, closing my eyes to try and stop the memories, but it’s no use. “I can’t stop thinking about it.”
I had kind of stopped, but thanks to Sylvia Lancaster’s oh so lovely reminder, it hasn’t left my mind since. Knowing that she knows what happened is terrifying. I could go to jail. And I would deserve to go. What I did is…horrible. I took a man’s life. Two of them. One I hated, and one who meant the world to me.
I’ve made so many mistakes already. I deserve to be punished for them.
The tears stream from my eyes, sliding down my face as I think of Jonas and all the things he’d done for me. I never got a chance to tell him thank you for changing my life.
Though he changed my life in different, dark ways too, by bringing Yates into it.
“Darling.” She comes to the bed and settles on the edge of it, sitting close enough that she can reach out and cup my cheek, forcing me to look at her. “You didn’t do anything.”
“But I did. I started the fire. I knocked the candle over. You know this,” I tell her, my face crumpling as the tears really start to fall.
She holds me close as I cry, pulling me into her arms. I press my face against her neck, letting it all out. Crying not just for what I’ve done, but for all that I lost, especially these last few months, even the last couple of hours. How I had Whit in my life, only to lose him completely, thanks to what I did in my past. I loved him.
I still love him.
And I lost him.
The fire and the secrets I keep will affect me for the rest of my life. Maybe it’s time I come clean.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she murmurs against my hair, her voice so low, it’s almost as if I don’t hear her at all. “It was never your fault. The one candle you knocked over didn’t start that fire.”
I go stiff in her arms, pulling away slightly so I can look at her. “What are you talking about?”
She strokes the hair away from my face, her expression dead serious. “I was furious that night, you know. Jonas and I had another raging argument. He told me he wanted a divorce. He was through with me. He couldn’t forgive me for what I did with Augie, even after everything we’d been through.”
That she would even bring up Augustus Lancaster right now makes my stomach cramp.
“I saw you leave Yates’ room,” she says, averting her gaze, staring off into the distance as if she’s lost in her memories. “I had a suspicion about you two, and I didn’t want to believe it. Deep down, I knew. I knew, but I didn’t know how to stop it. I thought, perhaps, that you wanted—to be in a relationship with him.”
Tears well in my eyes and I want to scream at her. That was the last thing I wanted. And if she suspected, why didn’t she try and stop it? Stop him? Why didn’t she say something to me? To Yates? To Jonas?
Because she’s selfish. Thoughtless.
Too wrapped up in her own bullshit.
“When I saw you leave his room, I went in and confronted him. He was asleep, and I noticed the candle had fallen over, the flame sputtering in the spilled wax. It wasn’t going to start a fire, Summer. There was no way that could happen.”
“Then how did it start?” I whispered, scared yet eager to hear her explanation.
“I fixed the candle, set it back in its holder, and it knocked into the one next to it, making a clanking noise. Loud enough that it woke Yates up. He became very defensive when he realized I was in the room with him. Asking where you were, what did I know. And I told him I knew everything, even though I truly didn’t. I was only making assumptions.” Her eyes narrow as I can only assume she recalls the memories of that night.
“You said that?”
Mother nods. “He accused you of being a slut. That you asked for it. Begged for it. He said because you were so beautiful, how could he resist? As if it’s your fault. Men can be that way sometimes. Never wanting to take responsibility for their actions.”
I let her words sink in. It’s so true. Of course, Yates would blame me and say that I asked for it. Heaven forbid he be responsible.
“Then he started in on me. Saying he was going to tell his father I snuck into his room. As if I wanted to, I don’t know, molest him? Please. When I laughed, he got angry. Said I was nothing but a slut who used his father for his money,” Mother explains, her eyes falling shut for the briefest moment. “That’s when I grabbed one of the empty iron candle sticks and struck him in the head with it.”