That sense of almost-normal lasts until I pull into the driveway of my parents' house.
I haven't been able to make myself come here. Haven't been able to make myself face it.
The house looks smaller than I remember. The paint is peeling on the porch rails, and the garden my mother used to tend has gone wild with weeds. Cole said he comes by to mow the lawn and check on things, but there's only so much one person can do, and he's been doing it alone for three years.
Because I wasn't here. Because Craig convinced me a funeral was too morbid, too expensive, too inconvenient. Because I let him.
I sit in the car for a long time, hands tight on the steering wheel, staring at the front door. The engine ticks as it cools.
The anger, when it comes, is so sudden and so fierce that it steals my breath.
Not at Craig. Not this time. At myself.
I wasn't there when they lowered my parents into the ground. I wasn't there to hold Cole's hand or hear the minister speak or throw dirt on their coffins. I missed it. I chose to miss it, because a man I'd given my power to told me I should, and I was so deep in his control that I didn't even fight.
My mother would have been devastated. She'd spent her whole life worrying about me, checking in, sending carepackages to my Seattle apartment that I had to hide from Craig because he didn't like me "depending" on my family. And when she died, I didn't even show up to say goodbye.
My father would have been furious. He'd taught me to be strong, to stand up for myself, to never let anyone make me smaller than I was. And I'd let Craig shrink me down to nothing while my father was still alive to see it, even if he didn't know it.
The sob that tears out of me is ugly and raw. I press my forehead to the steering wheel and let it come, let the grief and the rage pour out of me in waves I can't control. Years of suppressed guilt, of telling myself I'd make it up to them somehow, of pretending I could live with what I'd done.
I can't live with it. I can't undo it. And I can't keep carrying it like a weight I'll never set down.
When the tears finally stop, I feel hollowed out. Empty. But lighter, too, in a way I don't entirely trust.
I wipe my face with my sleeve and get out of the car.
The key still works. The door swings open with a creak that sounds exactly like it did when I was sixteen, sneaking in past curfew. The smell hits me first—dust and stale air and, underneath it, something that's still unmistakably home. My mother's lavender sachets in the hall closet. My father's pipe tobacco, even though he quit smoking a decade before he died.
I walk through the rooms slowly, trailing my fingers over furniture covered in sheets, opening curtains to let in the pale afternoon light. The kitchen still has their coffee mugs on the rack by the sink. The living room still has my father's recliner facing the window where he liked to watch the birds.
Cole kept everything exactly as it was. Waiting for me. Waiting for me to come home and help him figure out what to do with a lifetime of memories.
I owe him more than I can ever repay.
But I can start by being here now. I can start by not running away again.
I lock up the house and drive to the bar with the windows down, letting the salt air clear my head. By the time I pull into the Ironside parking lot, my eyes aren't red anymore. Small mercies.
The bar is quiet when I walk in. Mid-afternoon on a Saturday, the calm before the evening rush. Nash waves when I come in.
"Cole's at the shop. Will's in the office if you need anything."
Will's in the office. Where I'm supposed to be working today, going through the quarterly tax documents that have been piling up since Darla left.
I tell myself the flutter in my stomach is residual emotion from the house. It's not convincing.
The office door is open, but I knock anyway. Will looks up from his computer, and his expression shifts when he sees me—concern flickering across his features before he can hide it.
"Gemma. You okay?"
I must look worse than I thought. "I'm fine. Just had a rough morning."
He doesn't push, doesn't ask what kind of rough. Just nods and gestures to the chair across from his desk. "You want to sit for a minute before you dive into the tax stuff?"
I should say no. I should go to the side table and bury myself in paperwork the way I've been doing for weeks. But I sink into the chair before I can talk myself out of it.
"I went to my parents' house today." I hear myself say. "First time since I got back."
