Chapter Four
There’s a note on my pillow when I wake up, but what happens next is almost entirely lost to a black hole of memory.
Nate’s handwriting on the hotel’s blue stationery.
I love you, but I can’t marry you.
His phone going to voicemail.
Pulling out the bobby pins I’d left in my hair the night before, my fingers shaking.
I don’t remember calling Aurora, but I must have because she brings my mom to my room. They band their arms around me while I sob. I can’t recall seeing George, but I know from his scent that he carries me to my parents’ car. He whispers into my hair.
“I’ve got you. It’s going to be okay. I promise. I promise. I promise.”
But it’s Aurora who’s beside me, not George, when I vomit in the back seat.
My dad buys me a ginger ale from a gas station, and my mom says she’s never seen me like this.
“I have,” my dad tells her. “Her ninth birthday.” The one Mom missed.
I’m slumped on Aurora’s shoulder while she fans me with a Darlington Manor brochure. As we get closer to Toronto, it dawns on me: I have nowhere to live. I sit up, panicked, goose bumps breaking out over my clammy legs and arms.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
“Home,” my dad says.
I can’t go back to my parents’ house. I won’t go backward. Whatever’s left of my life, it’s in the city. I can’t get enough oxygen to my lungs. My head feels like a hot-air balloon, ready to lift from my neck and float away. I’ve never passed out before, but I think I might be about to.
“Frankie,” I hear Aurora say. But it sounds like she’s on the ground and I’m in the atmosphere. There’s a strange sound coming from my throat. “Breathe, Frankie.”
“I don’t want to go home. Please.”
Aurora presses a cool hand to my cheek, turning my face to her. She brings our foreheads together. “Breathe.”
I nod, staring at my reflection in her eyes.
“Is she okay?” My mom’s frantic voice brings me back down. I focus on breathing.
“She’s okay,” Aurora says. “And she can stay with us. Betty won’t mind.”
She hands me a bottle of water.
“What about the dress?” I ask. I love my wedding dress. It hasn’t dawned on me yet that I’ll never wear it.
“George will take care of it,” Aurora says. “He’s packing up the rest of your things.”
Dad asks for Aurora’s address, and I lean my head on the window and close my eyes.
Chapter Five
Aurora and Betty live in a cozy one-bedroom apartment in Toronto. I make a nest on their sofa with every spare blanket and pillow they own. Atomic Yellow, Aurora’s ancient cat, moves into the nest with me. I leave the sofa only when absolutely necessary.
George and my brothers collect my things from Nate’s house, and the space becomes more cramped, even though all I own are clothes, cookbooks, and knives. I gave up most of my stuff when I moved in with Nate.
I have my first panic attack when George tells me he can’t stay. He calms me down and says that he’s sorry but he has an assignment in Peru. I beg him to let me go with him, but he says not now, not yet. He hugs me tight and kisses my temple in a way that feels final.
Nate won’t answer my calls or reply to my texts. I become obsessed with making sense of what happened, the same way Idid when I was eight, after it became clear Mom wasn’t coming home anytime soon. The week before she left, I’d been in trouble at school for kicking a boy at recess. He’d been making fun of our teacher’s accent, and I figured he deserved it. Mom was furious. “Why do you have to be so difficult?” she’d said. My brothers and I were a handful, and I knew that had to be part of the reason she’d left.
