Page 45 of The Heartbreak Hotel
“No,” I say, the warmth that began in my stomach rising up into my rib cage, my neck. I can feel my skin going splotchy. “Don’t worry, Goldie, I’m not going to ask you for a handout.”
“That’s not what I’m—”
“I’m not like Mom.”
Her mouth snaps shut, and the words hang between us. She looks offended that I’d accuse her of equating me to our mother. But that’s what she was doing, whether she knew it or not. It’s what we’re always doing, how the two of us move through the world. Molded by her.
“I know you’re not,” she says stiffly. “I only want you to be okay.”
“I am okay.”
A muscle tenses in the corner of her jaw. “I’m just worried,” she says slowly, “that you’re doing this hotel…thingto postpone your career. That it’s one more excuse not to get started.”
My cheeks are hot now. If this goes on much longer, I’ll start crying. Goldie doesn’t know that I wanted to get started months ago; she doesn’t know that I failed the test. She doesn’t know what Nate did to me—not the depth of it, not the things that I tolerated, the weakness that makes me like our mom.
“The Comeback Inn isn’t an excuse,” I bite out. She doesn’t deserve an explanation, but I give it to her anyway. “It’s something I really care about.”
“But what about ajob?” Goldie presses. “What about something that’llpayyou? Do you care about that, or just playing housekeeper in this—”
“Louisa’s quite good at this.”
We both spin around. Henry’s standing on the other side of the screen door to the garden, one hand on the doorknob. He looks at me, jaw pressed into a tense line, before pushing it open and stepping into the kitchen. “I’ve seen it.”
Goldie opens her mouth, looking from Henry to me and back again. I still feel like I’m on the verge of tears, my cheeks hot and clammy. The fact that Henry must have been listening from outside, must have heard all the ways my own sister thinks I’m a failure, makes me want to cover my face like a child.
“I don’t get the sense that she’s playing at anything,” Henry says. The door shuts squeakily behind him and he looks at it,then back at me, before adding, “It seems to me she’s helping these people.”
I look down at my feet, heart frantic beneath my ribs. I didn’t know Henry thought I was good at anything. After all the ways I’ve made a mess of myself in front of him, I don’t know why he’s defending me at all. Goldie recovers before I do.
“I’m sorry, who are you?”
“Henry Rhodes.” When he extends his hand toward her, she takes it. “I’m Louisa’s landlord.”
“Marigold Walsh,” Goldie says crisply. “Her sister. And we were having a conversation, so if you don’t mind—”
“Goldie,” I say quietly. Both she and Henry look at me. “I think we should finish this another time.”Or maybe never.
Goldie looks at her watch. “Fine,” she says, in a way that indicates it’s clearly not fine. “I need to get going anyway. I’m going to get my things.”
She leaves the kitchen in a clatter of heeled footsteps. Henry doesn’t move.
“Sorry,” I say straight down at my feet.
“What for?”
I look up at him, my face still on fire. He’s watching me carefully, that concerned line between his eyebrows, the sunburn gone from his cheeks. They’re clean-shaven: smooth and familiar in the kitchen light.
“That was, um—” I swallow, shaking my head a little. “She just worries about me.”
“That’s what families do,” he says. It makes me wonder, straightaway, what his family is like. “But she doesn’t have a reason to worry about whether you’re doing well at this. You are.”
It’s maybe the kindest thing anyone’s ever said to me. It’s, somehow, the exact thing that I need to hear.
I mean to say,Thank you. But when Henry’s gaze meets mine, when I open my mouth, what comes out is: “I was going to take my nephew to the park in a bit. Do you want to come?”
Nineteen
Quinn’s wearing a beanie shapedlike a fox face, orange ears pointed skyward. He runs ahead of us down the sidewalk, kicking up leaves, oblivious to the tension that expands and contracts like a held breath between the two adults behind him.
