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  I had no right to share the picture with the world, but I did it anyway. I’ve regretted it every single day since.

  I really am a cunt.

  CHAPTER TWO

  CORALIE

  Fight or Flight

  NOW

  My mother named me after the ocean. She loved the organic weirdness of coral. It was her lifelong dream to travel to Australia and swim in the Great Barrier Reef, so she could see the forests of stony, gnarled tree-like formations all crowded together, stretching out below her as far as the eye could see. She used to show me so many faded pictures in the battered old Encyclopaedia Britannica she kept pushed underneath her side of the bed she shared with my father. Ironically, my mother couldn’t swim, though. She was always talking about learning but she never seemed to get around to it.

  She died when I was twelve, which put a dampener on her plans for world travel and sea exploration. For six months after her death, I thought my mother had been driving in the rain and had lost control of her car. Turned out she’d driven off Palisade Bridge and ended her life on purpose. My father knew how to push her buttons, had been pushing them for years, and she’d simply reached a point where the promise of the Great Barrier Reef, the promise of seeing me graduate, the promise of growing old and dying in her sleep, hadn’t been enough to justify living through the torment any longer.

  I’d found a letter addressed to me in my father’s desk, which explained all of this. Up until then, I’d been heartbroken, devastated that my mom had been taken away from me so cruelly. When I’d read through her reasoning, the paper shaking violently in my trembling hands, I’d stopped being heartbroken. I’d stopped crying. I’d started being happy instead, because at least she wasn’t suffering anymore. At least she’d gotten out, and that was something. I didn’t get out until much later.

  “Sure you don’t want me to come with you? It’s a long flight. At least let me take you to the airport. Traffic’s a nightmare at this time of day.” Ben, my boyfriend, helps me carry my suitcase down the front steps of our house in Palos Verdes. When I left South Carolina, I was heading for Canada. I made it to California and I stopped running, though. Seemed far enough, given that my father staunchly refused to leave the state, and the sunshine made me happy. I let Ben put my bags into the trunk of my car, knowing that he doesn’t really want to come to the airport with me, let alone Port Royal. In fact, I’m sure the prospect of it is making him itch on the inside.

  “I’m fine, seriously. LAX is thirty minutes away. You should stay here. You have work to do, and besides…I don’t know. I need to do this on my own. Does that make sense?” It doesn’t even really make sense to me—I should be grasping hold of any support being offered to me right now, but I’m not. A deep sense of shame floods me whenever I think about home. I don’t want to take Ben there. I never want him to step foot inside the house where I grew up otherwise he’ll remember it and carry it with him. I’ll know when he’s looking at me that he’s seeing that place and everything I told him that happened there, and I won’t be able to bear it.

  Ben nods, frowning. “Okay. If you need me, you can call me anytime. You know that, right? I’ll jump on the first plane out of here.”

  “I do. Thank you.” I kiss him on the cheek, and he hugs me, patting me lightly on the back. It’s hardly the most romantic of goodbyes.

  “Four days. That’s really not so long. I’ll see you soon, Cora.” He stands in the driveway and sees me off, waving. I drive straight down PCH until I hit Hermosa Beach, and then I pull down a side street, open up the car door, shove my fingers down my throat and I make myself throw up.

  I feel much, much lighter after that. It’s not until I’m on the plane and my heart is slamming against the inside of my chest like a fist against a brick wall that I realize how stupid it was of me to do that. I haven’t made myself throw up in over seven years.

  Seven years.

  Bulimia was never about self-image for me. It was about anxiety and control. It took years for me to overcome it. What I just did was stepping into incredibly dangerous territory. The most worrying thing is that I didn’t even think about it. I’m twenty-nine years old now. I have a good job. A beautiful home. A steady boyfriend. I shouldn’t have to be worrying about things like eating disorders, and yet here I am, sitting on a plane, freezing my ass off, wondering whether I’m going to continue to make myself throw up when I’m back in Port Royal.

  Smokers revert back to a pack a day when they crack. Alcoholics drink the well dry. Maybe I’m going to make myself so ill that I land myself back in hospital again. I don’t feel anything when I think about that. I just feel…flat. I only experience a spike of true emotion when I think about driving my rental car down that street in that small town, and seeing those familiar houses with their colonial pillars and their wide sweeping lawns, and their marshy boat launches out the back. That’s when I feel like I’ve completely lost control of my body.

  “Ma’am? Ma’am, are you okay? Your breathing sounds fast all of a sudden.” The large woman in the seat next to me has kind eyes. They’re full of concern as she stares at me through her circa nineteen-eighty huge horn-rimmed glasses. “I wouldn’t normally say anything, sweetie, but you’ve been fidgeting since we took off. You just don’t seem like you’re havin’ a good time at all. Are you afraid of flying? That what it is?”

  I just stare back at her dumbly for a moment before her words filter through to my brain. “Yes. Yeah, I hate flying. I get really anxious.”

  The woman nods. She leans in close, beckoning me to do the same. “You want some Klonopin, sweetheart? I always get some for when I’m flying. I have a stash in my purse.”

  I’m about to say no, fully intend on doing so, but then I find I’m nodding, holding out my hand, and the woman with the horn-rimmed glasses in the seat next to me is tipping small white pills into my palm. I don’t even know how it happens. “There we go, sweetie. There’s six. You can keep ‘em for next time. Don’t go crazy now, though. Don’t go takin’ ‘em all at once. I don’t want to be responsible for you dyin’ in your sleep now.”

  “Oh, I’ll be careful. I promise.” If I were going to kill myself, I’d do it the same way my mother did. I’d drive my car off a bridge and have done with it. There would be some kind of symmetry in that, I think. I can’t tell her that, though. I learned a while back that you can’t just say whatever the hell you’re thinking or people will assume you’re mentally disturbed.

  The woman—her name is Margo—gives me her tiny plane sized bottle of water to drink down my nefariously gained medication, and then she talks to me for thirty minutes about her cats. No children to speak of, Margo has replaced her non-existent progeny with some fur babies that she seems remarkably proud of. I tell her that I’m allergic, and she makes this terrible moaning sound, as though she’s putting herself in my shoes, imagining being without her precious kitties, never able to pet them again, betrayed by her own body.

  “You poor, sweet child,” she says. “What about dogs? Can you do dogs?”

  I feel like I should object to the term, ‘do dogs,’ because it sounds sexual and I definitely don’t want to have sex with dogs, but in the end I don’t bother. Margo wouldn’t understand, and I don’t particularly want to discuss sex and dogs in the same sentence with her. Instead, I tell her that, yes, I can ‘do dogs’ and that my boyfriend has a German Shepherd. Ben doesn’t have a dog at all, but lying seems to be a smart way to fill the time right now.

  When we land in Charleston, I’ve made up so much shit about this pretend animal that I’m actually thinking about getting a dog. Margo says goodbye when we’re let off the plane, and I leave her in the dust as I barrel down the hallway, heading for the rentals desk. News of my father’s death came suddenly. I wasn’t expecting it, so I didn’t really have time to book a vehicle. Thankfully, when I get to the desk, they have plenty of options to choose from. Maybe it’s the Klonopin, or maybe it’s the fact that I really don’t want to be her
e and I was just thinking about driving myself off a bridge, but I decide on the most powerful, ridiculously high end, dangerous car they have—a Porsche Cayman. I’ve never driven anything so ostentatious or blatantly stupid before. I’m genuinely surprised that they even have a car so likely to get wrapped around a lamppost.

  Callan was always into cars. Fifteen years ago, he would have loved driving this thing. Jeez, I mean he probably actually has one of his own now. Every once in a while, someone will say his name. They’ll read an article about him and see that we’re from the same tiny town in South Carolina, and they’ll comment on what a strange coincidence it is. Do I know him? Did we hang out when we were kids? Sometimes I’ll tell them the truth. Sometimes I’ll admit to knowing him, maybe even say, ‘yes, we were actually next door neighbors, if you can believe that.’ Most of the time, I shake my head and tell them, no. I have no idea who he is. It’s easier that way. It’s better.

  ******

  “Coralie Taylor? Is…is that you, child? Well blow me down. You’d better not be plannin’ on walkin’ past my house and not comin’ in to say hello. I know you was raised with manners, girl.”

  Friday Beauchamp was my sometimes nanny when I was a kid. She was the only other woman my father would let inside the house; he wasn’t stupid enough to ever go up against Friday. She was big even back then, the size of a doublewide trailer, my dad would say, and now she’s even bigger. Her temper was the stuff of legends. She tanned my backside raw so many times that I almost forewent sitting down altogether for an entire year.

  Friday may have been tough on me, but she was also generous and kind when I needed it. When I was so tired I could barely stand. When my body hurt so badly I just wanted to die. She would clean up my cuts and patch me back together time and time again, and she would beg me to stay with her in her modest little house, and I would cry and tell her that I wished I could, and then I would go home anyway.

  She knows I would never come back here to this place and not come to see her. She knows I was raised with manners, because she instilled them in me. I let her fold me into her embrace, and the smell of rosewater and hair pomade floods my senses, bringing back a swathe of memories, painful and sweet, wonderful and terrible all at the same time. It’s enough to bring tears to my eyes. She pats the back of my head, making cooing noises.

  “If you were anyone else, child, I’d say I was sorry for your loss,” she tells me. “I know better, though.”

  “Yeah. It’s hard, I guess.” I say bland things like this all the time when I tell people my father died. It seems like it’s expected of me, and I hate disappointing people.

  “Bullshit.” Friday leans away from me, holding me at arm’s length so she can get a good look at me. “This ain’t even close to hard. This is the easiest thing in the world. Your daddy died. He was a spiteful old bastard and he deserved every last moment of pain he lived through before he passed. It’s okay to be relieved, Coralie.”

  I just nod and mmhm and hope she stops talking about him soon. Friday knows my avoidance tactics well enough to read me. She pulls me up the steps that lead to her porch, where a pitcher of sweat tea is already sweating in the shade. Two tall glasses are set out side by side, and a part of me finds this amusing. I’m so used to California now; in Los Angeles you’d never find such an open sign of hospitality. Friday put two glasses out, not because she knew I would be stopping by at some point, but because she knew someone would, they always do, and she wanted to be ready to receive her guest.

  “Sit yourself down, baby girl. I need to hear all about that Hollywood lifestyle of yours.” Friday, despite being such a huge woman, moves with grace as she crosses the porch and sits herself down in one of her white-painted Adirondack chairs. “I know what goes on out there. All those loose morals flying around. All those pretty boys with they bleached white teeth. It’s a wonder a woman can get any work done. You taking commissions from all them A-lister celebrity types, huh?” She says all of this in one breath, before I’ve even had chance to sit myself down.

  Once I’m confortable, I take a deep breath and start at the beginning. “I don’t live in Hollywood. I live south of the city, right on the ocean. I do take commissions, but I haven’t painted anything for anyone famous yet. And I never go into Hollywood. Even if I did, I wouldn’t be looking at pretty boys with bleached teeth. I have a boyfriend, remember? Ben? I told you about him last time I emailed.”

  “Email? Baby girl, you know I ain’t reading no email. I can’t work that crazy machine. What’s wrong with a regular letter? The postal service is still running, ain’t it?”

  “Yes. Though not very well,” I concede. “Are you still taking your insulin?” Friday’s been diabetic for the past few years. Whenever I find the time to call her and see how she’s doing, she skirts around the topic of her medication. Sitting right in front of her, looking her right in the eye, makes it harder for her to lie or dodge the question.

  “When I need it, child. I don’t see the need to be pumping that nonsense into my body every five seconds of the day.”

  “You’ll get sick if you don’t take it like you’re meant to,” I chide. “You could go blind. Lose your legs. Do you want that?”

  “What kind of a backward, hair-brained question is that? And there I was thinking you was smart. Of course I don’t wanna lose my damn legs.”

  Friday always grows hostile when you point out the truth. I don’t take offense. “Then start doing what you’re meant to. Your insulin intake wasn’t a suggestion. It was doctor’s orders.”

  Friday makes a disgruntled sound, refusing to look at me. She pours out some sweet tea and thrusts the glass at me. “I saw that one yonder coming home earlier.” She points across the street, toward the house I’ve been avoiding looking at. Both houses, in fact. To the left, the Cross household, where Callan grew up, and next to it, the three story building where I existed in the shadows for seventeen years.

  “He grew again, if that makes any sense to you. The boy never stops growing.”

  I blink slowly at the house across the way, trying to understand what Friday is telling me. “Callan? Callan came home?”

  Friday sighs heavily, shifting in her chair. “Ain’t that what I just said? He rolled up this morning in a terrible piece ‘o’ shit car. Pretty sure there was smoke pouring out from underneath the hood.”

  “Callan shouldn’t be here. Callan is in New York.” I know this because I somehow always know where he is. I never mean to notice him so much, but the guy does have social media accounts, and, well, I sometimes look him up.

  Friday stretches, rolling her shoulders back so that her considerable bust protrudes even further. “Then Callan has a twin brother with a surly gait that I never done knew about when you kids was growing up, because a tall, dark-haired guy walked into that there building five hours ago that looked just like him.”

  After the stern telling off I gave myself on the plane about not making myself throw up anymore, it’s funny how badly I want to stick my fingers down my throat all of a sudden. The Klonopin Margo gave me has been nicely dulling the sharp edges off the day thus far, but now it feels as if all the world is in glaring Technicolor and my head is about to split open.

  “How? How did he even know to come back? I don’t understand.” Telling him about my father never even crossed my mind. Callan hated him almost as much as I did. There’s no way he would ever want to come back here and pay his respects. Given our history and every single heartbreaking thing that happened here, him showing up unannounced was the very last thing I was expecting. Jesus Christ, how the hell am I going to deal with this?

  Next to me, Friday clears her throat. “I called him after I heard, child, same as I called you. You was thick as thieves growing up. He was your first love. Ain’t no way I wasn’t gonna give him the chance to get his ass down here and support you.”

  “Oh my god, Friday, I can’t believe—” I stop myself there. I’m dangerously close to losing my temper and che
wing out the old woman, and I’m sure she only thought she was helping. Damn it, though. Callan being here is the last thing I need. I need calm, and quiet, and peace, and the only thing Callan Cross can provide right now is confusion. I take a deep breath and then start over. “Callan and I aren’t friends anymore, Friday. We haven’t been for a very long time. And now he’s come back here, thinking I need him or something, and it’s going to be so awkward. I can’t…I can’t even look at him.”

  Friday listens to me speak, but I can tell she has something to say from the look on her face. Her lips are pressing tighter and tighter together, turning them white, and her eyebrows are practically fused in the middle. “Just ‘cause you can’t look at him, doesn’t mean he can’t look at you. You know what he did when I told him your daddy was dead?”

  “Laughed?”

  “No, he did not laugh. What’s wrong with you? Lord have mercy.” I stare down at my sweet tea, not saying anything, but Friday prods me with the toe of her slipper. “That boy done broke down in tears, young lady. He may have denied it, but I could hear it in his voice sure as eggs is eggs. Now.” She points her finger at me, shaking it in my face. “When you see him, you make sure you don’t claw his eyes out too quickly, you hear? He might have something he’d like to say to you first.”

  I shake my head slowly, feeling a strange, hollow kind of numbness working its way through my insides. “It’s been twelve years, Friday. If either of us had anything to say to one another, it was said a long time ago.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  CALLAN

  Ghosts