Page 79 of Meant for You

She wasn’t a cruel woman; she was just indifferent. Like now, when I’d first moved here I’d been missing Dane. And most nights after a silent dinner with my aunt, only the odd word spoken, usually to correct my posture or my manners, I’d head upstairs to my bedroom, climb into bed, and cry myself to sleep.

I stared out the window to the front yard and it felt like I’d never left. That we’d never argued, that I hadn’t packed up my car and driven to Cassy’s ranch, a woman I had never met in person but who I’d clicked with from that first phone call.

“Everly? Are you still up there?”

My fingers clenched around the window frame and I turned toward the door. “I’m coming down.”

I shook off the melancholy feeling riding me and took the stairs, sidestepping the parts that squeaked out of habit, the ones that alerted her when I was coming or going that might have given her a reason to seek me out.

My aunt was in her kitchen, like I knew she would be.

She loved to cook, and if ever I needed to talk to her, I always came looking for her there first. Not for the first time since arriving, I took her in, wondering what was wrong with her. Because she looked fine.

Just like she always did.

Her faded brown hair streaked with silver was pulled back in a tidy bun at the nape of her neck. Her tan slacks looked freshly pressed, and her floral blouse, one of many, was neat and tidy.

She turned to me, brushing her hands down the apron she was wearing to wipe away the flour on her fingers. “I’m making biscuits to go with dinner. How about you get started on the potatoes?” she said.

I moved around the familiar room, gathering potatoes from the pantry, chopping board from the middle drawer, peeler from the one above, and a knife from the wooden block on the kitchen island, and began doing what we had many times before.

I’d finished washing them and was in the process of peeling when I worked up the courage to say what I’d been wanting to since I arrived. “You’re not sick, are you?”

She was at the counter down from me, the sink between us, and I watched her go still.

Her spine straightened. “Stop asking ridiculous questions and hurry up with those potatoes.”

I turned to her. “I didn’t ask you a question. I stated a fact that is easy to see.”

She busied herself placing her biscuits on a tray, not looking at me. “Well, how else was I going to get you home?”

I mean, I knew it as soon as I saw her. I knew that she’d lied, but still I didn’t want to believe it. I wanted to find some other reason that she’d lie about her own health to get me there.

“Have you even been sick?” I asked.

“You’ve been gone months,” she said, giving me more excuses.

“I call you all the time and I’ve visited regularly.” I curled my fingers into a fist and let the bite of my nails into my palm remind me to stay calm, not to show just how angry I was.

She turned to me, and her blue eyes that had a hardness, a directness, that had always made me squirm, locked on mine. “I’ve heard reports from a reliable source that you’re fraternizing with undesirable people.”

It was my turn to still. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me.” She turned back to the counter and lifted her tray, carrying it to the oven and sliding the biscuits in. She set her timer and turned back to me. “I thought it was time you came home, thought about where you came from, remembered your values, the things that are important.”

I was stunned silent for several long moments before I finally found my voice. “The people I’m spending time with are good people, Aunt Julia. I’ve made real friends, have a job that I love. I don’t know who’s told you that about me, but they’re wrong.” Stay calm. Hysterics, emotions of any kind really, did not work on my aunt. An abundance of any feelings only made her dig her heels in deeper.

I’d learned that the hard way. My teenage frustrations, the odd outburst, and my tendency to cry when I was angry or upset had only gotten me grounded. It didn’t matter the subject or how upset I was. Even the subject of my parents, how much I’d missed them, had made her purse her lips unhappily.

Being overly emotional was not tolerated in this house. Was considered a weakness.

So I’d learned to lock it all down around her.

She started putting away what she’d used to make her famous biscuits, and on her way back from the pantry her blue eyes fixed on me. “So you’re not spending time with that boy?”

That boy. She’d never said Dane’s name, not once, and after what happened at the diner a year and a half ago, any mention of him, even when I didn’t say his name, caused her mouth to turn down and an unmistakable look of disgust to twist her features.

“Dane’s my friend,” I said, because telling her the truth at this point would have been the absolute worst thing I could do.