Page 54 of How to Walk Away

Kit nodded.

“It must have terrified her to be confronted with it.”

“That’s why she wanted me gone,” Kit said. “I’m the evidence.”

“Who was the guy?” I asked.

Kit shook her head. “She wouldn’t say.”

“Are you going to tell Dad?”

“Never!”

“But you told me.”

“I told you because I needed you to understand.”

It was a lot to process. My head was swirling. “Why did you wait so long?”

Kit sighed. “I kept thinking she’d tell you, but she didn’t. I kept thinking she’d reach out and apologize to me, but she didn’t. At first, I had bigger fish to fry. I had to get through rehab and that whole first year of being sober. Then I was getting the Beauty Parlor going, and the timekind of flew. But the truth is, I was really, really, really angry. I thought I would never want to see any of you again.”

“But I didn’t do anything!”

“No,” Kit said. “But you got to be Dad’s real daughter—and I didn’t. I know this sounds crazy, but it felt like you’d stolen him from me.”

“But Ididn’t!”

“My brain knew that,” Kit said. “But my heart was a different story.”

I tried to put myself in Kit’s shoes. “You were just mad at everybody.”

“Everybody. Everything. It stirred up a lot for me. Mainly about how I always thought she loved you better. Turns out, I was right.”

“She doesnotlove me better,” I said, but now I wondered—and not, actually, for the first time.

Kit shrugged. “It’s okay. It’s hopeless with her. But I didn’t want to lose you, too.”

“So the crash made you miss me?”

“The crash made me want to stop wasting time.”

“So you came home to see me.”

“But then I just couldn’t explain. It didn’t feel like my secret to share. I wanted to give her a chance to say something, at least.”

“Why today?” I asked. It was a fair question. She’d been here two weeks. Why come storming in now?

“I ran into Piper McAllen at Starbucks this morning. Do you remember her?”

I shook my head.

Kit shrugged. “A mean girl from my grade, now a show-offy mother of two. She told me everybody says I went crazy and was put into a home. She said that to my face! InStarbucks! Apparently, the whole world just thinks I lost my marbles. And that was it for me. I was like,We’re done here. Time to set the record straight. I left my latte on the counter and stormed over.”

I was about to suggest maybe Kit should go find our mom—she’d left her purse here, after all, and wouldn’t get too far without it—when there was a knock at the door. When it pushed open, it was our dad.

In the instant I saw him I felt a rush of sympathy. He was my mother’shigh school sweetheart. They got married the summer after they graduated, and Kit was born a few months later. My dad had been all set to go to college in California, but he joined the marines instead. Of course, my mom gave up college altogether.

Neither of them had gotten quite what they’d hoped for.

---