Oh shit. They’re here.
They’re here and they’re having sex.
This is worse than I thought. Their love knows no bounds. Someone kill me.
I turn around, intending to tiptoe back to the kitchen and maybe pee in the sink so I don’t have to listen to this crap and get scarred any further, when I hear my father’s voice.
“Oh, Sophia.”
Sophia? Who the fuck is Sophia?
My mom’s name is Caroline.
What in the shit?
I huddle back to the ajar door, peering through the crack, blinking the image into focus.
My dad is lying on the bed, and on top of him, with her back to me, is a woman who is definitely not my mother. Long red hair. Slender figure. Freckles on her shoulders. She is riding him.
Dad is cheating on Mom.
The perfect fairy tale I grew up believing is all a lie.
All men are cheaters.
All men are untrustworthy.
All men are trash.
I pad back to the front door and slip out of the apartment, taking the stairs three at a time up to the roof of the building.
I don’t jump, but not because I don’t want to.
Only because I have an unfinished grudge to tend to.
And Dad? I’ll never forgive him.
I was being followed.
I could tell I was being followed when I looked through my rearview mirror and noticed the same incognito black sedan zipping out of Boston, gliding onto the highway, staying the same four-car gap from me no matter how many lanes I switched.
Not knowing who it was—Frank? Louisa? Devon’s Mom? The devil himself?—I decided to escape it.
Today seemed like a bad day to die and get buried in the woods.
I lane-hopped for a while, feeling sweat coating my forehead as I tried to think of a game plan. How was I getting rid of this strange car?
And then it hit me.
I popped my blinker to make a right into one of the small towns bracketing greater Boston and waited patiently in a line of cars. My stalker did the same. When the light turned green, I made a terrible （and I do mean freaking awful） traffic offense and continued straight ahead, not taking the right, and speeding into a busy intersection. Cars slammed their brakes, horns blared at me angrily, but when I looked back, I saw that the black sedan was way behind, trapped inside a sea of vehicles in a traffic jam from hell.
I drove and drove and drove some more, not sure where I’d end up.
And somehow, already knowing where I was going to go.
All at the same time.
For the first time since I’d turned eighteen, I was living with my parents again.
I couldn’t kid myself anymore. Staying in Boston at this point was a death wish. Might as well stick an I’m With Stupid sign on my forehead pointing at my brain.
Several people wanted me dead. And I just signed my soul away to the devil in stilettos.
It was time to lay low until I came up with a game plan.
My parents lived in the place where sex appeal went to die, also known as Wellesley, Massachusetts.
A few years ago, my parents announced excitedly that they’d saved up enough money to fulfill their long-time dream of becoming boring retirees, moved from Southie and bought a sage green colonial house with a matching roof, a swinging chair on the front porch, and red shutters.
Persy and I called it the Gingerbread House, but only one of us was excited to come here each Christmas and play the happy family charade.
“Oh, Belly-Belle, I’m so happy you’re with us again, even if the circumstances are less than ideal.” Mom poked her head through the backyard’s double doors, offering me an apologetic smile.
Perched on the lip of the pool they were so proud of, I dipped my feet in the water, wiggling my toes.
“Already told you, Mom, everything’s fine.”
“Nothing’s fine if you can’t afford your apartment anymore.”
She walked out to the patio carrying a bowl of watermelon peppered with fresh feta cheese and mint.
Placing it on the edge of the pool beside me, she ran her hand over the yellow Lycra of my bathing suit, her fingers halting at my swollen belly.
“I moved in because I need a change of pace, not because I can’t afford rent.” I selected a beautifully cut piece of watermelon—square and sharp angled—and popped it into my mouth. It was ice cold. “Everyone I know and their mother begged me to step away from Madame Mayhem. They think working on my feet all day is bad for the baby.”
Mom didn’t know that there were people after me.
She didn’t know about the letters.
She didn’t know I’d lived the last few weeks with Devon.
She didn’t know anything.