the life they’d laid out for her.
“So, did you know my mom once grounded me for getting my hair cut?”
“Yes, of course. I keep track of all your past haircuts and have a list of all the times you were grounded as a child.”
I let out a little laugh, delighted by the dry sarcasm, but I forge ahead to make my point. “I was seventeen. I read an article on pixie cuts in Cosmopolitan, thought it would look cute on me, so I went to the salon, showed them the picture, and came home with a pixie cut.”
“Fascinating stuff.”
“My mom was so horrified, she grounded me for a week. I missed the spring formal. Because of a haircut, Colin.”
He sips his drink. “How old are you?”
“You know exactly how old I am.”
“Yes. I do. Which is how I know that this episode with the pixie whatever happened a long time ago. Perhaps it’s time to let that one go. Perhaps it’s time to let it all go.”
“You’re not wrong.”
His hand freezes midway toward setting his glass on the counter, and it’s oddly gratifying to know I can surprise this man. “I’m not?”
I shrug. “Like you said, it’s been long enough.”
With that, I stand and pick up my own glass, and head back toward my bedroom.
“Where are you going?”
“To call my mom,” I call over my shoulder. “If you hear screaming, be a good husband and make me another drink, would you?”
Chapter 9
Sunday, August 30
Is it still too hot to be wearing leather pants? Absolutely.
But it’s a small price to pay for showing my parents that, while we might be meeting on their turf, I’m still me. The version of me that pairs leather pants with red patent leather shoes and a black silk camisole. No cardigan. It’s the no cardigan that will get my mother, mark my words.
What? I said it was time to let it all go, not become a doormat.
The cabbie gives me an impatient look in the rearview mirror, and I realize my stalling time is over. With a grimace, I shove open the cab door and step onto a street I haven’t set foot on in a long, long time.
I look around, somehow completely unsurprised to see that the street I grew up on looks exactly the same. You often hear people say how New York City is always changing, and it’s true. Just not on the Upper East Side. Or at least not on Sixty-third Street.
I glance at the row of town houses as the cabbie drives away, and on a closer look, a few things have changed. The Steins’ door is dark blue instead of red. Mrs. Krause’s home has gotten a facelift, no doubt by its new owners, considering Mrs. Krause had been in her late eighties when I was a girl. Trees are taller, flowerpots refreshed, but the essence of the street is still exactly as I remember it.
Finally, I fix my gaze straight ahead, at the home I grew up in. My parents’ town house has changed …
Not at all.
There’s still the dark gray door. The perfectly kept steps. No flowerpots at this house. My mother finds them messy. The welcome mat is strictly practical. No cheeky puns or friendly sayings, just a place to wipe your feet before entering the pristine foyer.
Sounds fun, right?
And now you’re wondering what I’m doing here. I was told, after all, that if I walked out the door, I was not to come back.
Yeah, well, I’m sort of wondering what I’m doing here myself. One minute I was making strained small talk with my mother, and the next she was informing me she’d see me at five for Sunday dinner.
Note that I said informing. Not asking if I was available, or if I’d like to come over. It was simply there. A command. I haven’t had Sunday dinner with my family for the better part of two decades, but you’d have never guessed it from my mom’s casual insistence.
And, so … here I am. Preparing to enter the lion’s den.
I manage the steps just fine, but the front door gives me pause, and I realize just what sort of mind games ten years can play.
Do I knock? Or merely … enter?
The thought of knocking feels unthinkable. I’ve burst through this door hundreds of times. Thousands. But I’m not an eighth grader bounding home from school any longer. I’m a thirty-one-year-old woman.
And this is no longer my home.
If you walk out that door, Charlotte Spencer, don’t