Unconditional

It’s after midnight now, too late for a hotel. My friends here are out—I couldn’t take the questions, the sideways glances and whispers about this, another failed relationship. I can’t go to my father, and I haven’t spoken to Juliet about anything that matters in years. She’s off on her delayed honeymoon now anyway, something about a road trip in California; she won’t be back for weeks.

I’m completely alone in this, I realize again, but before the darkness can rise again, the answer suddenly arrives in my mind, bright like a miracle.

The beach house.

I begged Juliet to sell. For me, it’s a place full of dark memories, the shadows of a time I’d rather forget, but now I’m almost glad she held fast. Nobody will look for me there, I’ll have time to figure things out.

I give my perfect life one last, longing look in the rearview mirror, and then I put the car in drive and head away, away from the wreckage and heartache, towards the one place in the world I ever felt safe.

Beachwood Bay.

2

I drive for hours through the night down the dark, empty freeway, with nothing but the flash of neon headlights and my own memories for company. I can’t remember the last time I let myself just think, so I leave the radio off as I turn down the coastal road, letting the crash of waves outside the window lull me back to the last summer we spent here, over four years ago.

The house was in Mom’s family since before she was born, tucked away in a small town on the North Carolina coast. We came here every summer as kids, to splash around at the shore while Dad stayed in the city—to work on his novels in peace, he said. I loved those summers without him. It was like we exhaled a breath we’d been holding all year long. Mom became brighter, louder, smiling as she trailed sand through the house in her flowered one-piece and kaftan, singing along to country music she would play on the kitchen radio. Back then, me and Juliet were still young enough to be partners in crime, playing all day on the beach and begging to ride our bikes into town to buy ice cream sundaes at Mrs. Olson’s diner.

But we got older. Dad’s book didn’t sell the way he wanted, he started drinking, and Mom never sang in the kitchen anymore. I threw myself into the high school social whirl to stay out of the house, and somehow, the thought of three months in Beachwood Bay without escape from each other was a cruel and unusual punishment for us all. We stopped coming out here for the summer, and it seemed like that was it: we were drifting our separate ways, me graduating college, Juliet about to go off to school on the West Coast, nothing left to keep the family together anymore.

Until that summer. The last one. The one that still haunts me, late at night, when there isn’t enough white wine or sleeping pills in the world to block out the memory of a windy cliff-top, and a single white rose, and the knowledge that when it came down to it, to the most important people in my world, I failed.

I let them down.

I brush a tear from my cheek and turn off the highway, heading through town. It’s past two a.m. now, and there’s nothing but dark storefronts and the glow of streetlights. I drive onwards, down the road that winds gently along the shore, past thick trees and other houses, their security lights twinkling against the black ocean shadow beyond. Finally, my headlights beam on the red mailbox still posted on the side of the road.

I turn into the driveway, slowly pulling up beside a weathered truck left parked by the house. Emerson’s, I figure, slowly getting out. He and Juliet probably left it here during their trip. They have an apartment in the city now, but she wouldn’t give this house up, not even after it was damaged in a storm last year.

It’s funny, I think, slowly getting out of the car. We both were scarred by that summer, but the reasons that sent me running from Beachwood Bay have always pulled her back here, like she could heal her old wounds by building something new from the wreckage. Me, I never saw the point of trying to stitch together what was already broken beyond repair, or lingering where guilt would only scold me, and remind me of all the mistakes I’ve made.

Now, I stare up at the dark house and feel that flush of deep shame all over again. But I force myself to pull my suitcase from the backseat and hoist it up the front steps. It’s only when I reach the door that I realize I really haven’t thought this through.

The house is dark, locked tight. Nobody’s here, and nobody knows I was coming.

Think. There’s a spare key here, there has to be, so I check under the plant pots and around the top of the door frame.

Nothing.

Tiredness hits me all at once. I was up at six this morning to start preparations for dinner, and I haven’t had a moment to stop since. After the stress of the evening and the long drive out here, every muscle in my body is crying out for a warm bed and a soft place to rest. I can’t turn around and drive back now, but there’s nowhere else for me to stay. It’s dark and cold and I’m trembling with exhaustion, but I dig my nails into my palms and vow to keep it together. There has to be another way inside. We’re way out in the sticks here; they won’t have secured every window or bolted every shutter—small-town life has to have some upside, right?

I leave my bag and circle the house, checking every ground-floor window in turn. I’m just about to admit defeat and go curl up in the backseat of my car, when I tug on the kitchen window and feel something give.

Yes!

My heart leaps. I slide my fingertips under the frame, and lift. The window slides up, heavy and sticking in the old wooden frame, but far enough for me to squeeze through. I set it down again, and drag a planter to underneath the window, using it to boost myself up, and yank the window higher.