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“I’m cutting you, Clara.”

I spin around from the bar, almost knocking over one of my table’s drinks. “What?”

Joe holds a hand out. “Relax. Go home. I’m going to need you tomorrow.”

“I don’t work Sundays.”

Sundays are mine . I drive an hour outside of Atlanta to where I work what should technically be considered my second job. But since I get to ride in return for cleaning out stables, someone would probably consider it more of a hobby. It just happens to be one I was only able to enjoy in my past life when someone else was paying for it.

Joe nods. “I know you don’t. But I need all hands on deck. Jackie called out with the flu, and the whole club is booked.”

In the six months I’ve been here, I’ve never seen Joe shut down the club to the public.

He leans on the bar. “Tips are already set,” he entices me.

Under normal circumstances, I’d tell him I can’t. But I do have to fix my car that’s about to die if I want to actually get out of Atlanta on Sundays or when I make a break for it this summer.

“Do I have to remind you I pay you entirely in cash and off the books?”

I hate when people act like they’re doing something out of the kindness of their hearts and then toss it back into your face when they need something.

“Tomorrow is the Super Bowl, Clara. Did you even realize Atlanta was hosting it?”

I guess that explains the traffic earlier today.

He sighs. “Look, I’m booked out for one of the teams’ after-parties, and I already know, with the crowd it’ll draw, I’ll be serving drinks myself. You’d be doing me a favor. And these guys—win or lose—they’ll be here to drink. You can tip out whatever anyone hands you.”

Considering how my car sounded this morning, I guess not only would I be making money if I worked tomorrow, but also saving money because I wouldn’t have to pay to get it towed after it breaks down. There’s girl math somewhere in there.

“Fine.”

“Great. Hand your table off. You’ll only miss an hour. You’ll make it up times ten tomorrow,” Joe says. “I promise.”

I slide over to the computer. “If you say so.”

“I know so. Rebels are picked to win big time.”

I freeze, slowly tilting my head. “The Rebels?”

“The New England Rebels.”

“I know who the Rebels are.”

More than you’d ever know , I should add, but instead, I keep it to myself. But of course I know. And that’s not just because I grew up in New England. That’s because once every blue moon, I google Fitz.

“Right. I always forget you’re a Mass-hole,” he jokes. “Just my luck, though, you don’t have one of those fun accents. You know, pahk the cahr in Boston Hahbor.”

“I didn’t grow up in Boston,” I remind him. “About twenty miles south of it.”

Joe changes his tune. “Ah. Right. One of those fancy areas of the great state with Live Free or Die on the license plate.”

“That’s New Hampshire. Massachusetts’ is The spirit of America .”

I don’t waste my breath explaining that the slogan originated from a campaign ad in the 1980s and, technically, has nothing to do with the official state motto, which translates from Latin to By the sword we seek peace, but peace only under liberty . The state motto, written by one of my relatives in 1775, is older than the country itself. That was the motto of my father’s presidential campaign when I was in high school— Montgomerys have always been and will be for America.

Considering he lost then, and won when he ran again four years ago, I’m assuming he came up with something a little snazzier. I made it a point to not watch TV or glance at a newspaper for the year leading up to that election. I missed voting registration because it took me forever to renew my driver’s license, but if I did, I would’ve voted for the other guy.

“Fancy is fancy,” Joe says. “No matter the state.”

Joe might’ve been wrong about the state slogan, but he isn’t quite wrong about where I grew up.

On the surface, Manhasset looks like any other New England coastal town—shingled homes, sandy paths that feed into old streets. It’s a quaint town with one bakery. Cool summer mornings start with a sweater and jean shorts, but there’s plenty of warmth during the afternoon to ditch the sweater for a bikini top, to ride your bike to one of the beaches. But it’s also home—or a second home—to some of the most wealthy, powerful families in New England.

In my case, I didn’t have to go far to get to the water, only down the gentle slope of the sprawling backyard to the long dock. If you followed it to the end and jumped off, you bypassed the rocky coast flanking Captain’s Cottage, the home that’s been in my family for generations.

It started out that way, as a cottage. My great-great-great grandfather built it by hand. No more than a one-bedroom house with a dock, a place he and his wife escaped to on weekends so he could tune out the noise that came with being the state treasurer. When it came time for him to run for governor, his wife apparently begged and pleaded him to upgrade the home. What would people think of the modest house? Of the dingy dock and patchy grass? He refused.

The original home burned to the ground. According to my grandmother, Honey, his concerned wife set it on fire. But the Montgomery name lived on. The rebuild made the cottage grander than ever. The obsession with how things look is ingrained in my family like a generational curse.

“Get some rest tonight,” Joe says. “Don’t go too wild.”

“The only thing wild will be me eating ice cream with freezer burn while I watch Golden Girls .”

Joe probably thinks I’m joking, but I’m not. And I’m eager to have a few old ladies keep me company. That’s enough for me. I’ve never made it through an episode—even the series finale—without a smile on my face. Those ladies, well, they make me think of Honey.

We never called my grandmother anything else . We called her Honey because that’s what she called us.

“Oh, honey, be a doll and fetch my lipstick.”

“Did I ever tell you the time I went on a date with Mr. Kennedy, honey? The father, not the president. I never had a chance to rob the cradle.”

“Honey, good women aren’t fragile like flowers. They’re delicate,” she’d whisper, bopping my nose. “Like bombs. And a good man will protect you only to keep the fuse dry.”

Lung cancer took her quickly. She smoked Virginia Slims until the day before she died when I was sixteen.

“What?” she’d ask with a cough. “Is one cigarette really going to kill me? I’m ready to go anyway. My life, it’s exhausting, honey.”

What Honey meant was her kind of life was full. Full of adventure, like meeting the queen of England when her husband was the US ambassador to the United Kingdom or traveling to Saudi Arabia, India, and Pakistan. But her favorite time, she’d always say, was at home with us in Manhasset, where my sister and I lived while my father and mother were often in Washington, DC while he worked as a congressman and later, as a senator.

While most kids crave their mother’s hug after a nightmare, I always longed for the familiar scent of Chanel Number Five with the slightest hint of smoke cutting through.

Honey’s death was the catalyst to everything, my downfall, my banishment and punishment, the reason I’m standing exactly where I am, going by Clara Parker—Honey’s full maiden name—instead of the name I was born with—Parker Montgomery.

But I don’t blame Honey. I blame my parents, who would rather send me away—out of sight and out of mind—than take the time to help me with a loss I couldn’t manage to cope with.

I imagine, if there were a heaven—and Honey were allowed in—she’d be wearing her finest gown, smoking a cigarette, and drinking a Manhattan. If I ever got a chance to go there and find her, she’d look at me and ask, “Where have you been, honey?”

And I’m sure the next thing she’d say is, “How could you let them do that to you?”

* * *

Most twenty-nine-year-old women have a nighttime routine that includes retinol and a rich moisturizer. I’m not most twenty-nine-year-old women. My nighttime routine does include slapping on some moisturizer and brushing my teeth, but from there, things go differently, depending on the night.

On a good night, before I sleep, I check the front door by flipping the handle’s lock three times. And then I bolt it and repeat the process once or twice.

On a bad night, my brain yanks my body out of bed a dozen or more times. Those nights, I also check under the bed. But I’m not looking for the boogeyman, unless you consider the boogeyman someone my parents hired to kidnap me in the middle of the night when I was seventeen and take me—by force—across the state to a therapeutic boarding school.

Tonight, despite it having been a relatively good day, is a bad night.

My legs, tired from their mileage in heels during my shift, scream as I squat to look below the bed frame again. It’s irrational, I know. I’m very self-aware. But no one understands how deep the scars I carry are. They’ve cracked open my chest and allowed fear to seep into my veins, making me afraid to sleep at night after tough days. The thing is, I’m not scared of the things I might see when I close my eyes. I’m terrified of what—or whom—I’ll find when I wake up.

And so, I listen for the worst, like the heavy steps of grown men on the hardwood floors I refuse to cover with even the smallest of area rugs that might muffle their sounds, leaving me vulnerable, like the hallway runner outside my room in Captain’s Cottage. I often think if it hadn’t been there, maybe I would’ve heard them before they got to me. Maybe I would’ve had a chance to make it to my window and dash from it.

Shaking my head, as if it were that easy to rid myself of the intrusive thoughts, I finally crawl into bed where I silently sing my own lullaby.

You’re safe here.

You’re safer alone than with anyone else.

You’re—

“Out of your mind.” I groan before I get out of bed and head into what is the living room space of my studio.

I turn the TV on again. It’s after one in the morning, far past the time for Golden Girls reruns, which leaves me flipping between infomercials and the news. I can’t afford whatever they’re selling, so I leave a local station on and fold my hands against a pillow, lying on them to avoid the scratchy fabric.

“And we’re looking at the New England Rebels coming after a 16-1 regular season, ready to take that trophy…”

A box beside the anchor appears, filled with footage of previous games.

When the camera pans in on Fitz’s face, I lose my breath. It goes somewhere else, back to a time and place with my favorite people.

“Oh, Parker,” I hear Honey say. “What on earth are you doing? Look how messy your hair is.”

I don’t bother stopping what I’m doing, even though I’m standing on a kitchen chair I pushed over to the pantry so I could reach the box of cookies. “Getting supplies.” I take down the tin box.

Honey isn’t like typical grandmothers. She never baked cookies. But she also never tells us we can’t have them either. I shake the metal container and groan, lifting the lid. The outside is a lie. The inside is filled with Honey’s matchbooks.

“Supplies?” She produces another metal tin. I can tell by the weight this one actually has cookies.

I jump down off the chair. “We’re running away.”

“Who is we?”

“Fitz and me ? —”

“Fitz and I,” she corrects, grabbing an ashtray.

“Fitz and I,” I restate. “We’re running away.”

“You’re running away to the clubhouse with Fitz?”

I nod.

“In that case, go grab my comb and let me fix your hair. It’s all ratty”—Honey pauses—“and is that a stick in your braid?”

I frown. “Why does my hair have to be neat?”

“Oh, honey,” she says, pausing to light her cigarette. “Always look your best around men.” She lets out a long exhale.

I tilt my head to the side. We’re only eight. “Isn’t Fitz a boy?”

“One day, you both will grow up. Let him remember you without a twig in your hair.”

The man on the screen is far from the boy back then, but I see specks of my best friend growing up in the creases around his hazel eyes, the wideness of his grin, the lone dimple it shows in his right cheek. I see my confidant, the preteen who still met me in our clubhouse even though we were far from the age of pretend play. I see the teenager who was the closest person to me at the beginning of high school but who began to stop looking for me toward the end of it.

Fitz went one way, and I went the other. There were only a handful of times toward the end of junior year that we met in the middle. One of them was the night I was taken, on the first anniversary of Honey’s death.

I swallow the tastes of emotion that invade my mouth. It would be easy to think that there’s a hint of jealousy over Fitz’s success, his ability to live freely, but I’m not. I’m elated for him. And still, I’m sad. I’m sad he doesn’t even know that. I’m angry at myself that even after I left Horizons and began life on my own, I never was brave enough to overcome the embarrassment of what had been done to me and let him know how proud I was that he made it. I never was brave enough to say how much I missed him and the period of my life when things were innocent, when I believed in the best in people, when I believed I was worth more than whatever use I was to others, to my family .

I shift on the couch, uncomfortable not just because of the stiff cushions, but because it’s never been easy to sit with the fact that the two most important people to me are forever out of reach.

But depending on how brave I can be, one might not be for much longer.