48

Aster

––––––––

“All right,” Jerry says, putting the car in park. “Here we are.” Then he hesitates before asking, “Where are we, exactly?”

He ducks his head to look out the passenger window at the large old house looming beside us. My dad’s house. It’s the same as I remember, two stories, pale yellow, green door. The roses that flanked the steps are overgrown and rambling, my father the only one who’d ever bothered to tend them.

Jerry had agreed to drive me here without question. For the past thirty minutes he’d let me sit in the passenger seat, coping with my anxiety as quietly as I possibly could. He always knew when not to press, when to back down. He never fought for anything. Never had to.

“This is my dad’s house,” I say. “He died.”

His stunned expression is reflected in the glass. “I’m sorry,” he says, aghast. “Aster, I’m so—”

“It’s okay,” I say, studying the house, as though he might be frowning down at us from the upstairs window, tapping his watch and asking, What took you so long? Where were you? Who is that boy? “I hadn’t seen him since I was fourteen and we ran away.”

“Ran away? From...here?”

I get what he’s asking. Here is a lovely house on a lovely street in a lovely neighborhood filled with lovely people. Here is exactly the place the Aster he thought he knew would have grown up. But here is not who I am anymore.

Before I can say anything, a black sedan pulls up behind us and a well-groomed man in a pricey suit climbs out. “That’s the lawyer,” I mutter, getting out to meet Mitch Goldman for the first time.

“Aster Lindsey,” he says, smiling as he shakes my hand. “I’m glad you were able to make it. I know this is a busy time of year for students.”

I feel Jerry hovering behind me, not sure quite what the hell he’s gotten himself into.

Mitch makes the first move, extending a hand and introducing himself. Jerry replies in turn and then we just stand there.

“I guess we should go inside,” I say, words I’d never dreamed of uttering. Not once after we fled did I think of returning. I hadn’t even let myself miss the things we’d abandoned in favor of our freedom, however short-lived mine was.

“Of course,” Mitch says. “Absolutely.”

He talks as we trek up the long drive, mentioning how the Chester Horticultural Society would like to dig up one of the rose bushes for the public garden, if I would agree. He explains that the wrought iron mailbox is actually a piece of art from a famed local artist and is something I should remove from the house if I choose to sell it. I’m aware of him talking, but I can barely absorb the words, my eyes focused on his hand as he fits the key to the lock and turns it like it’s nothing. Like it’s just a door.

I don’t know what I’m expecting. A bunch of ghosts and demons to come pouring out, maybe. A cloud of old dust, choking us, warning us away, perhaps.

But nothing happens. The door opens and Mitch steps through, then Jerry gestures for me to go, following close behind. It’s just a normal entry into a normal old house. Nothing special about it, nothing to warrant the tightness in my chest, the rapid thud of my heart against my breastbone.

I squint into the gloom of the foyer, dust motes hanging in the stale air. It’s the same as I remember. A long hall with rooms flanking either side, the hardwood still like new. My dad threw a fit if we ran on it in our shoes, saying he’d take any repairs out of our allowance, not that we ever got one. I peek through each doorway as we pass, spotting the upright piano in the living room, the one my brother would never learn to play, and the glass cabinet in the dining room that still holds my parents’ wedding china, neatly displayed. Someone had come by to clean out the refrigerator and take out the trash, so even the kitchen is spotless, no dishes in the sink, no flies buzzing.

It’s just a home.

No, not a home.

A house.

An empty house, full of all the things that should have made a home, but didn’t.

“Shall I give you two some time?” Mitch asks. “I can come back in an hour or so, if you’d like.”

“An hour,” I say, my voice sounding foreign. “Please.”

“Of course. Take as long as you need.”

When the front door closes I slump against the counter, exhausted by the wasted effort of pretending to be someone composed and sophisticated, the same person I had tried to be for Jerry.

“Are you all right?” he asks tentatively, glancing around. “Can I do anything?”

“I’m fine,” I say.

“Did you grow up here?”

“Yes.”

“Until you...ran away? From your dad?”

I nod stiffly, taking in the room. The refrigerator door used to be covered with magnets my mom collected, holding up artwork and tests we’d aced at school. Now it’s bare, the surface shiny and unmarred. “Yes. He... He was very controlling. He was hard on my mom.”

“I’m sorry.” He pauses for a second, then asks, “Is she coming? Here? Today?”

I shake my head. “No. She doesn’t talk to me. Not since...” I’m clutching the edge of the counter. “Not since I went to prison.”

Jerry does a comical double-take. “Say that once more?”

“I went to prison for retail fraud,” I say. Jerry is the only person, besides Aidan, to whom I have ever made that confession. “Holsom has a program to help troubled kids they think might have potential, and when I got out, I went straight from prison to college.”

His mouth moves soundlessly, like a fish.

“And now my dad died and left me this house and I’ve been afraid to come back because I’ve tried so hard to have a new life and I didn’t want to be reminded of this one.”

Jerry still looks dumbfounded. “I had no idea.”

“How could you? I never told you.”

“Well... I never asked.”

I feel myself soften a bit, the steel spine I’ve been trying to maintain starting to bend. “Do you ask all your girlfriends if they have a criminal record?”

He smiles sheepishly. “No. But I should probably look into Missy a bit more closely.”

I laugh. “Maybe.”

“Well,” he says, brushing his hands together. Smooth, clean, pre-med hands. Hands he’ll one day use to heal people. “Want to give me a tour? I’ll ask all the questions I should have asked before.”

And that’s it. He just...accepts it. Jerry’s the poster child for Holsom’s clean cut, well-to-do student body, and he accepts me, flaws and all. I wasted an entire year trying to be someone I thought he wanted—someone I thought I wanted—and it turns out I could have been myself the whole time. Maybe we would have fallen in love, maybe not, but it would have been so much less exhausting.

He follows me through the house, each room neat and orderly, functional but impersonal. There are no photos of my mom or my brother or me, nothing to indicate we had ever lived here. Ramsay’s old room now holds a treadmill and a weight stack; my room is a half-finished library. Even the master bedroom is nondescript, no alarm clock on the nightstand, no reading glasses, no slippers by the bed. My dad knew he was going to die and hid every trace of the person he’d become from the daughter he would ask to return, as grudging in death as he had been in life.

I trail my fingers down the wooden banister as we descend the stairs, retracing our steps down the long hallway. I don’t know exactly what I expected to find when I got here, but I thought there’d be more, somehow. More drama. More history. More pain. But there’s nothing.

I tug the door closed behind me as Mitch comes up the driveway.

“Everything okay?” he asks.

“Just fine,” I answer. “Let’s hire someone to empty the house and sell it. The horticultural society can have the rose bushes. I don’t care about the mailbox.”

“Are you sure? It’s quite the collector’s item.”

“Then it’s yours,” I tell him, heading for the car. “I have everything I need.”