Page 38 of Heartache & Playdates
There were worse things.
And, no matter how I felt now, Alex was proof that there was always hope for love. He’d sworn he’d never love anyone again. Him and Ash had been together from their teens. They’d had a child together, raised him for fourteen years.
Then she was gone. His son was gone.
It could have destroyed him. But now, now he was beaming as he talked about his pregnant fiancée and his daughters.
For once, Nick was right. It was time I moved on with my life. I was determined to put Peyton and the past behind me once and for all. I’d wanted answers for all these years, and I’d gotten them. I knew now why she left and hadn’t said goodbye to me. She knew I would talk her into running, and she was right. I would have. And I knew she was right; her dad would have ruined my life.
That was my closure.
It was time to move on.
My phone buzzed and my heart jumped as I pulled it out of my pocket thinking it might be a message from her. It was not and my heart sank.
So much for fucking closure.
14
PEYTON
SIX MONTHS LATER
“So this is it?You’rereallyleaving?” Leo sat on the edge of my bed as I wrapped a framed picture of Nonna and me in bubble wrap.
“This is it,” I confirmed. “I’m really leaving.”
“Why don’t you sublet this place? Airbnb it? Something?”
I sighed. I’d thought about those options, but in my gut, I knew it wasn’t the right thing to do. “If I do that, then I’m basically telling the universe that I’m waiting for Nonna to die. That’s what my actions will be saying, even to Nonna. I can’t do that.”
“Yeah, but this is all so—" Leo looked around my nine hundred square foot walkup which was a shell of what it had been. The bookshelf was empty. The walls were bare. The couch was gone because I’d sold it. The plants had all been rehomed to various neighbors. “—permanent.”
It was permanent. And I couldn’t say that I was happy about it. But what choice did I have?
“Are you sure that this isn’t another scheme?” Leo asked. “Like the ploy to get you to go to the reunion.”
“No, this time it’s real. She fell and no one found her for two days. They kept her in the hospital for forty-eight hours because she was dehydrated and confused.” Saying it out loud made me sick to my stomach. Thinking of her lying on the floor of her hallway helpless, scared for two days. I didn’t even want to think about what would have happened if I hadn’t called in a welfare check.
“What about a retirement home? Didn’t you say that one of your friends owns one?”
The night I got home from the reunion, Leo came over and brought a friend named Jack Daniels. Two glasses in, I’d spilled everything to him. I’d told him every last detail, including Alex Vaughn owning an assisted living facility.
I shook my head. “I can’t do that to her. She loves her home, and she can’t be there alone anymore.”
Not to mention, Nonna’s home was the only home I’d ever really had. I spent every summer, and also the most important six months of my life during junior year there. Without her, I don’t know if I would have survived my childhood. Whenever I was in a new place, a new school, no matter how bad it was I knew if I just made it to June, I’d be in San Francisco with her. It was the one constant in my life.
Besides being my only stability, she was the only adult in my life who loved me unconditionally. She fought for me; she was the only person who ever stood up to my dad. Most of the time, she lost, but she did fight. That was more than I could say for my mother. That woman never stood up for me. Not even when I begged her at the time I needed her most. When I pleaded, cried, and bargained for her to help me, she refused.
Nothing I said ever mattered. My father controlled her and, until I was an adult, me. Whatever he said went. No discussions. No negotiations.
I hadn’t seen either of my parents in over twelve years, and during those years had only spoken to them a handful of times. People in my life sometimes thought that was strange but only because they didn’t know them.
My father was a cold, unfeeling, controlling, narcissist and my mother was his puppet. One of my therapists had asked if I ever felt any empathy for my mother being in such an unhealthy marriage, and I said no. Maybe that made me coldhearted, but it was the truth.
“Soooo you’re really doing this?” Leo asked. “There’snothingI can do to stop you?”
“I’m really doing this. And, no, there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”
