the two most important people in my life. They disrespected me. Am I just supposed to pretend I’m fine with it? Is that the kind of girlfriend you want? Someone who just gives up and lets other people win every time?”
Miller’s arm is hanging casually over his steering wheel. His voice is calm when he says, “Sometimes you have to walk away from the fight in order to win it.”
Hearing him repeat those words infuriates me. I stomp my foot. “You don’t get to break up with me and then quote my dead aunt!”
“I didn’t break up with you. And I’m quoting you.”
“Well, you should stop. Don’t quote anyone! It’s . . . it’s unattractive!”
If it’s possible, Miller somehow looks amused. “I’m going home now.”
“Good!”
He looks behind him and begins to back out of the driveway. I’m standing in the same spot, confused by our argument. I don’t even know what just happened. “Did we just break up? I can’t even tell!”
Miller presses on the brake and leans out his window. “No. We’re just having an argument.”
“Fine!”
Again, he looks amused as he backs onto the street. I want to wipe the smirk off his face, but he’s already leaving. When he rounds the corner, I walk back inside the house. My mother is standing in the living room, staring down at her phone. It’s on speaker. She’s listening to a voice mail. I walk in on the tail end of it.
“. . . she didn’t sign out at the office, so we’re just calling to let you know she’ll need to bring a note to excuse her from her afternoon classes today . . .”
My mother ends the call before the voice mail is over. “You skipped school today?”
I roll my eyes as I brush past her. “It was only three classes. I had to get out of there. I couldn’t breathe. I still can’t breathe.” I slam my door, and tears are streaming down my cheeks before I even fall against my mattress. I grab my new phone and call Lexie. She answers on the first ring because she’s dependable like that. She’s the only dependable thing in my life right now.
“This . . .” I suck in a series of quick breaths, attempting to choke back tears. “This is the worst birthday. The worst. Can you . . .” I suck in more breaths. “Come over?”
“On my way.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
MORGAN
I pull a few of Chris’s shirts out of the closet and remove the hangers from them. I drop them into a trash bag I’ll be donating to a church.
Lexie showed up half an hour ago. I debated on not letting Clara have her over, but I’d almost rather Lexie be here than for Clara to be alone right now. I was relieved to see her when I opened the front door earlier because I could hear Clara crying from my bedroom, and she refuses to speak to me. Or maybe I don’t want to speak to her.
I think it’s best if we just don’t speak until tomorrow.
Now that Lexie is here, Clara is no longer crying, which is good. And even though I can’t make out what they’re saying, I can hear them talking. At least I know she’s home and safe, even if she does hate me right now.
I pull two more of Chris’s shirts out of my closet.
Since the week after Chris died, I’ve slowly been getting rid of his stuff. I’ve been doing it a little at a time, hoping Clara doesn’t notice. I don’t want her to think I’m trying to rid this house of the memory of him. He’s her father, and erasing him isn’t my goal. But I am trying to rid my personal space of him. I threw his pillow away last week. I threw his toothbrush away this morning. And I just finished packing up the last of his dresser.
I expected, in all my digging around, that I would find something he was sloppy about. A hotel receipt, lipstick on a collar. Something that would show he was a little careless in his affair. Aside from the letters he kept locked away in his toolbox, I find nothing else. He hid it well. They both did.
I should probably take the letters out of my dresser and put them away before Clara accidentally runs across them.
I pull a box of his things down from the top closet shelf. After I got pregnant with Clara, Chris and I moved in together. We didn’t