No TV blaring, no music playing. No phone scrolling.
“Um, hi,” Dylan said.
Carrie offered a small smile. “Dylan.”
“Where’s Dad?”
“He’s at the house.”
“You rented ahousehere?” Dylan asked. Now the panic was surging, rising and cresting. There was no way she could deal with her parents being in Clover Lake for longer than a few days, not while she filmed, not while she tried to build something with Ramona that was more than a publicity stunt.
“We did,” Carrie said calmly. “Just for two weeks. Your dad wanted to get a sense of things for the soundtrack.”
Dylan clenched her teeth. “Is Jocelyn coming to town for her original song?”
Carrie just looked at her coolly. “At some point, yes.”
“What? Seriously?” Dylan rubbed her forehead. “Mom, I don’t want her here, and it’s not fair that you just swoop in and—”
“Dylan, stop,” Carrie said.
Dylan did, more from Carrie’s icy tone than the command itself. Her mother stood up, gold necklaces swaying on her pale chest. She wore a lacy maroon blouse and torn black jeans. Elegance and rock and roll, just like always. She walked up to Dylan, then put her hands on her daughter’s shoulders.
“Sweetheart,” she said softly.
Dylan looked down. She’d never known what to do when her parents showed her affection. On the one hand, she craved it like water. On the other, her skin felt too small for her body, and her jaw tightened without her consent.
“Look at me,” Carrie said.
Dylan sighed, forced her eyes on her mother’s matching set, icy green, nearly transparent.
“I know your dad and I messed up a lot when you were young,” Carrie said.
Dylan frowned. Because they’d never had this conversation. Not once. Not when all their separate therapists recommended family therapy. Not when Carrie and Jack got out of rehab or remarried or divorced. Not when Aunt Hallie took Dylan away from them for a month in the summer when Dylan was thirteen.
Never.
“Mom,” she said, unsure she wanted to have it now.
“Just let me say this,” Carrie said, then took a deep breath. “Your dad and I messed up a lot. And I get that you’re angry about that. You’re hurt. And you should be. I’m sorry, Dylan, I can’t express how sorry we are. If I could change it all for you, I would.”
Dylan’s throat went thick, aching as though a snake had curled around her windpipe.
“But at some point, baby…” Carrie trailed off, her lower lip bobbing. Her hands went to Dylan’s face, cupping her cheeks like she was a little girl. “At some point, you’re going to have to choose. You either forgive us, and you accept the life we’re trying to build now. Together. With you. The efforts we’re making, however imperfectly. The work we all need to put in to be a family. Or…” Her eyes filled with tears. “You don’t. And we’ll stop trying to make you.”
She leaned forward and kissed Dylan on the forehead, whisperedI love you.
And then she left.
Chapter
Thirty-One
The next fewweeks passed quickly. Dylan kept her head down, her mouth shut, and concentrated on filming and Ramona.
That was it.
After the initial fallout of her drunken sidewalk episode—photos on myriad online gossip sites, Gia and Rayna both going apoplectic when they first talked to her about it—Laurel and Rayna managed to spin the story in a romantic light.
