“But you won’t do it again?” Juliet asked.
Danica shook her head furiously. And then she asked, “Is Chris still here?”
Juliet’s face broke into a smile. “Chris?”
Danica hung back, looking sheepish. “He’s my boyfriend.”
“He’s still here,” Juliet said. “But I didn’t know you had a boyfriend.”
“We met, um, online,” Danica said, kicking her foot forward and back.
Juliet felt the watchful eyes of the sleepy officer. “We can talk about this later,” she said, guiding Danica out into the waiting room, where Juliet signed nearly twenty sheets of paper and prepared her daughter to go. Meanwhile, Theo woke Chris up, so that Chris nearly leaped out of his skin. “Who are you?” Theo demanded. But of course, Chris put the pieces together soon enough.
During the brief drive from the police station to the breakfast place on the corner of Blaine Drive and Shelby Lane, not a word was spoken in the car. Juliet was in the passenger seat, occasionally glancing back at Danica and Chris, who clasped hands desperately. They looked young but strong in ways that Juliet had never been at that age. If she had, maybe she could have allowed Callie to love Theo. That, or maybe she could have allowed herself to love Theo. That was a more complicated thing, she knew. It was something she hadn’t allowed herself to fully touch.
Chris and Danica were starving. They ordered omelets, pancakes, and juice, while Juliet and Theo opted for fried eggs and toast. Sunlight poured through the large windows, illuminating their tables and their juice glasses. With Theo beside her, Juliet felt a sense of warmth and companionship she hadn’t in years. Alvin had emotionally abandoned her years ago. Here she was, trying to parent the daughter who’d rather live halfway around the world.
After the juice and coffee arrived, but before the rest of the food was finished, Juliet cleared her throat and said, “Danica, I want to tell you a story. About myself. About Theo. And about my friend Callie.” Slowly, the story unspooled from Juliet’s heart, bringing her daughter deeper into Juliet’s world than she’d ever allowed her. Slowly, Danica was allowed to see just how delicate her mother was, and just how much her mother wanted to keep her around.
Juliet was a broken person. But she was getting better all the time. Wasn’t that the goal in life? Wasn’t it good to move forward, one step at a time?
26
It wasn’t that Juliet officially declared that they would remain in Bluebell Cove for the foreseeable future. Like anything worthwhile, it happened organically, with Theo’s restaurant reopening that first week of August to incredible acclaim, and Theo asking Juliet to come on as his manager and social media strategist and “first taste tester.”
Juliet hadn’t heard a thing from any of her fashion friends all summer, and she hadn’t heard a peep from a single person she’d applied to for jobs. After Theo asked her to sign on as manager, she sat alone in the dining room of his restaurant, watching as a healthy August storm formed over the Atlantic and boiled the water beneath it. She tried to picture herself back in Manhattan in a month. She tried to imagine herself going to interviews and living in the living room of that apartment in Greenwich and trying and failing to keep track of Danica. She imagined calling her sisters infrequently and losing any traction they’d recently gained in their relationships.
She imagined not seeing Theo every day, and this made her wince most of all.
The day after he asked her, Juliet woke up and made herself and Danica a big, healthy breakfast of eggs and turkey sausage and Greek yogurt with strawberries. Danica, who’d begun reading Wuthering Heights along with Mary via their online book club, tried to read at the table, at least until Juliet asked her to stop and talk for a second. Danica closed the book and looked at her mother expectantly. At that moment, Juliet saw her daughter for who she was, now that they’d left the city for more than two months. Somehow, she looked brighter and more confident. She was wearing less black and less makeup. She’d recently brushed her hair. Juliet couldn’t say when the change had happened. But her guess was that it was around the time after she’d driven her home from the police station in Bangor.
Things had changed after Juliet had begun opening up to her daughter. The biggest change of all, Juliet felt, was that Danica felt okay about opening up to her back.
It was a beautiful and unforgettable thing.
“How would you feel,” Juliet began, her heart pumping, “about staying in Bluebell Cove a little bit longer?”
Danica smiled. “It’s funny,” she said. “I was so worried you were going to ask me that back in June. I dreaded it. And then, I started complaining to some guy on the internet about it, only to figure out he lives across the cove from us.” Danica gestured wildly toward where, Juliet knew, Chris lived with his mother and stepdad. Chris had recently become a new figure in their lives. He’d come for a few dinners. He’d dined at the restaurant. Juliet still wasn’t sure whether she wanted to trust him, but even she had to admit that he seemed like a good guy. He seemed to genuinely care about Danica. Juliet had never managed to fall in love with the person who cared about her, in return. How had Danica figured that out at such a young age?
She was a miracle child. Someday soon, she’d be a miracle adult, making her mark on the world.
When Juliet didn’t say anything, Danica put down her fork and said, “I’ve been thinking about the, um, stealing thing. Well, I’ve been talking to Monica about it.” Monica was Danica’s therapist, whom Juliet had found for her after the shoplifting incident. “I don’t know exactly why I did it, but I’m more conscious of my feelings around it. If that makes sense? I think I’m analyzing my triggers. By Chris, he makes me calm, you know? He makes me analyze my thoughts and see whether any of them are useful. If they’re hurting me, I’m learning to throw them out.”
Juliet crossed her arms over her chest. She’d never been good at controlling her own feelings and thoughts. She’d been at the mercy of the fashion world, of her own aches and egos, of her father’s venomous rage. But she’d never felt really “behind the wheel” of her own life.
“I get it,” Danica said then, kindly. “You want to help Theo at the restaurant.”
“I do,” Juliet said, surprising herself with how desperately she felt this.
“Then you owe it to yourself to give it a try,” Danica said.
On the walk to the restaurant later that afternoon, Juliet felt flabbergasted at her daughter’s adult-minded insights. It made her wonder what people had heard when Juliet had opened her mouth as a teenager. She felt sure she hadn’t sounded like a savant. She’d probably sounded like an arrogant idiot, sure that she owned the world, or would own it soon.
Why had Callie loved Juliet so much? Juliet stopped short at the front door of the restaurant, her thoughts reeling. Callie loved me because love was simpler back then, Juliet thought to herself. But she wasn’t sure if that was so. Juliet had always loved Callie, but her love for Callie was complicated, just as Callie’s love for her had been complicated. Just because she’d died didn’t mean all that complication fell away.
Just then, Theo peered through the window and spotted Juliet, standing there, waiting to come in. He opened the door, delivering a radiant and handsome smile that pulled Juliet out of herself. She had a strange thought. She wanted to see Theo every day for the rest of her life. But she wasn’t sure how she could make that happen. They were friends who’d been through too much.
“We’re going to do it,” she told him now, throwing her arms around him. “We’re going to stay in Bluebell Cove.”
