Burn Down the Night (Everything I Left Unsaid #3)- Molly O'Keefe Page 0,22

all those questions away. Just roll them up and tuck them out of sight.

“Should I call you Joan, too?”

“That would be helpful.” The less Max knew about me the better. And, frankly, I’d grown used to not being Olivia. It had been a sweet fucking relief not being Olivia.

“Aunt Fern,” I said. “I…don’t know how to thank you. What you’ve done—”

“Stop.” She held up her hand and my words died on my lips.

From the inside of the tennis shirt she pulled out a wad of money that had been tucked into her bra. A giant roll of bills. “Here.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s money.” Her tone indicated her estimation of my intelligence had not gone up at all in the last few years.

“Yeah, I get it, but what’s it for?”

“For you. I’m assuming you don’t have any.”

I had fourteen bucks. And whatever coins were in the ashtray of that old Buick. That’s it. “I don’t…I don’t want your money. You’ve already done so much.”

“Take it,” Fern shook it at me. “I…I need you to take it.”

“Why?”

She grabbed my hand and shoved the money in my palm. Forcing it on me. I stood there, dumbstruck.

“I’ve been thinking about this all night,” she said. “At first I thought you coming back here was a way for me to try to make things right between us. To make up for how badly I screwed up when you were kids.”

“You didn’t screw up,” I lied. Or maybe I didn’t. I couldn’t tell anymore who screwed up. All of us did. It was a screwed up situation.

“Listen to me, Oliv…Joan. For once in your life, just listen.” She was all military again and I shut my mouth so fast my teeth clicked.

“I could ask you a lot of questions right now. About the police, and the kind of trouble I think you’re in, but you know something, I don’t want to know. You…you are not my business anymore. You made that clear that you didn’t need me to care about you. You didn’t want me to care about you. So, you don’t owe me anything and after this…I don’t owe you anything. Clean slate between us.”

She was washing her hands of me. That’s what this was. The wad of money in my hand suddenly felt like it weighed seven hundred pounds.

“I’ve carried around my guilt about you for years. For years. But I’m done.”

Oh, why did this hurt? I had no business hurting like this. I’d done the same to her seven years ago. I put my hand to my chest, the thin skin over my heart.

But there was nothing I could say, because she was right.

She deserved to wash her hands of me.

“I remember when you moved in with your sister.” She was not looking at me. Her eyes were somewhere between our feet and I was staring into the top knot of her hair. The red curls all swirled together. “After Derrick died. I had no clue what to do for you two. And there’s a woman down here, Nancy—”

“I remember her,” I said, and she blinked at me like she was surprised. “I did live here for four years and she was nice. Had all those grandkids here all the time.”

“Right. Of course. Well, Nancy told me to make you food. She said food would tell you that you were safe. That you were going to be cared for. I couldn’t believe it would be that simple. I mean…I had no idea you even existed. And suddenly you were going to live with me? Food seemed…ridiculous. But I didn’t know what else to do so I made this big dinner. Nancy helped me. Macaroni and cheese and brownies and this fruit salad thing she said her grandkids loved. I even made Jell-O. I made all this food because I didn’t know what else to do. And then when I picked you up at the bus station…God, you looked like wild animals. Thin and dirty and…angry. So angry. I knew better than to hug you. If I tried to hug you, you would have bitten me. But instead I brought you here, to my home and this table full of food and said—I’ve made dinner.”

I remembered it so well. The smell of the macaroni and cheese—it had sausage in it. It would have been delicious. I knew it then. I knew it now.

“There were a thousand things I could have said. Should have said. About how sorry I was about your dad. How sorry I was