Page 190 of The Exit Strategy

I also know what I have to do to get there.

I spenttwo days packing up anything I wanted to save and left the rest untouched.

Today, I walk in the Boston summer heat to the Kent Street T-stop that will take me to Washington Square. It feels like a lifetime ago I rode this train every day.

I didn’t think I’d miss it, but there’s more nostalgia on this train than in my childhood bedroom. It’s…odd.

Rush hour ended an hour ago. If Grace is still working for the family she nannies for, she’ll be along any minute.

I find a bench facing Square Tavern and wait.

It doesn’t take long.

Twenty minutes later, she crosses Beacon Street, staring at her phone, lost in her own world.

I wait for the moment she spots me. And when she does, it’s worth it. She stops, glances around us, takes a step back, then one to the side. From fifteen feet away, I watch the color drain from her face. She doesn’t know what to do—or perhaps she doesn’t know what I’ll do.

It’s fair.

“Grace,” I say first. I am the one waiting for her, after all.

Her hands fall to her stomach protectively, and I roll my eyes. I’ve never once been a violent person, and she knows it. But she scrambles to unlock her phone, and I know instantly that she’s recording me.

I don’t care. I’m not here to make a scene.

“What are you doing here, Junie?” She’s so nervous her phone rattles in her hands.

“You wanna sit?”

She frowns and shakes her head. I simply shrug.

“Why’d you do it?” It’s the only question I have for her. Iwon’t be satisfied with whatever she says, but I need to hear her say…something.

A single tear falls down her face, but this is a woman who can cry on demand, so I don’t even blink.

When she doesn’t get a reaction out of me, she pockets her phone.

“Isn’t it exhausting?” I ask. “Pretending all the time?”

Grace brushes away another tear. “Paul and I just…happened. I didn’t mean for it to get so…out of hand. I was,” she peers around as though searching for her next big break, and I sigh. “Your video went viral, and I was…jealous. I had nothing and you were getting the attention and?—”

“You had nothing because you betrayed me.” I don’t shout it. I don’t show any emotion at all. I simply state facts. “And the truth is, I would’ve done anything for you.”

Whatever I needed from her no longer exists. I just needed to witness it. “Now you have to live with what you threw away in favor of strangers on the Internet who change opinions like most people change underwear. The approval you want can’t come from them, Grace. It’ll never keep you happy for long.”

I walk away, back toward the crumbling house of ghosts I’m finally ready to exorcise.

“That’s it?” She calls at my back. “You’re not going to yell? Or call me names? Anything?”

I keep walking. That’s the reaction she wants, and it fills me with happiness when I don’t give it to her.

Who knew taking the high road could feel better than spite?

The doorbell ringsat 12:03 the next day. It’s followed by a long string of curses that belong to my father.

“Damn it, Juniper. Open this damn door.”

He’s pissed off that I had all the locks changed. This is no longer a house with a revolving door for people to take advantage of.