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He laid my car seat down as I curled up and cried. He combed his fingers through my hair and drove and drove.
I don’t know why or how, but we ended up back at Dartmouth.
Back to where we made her.
It was a her, by the way. They told us that.
He pulled in, leaving me for a minute to find Mr Gibbs. I don’t know what BJ told him, but Gibbs took one look at me, opened the house, put on the fire and the kettle and then left us.
Beej carried me into the house, up the stairs, and into the shower.
He stripped us both down gently and slowly and turned on the water and I remember looking down at my body and everything feeling foreign.
My now empty stomach, like it was all a dream plucked out of me.
The next thing I remember is being in bed.
I don’t know how I got there, I don’t remember getting there. But I remember a quilt swallowing us both whole, him holding me from behind, and us staying like that for nearly two days.
The morning I first got out of bed after everything, BJ wasn’t with me.
I called for him but he wasn’t in the house.
And then I saw him out the window. He was lugging a big, flat piece of sandstone and laying it under the willow tree. He lifted his shirt to wipe his face and then covered his mouth with the bend in his elbow, and I saw him take a big, staggered breath, then another, then another. He wiped his face and his tears with his wrist, gruffly, the way boys do when they aren’t just wiping away their tears but their feelings as well.
I didn’t know what to do when I saw that, or how to comfort him.
We were so spectacularly in over our heads.
I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t think I was supposed to see what I saw. I just sat on the bed, waiting for him to come in. He did eventually, and we took another shower, and then we went back to bed and stayed one more night.
As we were leaving and Mr Gibbs was sending us off, I turned to him.
“We were never here, do you understand?” My voice was sharper than I meant it to be, but it wasn’t sharp with rudeness, just desperation. “Please.”
“Yes.” Gibbs nodded.
“And that stone he laid,” I pointed over to it. “It never moves.”
Then Mr Gibbs nodded again, quickly, and even if he didn’t know, I knew he understood.
BJ slipped his hand in mine, put me in the car, buckled me in then kissed my nose.
We drove back to London in silence. It was a Saturday night when we arrived home. And holy shit, were our parents mental. Marsaili was practically deranged.
When I arrived on the front steps with BJ standing behind me, she opened the door, yanked me inside and physically body blocked BJ from following me in.
“Leave,” she said with a pointed finger. “Now. I don’t want to see you near her. Skipping school! Running away! Unacceptable. I’m calling your mother.” She slammed the door in his face. “I cannot beli— go to your room,” she growled. “Do not speak to that boy, do not call him. Do not sneak him in through your window. I’m nailing it shut. Magnolia Parks, do you hear me? Do not—” Marsaili gave me the darkest eyes she’s ever given me. “—even dream of contacting him. You will be lucky if you ever see him again.”
The thing was, the moment I was in my room, all I did was cry. And not my normal crying. Not crying to get my way, not crying out of insolence or because I was drunk — it was different crying and they could all hear it because I was crying like my heart was broken.
“Magnolia?” Marsaili asked, standing over me. “What happened?” she asked gently, her tone suddenly quite different upon realising that I was different.
But I couldn’t tell her. I shook my head as I cried in a way that didn’t sound like it was coming from my body.
“Magnolia, darling, are you hurt?” my mother asked as she stroked her hands through my hair and I fought her off.
“Darling, sweetheart,” my father whispered, “I want you to tell me what’s going on. What do you need?”
