though all I ever was to him was a potential girlfriend.
I shove the picture in the drawer. I don’t want to see his stupid face right now.
I sit at my desk and pull out last year’s Christmas journal. Yesterday, after Granddad interrupted our lunch, I scribbled a poem about Connor. About wanting him. My own words make me blush. Maybe there’s a little bit of Dorothea in me after all.
I open my laptop, drumming my fingers impatiently while a bookmarked page loads. I compose a new email, following the submission guidelines. The deadline is midnight. Publication is online only, not print—but it’s a start. I hit Send.
Chapter
Fourteen
The secret is out, but the house still feels like it’s holding its breath.
I find myself sneaking around on tiptoe, wary of every creak and groan of the old floorboards. The sense of doom that descended the night of the storm, the night I found out Erica was coming back, still hasn’t lifted.
I skip my swim the next morning and stay in my room, refreshing my email constantly to see if I’ve heard back from the literary magazine yet (even though I know it will probably be a while). I’m not sure whether I’m more afraid of being accepted or rejected. In the afternoon, I force myself to go out to the dock. I swim for a bit and then spread my towel out on the sun-bleached wooden boards. Remind myself that I am a salt-and-sunshine girl, and this hurricane gloom won’t last. Erica brought it with her, and when she leaves—and she will, I know it—she’ll take it with her.
Part of me hopes Alex will stroll up with that cocky grin of his and challenge me to a race across the channel. I stare at the windows of the carriage house, the blinds pulled shut to block out the heat, willing him to appear. His beat-up black pickup is in the driveway, so I know he’s probably home, but there’s no sign of him.
Maybe he’s hanging out with the guys from the baseball team. I saw Ty pick him up late last night. I wonder what Alex told them about us. About me. Would he say I led him on? That I was a tease, letting him hold my hand, then telling him I wanted to be with somebody else? Some college boy? I don’t want to think that he’d bad-mouth me to save face. Still, he bragged about hooking up with Ginny. And he was so angry when he saw me with Connor.
I’m not sure what I’m more worried about: the whole town thinking I’m a slut like my mother or Alex thinking that. For somebody who’s worked so hard to be nothing like your mom, you’re sure acting a lot like her. Much as I tell myself that he was just mad and lashing out, those words have stuck with me.
When I hear Erica’s car rumble down the driveway, I go back inside. Grab Grace from the couch in the sunroom where she’s been reading one of my old Fancy Nancy books. We make chocolate-chip cookies and sandwich vanilla ice cream between them, and she says she’s sad not to see her daddy this weekend but she’s glad we’re sisters.
She’s much easier to win over than Isobel, who’s wallowing in their room, not tempted by the scents of chocolate and sugar and butter wafting up the stairs, or the fact that Luisa went out and got fat-free frozen yogurt just for her.
“She said she doesn’t want to pretend we’re a happy family,” Gracie reports back, her little shoulders drooping beneath her pink T-shirt. “But I’m not pretending. I like it here.”
“I’m glad, ’cause I like having you here,” I say, tweaking one of her braids. Much as I hate every moment Erica is here, I am grateful for the chance to get to know my little sister. She’s sweet and easygoing and cheerful. But sometimes I wonder how much of that sweetness is her feeling like she has to make up for all the anger around her.
“I wish I could do something to cheer Izzy up,” Grace says. “Maybe I’ll draw her a picture.”
“I bet she’d like that.” I wrap the extra ice cream cookie-wiches in parchment paper and put them in the freezer. It’s strange to have extras instead of running down to the carriage house and giving them to Alex. If he were around, he’d eat at least two. “But it’s not your job to make sure everybody is