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But, no—she’d called that plan too cowardly. She’d been so sure she could handle returning home. It would be healthy, she’d told Genevieve. She’d been so confident that, after seventeen years, she’d grown up enough to put her old life into its proper perspective.
She shook her head, feeling her hair pulling free of its careful French braid as it snagged on the tiny splinters of the old door. This was her lifelong sin—the sin of idiot optimism and dogged pride. From the time she was a little girl, she had always believed she could do anything. Sleep safely in treetops, marry the handsome superstar, flout the alcoholic tyrant.
She could still remember the last night she’d ever entered this house and thought of it as home. She’d come in late from work—one of the other cashiers had called in sick. For once, she hadn’t even been thinking about her dad, and whether he would be drunk. She’d been locked in her own private hell, worried about the baby, and angry about Colby’s inexplicable reaction to the news.
But not yet terrified. She had no idea that the Malones had come here to see her parents. She’d believed that her secret was still safe. And, fool that she was, she believed that, once Colby got over his shock, he would come around. He’d do the right thing. He loved her. Sure, they’d fought, and they’d broken up, but everyone knew that was just temporary. They belonged together. He loved her.
The minute she shut the door and dropped her keys on the hall table, her father appeared out of nowhere.
“You disgusting slut,” was all he’d said, and then she felt something hard and cold crash against her head. Later, she learned it had been his full beer bottle. She didn’t even remember falling to the floor, and she didn’t remember the rest, either, thank God. Had he kicked her as she lay there? Or had he hauled her up by the hair and punched her? The next day she’d found her own hair all over her shirt, so maybe he had.
She only knew that, sometime much later, her mother had helped her into the living room—just to the right of this foyer—and onto the sofa. Her consciousness went in and out with a fiery, strobelike effect.
She didn’t ask why her mother wasn’t taking her upstairs and putting her into bed. She assumed that she wasn’t able to climb—one of her hips hurt so much she thought it must be broken. But hours later, when her mother woke her again and helped her limp in total silence out to the car, she realized that her mother had kept her downstairs because that would make the escape easier.
She knew, somehow, that she mustn’t cry out, though she had figured out by then that it was her leg, not her hip, that really was broken. As she exited the house, the moon was full on the vines. Genevieve already sat in the front seat, clutching her ballerina bear, her face like a white button at the window.
Her mother had brought pillows and blankets, and made a sort of bed in the backseat for Hayley. She lay gingerly down, hugging herself against the pain, and passed out again.
She woke somewhere near the Nevada line, screaming. Someone was stabbing her stomach with knives, and blood streamed out of her, soaking the denim of her jeans.
“No,” she had cried, squeezing her legs together in spite of the pain. “No…no…no…”
The sudden sound of a car engine snarling to life returned her to the present. She sagged against the door, relieved. Finally, Colby was leaving.
Somehow, just knowing she wouldn’t have to face him anymore tonight brought back a little of her courage. She moved away from the door, deciding it was time to do something practical.
She pulled out her cell phone and put a call in to Genevieve. To her surprise, her sister picked up on the first ring.
“I was just about to call you!” Genevieve’s musical tones sounded scratchy, as if she’d worked too many hours today. “I’ve been on since about six this morning, but they finally gave me a couple of hours to sleep. How are you? Did you make it through the funeral okay?”
“I’m fine.” And, as always, the sound of her little sister’s voice was enough to bring the world back into balance. “The funeral was uneventful.”
“Did you decide to stay at the house after all? I still think a hotel might be—”
“No hotels, silly. There’s a lot to do before we can put the place on the market, and I might as well get started.” Hayley had to smile at herself. Two minutes ago, she’d been seeing specters and barring the door against demons of the past, but now she was back to sounding like the bossy big sister.
“Honestly, I’m fine. The place isn’t as big a mess as I’d expected, actually.”
Genevieve sounded unconvinced. “Well, that’s good, but…”
“But nothing.” With her sister’s voice as company, Hayley marched resolutely up the stairs. “I want to hit the ground running in the morning. So I’ll just turn in early and—”
She stopped at the door to her old room. Confused, she swiveled on the landing, checking the layout to see if she’d become disoriented. But no, this was her room.
Had been her room, anyway. In Hayley’s mind, the room had never changed. It had remained exactly as she left it that final afternoon, when she dashed off, late to work as usual.
She could remember every detail. She’d bought a new pair of sneakers, because she got a discount now that she worked at the sports superstore. She’d stuffed the empty box into the trash can, but she hadn’t quite been able to make it fit, which she knew would make her father mad. The shirt she’d worn to school—white with a scoop neck trimmed with blue sequins, all the rage that year—had been tossed onto the foot of the bed, abandoned for her uniform shirt.
And, of course, all along the edge of the mirror were pictures of Colby. Laughing, confident Colby, with his arm around her, about to dunk her into the pond, or leaning over her, dangling a cluster of grapes just above her open mouth.
But none of that remained. Instead, a sea of boxes greeted her. Such a mess. She couldn’t have stepped two feet inside this pink-walled room if her life had depended on it.
It had become the rubbish closet. Maybe, she thought, that was where all the possessions they’d left behind had ended up. Maybe, somewhere in there, was her diary, which her father had undoubtedly found when he took the mattress off her bed. And the pregnancy test, which she’d wrapped in a bag and stuffed behind her winter sweaters.
“What’s wrong?” Genevieve sounded concerned. Hayley wondered how long she’d been silent.
“Nothing,” she said. She launched into a light-hearted description of the sweet touches Roland and Miranda had added to make the house homier.
As she talked, she closed the door on her room and tried Genevieve’s. Though he’d left the pink ballerina border along the ceiling, her father had turned Gen’s room into some kind of home gym. A treadmill, a weight bench, a stationary bike.
She tried to picture him using any of this—and she suddenly realized that her mental picture was seventeen years out of date. She’d asked for a closed casket, and she hadn’t felt the slightest urge to look inside.
She shut the door. She kept talking, but her mind was sending out a string of painful questions.
Had he changed very much as he’d grown older? He would have been nearly seventy. He’d always been a little overweight. Beer belly, mostly. The lawyer who phoned had said her dad died of a heart attack. Was it a surprise? Had he been warned about his habits? Had he spent the last months of his life in the converted exercise room, trying to sweat out a lifetime of booze?
“Hayley,” Genevieve said, breaking into her mindless chatter, obviously not buying it for a minute. “You sound funny. What’s going on?”
Hayley had just opened her father’s bedroom door. Finally, a bed, the same dark walnut four-poster