Page 202 of Perfect
What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him, in this instance.
***
Going through the house is overwhelming. I never realized how manythingsDanny and I had, and I have to decide what to do withallof them.
I’ve been in Boston for a few days when Danny’s family realizes I’m there, and his brother David shows up and tells me that if I were a decent person, I would giveDanny’sfamilyDanny’shouse andDanny’smoney.
When I laugh at him and tell him he’s insane, he turns an ugly shade of red and tells me it’s my fault that Danny’s dead, that I’m an ungrateful whore, and that I never deserved him. I stand in the doorway and watch him try to push me around and manipulate me the way Danny used to, and a savage joy spreads through my body when I tell him to fuck off and slam the door in his face.
David, his aunts, and several of his cousins show up the next day, so I answer the door with one of Danny’s guns, which scares all of them enough that they don’t try to push their way into the house. The gun is unloaded, which is for the best, because all the rage I suppressed for a decade wells up and I start screaming at them.
I tell them about what Danny did to me in the cabin, what he did to me when I was a kid, everything he’deverdone to me, and I tell them to get away frommyhouse, myparent’shouse, that they’ll get fuckingnothing, that they can all rot in hell with Danny, and I’ll send them there myself if they show up again.
They’re all so shocked that they don’t say anything before I slam the door in their faces.
I’m so furious when they leave that I destroy anything personal of Danny’s that I can find in the house, anything he loved, anything I can get my hands on.
The house is a fucking wreck by the time I’m done, and so am I.
When Theo calls an hour later, I sob through telling him what happened. He says he’s proud of me, that he loves me, and then he offers to send Danny’s family copies of the crime scene photos so they can see that Danny got exactly what he deserved. I laugh and tell him he’s insane, but that I love him and I’ll think about it.
I take myself to a nice dinner afterward and walk around Beacon Hill, soothed by the familiar old, red brick buildings, happy to be a different person than I was the last time I was here.
The next day, I hire cleaners to deal with the absolute mess I made. While they clean, I spend the day selling all the jewelry and watches at a pawn shop, selling the cars for much less than they’re worth to a used car dealership, and sticking Danny’s motorcycle and all the paperwork out on the street with a FREE sign, mainly because all of it would have pissed Danny off to no end.
I take a break from dealing with everything and go to Cape Cod for a few days, staying in Hyannis, as close to my grandmother’s old house as possible. I walk along the beach, taking photos of everything to show Theo the beaches I grew up on. He calls when I’m tide pooling, and I spend the time describing it to him, telling him how much I wish he was with me and that I’d like to bring him out here someday.
It’s the first phone call we have where Theo sounds even remotely calm, and I know it’s because it’s the first call we’ve had where I’m not a nervous wreck.
By the time I head back to Boston, I’m ready to leave, so I hire movers to donate everything in the house that didn’t belong to me before I met Danny. The only things left in the house after that are my books, a few boxes of my keepsakes, some of my parents’ things, and my mother’s paintings.
I stand in the mostly empty house, waiting for the movers to come pack and ship all my things back to Astoria, and I stare at the painting of me and the rabbit. I refused to look at it before now, but it seems different from the painting I looked at before I left Boston.
For the first time in my life, it feels good to look at, because I can finally see all the pain and the joy and the love that my mother put into it.
As the movers take the boxes of my parents’ things downstairs from the attic, they find the fireplace grate with the long spikes tucked away in a corner under a tarp, and I start to cry. When Theo calls, I tell him we can have a real Christmas when he’s out, with the ham and the grate and the aluminum tree and French toast and whatever other insane bullshit he wants. He asks if we can skip the life-altering panic attack, and I tell him maybe, but only if he’s good.
He’s quiet for a long moment before he tells me that he likes being good for me, and a small wave of heat courses down my spine for the first time since the day he got acquitted.
I wantthatback.
I have almost everything else back.
I finally have access to my identity, my past, and mylife, but with a few exceptions, like my bank accounts and my keepsakes, I don’t want it.
It’s not mine anymore.
On my last day in Boston, I donate Danny’s entire life insurance policy to a local domestic violence organization, find a realtor to sell the house for me, and go to the cemetery to say goodbye to my parents.
I schedule my flight so I can drive directly from the airport to Salem to see Theo, but I don’t tell him I’m coming.
The second he walks into the visitation room, his face relaxes into relief, and he holds me so tightly I can’t breathe.
“Is this why you didn’t answer the phone this morning? I wish you would have told me, I was freaking out. How was the flight? How are you?” I lean forward over the table and smile, trapping one of his ankles between mine and lacing our fingers together.
“I’m just happy to be home.” He blinks, his face blank for a moment before a broad, crooked smile spreads over his face, filling my chest with warmth.
***
