When my father got home, he knocked on my door tentatively, and after a pause to wipe the tears (though they kept on flowing regardless), I let him in. And then I told him the story. The whole, true, painful story about the whirlwind romance that ended in deceit. The money and the property and the company, and the way that Levi tried to get it from me. I told him about Mom and Mr. Maxon, news he still couldn’t seem to get his brain around. And then I told him about my decision to let it all go.
It took him twenty-four hours before he started trying to talk me out of it, but I wouldn’t hear a word. And he must have told Brenda the truth as well, because she soon joined in the chorus.
“You said you wanted to move out on your own, do your own thing. Well apparently not, because all that money could help you with that!” She cried. Her voice was at a screeching keen that I was sure only dogs could hear.
“No,” I said, which I’d taken up as my standard response. No explanation. No anger. Just no. I’d clung to it for days. Because if I thought too hard about it, I started to wonder why I was doing it. Was I returning the money to get him to show me something? To prove something to him?
I come back to the present.
Inside the post office, Dad walks me back to an office near where they sort the mail. Inside is his supervisor, a tall, muscled black man named Jamelle.
“Paperwork?” he says to me, having already been briefed on the reason for our appointment. I pass him the envelope. “And I’ll need to see some identification.”
“Are you sure about this?” Dad asks, one final time.
“No,” I whisper.
LEVI
It’s early June, not that you could tell from the weather.
It’s been raining every day for weeks, and the temperature’s barely crept past sixty-five degrees. The whole of Boston has been gray and damp and cold.
Everyone’s spending their time complaining about how gloomy it is, but it suits me just fine.
The weather perfectly matches my mood, after all.
It has been three weeks since my father died. Three weeks since I returned from the hospital to find Cadence gone.
Three weeks since Albert sheepishly slid her engagement ring across his desk, along with news that she’d be turning everything in the will over to me.
Three weeks since I’d seen or heard from her.
I’ve tried calling. I’ve sent scores of texts. I went to her father’s house trying to find her, but she wasn’t there. Or at least, that’s what her father said, along with instructions for me to leave his home before he called the Boston Police Department to deal with me.
There were emails, and even a few letters that I mailed to her. None of it worked. If she’s gotten any of my letters and calls and texts and messages, she’s ignoring them all.
I don’t blame her, of course.
What I did, at least to start, was despicable.
And she had no way of knowing – or no way of trusting – that any part of it was real and true. I wanted to explain to her that it had really only been that very beginning that was a lie.
But none of my arguments mattered, because I couldn’t get her to hear them.
She was just gone.
Julia and Logan’s new home is on the third floor of brownstone in the South End. The neighborhood is vibrant and moneyed, but by the time I climb up the narrow carpeted stairs to their door, I’m sure I’m at the wrong place.
Julia’s father could have bought them a house anywhere in the city. Throw in Logan’s family money, and they were practically Boston Brahmins.
How did they end up in a third-floor walk up in a divided townhouse?
I knock on the door, and Julia flings it open. Warmth and light pour out of the tiny apartment, and she practically glows when she sees me, wearing torn jeans and a button up, the sleeve rolled up, her hair gathered in a messy knot at the nape of her neck.
She takes one look at me – from the rumpled clothes that I haven’t bothered to send out to the dry cleaners, to the bags under my eyes from nights spent laying away wondering how I let everything go so wrong – and says, “You look like shit.”
“Good to see you, too, Julia.”
She reaches for my hand and pulls me in for a hug. “Oh sweetie, I’m sorry.” Then she lets me go and slaps me on the back of the head. “But also, what the fuck did you expect, you abject lunatic?”
I rub the spot where she got me, not that it hurt. It’s more the truth that stings. She’s absolutely right.
I brought it all on myself.
Logan must have told her everything.
They’d returned from their honeymoon just a couple days previously, and Logan had forced me to join him for a run. Like his wife, he’d taken one look at me and known something was wrong. We’d barely made it a mile before I’d told him the whole, shameful story.