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The aged handle squeaked as I turned it and pushed the door open, the old familiar noise making me feel like a little girl again. “Hello,” I called out. I heard a loud, excited yelp from the bedroom and suddenly the door was flying open as Marlo danced out and launched herself at me. I squealed as she picked me up and jumped around with me, laughing out loud. “Stop! Stop!” I demanded. “I haven’t peed in hours. I’m going to wet my pants.”
Marlo set me down, laughing. She grinned and wrapped her arms around me, saying, “Welcome home, baby sister. College graduate.”
I grinned back, squeezing her tightly, holding back tears. Marlo hated it when I cried. I went and used the restroom quickly and when I came back out, she smiled and took my hands again. “Let me look at you.” Her eyes ran over me for a minute and she shook her head. “You always were pretty, Ten, but wow, you’re a class act.”
“I’m the same,” I said, disagreeing. “Just some new clothes and a haircut.”
“No, no, it’s not just the clothes and the hair. It’s you. You look all grown up. You’re too skinny, though. Is everyone on a diet in California?”
I snorted. “Yeah. A little different than the starvation diet we were always on. There, they do it on purpose.”
She let out a half laugh–half groan and brought her hand to her forehead. “How are you? Really?” she asked, sitting down on the couch. “Is it weird to be back?”
I sat down next to her. “Yeah. Kind of. I mean, I’m not sure yet.”
Her forehead creased as she studied me for a moment. “Have you seen him?”
“Who?” I asked flippantly, as if I didn’t know exactly whom she was referring to.
She just raised her eyebrows.
I sighed. “No. I literally drove straight here.”
“Well, it’s going to be fine. It’s been a long time. And you know, he gained about two hundred pounds, lost all his hair, and came down with a really bad skin disease, so…he’s hideous, unsightly. Honestly? Disgusting.” She shivered.
I gaped at her and the corner of her lip quivered into a smile. “What?” Then I laughed. “You’re lying. He did not. I mean, God, that’d be a stroke of luck on my part, but…” I shook my head. “You’re right. It’s going to be fine. I have a job to do here. It’s been almost four full years, and I’m just going to have to look past the fact that someone I loathe lives right up the road. We’ll just steer clear of each other, I’m sure.”
“Do you really still loathe him, Ten?”
I thought about that for a second. Loathing Kyland was just a step below hating him, and I found it hard to completely hate him, as I still knew who he was capable of being. Still, I needed something to hold on to. “Yeah. Yeah, I do. And no one’s going to take that from me. At least, not yet. When it comes to men, never forgive, never forget—that’s my life motto.”
She looked at me dubiously. “That’s my life motto.”
“Well, I’ve adopted it.”
“That’s good,” she said. “You should. All women should.”
I’d only ever asked Marlo about Kyland once, or rather, about Shelly. A couple months after I’d left, I’d woken up in the middle of the night, something from a dream or a half-formed thought convincing me everything he’d said to me that horrible day had been a lie. In the dark of the night, it’d seemed so possible, likely even, that he hadn’t been telling the truth. I’d known who he was. And that wasn’t him. It wasn’t. The pieces of some puzzle I couldn’t fathom once I was awake had come together in my head in the bleariness of sleep. But in the morning when I’d called Marlo asking her if she’d seen Shelly around town recently, she’d haltingly confirmed that she had and that she looked like she was just a few months pregnant. A few months. Meaning Kyland had been with her right about the time he’d slept with me. I’d spent that day in bed, curled up, staring at the wall, contemplating how slowly an hour could tick by, my heart breaking all over again.
I’d vowed not to ask about him again and I hadn’t. Not once. Even the month I’d calculated in my head that his baby would probably have been born, I didn’t ask Marlo a thing. It’d taken an act of willpower unlike any I’d shown before, but I’d done it.
The day four years earlier that he’d told me what he’d done, the day I ran from his house back to my own, was the last time I’d seen him.
“I think you should know…”
“What?” I asked.
“Well, he works belowground at the mine. I’ve seen him coming home, covered in coal dust.”
