Page 19 of Sweet Ruin

“You’re always so early,” she adds as she steps aside to let me enter her house. The tone of her voice makes it clear that is not such a redeeming quality in her eyes.

“You said eleven.”

“No, I said eleven-ish.” She tsks. “Well, harm’s already done, I suppose. Wipe your feet. The girl came yesterday.”

I bite my tongue. “The girl” is a kind German woman in her sixties named Maria who’s been cleaning Mom’s house for pennies for the last four decades.

And then I have to bite my tongue again when I get into the foyer and am reminded of exactly what this place is.

Not a house. Not a home.

It’s a museum. An altar, really, given that there’s a distinctly religious vibe to the way everything is arranged.

The hallway is wall-to-wall Vivian. It’s her full highlight reel, from the cradle until now. A quick sweep across the left-hand wall reveals the pageant sash, the Berkeley graduation, the frilly pink tutu and a familiar smile beaming in the front row.

Vivian on a beach. Vivian at prom. Vivian on a boat, a goat, a box, a fox like she’s freaking Sam-I-Am.

Technically speaking, I’m in here somewhere. Last I counted, I made it into two shots total.

I’m there in the far corner of the Dorsey extended family cousins, half-hidden behind Uncle Bub’s shoulder. And then, wedged behind a replica of the fishnet leg lamp from A Christmas Story, is a framed newspaper cutout of me at my bakery opening.

This house has shrunk me my whole life. You walk in a person; by the time you hit the coat closet, you’re staff.

Today, I feel that familiar shrinking start.

But for the first time ever, it doesn’t quite work.

I feel it hit me like a bucketful of cold water splashed in my face, but instead of flinching and cowering, I laugh.

Go ahead, bitch. Take your best shot.

This house doesn’t know that I’m not the same old Delilah anymore.

There’s a hotel receipt folded into the wallet in my coat, dated the night of my father’s funeral, that’s forever changed me. Room service for two. They got ice cream after they were done desecrating my marriage.

I remember thanking Connor for taking Vivian home that night. I’m pretty sure I said, “Thank God she has you.”

As of last night, I know about the loan, too. All thanks to a scorched corner of paper shoveled out of my own kitchen sink, with my signature forged onto it, under the letterhead of a lender I have never heard of. V Haven Holdings. Whoever the hell that is, they seem to think I borrowed money from them, when in reality I did no such thing.

So it isn’t just the affair anymore. Things have changed. The white-hot anger isn’t so hot. It’s cold. Ice-cold.

I think I kinda like it better that way.

But only for a little while. It’s eleven o’clock right now, so in eight hours, give or take, I’m going to leave this behind. My nagging mother, my greedy sister, my backstabbing husband... I’m going to destroy them all and then leave them smoldering in the wreckage.

First, though, I need to put down this godforsaken projector.

I heave it into the living room, stopping along the way to fish a ratty old towel out from the linen closet, and make sure that no part of the old, greasy machinery is touching my mother’s precious dining room table before I set it down.

Mom has a system going at the other end—napkins folded in triangles, sorted into piles by some cryptic ranking of guests I will never be told.

“The screen’s going on the big wall in the living room,” I tell her when I’ve hauled the last of it in. “Dad always ran it in the den, but the den seats twelve and you invited fifty.”

“Whatever, dear. Mind the paint.” She doesn’t look up from her folding.

Fine by me. I take the rolled-up screen and the bag of extension cords into the living room and get set up.

The screen goes up first. I lock the legs and center it on the big wall. Dad’s projector goes on the side table—on a towel, of course, because God forbid that century-old hunk of wood gets one more nick on it.