Mom stopped at the front door. “Someday, Harper, when you’re an adult and have to make adult choices, you’ll understand.” She pulled her raincoat over her head and offered Dash a faltering smile. “Be a good boy. Mind your sister. I’ll be back in a few days.” She turned to me, her eyes shining and glassy. “I’m sorry.”
Then she stepped out into the downpour. I stared after her, sure this was a dream. A nightmare. My phone was blowing up. Dash was crying. The rain was pounding…
I can salvage this, I thought wildly. Desperately. Pathetically trying to hold on to a scrap of happiness.I’ll call Mrs. Andolina. Beg her to come back. Yes, I’ll ask a sixty-year-old woman to drive into a hurricane to watch my little brother so I can go to a party…
“Harper?”
I turned. “Whatis it, Dash?”
Sniffling, he pointed one finger up.
I looked up too, to the steady stream of droplets dripping from the ceiling and onto the living room rug in front of the TV. I stared. The heated fury in my body instantly turned to ice. Out of my peripheral, I saw another leak in the kitchen. A third in the stairwell. Like silverystalactites.
Something in me snapped. My mind went blank but for flashes of traumatic childhood memories that confused then for now, now for then. I was a little girl and I was me. It had happened and it was still happening, and I couldn’t escape.
I ran out into the downpour and was instantly drenched. My dress ruined. My curls flattened. Makeup streamed down my cheeks with rain and tears. The dentist’s car was turning around and driving away, and I chased after, screaming as the red taillights grew fainter.
“FUCK YOU! I HATE YOU! DO YOU HEAR ME!? I FUCKING HATE YOU!”
I screamed over and over until the lights faded away. Until the car was gone. Until my voice gave out and I fell to my knees on the hard cement drive. My dress tore and my skin too, though I hardly felt it.
“Harper?”
Somehow under the tumult of the storm and my sobs, I heard Dash’s little voice, tear-filled and frightened. It drew me out of the cycle of then and now and into just now.
Pull yourself together. One more time. For him.
But I couldn’t stop crying. It was as if something had broken in me after years—more than a decade—of holding myself together, and I was helpless against it. The rage, the grief, the absolute horror of doing another round of Mom’s addiction…
I can’t do this again. Not again.
I hauled myself off the driveway and staggered into the house. Dash watched me with wide eyes, his own tears streaming. Wordlessly, sobbing, I pulled pots and pans from under the sink and put them under the leaks. Theping ping pingof water hitting the metal added to the horrible symphony of this night: a wailing storm of rain, of tears, of water seeping into cracks and ruining everything good and whole, while somewhere, in another life, another me was dancing in a glittering ballroom with a beautiful boy…
“Harper…?”
Dash was still following me as I set out the pans, now and then tugging my hand with his little one. My heart broke for him more than for me, but my sobs wouldn’t stop. I shook my head, trying to explain, to comfort him, but I couldn’t get the words out. Instead I hugged him close, whisperedI’m sorryin his ear, and put him in front of the TV again.
Then I sat in the stairwell next to the dripping water and texted Orion.
I had more than a dozen worried texts and missed calls from him that only made me cry harder. I could barely see the phone keys as I typed.
I’m not coming. I’m sorry.
The phone dropped out of my hands, I pulled up my scraped knees—blood and grime and rain stained my dress—and buried my face in my arms. I tried to dive into the black nothing, to make it all go away, but the pounding rain wouldn’t stop. The thunder kept booming, and it sounded like the storm was banging on the door, demanding to come in.
Someonewasbanging on the door.
Dash’s little voice called my name, and then a deeper one.
“Harper?”
The voice. The accent. The scent of cologne mixed with rainwater. Large, strong hands were on my shoulders, gently bringing me around.
I lifted my head, which felt as if it weighed a hundred pounds, and opened swollen eyes. Beautiful dark ones looked back. Orion knelt in front of me, and I burst into tears all over again when I thought I had none left. Though I was a dirty, sodden mess, ruining his tuxedo, he gathered me to him.
“Oh, love.” His voice was low and rumbling in my ear as he held me tight, held me together. “It’s going to be all right.” He stroked myhair, kissed my forehead. “Everything’s going to be all right.”
I didn’t believe him, but in those moments, encircled in his arms, I pretended he was telling the truth.
