Page 30

A s Nico drove them the last hundred yards down Placard, Ginny’s usually tiny street felt like it stretched on forever.

She knew she was sitting in the truck, but she couldn’t feel the seat under her.

Her legs, when she glanced down at them, looked tiny, as if she were staring down at herself from some high vantage.

Nico, on the other hand, seemed to take up every inch of the space, a dark presence whose furtive glances made her want to fling herself out of the still-moving vehicle.

She had experienced sensations this intense only once before—as emotionally exposed as a peeled grape, her mind struggling to stay connected to the world, an overwhelming sense of danger and doom.

That had been in the minutes she and Sadie had held each other as they awaited final word from Monique.

Were they orphans, or did they still have loving parents?

There was no one to hold her now but, just as Monique’s red-rimmed eyes had cracked the thick shell of Ginny’s emotional stupor that day, the sight of Ginny’s demolished home as it came into view slammed her back to reality now.

Her new roof was folded in reverse like the wings of a crushed origami crane.

The plaster walls she’d so lovingly repaired lay everywhere in chunks and slabs.

Her home’s colors—yellow, green, blue—registered in her vision, but had no visual logic to them, pastel Lego blocks dumped from a box.

As if reveling in their freedom after one hundred years of darkness, her bruised and bent copper pipes gleamed dully in the early evening light, their metallic shine made duller still by the clouds of dust still settling over the scene.

She had missed the demolition by mere minutes.

Leaping from the truck before Nico could bring it to a complete halt, she dashed to the ruins.

With no rhyme or reason, she began running around, climbing up walls and stepping over ceilings to grab up anything recognizable—a battered yellow teapot, a bit of wall with hand painted blueberries on it, a nearly complete fireplace tile where a little man and a little woman walked beside a windmill.

She pulled the hem of her T-shirt away from her body and began collecting the precious bits as if, with enough pieces and enough glue, she could put everything back together again.

Her eyes stung, and her hands were quickly coated in the pulverized remains of everything she’d held dear, everything that had kept her as close to happy as she could imagine being since the loss of her parents.

Behind her, Nico called her name, his voice becoming vaguely louder. To her right, a man in overalls climbed down from the giant black excavator that had done the deed, bits of her house still stuck in the toothy maw of its bucket.

There was barking and howling too, a cacophony of it.

Even the dogs sensed and smelled that something was terribly, horribly wrong.

Their alarm and wails matched her feelings exactly, and the sound of it deflated something inside her.

They had all lost their first true home.

She stopped running and let her knees sink to the lumpy, mole-pocked lawn.

She closed her eyes and pulled her hands in toward her, protecting the random pieces of her first true love still cradled in her overstretched shirt. Too sad to cry, too angry to scream.

She felt the heat of Nico’s body on the grass beside her—smelled his cologne—even before he spoke. “Ginny, I didn’t want this. It was a mistake. Please, please believe me. I’ll make this right, I promise.”

A bitter laugh escaped her lips, and she swiveled her head toward his.

Kneeling next to her, he looked out of breath, but that was easy to fake.

He looked upset too, but she knew now just how good an actor he was.

She’d suspected it. She’d even convinced herself of it after Monique told her more about him at Sunday brunch.

She’d promised herself never to fall for his tricks again.

But then her pitiful, feeble heart betrayed her, and she’d believed him one final time. One final, disastrous time.

She willed her stinging eyes to stop blinking as she swiveled her head to stare straight into his hell-dark orbs.

“You have everything—you even have a mom—and you still had to take the one thing, the one thing I had.” Against her most fervent wishes, her voice broke.

“You had to smash it to pieces because nobody but you gets to have things, do they? Nobody but you works hard. Nobody but you is even a real person. I’m just some kook, some weirdo, some loser. ”

“No, Ginny,” Nico said. He tried to touch her arm, but she twisted away.

“And you played with my heart too, because losers don’t have feelings, do they? Not real feelings. Only the pretty people get to have those. Only the winners do.”

“It wasn't me. I was happy to move the house. My brother did this.”

Her throat twisted so tight she had to yell to get words out at all. “Stop lying. Just stop. His texts only said ‘It’s done,’ because he knew you’d know exactly what he meant. And you said he’s in Colorado. How would he have even known I left the house if you hadn’t told him?”

Nico shook his head as he gave a limp and unconvincing shrug. “I’ve no idea how he knew. It’s true we’d had a loose sort of a plan, but that was before. The plan changed when we both agreed on moving the house. I didn’t want this, I promise.”

She stood awkwardly, still holding onto the bits of her treasured home. “How about I make you a promise?” she spat as she glared down at him. “I promise to never believe your promises ever again.”

“Ginny, please, don’t.” He looked up at her, his mouth a slanted gash of pain and his eyes watering as if he were about to cry. The guy deserved an Oscar for this performance.

“No,” she said. “ You don’t. You don’t call me, you don’t text me, you don’t think of me. People like me are beneath your thoughts.” She turned and started walking toward her car, her mind an orchestra of wrong notes.

I promised myself he wouldn’t win . I promised!

But in the end, he had, and she had lost everything. In a defeated tone she added over her shoulder, “Drop the dogs off to Monique. She’ll know how to find me.”