My Life Next Door(108)

It’s not clear who reaches for whom. Doesn’t matter. I have Jase in my arms and mine hold him tight. I’ve done so much crying that there are no tears. Jase’s shoulders shake but gradually still. No words for a long time.

Which is fine, because even the most important ones—I love you. I’m sorry. Forgive me? I’m here—are only stand-ins for what you can say better without talking at all.





Chapter Forty-eight



The drive back to the Garretts’ is as silent as the drive to the park was, but a whole different kind of silence. Jase’s free hand intertwines in mine when he doesn’t need to shift gears, and I lean across the space between our seats to rest my head on his shoulder.

We’re pulling into the driveway next to the van when he asks, “What now, Sam?”

Telling him was the hardest part. But not the end of the hard parts. Facing Alice. Mrs. Garrett. My mom.

“I only got as far as you.”

Jase nods, biting his bottom lip, shifting the clutch into park.

His jaw tightens and he looks down at his hands. “How do you want to do this? Are you going to come in with me?”

“I think I have to tell Mom. That you know. She’s going to be—” I scrub my hands over my face. “Well, I have no idea what she’s going to be. Or do. Clay either. But I’ve got to tell her.”

“Look, I’m gonna take some time to think. How to say it. Whether I start with Mom or…I don’t know. I’ll have my cell. If anything happens, if you need me, call, okay?”

“Okay.” I begin climbing out of the car, but Jase catches hold of my hand, stopping me.

“I’m not sure what to think,” he says. “You knew this. From the start. I mean, how could you not have?”

Kind of a crucial question.

“How could you not have realized that something terrible had happened?” Jase asks.

“I was asleep,” I answer. “Longer than I should have been.”


I know Mom’s home when I get there because her navy blue sandals are outside the door, her Prada purse slung on the lowboy in the hallway, but she’s not in the kitchen or living room. So I head upstairs, to her suite, feeling this sense of trespassing, even though I’m in my own home.

She must be deciding what to wear to some new event, and indecisively, because there are piles of clothes tossed on the bed…a rainbow of florals, soft pastels, and rich ocean colors, starkly contrasted by her power-suit whites and navies.

The shower’s running.

Mom’s bathroom’s huge. She’s renovated it a bunch of times over the years. Each time it’s gotten bigger, more luxurious. It’s fully carpeted with a couch and a sunken bathtub, towel warmers and a glass shower with seven nozzles spraying from every direction. It’s all done in a color my mother calls oyster, which looks like gray to me. She’s got a vanity and a little upholstered bench set up in the corner, with a parade of perfumes and lotions, glass bottles, squat jars, and miles of makeup. When I crack the door open, the room’s filled with clouds of steam, so thick I can barely see. “Mom?” I call.

She gives a little shriek. “Don’t do that, Samantha. Don’t walk in when someone’s taking a shower! Haven’t you seen Psycho?”

“I have to talk to you.”

“I’m exfoliating.”

“When you’re done. But soon.”

The shower squeaks off abruptly. “Can you hand me a towel? And my robe?”

I unhook her apricot silk robe from the door, where, I cannot help but notice, a navy blue man’s robe also hangs. She reaches out around the shower door and clutches at the silk.

Once the robe is knotted neatly around her waist and the plush oyster-colored towel wraps her hair like a turban, she sits down at the vanity, reaching for her skin cream.

“I’ve been considering a little Restylane between the eyebrows,” she says. “Not enough to look ‘done,’ just to take away that little crinkle here.” She indicates a nonexistent wrinkle, then pulls her forehead taut with both hands. “I think it would be a smart career move, because lines in your forehead make it seem like you’re fretting. My constituents shouldn’t think I’m concerned about anything—that would undermine their confidence, don’t you think?” She smiles at me, my mother with her convoluted logic and her towel crown.

I have chosen the Road of No Small Talk. “Jase knows.”

She pales beneath her face cream, then her brows snap together. “You didn’t.”

“I did.”

Mom springs up from the upholstered bench so quickly, she knocks it over. “Samantha…why?”