She blinks at me, confused. “What?”
I stop a few feet from her, pulse still racing. “Why are you crying?”
It’s only now that I’m close enough that I can see the sheen of tears on her face, and I realize she must be freezing with the wind whipping at her cheeks, chapping them.
She wipes at her cheeks and then studies her hand. “I didn’t realize I was.”
I wish there was a chair beside her, somewhere I could sit down just to be close to her, but there’s not, and I realize how lonely that chair must look out here without her in it. Alone in front of a firepit that isn’t lit.
“Can we go inside?”
She nods and pushes out of the chair, her blanket catching in the fallen leaves at her feet. I follow her up the stairs into the Airstream, realizing she finally got the electric turned back on when warmth greets us.
“Why weren’t you sitting inside?” I ask. “It’s freezing out there.”
She shrugs and settles into one of the built-in seats at her kitchen table. “Wasn’t that cold when the sun was out.”
I look around the Airstream. She’s made a lot of progress since I was here last. The roof is repaired, and it looks like she’s in the middle of replacing the floorboards that lifted from the water damage. The couch and bookshelf still need to be repaired, but otherwise she doesn’t have much to finish before she could move back in. The thought twists something in my stomach.
I push it away and let my attention settle back on her. Her eyes are red-rimmed, her cheeks wind-burned. She looks wrecked, and it makes my chest ache.
“Are you okay?” I ask again, softer than I did outside.
She tucks her feet up on the bench, wraps her arms around legs, and rests her chin on her knees. “I don’t know, honestly.”
“Do you want to be alone?”
Her gaze holds mine for a long moment, then she shakes her head.
I exhale in relief, and move to the bench opposite hers, lowering myself down into it. “What happened?”
She sighs, and chews on her bottom lip. Finally, she says, “I got into a fight with my mom. And then Wren.”
My eyes stay fixed on hers. They’re more green than brown right now, clearer from the crying. “Do you want to talk about it?”
She swallows, then turns and lowers her legs beneath the table. I watch as she fiddles with a tassel on the edge of her blanket. “My mom told me I need to back off.”
“What?” I don’t mean for the words to come out so incredulously, but to my relief, it makes a small smile tick up in one corner of her mouth.
“Not in so many words,” she says. “But she told me I’ve sacrificed a lot for them, and that she doesn’t want me to keep doing that. She…” She trails off for a minute and meets my eyes. “She told me Wren talked to her about it. And I don’t know why, but that just set me off. So I confronted Wren and she said awful things, and I just had to get out of there.”
“What did she say?”
She blows out a breath through her nose. “That I don’t have a life. That I’m alone.”
I think of the chair outside, and my chest aches.
“That’s not true, Stevie.”
Her chin dips in a nod. “I know. I know it’s not true, but it hurts to know that’s how the people closest to me think of me. That they think my life here is worthless.”
“They don’t think that.”
I don’t consciously reach for her hand, but one moment, mine is in my lap, and the next it’s wrapped around hers. Her handsare large, and they’re callused, but they’re also delicate. The fingers long, slender. Her nails are painted a dark green that she did a few days ago on the couch as we watched a sitcom.
My thumb traces over the ridges of her knuckles. “They don’t think that,” I repeat.
She shakes her head, watching the path of my thumb. Back and forth, back and forth. “Maybe not, but they don’t think this is the life I chose, that it’s the life I want.”
