Mia’s eyes widen just a tad, and she shakes her head, looking toward the perfect parents she’s always wanted. “Know what?”
“Holden,” Mom says.
“Shut up!” I spit. It comes out loud, harsher than I expected, but I don’t care.
“Holden!” Mia reprimands.
“Did you know?!” I repeat, because it’s one thing for my mom to do what she did, but my best friend… we’ve been through so fucking much together, and if she knew and didn’t say a word this entire time…
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she chokes out, her eyes coated with tears.
“She doesn’t know,” Mom says, and I finally trail my eyes to hers.
“Good,” I growl, teeth gritted as I cross my arms, widen my stance. “Then tell her.” Silence descends, and for seconds, no one moves. The air in the room turns thick, and it feels as if the walls are closing in me. “Tell her what you did!”
“It’s out now,” Joseph cuts in. “You obviously know, and that’s all that matters.”
Ah, so he doesn’t want his sweet, innocent daughter to know how much of a fucking idiot he is. I ignore him, focusing on my mother again. “I want to hear it from you. Tell her.”
No one speaks, and all it does is set my rage into overdrive. Because here’s the fucked-up thing about this whole mess: I could easily blame myself for the way things turned out, just like Jamie has. Maybe if I’d told my mom my suspicions about Beaker, she would’ve never gone to the extremes she did. But, my mother never asked, never gave me the opportunity to fix the damage before it got out of hand. Instead, she assumed, she judged—a trait she despised in everyone else—and she jumped to a conclusion so far-fetched that it forced Jamie to run. Not to me. But to Beaker. All so she could ask why—an answer she still hasn’t gotten five fucking years later. A question she’ll have to take to the grave.
“Fine.” I face Mia. “Jamie left me because my mom accused her of being a crackhead and blamed her for the attack.”
Mia gasps, her eyes almost as wide as her mouth.
But I’m not done. “And then your dear old daddy offered her a check to disappear from my life.”
“Dad!” Mia fumes.
“She didn’t take the money,” Joseph says, as if that somehow makes it okay.
“No fucking shit, she didn’t! Do you think you can put a dollar value on our life? Our love?” I scoff, letting all my pent-up fury pour out of me slowly, slowly. “We don’t all live in the world of Joseph fucking Kovács, where money rules over everything else!”
Mom speaks up, “We didn’t go there with the intention of—”
“Of what?” I cut in. “Of her fucking running away? That’s exactly what you intended, and you knew it was wrong. That’s why you waited until I was out of town to do it, so don’t come at me with this bullshit, Mom!” I shake my head, my eyes right on hers, eyes losing the fight to fake it. “You saw me at my worst when she left me. You saw my struggles, my pain… and I’ve spoken to you about her since we got back together. I told you she was living with me. I told you about our future plans and not once did you ever mention any of this!” I wipe the tears of betrayal from my eyes, from my soul. “For years, you kept this from me… and you didn’t even warn me of what she might be walking into last night.”
“I don’t know what to say, Holden.” Mom openly cries now, her hands covering her face—no doubt hiding her shame—and as much as I want to go to her, to comfort her, Joseph does it for me. “I’m so sorry.”
I wish, more than anything, that it was enough. “You have no idea what you guys did to her,” I struggle to say. “You guys made her face the demons of her past—a man she spent years running from—because you made her believe she was everything you thought of her, everything she fought so hard to escape!”
Mom lifts her tear-soaked eyes to mine.
“And he killed himself in front of her!”
“Oh my god,” Mia cries.
“He put a bullet right through his fucking skull seconds after trying to choke her to death! She pissed herself, she was so fucking scared, but you know what the worst part is?” I sniff back the heartache and lift my chin, trying to stay as strong as the girl I love. “She was alone, Ma. I wasn’t there for her… and now she’s part of my life, and so are you, and she can’t look at you without seeing a dead man staring back at her… and that’s on both of you.” I turn quickly and push open the door because I’ve said everything I need to.
“Holden,” Mom cries out. “I’m so sorry. I love you so much. I don’t…”
I pause with my back turned, my palm flat against the screen door, and I give myself a moment to catch my breath, catch my thoughts. It’s Mia’s quiet cries that have me turning around, facing them all again. I attempt to smile at Mia, silently conveying my thoughts—that this doesn’t change anything between us. And then I look at my mom, see the woman who raised me… who loves me. “I love you too,” I tell her honestly. “And that won’t ever change, but—”
“Maybe I can talk to—”
“No.” Fuck no. “Right now, you need to give us time. And space.”
Mom releases a breath, along with a new set of tears, and I stand there, watching her, wondering how the fuck it came to this. Finally, I say, my voice even for the first time since I got here, “I asked Jamie to marry me.” Mia gasps while Mom cries some more. “And she said yes.”
“Oh, Holden,” Mom sobs as she steps toward me.
I instinctively take a step back, put my hands up between us. “It’s the happiest day of my life, Ma, and I really wish that you could be a part of it.”
47
Holden
When I get back home and open the front door, the first thing I notice is the bed. It would be hard not to focus on it, considering it’s on its side in the middle of the bedroom. For a second, just one, I think I’ve walked into pool-house-post-Jamie 2.0. But then I notice the bedsheets hanging between the bed frame and the window, and I call out, walking toward it, “Jamie?”
“Babe!”
I squat down beside the bedsheet wall, pushing aside the fabric, and peer inside. Jamie’s sitting on the mattress, only inches in front of the wall, and I ask, “What are you doing?”
“I made a blanket fort! It’s on the list.” When I left only fifteen minutes ago, she was fast asleep, and now… now she’s patting the spot beside her, her childish smile warming my chest. “Join me!”
She’s been ticking items off her Favorite Childhood Memories list almost daily since she got here. Sometimes, I do them with her, but mainly, she seems happy to do them on her own. I duck and enter her fort carefully, hoping not to break it.
“Look,” she says, pointing at the wall in front of her before I’m even situated.
I look where she’s pointing and… it’s as if every memory of her I’ve ever held on to collides with visions of our future, creating a present far more significant than any gift she could ever give me. Black ink swirls along the walls—all smooth lines, rounded curves, and sharp angles…