“Yeah?”
“You know I’ll have my master’s degree by the end of the month.”
“Congratulations.” The word comes out sour, teetering on the edge of sarcasm. If Bev were here she’d throw something at me. I’d deserve it.
Charlotte runs her tongue across her teeth. “I wanted you to know that I’ve been applying for other positions. In other counties.” My guts twist. If I were a cat my spine would be hunched, my fur poofed out. “I thought, if I get a call back . . . I thought maybe you might want to move with me. We could split rent, for a while.”
I am aware, in a distant, intellectual way, that this is an act of kindness. I should be flattered and warmed by it. I should be relieved, to be handed a way out of a town that’s trying to kill me. I shouldn’t want to put my fist through the glass at all.
When I fail to answer, Charlotte adds, “You could do better than this place. You know you could.”
I know she’s right. When people drive through Eden—and they rarely do—all they see is a little bad-luck town scrabbling on the surface of Big Jack’s bones, like a parasite on the carcass of a whale. They don’t know about the Gravelys or the Starlings or the things that prowl in the mist, but they sense something off, something spoiled. They keep driving.
Anywhere would be better. But: “Maybe I don’t want better.” Charlotte opens her mouth. I cut her off. “Anyway, Jasper’s still in school. He needs me.”
She looks at me with that gentle, insufferable sympathy and asks, softly, “Does he?” and I am amazed how much a question can feel like a sucker punch.
It leaves me panting, reeling. “He does, he needs me. I can’t leave. This is my—” The word catches in my throat and burns there, a choking sweetness, like wisteria in bloom.
It’s funny: I always wanted to be from somewhere, to come from something other than a red Corvette and a motel room, and now I do. I’m a goddamn Gravely—my ancestors have been here for generations, digging their roots deeper and deeper into the earth. They’ve written the history of this town in blood and coal, and the town has buried them, one by one.
So how come I can’t say the word? How come it still tastes like a lie?
There are no more flowers left on the front doors. Charlotte tucks the cardboard box under one arm and studies me with a tired sort of pity. “Home is wherever you’re loved, Opal.”
“You come up with that yourself or did you see it on some soccer mom’s Instagram?” I’m all spite now, hissing and spitting. “So, what—you aren’t loved enough around here? Is that it?” I try to make it mocking but I wonder if it’s true, if that’s why everyone keeps leaving me.
For a moment Charlotte’s calm cracks and I see the wound running beneath it, raw and red. She stitches it closed again. “Apparently not. Just think about it, alright?”
“Sure,” I say.
But I won’t. I’ve made it twenty-six years—despite the Beasts, despite Baine, despite everything—and I’ll be damned if I’ll cut and run now.
I fully intend to go back to room 12 and continue wallowing at an Olympic level, but when I open the door it strikes me less as a room and more as a den. The floor is scattered with the plastic carcasses of a dozen meals and the sheets have a greasy sheen, like hides. The air is still and meaty.
Room 12 has never meant much to me, but it doesn’t deserve this. I rest my head on the sun-warmed metal of the door, wondering if Starling House is falling into decay in my absence and reminding myself firmly that it isn’t my problem and never will be, before sighing and stripping the sheets off both beds.
In the movie version of my life the scene would collapse here into a cleaning montage. You would see me rolling up my sleeves and hauling wet laundry out of the washer, dragging the motel cleaning cart across the parking lot, discovering half a granola bar stuck to the carpet and shoving it furtively in a trash bag. The soundtrack would turn peppy, indicating the heroine’s renewed resolve. But reality never skips the boring parts, and I’m not sure I have renewed resolve so much as a real stubborn streak, just like Mom. Survival is a hard habit to break.
By the time Jasper turns up the room smells like bleach and Windex and there’s a feast laid out across his bed like an apology: canned peaches and gas station pizza, a pair of Ale-8s, a king-sized Reese’s to split. I know it’s not much, but maybe it’s enough, because maybe home is wherever you’re loved. The worst thing about cheesy slogans is that they’re mostly true.