Slowly, she stepped farther inside the closet, taking in her surroundings. Of course, it was nothing like a regular closet. The lights had been left on, and she could see everything clearly: the twinkling glass island that housed Mrs. Crawley’s jewelry, the symmetrical walls of built-in drawers and hangers and shoes. The open space didn’t offer much for hiding, but she needed to hide. What if Mrs. Crawley came in here? What if—her thoughts were interrupted as she heard voices growing louder, and she realized she had jinxed herself.
“I need to get out of this dress,” she heard Mrs. Crawley say as Chat protested, as he rambled on about how Cooper really needed to go back to bed, how he really needed to check on Max, whose cough was getting worse. Mrs. Crawley kept repeating herself, her voice desperate and slurred, as she told him that she “had, had,hadto get out of it.”
Just as Augie sensed Mrs. Crawley moving toward the closet, she rushed to a wall of clothes and shimmied in behind a row of long, thick coats. She pressed her back flat against the wall, willing herselfnot to sneeze as a fur collar swayed in front of her. She clutched her abdomen and stared out through the gaps of light between the hangers as Mrs. Crawley burst inside.
There was no way not to watch. And no way not to notice: Mrs. Crawley was drunk. Or deranged. Her eye makeup was smudged, her hair all over. She moved fast, clawing at a zipper at her lower back, grasping at the halter’s knot around her neck. She struggled for a moment, cursed to herself, before finally she tugged the right strand, and the dress fell away, the whole piece slipping off and landing in a shining green puddle on the floor. Augie glanced away, ashamed. Mrs. Crawley wasn’t wearing a bra, only a thin nude thong. Still, a second later, Augie couldn’t deny the draw to study her, tracing her lean, defined muscles all the way from her calves to her triceps to her neck. And that’s when she saw it—that’s when it finally clicked: that silver chain around her neck, that necklace, that amber pendant she always wore. The one she’d told Mrs. Cline at the baby shower she had gotten in Latvia. As a gift. From an ex.
Latvia. Latvia.Latvia.
The place Chat’s uncle lived. The place he played hockey. Trey? Uncle Trey?
Augie’s mind was on overdrive, and she wished she had more time to think—but as Mrs. Crawley pulled on a black nightgown, flicked off the lights, and left—only seconds later, the lights flashed back on and there was Chat, looking back and forth inside the closet, panicked.
Augie pushed an arm through the coats, and instantly, he was there. He pulled her out.
“Okay, she’s with Cooper now,” he said as Augie stumbled forward. “Come on.” He grabbed her hand, dragging her toward the door. “We gotta move.”
20
In her lowest moments, Danika’s mind turned against her. It doubled down. Whenever she needed to pull herself up and think positively—to save herself—her subconscious did the opposite. It was like that game when someone said, “Don’t think about a horse! Don’t think about a basketball!” and images of horses and basketballs flooded in. She was her own worst enemy.
This was a pattern Danika recognized, but one she could not stop. Once she reached a certain point of despair or lack of control, the devil on her shoulder took over, conjuring bad thought after bad thought, bad memory after bad memory, each served one at a time as if from a conveyer belt. It was harder to stop when she was drunk.
So that night, after tearing off her dress and changing into pajamas, as she stumbled back into the brightly lit hall—makeup still a mess, head still spinning—and went to tuck Cooper in, her mind was already working against her. Memories began to flash on overdrive.
There was her mother, painting her fingernails at the kitchen table only to piss off her dad, who hated the smell—the fight that ensued. There was her father, building a bonfire one night for her at eight years old, joking the whole time, until she realized he was drunk, and then he passed out on the grass. There was the halter topshe’d worn to a middle school dance, the one a girl had called cheap,Because your dad’s only an E-7. Always, there was the smell of bacon, BLTs, the last thing she saw him eat—bringing her back to the day the military police showed up on their porch, explaining he’d shot himself out on the running trail.
The next set of memories came from St. Cloud. Dark at first, then illuminated with love. She remembered the day she first saw him mowing the lawn across the street, the way he’d pushed up his sunglasses, pulled off his orange work gloves, and yelled, “Hey, are you the new girl? I’m Trey.”
More flashbacks cut in and out from there. Searing snapshots of sounds, sights, smells, and tastes: the freezer-burn cold of hockey rinks, the harsh vowels of the Latvian language, the fresh, piney sting of Riga Black Balsam. The cold lights of a taxi in the night.
“Mom?” she heard Cooper say as she stepped inside his room, steadying herself. She went to his bed, where he sat upright. His night-light glowed with swimming images of fish, reflected across the walls of his room in swirling, neon circles. Cooper’s face was heavy with sleep. She sobered, softened.
“It’s late, hun.” She pulled his covers higher. Moved his elephant closer.
“I heard you come home.”
“I know. I’m sorry.” She touched his forehead.
He yawned. “Love you a lilac.”
Danika swallowed. Cooper used to have a habit of saying “I love you like a lot” before bed, and sometimes he’d say it so fast, it sounded like “I love you a lilac.” It had become their inside joke. It was the first thing to comfort her all night. Here, despite everything, Danika was reminded that she had what she’d always wanted: unconditional love.
“Love you a lilac,” she whispered. She kissed her hand and pressed it to his cheek, worried her mouth still reeked of booze.
Cooper nestled into his pillow, and Danika sat in the dark, the carousel of night-light fish still dancing around her. She watched them for a moment, their colorful striped bodies, until she grew dizzy and stood up, going to the window. Cooper always insisted on sleeping with the curtains open, but she tugged them shut now, hoping he’d sleep in. It had been a long night.
As she soaked in the steady pour of rain, she froze. Because spinning down the driveway below was a pinwheel of color—a hideous mash-up of maroon and yellow. The U of M.
It was shocking how bright the umbrella looked in the dark. Danika could not peel her eyes away, even as she felt everything drain from her body—as she became a shell of herself. She seemed to fill with a whole new feeling, a new substance pouring inside of her, all the way up to her skull: a thick, growing lava of rage.
How could he.
The stinging, sour hurt came after.
She knew that from then on, whenever she saw those colors—umbrellas in general—they would bring her back to this night, to this moment, this pain. This thought, of everything, broke her. All she could do was watch and hope the girl would see her, too. That she would turn, look up, and catch sight of her silhouette in the glow of the window. But, of course, she didn’t. It was a memory missed, a haunting averted. Danika hated her for it.
21
