The Watcher Girl(11)
It took only a few months of my obstinate, limit-testing antics before they shipped me to Florida to live with our mother’s mother, where I stayed until I finished high school a semester early. Grandma Janet was no walk in the park, but she was Disney World compared to Greta.
“Shall we head in?” Rose points to the front door, and her nails are the palest, prettiest, glossiest pink I’ve ever seen. Not a chip in sight. I often wonder what it’d be like to make it more than twenty-four hours postmanicure without picking at my polish.
I follow Rose and Evan inside, ignore the acidic discontent bubbling in my center, and force myself to be cordial for the hour that follows.
It’s a distraction at least: the small talk. Bliss serves homemade organic lemonade sweetened with agave nectar. We discuss Rose and Evan’s new condo. We chat about Sebastian’s law school progress, his latest “psycho girlfriend,” and whether or not he’s been using the guided meditations Bliss recorded for him. Dad shows us his new putter. Rose pulls out a funny video she took of Evan waxing poetic to his undergrads about the intricacies of paper wasps—probably the most I’ve ever heard him speak.
It’s all strangely normal, while at the same time categorically unnatural.
But for a solid hour, I forget why I’m here. And I certainly don’t think about Sutton’s house three blocks away or his daughter with my name or his wife with my face who wears my perfume.
But at the end of the night, I remember.
In fact, it’s all I can think about—and it almost kills me.
CHAPTER 4
I lace my sneakers and stretch my hamstrings by the front steps Sunday morning, grateful to have made it up and out the door unseen. It’s been a week since my last run back in Portland, and I’m craving a clear head and that intoxicating flood of endorphins that always follows. That and it’s less obvious than sitting outside someone’s house in a parked car.
If and when I run into Sutton, it needs to happen naturally. I need to be able to tell him I’m simply visiting my father and I had no idea he lived three blocks away. From there we’ll make small talk, and after that we’ll set plans to catch up over coffee.
Over lattes and scones, I’ll apologize for hurting him the way I did.
I’ll explain all the reasons it was for the best.
I’ll wish him nothing but love and happiness.
And I’ll be on my way.
I stretch my arms over my head and do a handful of side bends before debating whether to sneak back inside to grab a bottle of water. I don’t want to wake anyone, and I certainly don’t want to run into someone who might mistake my mere presence as an invitation to socialize at this ungodly hour.
A shadow fills the glass behind the living room window, and when it moves closer, I realize it’s Rose. She and Evan decided to stay last night after conversations stretched late into the evening. She offers a subtle, beauty-queen finger wave, and a few seconds later, the front door swings open.
“Since when have you been a runner?” She wraps her hands around her coffee mug, her petite frame drowning in one of our mother’s old waffle-weave bathrobes.
“Since always.”
I don’t go into detail about being fifteen and starting a new high school in Boca Raton and having some asshole pizza-faced kid walk up to me in the hallway the second day and randomly tell me I needed to go on a diet. The joke’s on that jerk, though, because while he was the catalyst that sparked this hobby, I stuck with it all these years because it’s the only thing that quiets my mind. The joke’s also on him because a few years ago, I found him online in all his pot-bellied glory. Add in his two baby mamas, one public urination, and a DUI, and I’d say life has settled our scores.
Rose takes a seat on one of the steps, adjusting the hem of the robe until it covers her striped pajama pants. “It’s crazy to think that you’re my sister and I barely even know you sometimes.”
“You’re not missing out on much.”
“I doubt that.” She offers a tender half smile. “Growing up, I always thought you were so cool.”
“You saw me once a year.” At Christmas, my father would fly down to Boca Raton with Rose and Sebastian to visit me. It started when I was eleven, too young to travel alone, and then it became tradition.
Our only tradition.
“Yeah, but you were so badass. You didn’t care what anyone thought of you. You did what you wanted to do. You were fearless,” she says, breathy and awestruck, like she’s spent all these years idolizing me into what she needed me to be in her head. “And look at you now—jet setting all over the world. You’ve lived in more cities in the past eight years than most people will visit in their lifetimes.”
“I promise it’s not as glamorous as you’re making it sound.” I scan the empty sidewalks and give my legs an extra stretch. My shoes are in mint condition, fresh out of the box—I bought them before I planned this trip and haven’t used them yet.
I scuff the side of one against the concrete step until it leaves a satisfying gray blemish.
Rose doesn’t notice.
Instead, she clears her throat, running a flattened palm against her thigh. “So . . . I’m pregnant.”
My sister gazes up, eyes round and expression unreadable while she assesses my reaction.