And he left the room.
It didn’t sink in at first. I sat down, my eyes on Dad’s laptop. I clicked the picture, read the caption: Whitley seems to have a thing for brotherly love.
“Fuck them,” I said quietly. “Fuck them. They don’t matter.”
But Dad did.
He mattered because he could take them away. Nathan, Bailey, Sylvia, Harrison—he could take away the only people who cared about me. The words sank in slowly. I was basically being kicked out.
Kicked out of my home.
At the beginning of the summer, I swore this place would never become my home, but it had. I didn’t realize it until now, until it was being taken away, and yet, somehow, this house felt safer, more real, than my mother’s house in Indiana ever had. The Caulfields had made this my home.
I didn’t want to leave.
I ran upstairs, hot tears stinging my eyes and burning the tops of my cheeks. I pushed open the door of the guest room—my room—and threw myself onto the bed—my bed.
I just lay there for a while, my face in the pillow, trying to calm down. When my heartbeat finally slowed, I rolled onto my back and stared at the ceiling. My head hurt. My stomach ached. Dad’s decision to send me back to Mom’s house put me in a serious state of pain. What was I supposed to do? I didn’t want to go back. I didn’t want to leave now. I had a week and a half left here. A week and a half left with Nathan. With the Caulfields. With my family.
Not anymore.
The house was eerily empty around me now. Dad was somewhere downstairs, I knew, but the TV was off. And the others hadn’t come back yet.
I needed to talk to someone. I needed advice.
I reached over to the nightstand and picked up my cell phone. The screen flashed one missed call from Mom and a voice mail, but I ignored it. She was the last person I wanted to talk to. We hadn’t spoken since our last argument a few days ago, and I was sure she wanted to bitch at me for bitching at her. Whatever. I couldn’t deal with her now.
I dialed Trace’s house number. L.A. was two hours behind, so I hoped he’d be awake.
“Hello?” Emily’s voice said when she answered the phone.
“Um, hey, Em,” I said awkwardly. My voice cracked, still not recovered from the crying.
“Whitley? Hey, girl. How are you?”
“Not… not good. Can I talk to Trace, please?”
“Sure. He’s playing with Marie right now. She just started laughing for the first time!”
“That’s great.”
“I know. We’re so excited. It’s almost ridiculous, I guess. Okay, here’s Trace.”
The phone crackled as it was passed to my brother, and a second later Trace said, “Hey, sis. What’s going on?”
“I have a problem,” I told him. “And I really just need you to listen and tell me what to do.”
“Oh-kay,” Trace said. “I’ll do my best.”
I took a deep breath, let it out, and started talking.
I told him everything. About Dad. About the Caulfields. About Nathan, the graduation party (in minimal detail), and Facebook. Trace never interrupted. He just listened until I got it all out. Listened while I ranted and nearly started crying again and wallowed in self-pity. He listened and listened until I finally got out the last few words of my story.
“… and now he wants to send me back to Mom’s, and I don’t want to go. What do I do, Trace?”
“Wow,” he said. “Seriously—wow. I mean, what are the odds that of all the people Dad might marry, the chick’s son is someone you’ve—”
“Trace!”
“Sorry. Okay, advice… hmm.”
I waited through his thoughtful pause, half expecting him to tell me that the best plan would be to just end things with Nathan. Logically, that probably seemed like the solution, but I couldn’t. And I shouldn’t have to.
I guess Trace knew that, because he said, “Really, Whitley, all you can do is try to talk to Dad again.”
“About what?”
“About how you feel,” Trace said. “You should talk to him and to Mom. You clearly have issues with both of them, and who knows? Maybe just telling them how you feel could fix things. Or at least improve them a little.”
“I doubt it.”
“Well, I don’t know what else to tell you,” he said. “I’m sorry. I hate that you’re having to deal with this.”
“Yeah, it sucks.”
“You’ll figure it out,” Trace said. “Just do whatever will make you happy. That’s what’s important. Don’t forget that, okay?”
“Whatever.”
Everyone said that to me. That they wanted me to be happy. That it was the most important thing. But just when I started to figure out what I wanted—what would make me happy—it was squashed.
Talk about goddamn mixed messages.
“Hey, don’t ‘whatever’ me,” he said. “I mean it. I’m sorry my advice is unoriginal, but I’ll do whatever I can to help. I could call Dad if you want. Make him listen to me. Or Mom. If you can’t talk to them, I can.”
“No.” I sighed. “That’s okay. You don’t have to.”
There was a short silence before Trace said, “I’m sorry, Whitley. I know you’ve been having a horrible summer, and I haven’t been there for you as much as I should have. I’ve just been so—”
“Busy,” I said. “I know. It’s fine. You have a family to worry about now.”
“You are my family,” he said.
The tears almost started up again. Those four little words meant so much to me—which was stupid, really. They were just words. But they were words I’d been wanting to hear, wanting to believe. You are my family.
“You sure you don’t want me to call Dad?” Trace asked.
“I’m sure,” I said. “Really. I don’t think there’s anything anyone can do.”
“Okay,” he said. “But call me if you need me. I’ll be here.”
As I hung up the phone, I tried to comfort myself with that thought. Trace would be there. He wouldn’t judge me or abandon me. Even if I lost Dad. Even if I never fixed things with Mom. Even if my relationship with Nathan didn’t work out and I screwed things up with the Caulfields, I had Trace. He was my family.
But I wasn’t sure that would be enough.
CHAPTER 29
Not even a week had passed since I’d finally put my clothes into the drawers of the oak dresser, and here I was, already packing them up again. The thought did cross my mind, how much easier this would’ve been if I’d just left all of my stuff in the duffel bag. If I’d never unpacked. If I’d never let this place become my home.
Bailey sat at the foot of my bed, watching as I moved sluggishly around the room, my hands clutching one personal belonging or another. She and Sylvia had gotten back home about an hour after my fight with Dad. When Bailey had come upstairs to show me her shoes, she found me still half in tears after my phone call with Trace.
I told her everything. Well, not everything. I left out the part about my would-be one-night-stand with Nathan earlier this summer. She was too young to hear that shit. So I started by telling her that we were seeing each other, then worked my way up to this morning in the kitchen with Dad.
She didn’t cry, but I could tell she wanted to.
“You know,” she said with a weak, forced smile, “I knew there was something going on with you and Nathan.”
“Yeah,” I said, my laugh sounding strangled and pathetic. “Yeah, you did. Good guess.”
“I didn’t have to guess,” she mumbled, toying with a loose thread in the comforter. “It was pretty obvious.”