Page 40 of Jar of Hearts
Walt cuts the engine. Geo stares at the garage, then chances a glance in her father’s direction. Both his large hands are still on the steering wheel, but his knuckles are pale, his jaw set in stone. Walter Shaw has lived here for over forty years. It’s the only house he’s ever owned, the mortgage paid off long before Geo went to Hazelwood. Walter Shaw is a good man, a successful doctor, and an upstanding citizen of the community. He doesn’t deserve this. Someone has desecrated his house because of her, and the guilt stabs her like a prison shank, quickly and painfully and in multiple places.
“Dad—”
“This wasn’t here when I left,” he says. He yanks the keys out of the ignition and tosses them into her lap. “Let yourself in the house. I’ll take care of this.Now, Georgina.”
She does as she’s told, bringing with her the empty Starbucks cups and her duffel bag, now containing the gun she picked up from Samuel on the way here. She plans to stick it under her pillow. Though theneighborhood is quiet—it’s midafternoon on a Monday and most people are still at work—she can’t help but feel like she’s being observed, as if the neighbors are peering out their windows to witness Walt’s infamous daughter’s not-so-triumphant return home.
MURDERER. It’s not the welcome home she expected, but that doesn’t mean it’s not the welcome home she deserves.
The house looks exactly the same as she remembers. It’s both comforting and surreal. Taking a moment to pause in the front entryway, she breathes in the smell that hasn’t changed since she was a little girl. Walt’s signature beef stew is simmering in the slow cooker in the kitchen. It’s not a large house, but it’s always been enough for the two of them.
The portrait of her parents on their wedding day still rests in the center of the fireplace mantel in the living room, full color, but with that seventies retro green-gold tint. Walter and Grace Gallardo Shaw were a beautiful couple. Her father, one-quarter Jamaican, looking sharp in a gray tuxedo complete with satin stripe and oversize lapels. Her mother, half Filipino, dressed in a simple lace gown with bell sleeves, her black hair swept up into a chignon. They were an elegant mixed-race couple during a time when it wasn’t as widely accepted as it is now, and Geo got the best of both of them.
Unless her dad moved it, her mother’s wedding dress should still be hanging in the upstairs closet. Geo always thought she’d wear it on her wedding day. But after she and Andrew got engaged and the wedding preparations began, the dress suddenly seemed inappropriate for what they were planning—it was too modest, too old-fashioned. The thought shames her now. Sometimes she wonders if this is why she truly ended up in prison—to save her from herself.
She looks at the rest of the pictures on the mantel, photos she hasn’t seen in five years. Grace Shaw is in most of them, but the only real memories Geo has of her mother are from when she was sick. They discovered a lump in her breast when Geo was only two, and she died a few months after Geo turned five. She picks up the photo of herself sitting on her mother’s lap on her fifth birthday, surrounded by balloons, a giant chocolate cake in the center ofthe table. Her mother’s head is wrapped in a colorful scarf to hide the hair loss.
Her father only had two girlfriends after his wife died, the first while Geo was in grade school and the second while she was in high school. Both women were very nice, but neither relationship lasted long. A few months each, if that.
“You only get one heart,” Walt said to his daughter after the second one ended. He seemed sad, but not regretful. “I gave mine to your mother the day I met her. And she still has it.”
For a long time Geo believed that was true. One heart, one chance at love. It had certainly felt that way with Calvin. At sixteen, she couldn’t imagine loving anyone the way she loved Calvin James—and the truth was, she never did. It had been different with Andrew, after all. Less passionate but more secure. More mature but less spontaneous. Less exciting but completely fucking safe. As a healthy relationship probably should be.
According to her father, Andrew was married now, to a sales rep who used to work at Shipp. They had twin girls the year before. Geo didn’t blame him for moving on with his life. She’d have done the same.
She hears the pressure washer turn on outside. Washing the garage doors is the last thing her dad needs today. Sighing, she heads upstairs.
The last time she lived in this house, she had just turned eighteen. She had packed what she could for college, first staying in the dorms at Puget Sound State, and then renting a house a few minutes off campus with four other girls for her remaining three years. She could have lived at home and commuted to PSSU, but she knew she needed to get away. Once she did, she never moved back.
And it wasn’t because her dad was difficult to live with. Quite the opposite. Growing up, she never had a curfew. There were never set rules to follow. She never even had a list of chores, because it was never necessary. Between the two of them, they managed to fill the holes her mother left when she died. Geo did the dishes because her dad did the cooking. She cleaned the inside of the house because hetook care of the yard and maintenance. She rarely stayed out late, because Walt could never fall asleep until she was home and she didn’t want him to go to work tired. Because she was offered so much freedom, she hardly ever felt the need to take it. Funny how that worked.
She debates going into her old bedroom first, but the idea of a bubble bath is just too tempting. Her bathroom looks exactly the same, and Geo smiles in anticipation of her first hot soak in years. She plugs the bathtub drain and turns on the faucet. She painted the walls a light purple when she was fifteen, and after five years of prison gray, the color is a welcome sight. Or had she been sixteen? She thinks for a moment. It was before she met Calvin, so that meant she’d just turned sixteen.
Funny how she still does that. All the memories of her life are neatly divided into sections. Before Calvin. After Calvin. Before prison. And now, after prison.
As the bathtub fills, she peels off her clothes and takes a look at herself in the mirror. She’s aged. It’s jarring. Not that she looks older than her thirty-five years—she doesn’t. If anything, she can pass for thirty. But she’s much older compared to the last time she saw her face in this particular bathroom, in this particular mirror, in this particular light. There are faint lines around her eyes that weren’t there when she was eighteen. There’s a new groove etched between her eyebrows, and her skin, once luminous, looks dull and tired after five years of mediocre jailhouse cuisine, sleepless nights, and minimal fresh air.
But she’s home. Finally. She’s home.
She sinks into the bathtub, the hot, soapy water engulfing her body. It feels so good, she groans. She closes her eyes and allows herself to relax.
Twenty minutes later, she steps out, only because her finger pads have pruned and the water has begun to cool. She wraps herself in an old towel, her mood about fifty pounds lighter than it was the day before. It’s almost hard to believe that only that morning she was still in prison, eating runny oatmeal and overcooked eggs, a criminal among criminals.
The good mood doesn’t last long. As soon as she steps into the bedroom—herchildhoodbedroom—it all comes back. Her father hasn’t touched her room, and it looks exactly as she left it. Just like that, it’s nineteen years ago.
The floral bedspread.Calvin.
The window he used to climb through late at night.Calvin.
The empty jar on the dresser, which used to be filled with candy.Calvin.
The memories surround her, crushing her, and panic takes over, sinking its claws in. Dizzy, she puts a hand on the wall to steady herself and takes several deep breaths. Closing her eyes, she forces herself to count down from ten, focusing on her chest rising and falling, her lungs expanding and contracting, listening to her breath as it moves in and out of her body. A simple relaxation technique, something she’d learned in yoga class years ago. By the fifth breath, she’s out of danger. By the eighth, she’s calm. Her heart slows back to its normal rate, and she opens her eyes again, more prepared.
Calvin may not be gone, but he’s not here. And that’s good enough for now.
A beam of afternoon sunlight is streaming in from the window, filtered by the pink lace curtains she’s had since she was a baby. The room is cast in a soft pink glow. The poster of Mariah Carey hangs in the same spot beside her closet door. Vanilla-scented candles in various stages of melt top the bookshelf. The second shelf is filled with Stephen King paperbacks, a stack of high school yearbooks, ribbons she’d won in dance and cheerleading competitions, and the stuffed gorilla her dad bought her at the Woodland Park Zoo when she was twelve. “Look, Ma, they caught a monkey!” a small child had exclaimed delightedly when they’d come out of the gift shop, Geo swinging the stuffed ape by one of its legs. Everyone around had laughed.
The framed photograph of herself and Angela is still on her bedside table, unmoved after all these years. It was taken a month before her best friend died, when they were both sixteen and laughing on a sunny day at the fair. A frozen moment in time. It was the photo thatGeo could never bear to look at afterward. It was also the photo she could never bear to put away.
