her to her parents. Pushed her to this inevitable outcome.
Standing across from Bianca, I thought I finally knew the real reason Sadie had taken that money—not as a reckless act of rebellion at all. It was something she had said after I’d been welcomed back into her life, when we were all out at the Fold. From a corner of the bar, Parker had Skyped in to a board meeting he’d forgotten about, with a drink in his hand, laughing sheepishly.
Parker can get away with literally everything. I can’t even get away, Sadie had said. The closest she had come to mentioning the fallout of her missteps.
In retrospect, that was what I had missed. She wanted out. Out of the Lomans’ grip, out of her life, by any means possible. Out—into the directionless, limitless wild. So she stockpiled the money. And that wasn’t my fault at all. No, the blame could be traced back a few more steps.
“You did this,” I said, stepping toward Bianca, my voice rising. “I can’t imagine what it must’ve been like for her, growing up in this house.” The same way grief had taken hold of me years earlier. Except I wasn’t sinking but sharpening. Wasn’t chasing something at the bottom but letting something free instead.
I had been armed for attack with all the things Sadie had ever told me. Her whisper in my ear, one of the first things she’d said about her mother: All must worship at the shrine of Bianca Loman. “Why do you think she did it there?” I asked. “At the place you were so desperate to live? It wasn’t safe, isn’t that what Grant thought? Living so close to the bluffs? But you insisted.” Push and push until something shatters.
“And now look,” I went on. I was shaking, my expression ferocious in the mirror. Did Sadie’s parents ever see her for the person she was and not the one they expected her to be?
Bianca’s face did not change. A mask of fury. “Out,” she said. “I want you out.”
“Yeah, I’m going.” I edged by her, but she reached out to grab me, her cold fingers firm on my wrist, her nails grazing the surface, as if to let me know that she was only choosing not to draw blood.
“No,” she said, “I mean out of this family. Out of our house. You are no longer welcome at One Landing Lane.”
* * *
HER WORDS HAD HELD. But when I returned to Littleport that night, no one was there to tell me to go. The distance made everything hazy and ungrounded.
No one called, no one checked. And the time, like the distance, only softened things.
I continued overseeing the properties, and the money continued coming into my account.
It was a mistake. A fight, then, like in any family. Words not holding, emotion that would settle.
* * *
FOR NEARLY A YEAR, I’d been wondering if Bianca had really meant it. And now I knew.
I eased my car down the hill, passing Breaker Beach, heading into downtown. Like my mother, driving through town, looking for a reason to stop. Every earthly possession in the car beside me.
As I tapped my brakes at the crosswalk, I heard the rattle of metal under the passenger seat. I reached down, felt the edges of the metal box—the keys that I hadn’t brought back inside on my return earlier.
Like a sign. Like Sadie calling my name. All the ghosts reminding me that this was my home. Reminding me of all the reasons I still had to stay.
* * *
THE SEA ROSE WAS set three blocks back from the water, in a row of closely built one-story homes with pebbles in place of grass yards. At one point, the cluster of homes made up an artists’ colony, but now they were mostly quirky yet exclusive second homes, occupied only in the summers or on long weekends in the spring and fall—and they rarely went on the market.
It was a place I could’ve imagined my mother choosing in another life. Where she could carry her supplies down to Breaker Beach and work uninterrupted back at her house—the life she must’ve envisioned for herself when she set out in her car. Instead of the discordant one she had lived—working in the gallery, raising me, and painting only at night, in the hallowed silence. Torn between two worlds—the one in front of her and the one in her head that she was continually trying to uncover.
Still, she never could’ve afforded a place