Page 21 of Home Tears

The beer gardens remained quiet.

Julia tried to hide behind Jake, but Dani reached and hauled her in front. “You do not hide behind him.”

Julia snapped to attention—and there was the Julia Dani remembered—eyes blazing. She shoved at Dani’s hold on her arm. “Excuse me? Don’t touch me!”

“Then don’t get Jake to fight for you.” Dani squared up to her. Their noses were almost touching. She could almost breathe on her. “You sent him to tell me to stay away. I’m right here. Say it to me yourself now.”

“You can’t come home and expect everything to be the same—”

“When?” Dani shot back. “When did I demand for things to be the same? Because I’d rather be gone again than have things the same. So when did I, in your imaginary conversation with me, demand things to be the same?”

“Excuse me?”

Dani wanted to go back at her, a smart-ass comment on her tongue. She swallowed it. The emptiness that she had been feeling before was gone. It was filled up with years of anger. This wasn’t how she hoped her first conversation would go with her sister, but it was happening nonetheless. Her sister would run any other time. She couldn’t this time. They were in public. People would talk about how she’d been the coward of the two O’Hara sisters.

“I have as much right to see Aunt Kathryn as you do.”

Jake frowned.

Dani knew that he knew. She didn’t really want to see Kathryn. She just didn’t want Julia to think she could make commands and she’d obey.

“You do not.” Julia’s eyes were blazing again. “And she doesn’t want to see you.”

“Then the house.”

Julia quieted. “What about the house?”

“I want to come and see if any of my things are still there.”

Julia snorted. “Yeah, right. Erica trashed all of your stuff, and what she didn’t, I did.” She was smug, taking pleasure in her words. “We had a bonfire one night. The rest of your crap got burned.” She leaned back against Jake. “If you don’t believe me, ask Jake. He was there.”

Guilt filled her ex’s gaze before he looked down to the ground.

Dani gritted her teeth. She wasn’t surprised, but she was surprised at the added pang in her chest. “I want a picture of mom.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because you left for ten years. You’re not owed one.”

“So there are some pictures left?”

Kathryn got along with their mother as well as Julia got along with her. If her sisters burned her things, she wouldn’t have been shocked to find her mother’s sister doing the same to her remnants.

“I don’t know, okay?” Julia confessed, some of the fight leaving. She quieted her voice, and her shoulders loosened a bit. “We didn’t burn her stuff on purpose. There was a fire in the house. A lot of stuff was lost, but I remember seeing a few pictures of Mom. I can’t recall where they’re at right now.”

Julia was fidgeting with her fingers, and her throat was moving, she kept swallowing. She was lying. Dani saw it. She knew her sister’s tells and she was reading them right now.

Dani wanted to call bullshit on her sister, but she refrained. It was their first meeting in ten years. There’d been no hugs, no handshakes, and no tears of happiness. There hadn’t even been a ‘welcome home.’ Julia hadn’t said she missed her, and Dani didn’t think she missed her sister back either. There was so much they needed to say to each other, or maybe they didn’t. Maybe they could go through life not talking at all. No. Dani considered it. It was tempting, but she knew at some point they’d have to talk.

Jake. Erica.

But Dani wanted to focus on one thing right then. She wanted a picture of her mom. And whether Julia was going to give it to her or not, she was going to get it.

One way or another.

She was sitting on a bench toward the north end of the fair’s pond. It’d been man-made so it wasn’t large, and it couldn’t be classified as a lake, but it wasn’t the typical mud-like pond that Dani always thought when she heard that word. No. This body of water was serene, and calm, and there were lights set up all around it. A path circled it with a few benches set up so people could sit and enjoy the view.

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