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Justin was right. Home wasn’t a place, it was a person. For me it was a whole family.

I wanted to hold Chelsea. I wanted to help Sarah and Alex grow up. I wanted to wake up next to Justin and plant things in his yard, stay in one place and let things take root. Make traditions. Have birthdays and Christmases with these people, even though they weren’t mine. I was strong enough for that now, if he’d let me. For the first time in my life, I was capable of love—and the loss that came with it. I could handle it now. I’d healed enough for it.

So I got in my car and I started the journey back to him.

Toilet King billboards peppered the whole drive to his house like highway markers, letting me know I was headed in the right direction. I was less than half an hour away when out of nowhere, like I’d somehow gotten a signal on my phone that I hadn’t gotten in the past six months, Sarah called.

I stared at the caller ID for a solid ten seconds before I hit the answer button. “Sarah?”

“Can you come get me?”

I wrinkled my forehead. “Come get you? From where?”

“School.”

“Are you sick? Where’s Justin?”

“I don’t want him. The nurse says you’re still on the emergency contact list, you can come pick me up, they’ll let me go with you. Just come.”

“You’re going to need to give me a little more information than this,” I said.

“I got my period, okay?”

Ahhhhhh…

“I’m not telling my brother to help me get pads. And I’m not calling Leigh. She’ll throw me a period party. I’d rather die.”

I laughed a little. Yes, Leigh would definitely do that.

I was close. I could be there in twenty minutes. But then the nervousness sank in.

For some reason seeing Sarah felt as hard as seeing Justin.

Harder.

I didn’t just break up with Justin when I left. I broke up with all of them.

Alex would forgive me. He went with the flow and he’d probably be fine with whatever Justin decided. Chelsea was too small to know or hold a grudge. But Sarah… she would tell me exactly what she thought of me for leaving, and she wouldn’t sugarcoat it. She probably wouldn’t sugarcoat what Justin had been up to over the last six months either. Especially if it involved someone else. Just because she called me for help didn’t mean Sarah wanted me back in their lives. She didn’t forgive easily. She was hard on people and she didn’t forget. It would be a tough conversation and I didn’t have the bandwidth for it.

It took everything I had just to come and see him.

Also he wouldn’t be alone now like I’d planned, we wouldn’t have the privacy I’d hoped for if Sarah was there.

For a split second I thought of telling her I couldn’t do it, to call her brother to pick her up and I’d try this talk with him another day. Turning around and going back to Wakan.

But I also remembered what it was like to get my first period without a mother to help me.

I’d been alone, I didn’t know what to do. My cramps had me doubled over and I’d bled on my clothes. I didn’t want Sarah to have any of the small traumas I’d been forced to endure because of an absentee mom. So I made my decision.

“I can be there in twenty minutes.”

I came and I felt like an imposter when I signed her out of school. An adult she trusted enough to call in an emergency, but one who hadn’t been here in half a year and had to answer for it.

“Does Justin know where you are?” I asked her as we came out to the parking lot.

“No.”

“Okay, well we need to tell him. Text him right now.”