Harper confirmed she’d sent the letter. I felt a kind of relief that I didn’t have to see Chris. My excuse was in the world, on the way, out of my hands.

What I did with my life now was up to me. Harper had been able to take care of herself for years. I’d drained myself of almost every asset except the house itself for the sake of the people of Barrington. I had nothing left to give them, and the town itself had nothing left for me.

I’d been waiting for Chris and I hadn’t even realized it.

But now that I’d made a decision not to see him, he was everywhere.

The rosebushes that had grown wild, the creaky floorboards, the knowledge that there were still flying monkeys scratched into the back of my great-grandfather’s headstone.

The space behind the beige rotary wall phone led to a pantry, and the counter nearby was stuffed with pamphlets, flyers, phone books, recipes, and any other piece of paper we didn’t know what to do with.

Since I was a teenager, numbers had been scrawled on the wall around the phone. Mother wouldn’t have liked it, but she did it first. And Dad, for his part, never saw any reason to update a phone that worked perfectly well.

In the ridge of molding was a number etched in quick little ballpoint lines. The dark blue had faded and the years of grease and dirt obscured it, but if I put my temple to the wall, it was still readable.

Chris’s number hadn’t worked in years. Not since his mother left Barrington and the trailer they’d lived in fell to the elements. I went into the pantry and sat where I always had when I wanted a little privacy—on the root box that hadn’t stored a root in a decade. The peeling shelving paper had the same blue flowers, and the light hung dark and bald, kissing the silver ball chain.

For the first time since I’d sent Harper off with the letter, I felt its weight.

What had I done? If I’d been waiting for him all those years without realizing it, why reject him when he came? Shouldn’t I be celebrating my success? My patience? The victory of maturity over whim?

Shouldn’t I be cleaning the house and getting ready for him instead of telling him not to come? What was I supposed to do now?

I’d only done a couple of impulsive things in my life, and they all had his name on them.

It was Monday. I didn’t usually cry until bedtime, but sitting on that root box, I wanted to wail my heart out.

“Catherine Barrington,” I growled, “enough is enough.”

When I came out of the pantry, Harper was already in the kitchen, leaning into the refrigerator. She wore her yellow shirt and a ponytail.

“Morning.”

“Harper, what would you say if I went away?”

“Like what kind of went away?” She leaned her whole head into the refrigerator. “To prison or a trip?”

“A trip.”

“I’d say ‘have fun.’” She came out with yogurt, peanut butter, and jelly. “Where are you going?”

Where was I going? Anywhere.

“Paris.” I said it as if it was the closest guess in a timed game show.

“Fancy. Nearest passport office is in Springfield. Do you need me to come?”

I didn’t have a passport. If I wanted one, I would have to wait weeks to get it. I wanted to leave now. Tomorrow. Sooner. I wanted to go and get a new life before I lost my nerve.

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Taylor’s staying here,” Harper said. “I hope that’s all right. He’s harmless. And I only have a half shift.”

“It’s fine.”

“I need extra cash for your birthday party.” She put the containers in a plastic bag and snapped the loaf of bread off the counter without slowing down.

“What birthday party?”

“Thursday dinner barbecue.” She kissed my cheek and headed for the door.

“Harper!”

The door slammed behind her. I’d forgotten about my birthday, but she hadn’t. She loved me. She’d come back from college to help with Dad and never went back. She’d sworn she stayed because she wanted to, not to keep me company.

She’d lied, and I’d chosen to believe it. She and I were in this prison together. We were both going to be free.

I had to stay through the week. I guessed it was just as well. I could get a passport and take my time preparing to abandon Barrington.

Upstairs, I heard a crash that rattled the walls. Then another. I ran up, pausing in the middle of the staircase. In bare feet and a robe, I was in no condition for a man to see me. Even my sister’s man.

I heard another crash. It was coming from my old room. The one after the first and before the place I slept now. The master suite Daddy gave me when he thought it would cheer me up.

The walls pounded again, vibrating top down as if they shook from fear. Taylor had asked me for tools a few days before to spackle over a mushroom growing from the bathroom ceiling. He hadn’t asked for a sledgehammer.

I took the steps two at a time in my bare feet, running down the hall in leaping bounds as another crash came from the master suite. My suite. My space. The room that had been mine after Chris left, and the room I’d abandoned after a leak soaked the walls through and a mushroom grew on the bathroom ceiling.

A cloud of dust hung like a ghost outside the door. The window at the end of the hall caught each fleck of dust in morning light as they twisted and flew when I leapt inside it.

I froze at the threshold.

Taylor was in his late twenties. He was polite to Harper. He cleaned up after himself and spoke in complete sentences. Sweaty, stripped down to his undershirt, his skin was marbled with dirt and grime already. She’d said he was visiting from California, but she hadn’t said he was a demolitions contractor or that he’d be plying his trade while she was at the distro center.

The bed was covered in a blue tarp, and the ceiling—which was a piece of tin painted over in pink roses—was dusty but intact. Thank God.

“Oh, my Lord!” I said when he noticed me there.

“Good morning.” He had a beautiful smile for a guy I wanted to scream at.

“What… what are you doing?”

“Don’t come in!”

“But—”

“There are nails.”

The room seemed darker, no doubt because the plaster walls weren’t reflecting the light from the French doors to the balcony. They were just exposed hundred-year-old wood. Yellow Xs had been marked on some of the beams where the wood had been damaged by mold.

“You won’t have the mushroom again.”

It took me a second to catch up to what he meant. The roof over the back of the house had leaked into the bathroom five years before, and since then, a long-stemmed mushroom had grown from the ceiling. We’d repaired the roof and plastered over the fungus every year, but every year it grew back stronger.

And it was gone. I was rendered speechless by his kindness.

“The mold isn’t safe to breathe,” he continued.

Safe. Funny word. My parents had put me in this room to keep me safe. And Daddy had Reggie paint the ceiling to soothe me while I was safe and miserable.

“And that?” Taylor pointed at the roses. “I looked behind it. It’s clean.”

Clean.

Another funny word. After my parents caught me with Chris, I found out what they each were obsessed with. For my mother, the issue had been cleanliness, and my lack of it. For my father, it was safety.

After all the crying. All the fighting. After I showered the blood off my leg and the sticky gunk off my belly, I could never be right again for my mother. But Daddy had done all he could to make it right, even if he did everything wrong.

When Chris left, this hadn’t been my room. There hadn’t been a rose-painted ceiling. Above me, two golden wings peeked out from a flare of petals, hidden cleverly by Barrington’s only artist. I’d been a different person, and this room was part of a different era.

But not really.

Who was Chris? Who was I? All those years… should I sweep them away? Pretend they didn’t happen? Take the tin down, roll it up, and toss it aside? Pack up and run away so I could be sixteen again as if the flying monkeys hidden in the flowers had never existed?

I’d sworn to leave a minute ago, and now all I wanted to do was stay in my house with my people, taking care of a town I loved.

“I want to say something,” I said to Taylor.

“Yes?”

“I own a gun.”

“Okay?”

“I know how to use it.”

He must have thought I was talking about Harper, because he went from swaggering to sincere. As if I’d threaten him over her. Anyone who knew Harper knew she could take care of herself.

“Cath—”

“Don’t let anything happen to the painting.”

He nodded slowly, as if he didn’t understand why it mattered. “Yes, ma’am.”

“And thank you,” I said. “It’ll be nice to sleep in here again.”

I ran down the hall and threw myself onto my bed.

I wanted Chris to come to me, and I’d told him not to.

I wanted to leave so badly.

And I wanted to stay.

The tug-of-war for my heart raged, and I decided I was not going to shed a tear for it.