Lily nods. “Digital hygiene. It’s like clearing out the mold, Harl. You can’t live in the house until the air is clean.”
I put the phone face down on the nightstand. The silence that follows isn’t the heavy, watchful silence of the Thompson mansion. It’s a light silence; it’s the absence of a weight I didn’t realize I was carrying.
I start to unpack the thrift store bags. I open the closet doors, and the smell of my teenage years hit me—old paper, vanilla body spray, and the ghost of a cedar sachet Maria had tucked in there years ago. I hang up the six-dollar Levi’s and the corduroy jacket. I slide the flannel shirts onto mismatched hangers.
They sit alongside the artifacts of the girl I was before Skyler Thompson tried to draft a better version of me. My old Northwestern University hoodie is there, the gray fleece worn thin at the elbows. I pull it out and rub the fabric betweenmy fingers. I remember wearing this in the library at two a.m., fueled by caffeine and the desperate need to help people. I remember the person who didn’t care about Valentino red or the height of a centerpiece.
I pull the hoodie on. It’s too big and the hood is floppy, but I feel like I can finally inhabit my own skin again.
Dad knocks on the door. He’s carrying a toolbox in one hand and a stack of clean towels in the other. “Workshop’s ready. I moved the desk into the corner and put the daybed by the window. The privacy curtains are up.”
I follow him out the back door and across the small yard. The air is cool, carrying the scent of cut grass and the late-summer dampness of the earth. The workshop is a separate building, a small timber-framed structure that Dad built twenty years ago. It’s always been his world—a place of sawdust and sharp edges.
The small office at the back has been transformed. The smell of cedar is overwhelming here; the clean, sharp scent feels like a disinfectant for the soul. The daybed is covered in a heavy wool blanket, and the window looks out over the neighbor’s overgrown garden. There are no silk drapes here, no silver urns. Just the sound of the wind in the trees and the steady, grounding presence of my father’s tools on the other side of the wall.
“It’s perfect, Dad,” I say, and for the first time in days, the lump in my throat feels like gratitude instead of grief.
“I put a space heater in the corner just in case,” Dad says, setting the towels on the bed. He pauses, looking around the small room. “It’s not Lake Forest, Harley.”
“I know,” I say, sitting on the edge of the bed. The mattress is firm. It doesn’t have a three-thousand-dollar topper. “That’s why I like it.”
He nods, gives my shoulder a quick, awkward squeeze, and heads back out.
I lay down and stare at the ceiling. I can hear the house settling across the yard—the occasional creak of the porch, the rhythmic tinkle of the wind chimes. These are the sounds of a life that doesn’t need to be managed. They are the sounds of a home that is content with its own imperfections.
I think of Skyler, likely sitting in the “blue room” or standing in the gallery of ghosts, staring at his phone. He is waiting for a response that will never come. He is waiting for a compromise that doesn’t exist. He is still trying to figure out how to frame the disaster.
I close my eyes, not feeling the Thompson weight on my lungs anymore. I don’t feel the stitch of the white silk dress. I only feel the cedar-scented air and the warmth of the Northwestern hoodie.
I fall asleep before I can even finish the thought. It’s a deep, dreamless sleep—the kind you only get when you’ve finally stopped running from yourself and started building a place to stay.
Chapter 20
Skyler
Ichose the Rustic Grind because it’s the kind of place my mother wouldn’t even park her car near, let alone enter. Uneven and covered in a layer of dust, the floorboards creak. There are mismatched chairs, such as plastic orange stools and velvet armchairs that have seen better decades.
Perfect. An architectural equivalent of a middle finger to everything I’ve been told is valuable.
I sit at a corner table with a chipped mug of black coffee cooling in front of me. But I’m not drinking it. Instead, I stare at the steam, watching it dissipate into the air.
Then, impatient, I check the time, as I have been every three minutes.
The door chimes.
It’s a tinny, annoying sound. I glance up, expecting a student or a local, but it’s her. Entering the room as if walking ontoa runway in Milan, Amanda Davis demands attention. She’s wearing a cream-colored silk trench coat. Her sunglasses are oversized, hiding her eyes, but her mouth is set in that familiar line.
She spots me immediately. There’s no hesitation. Navigating the obstacle course of rickety tables, she moves with the grace of someone who has spent her life being watched. When she reaches the booth, she doesn’t wait for an invitation. She slides in across from me, the silk of her coat rustling against the cracked vinyl seat.
Safely seated, she removes her glasses to reveal flawless makeup.
“Skyler,” she says. “You look terrible.”
“Honesty,” I mutter, leaning back. “Refreshing. I thought you only spoke in Thompson-coded euphemisms.”
She reaches across the table, her fingers light as they graze my knuckles. “I’m not here as a consultant, Sky. I’m here as a friend. What happened at the club was a tragedy. No one deserved to be humiliated like that, especially not you.”
Calculated sympathy. I can see the gears turning behind her green eyes. She’s not mourning the wedding; she’s assessing the wreckage.
