“It’s okay if you’re not,” Bean assured her. “We’re still your friends.”
Lorna could feel in her heart just how true that was.
Seth and Bean went to the beach for a couple of days. Lorna stayed with her dad and visited Kristen every day. She could never really tell if her sister knew Lorna was there for her. But Lorna knew, and she supposed that was the most important thing.
When it came time to leave, Lorna told her dad about the trust. “It’s only seventy-five hundred dollars,” she said. “But I’ll sign it over to Kristen. I’ve also got some money I’ve been saving for a big purchase. I’m not going to need all of it. I’ll call you next week with a sum after I figure out a few things.”
“Thanks, Lolo,” her dad said. “This has been a drain on us.”
Lorna felt nothing but sadness for her father. She understood the drain. “I know, Dad,” she said.
The other decision she had to make, which had been building for weeks, was much easier than she’d thought. She’d believed if she didn’t buy Nana’s house, she would be giving up the only home she could call hers. But Nana’s house was not the home Lorna had been wanting all this time. It was only walls, and frankly, not very good walls. Home, she’d discovered, was where she felt safe and accepted for who she was. Home was with people who cared about her.
On the flight back to Texas, while Seth was gazing at his phone and Bean was once again glued to the window, Lorna studied Seth. The lines around his eyes. The stubble of beard on his face. She marveled at the forces in the universe that put him in her path at this time in her life—when she’d most needed a friend. But friends didn’t keep secrets. She put her hand on his arm. He looked up from his phone and smiled.
“I have to tell you something.”
“Oh. Sounds important.” He put his phone in his pocket. “What’s up?”
“It’s about the house. Our house. Where we live?”
Seth gave her a funny smile. “Okay.”
“I never told you, but... that house originally belonged to my grandparents. And then... then I lived there during my childhood. My mom, Kristen, and my grandmother. Until my grandmother died. That’s when it was chopped up into apartments.”
Seth’s brows dipped. “You lived there?”
She nodded. “My mom sold it to pay for another round of Kristen’s treatment. Anyway, I sort of stalked it until an apartment became available and moved in with a plan to buy it back. I thought that if I had that house, I’d be happy.”
His expression was inscrutable.
She swallowed. “I was one of the buyers Mr. Contreras had.”
“What?” He looked confused. And slightly annoyed. “But—”
“I know, I didn’t tell you. Or anyone, for that matter. I can’t explain, other than I was convinced it was something I had to do, Seth. I thought if I could buy back Grandma’s house, I could put my life back together. And I didn’t want any of you to know because, well... you all would have hated me.”
“But—”
“But I’m not buying it,” she interjected. “I’m not. I get it now—it’s just a house, nothing more. It wouldn’t have saved me.”
He frowned. “Did you need saving?”
She sighed softly. “I needed saving from myself. Not from my past like I thought, but from my spiral of thoughts. Bean saved me. Then you and Liz and Martin came along and pulled me into the light. So did the people at Bodhi who helped me see what I was doing to myself. You all saved me.”
Seth looked past her to Bean. “I wish you’d told us.”
Lorna winced. “I wanted to.”
He glanced off, his brow furrowed. Then he met her gaze. “You lived there as a kid?”
She nodded.
“What was it like?”
She told him the long sad tale of her life in Nana’s house. When she was done, he didn’t say much other than “Wow.”
“Are you mad?”
