Page 43 of Forbidden Girl

“I am staying out of it. I’m picking you up after the stupid shit happened.”

“How’d you know I was in Boston? Or where to find me?”

“Um, hello? Rose, my cousin, is your girlfriend’s best friend. And news travels fast. Literally, the shootout was on the News at Noon. I just cruised the main streets around Forest Hill hoping to find you.”

“Goddamn it.”

“Yeah. What are you gonna do?”

“I don’t know, Mer. I really don’t.” Everything is in the worst state of chaotic upheaval that I’ve had to deal with, like, ever. My life is unrecognizable. The status quo was never calm, but there was routine—objectives to achieve and directives to get me there. I’m good at critical thinking when there’s a clear goal to reach. All this uncertainty… I’m a rudderless ship at the mercy of a tempestuous current.

“Well, I’m in. Wherever you’re going, I’m going.”

“What about your job?”

“I’ll call out with COVID. I work at a print shop in the twenty-first century; how busy do you think it gets?”

I don’t know why I laugh so hard but it’s exactly what I need. “Wanna spend a weekend in Maine?”

He scoffs. “Nope. Ticks. But okay.”

As he heads for the Zakim bridge to Route 93, I think about how much I love him, and how lucky I am to have him as a best friend.

NINETEEN

JULES

House arrest is coming. I’m aware of that reality the second I step through the threshold into the foyer. Under no circumstances will I be allowed past the rose bushes at the end of the driveway until I leave for Washington. We live in a historic house on Joy Street that’s so grand it rivals estates in the English countryside, but it’s no better than an elegant penitentiary. I wonder if Dad has an ankle monitor ready for me.

“Your cousin is coming home tomorrow,” is all my father says as he enters the house on my heels. He’s fuming and exhausted. There are still blades of grass strewn about his suit, the green aggressively bright in contrast to the matte black material.

“Oh, good. Will you be allowing him to smack me around again?”

He’s struck by that. It’s twisting the knife of his failure as a father—his greatest fear is being unable to protect me—but it’s the only trump card I have to play.

He takes me by the shoulders as if to comfort me, but it’s cold and I have no use for it. “Of course not. We’ll be reevaluating his position in this family and this business.”

“Good. Because Rowan meant it. If Teague ever touches me again, she’ll lay him in his grave.”

His jaw clenches. It’s an automated physical response: He can’t stand the mention of her or the fact that she’s taken better care of me than he has. “And I would let her.”

Thanks for setting up my argument for me. “Then how can you be so opposed to me being with her? She loves me, Dad. So much that she’s risked her life for me twice. You saw that with your own eyes today.”

“I also saw her father show up to a funeral service and start shooting people! Callum Monaghan raised her in a house without a mother to keep her soft. She is all him, a hundred precent his daughter.”

“She’s not! That’s what you don’t get. Somehow, in spite of him, she’s better than him! And better than you.”

“That’s enough, both of you!” My mother makes herself heard. She’s ashen-faced from the morning’s trauma. A screaming match between my father and me is the last thing she needs. In true Italian fashion she talks with her hands, gesturing at the front door, then all around the hallway. “The world outside that door is chaotic enough. I want peace in this house. I want peace within my family. If you cannot speak to each other like calm, rational adults, do not speak to each other at all.” She starts for the stairs. “I’m going to clean myself up and then take to my bed. If I hear either of you raise your voice?—”

“I’m sorry, Mom. You won’t.”

“Good. Juliet Amelia, we need to have a conversation later, too.”

I hate it when she calls me by my full name. She only does that when I’m in trouble. “Okay.” You know where to find me, since Dad’s going to hold me captive.

My mother disappears upstairs. My father steps out of his dress shoes, kicks them toward the timber shoe rack, and loosens his tie as he ambles to the living room. He sinks into his favorite reclining chair. It’s not often I see him defeated, but he’s rubbing his forehead, his face, as if he’s unsure what else to do with himself. He’s been living this perilous life for thirty years. Has he finally grown tired of his own hellacious creation? What will be the last straw for him? Losing my mother? Losing me? After today he must know he’s on the precipice of both.

I collapse onto the couch opposite him, focusing on the whooshing of water through pipes as my mother turns on the shower upstairs. I don’t want to talk to him about Rowan, but I don’t want my love for her to be marred by guilt anymore, either. It has been, at least a little bit, from the start—that very first kiss. How something could feel so wrong and so perfectly right all the same is still beyond me.

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