It’s falling asleep on the train despite the mariachi band playing ten feet away, Charlie Lastra digging through his wallet across the car.
Only it’s not that anymore. Because without Mom and Libby, there is no home.
So I’m not running toward anything. Just away.
Until I see Goode Books down the block, lights glowing against the bruised purple sky.
The bells chime as I step inside, and Charlie looks up from the LOCAL BESTSELLERS, his surprise morphing into concern.
“I know you’re working.” My voice comes out throttled. “I just wanted to be somewhere . . .”
Safe?
Familiar?
Comfortable?
“Near you.”
He crosses to me in two strides. “What happened?”
I try to answer. It feels like fishing line’s wound around my airway.
Charlie pulls me into his chest, arms coiling around me.
“Libby’s moving.” I have to whisper to get the words out. “She’s moving here. That’s what this was all about.” The rest wrenches upward: “I’m going to be alone.”
“You’re not alone.” He draws back, touching my jaw, his eyes almost vicious in their intensity. “You’re not, and you won’t be.”
Libby. Bea. Tala. Brendan.
It knocks the wind out of me.
Christmas.
New Year’s.
Field trips to the natural history museum.
Sitting in front of a huge Jackson Pollock at the Met, asking the girls to please make us rich beyond our wildest dreams with their finger painting.
Laughing at Serendipity until whipped cream comes out our noses. All the memories, and all those future moments, all together, with Mom’s memory hovering close.
It’s slipping away.
The stinging in my nose. The weight in my chest. The pressure behind my eyes.
Charlie tugs me back into the office. “I’ve got you, Nora,” he promises quietly. “I’ve got you, okay?”
It’s like a dam has broken. I hear the strangled sound in my throat and my shoulders start to shake, and then I’m crying.
Tidal waves hitting me, every word obliterated under a current so powerful there’s no fighting it.
I’m dragged under.
“It’s okay,” he whispers, rocking me back and forth. “You’re not alone,” he promises, and beneath it I hear the unsaid rest: I’m here.
For now, I think.
Because nothing—not the beautiful and not the terrible—lasts.
32
NOW I UNDERSTAND why I didn’t cry for all those years. I want it to stop. I want the pain tamped down, divided into manageable pockets.
All this time I thought being seen as monstrous was the worst thing that could happen to me.
Now I realize I’d rather be frigid than what I really am, deep down, every second of every day: weak, helpless, so fucking scared it’s going to come apart.
Scared of losing everything. Scared of crying. That once I start, I’ll never be able to stop, and everything I’ve built will crumble under the weight of my unruly emotions.
And for a long time, I don’t stop.
I cry until my throat hurts. Until my eyes hurt. Until there aren’t any tears left and my sobs settle into hiccups.
Until I’m numb and exhausted. By then, the office has gone dark except for the old banker-style lamp on the desk.
When I close my eyes, the roaring in my ears has faded, leaving behind the steady thud of Charlie’s heartbeat.
“She’s leaving,” I whisper, testing it out, practicing accepting it as truth.
“Did she say why?” he asks.
I shrug within his arms. “All the normal reasons people leave. I just—I always thought . . .”
His thumb hooks my jaw again and he angles my eyes to his.
“All my exes, all my friends—half the people I work with,” I say. “They’ve all moved on. And every time, it was okay, because I love the city, and my job, and because I had Libby.” My voice wobbles. “And now she’s moving on too.”
When Mom died and we lost the apartment, it was like our whole history got swallowed up. The city and each other, that’s all Libby and I have left of her.
Charlie gives one firm shake of his head. “She’s your sister, Nora. She’s never going to leave you behind.”
I’m not out of tears after all: my eyes flood again.
His hands run over my shoulders, squeezing the back of my neck. “It’s not you she doesn’t want, Nora.”
“It is,” I say. “It’s me, it’s our life. It’s everything I tried to build for her. It wasn’t enough.”