“Penny, no one has forgotten, I promise you that.” I stand back up, facing her.
“Promises don’t mean much.”
Ouch.
“Do you ever think about what life would be like if you didn’t go out that night?” Penny asks, voice soft again.
All the fucking time.
But I shake my head. “I’ve thought about it, but I try not to live with regrets.”
As soon as the words leave my lips, I wish they hadn’t. She cocks her head back, and the walls I was slowly chipping away at rise back up.
“Wow. Okay…got it.”
I reach out to touch her arm, to pull her into me, but she’s already taken a step back, out of my reach. She quickly walks to the back door.
“Come on, that’s not how I meant it, Pen. You know that night was complicated…”
She turns her head around to look at me, eyes cold.“I need to get on the road. Wouldn’t want to keep my brother waiting.”
34
Penny
NOW
The trees surrounding the prison parking lot are starting to morph together in a green and brown line. That’s how long I’ve been staring at them. Loblolly pine trees. Tall, strong, fast growing—all of the things I don’t feel right now.
My car is in park, but I haven’t moved my fingers from the black leather steering wheel. It was so easy to say yes when they asked me to go see Danny yesterday. It seemed too good, actually, like the stars were aligning in my favor for once. I could go visit Danny and not raise the alarms for the “sudden” decision.
But on the drive here, I started to feel the weight of this decision weigh on me. To distract myself, I had called Audrey, asking about her Christmas plans. I listened to her recite her entire holiday menu, though I can’t tell you a single thing she’s making. I just needed a familiar voice, one that’s far away, one from my other life. The life I have outside of Wilmington.
The one I can return to at the end of this week.
I didn’t mention being on my way to the prison to visit Danny. She knows I have an estranged brother, but she’s never pushed, never asked too many questions.
She certainly doesn’t know he’s been sitting in prison for ten years because the drugs he sold put his classmate in a coma. She doesn’t know that I’m on his call list, but have never accepted a call. Or that four years ago, the phone stopped ringing altogether.
She doesn’t know that Danny’s been sober for a long time. That’s what Fia told me, anyway. My Nan was so proud of him when he celebrated one year.
And no one knows that deep down, I’m proud of him, too.
It’s clouded by anger and hurt and confusion about a night I feel I never got answers to. I never planned to cut Danny from my life; it just happened, slowly, over time. It got easier to pretend that part of my life didn’t exist.
And now here I sit, twenty minutes early for visitation, my lungs burning with tightness, my eyes blurry. My first instinct is to turn this car on and slam on the gas, driving back to the house as quickly as I can.
I can’t do that, though.
My next instinct is to call Jesse.
I’m still angry with him right now. He continues to hurt me, and I continue to hurt him—but I know he’ll answer. Before I can dissect how shitty of a person this makes me, I dial his number.
It’s a California area code—something I’ll never get used to seeing.
“Penny?” His voice sounds on the other side as I rub my clammy palms against my jeans.
“Hey,” I respond shakily and wipe my eyes.
