lying about their father. Esme accused her of having sex with strangers—she’d never forget it.
The box probably contained some proof. If Herc Huckley’s son knew about The Amateur Assassins Club, what else did he know?
She sat up and planted her shoes squarely on the floor.
Ingmar had given up on his nose-whining and was likely dozing. The house was completely quiet.
She stared at the closet.
This was what had come to her. This was what had bobbed to the surface of the storm—
for her.
This was what she could no longer ignore.
She walked to the closet door and put her hand on the knob.
She would open the box, spread its contents on her bedspread, and allow what was to come.
Liv knew that Ru would know where to find her, if not consciously then instinctively. Liv had picked Ru up at this airport twenty years earlier—when Ru was sixteen and had disappeared for twenty-one days. Just like last time, Liv parked her mother’s wood-paneled Wagoneer in a handicap spot in the short-term lot and smoked a cigarette out the open window.
Liv was nervous because she was always nervous. She missed the quiet routine of the spa-like rehab center—the persistent smell of tea tree oil, the quiet watercolor painting lessons, the soothing blink of the EMDR lights, and the long, winding conversations about her childhood—the one she invented bit by bit, loosely based on her own past. Ru wasn’t the family’s only storyteller! Liv didn’t tell her therapists her main secret, that she was lucky—weirdly, perversely, and oddly lucky. Yes, she worked for things here and there, but overall the world extended offers she couldn’t explain, and she took them. She simply had learned to accept it.
Frankly, she didn’t trust therapists, and she’d hated the rehab center’s trust-based activities—trusting addicts is counterintuitive. She didn’t really fully trust anyone, and certainly not herself.
She was taking an antidepressant, and the occasional Xanax for spikes of anxiety. She’d scored a few Valiums—her favorite antiques, as she called them—from a friend whom she visited briefly after rehab for the express purpose of possibly scoring her favorite antiques. She took a Xanax now—not wanting to waste a Valium—and lit another cigarette. She was well aware that Ru had taken her place as the youngest in the family, the baby, and hadn’t even had the courtesy to be the opposite gender, which would have allowed Liv to be the baby
daughter,
if not the actual baby. On top of that thievery, Ru had also been a bit of a genius though airheaded and impractical in that way geniuses are allowed to be. It was Liv’s lifelong job to take Ru down a few pegs, to keep her humble, to make sure that she had firm footing in the real world.
It was exhausting and didn’t make Liv feel like a good person, deep down. But that was her role and so she stuck with it. Changing roles at this stage would only disrupt all of the familial patterns, causing great upset to everyone involved, and wouldn’t actually last. The old roles were like ruts in a well-traveled dirt road. Eventually they would be drawn back to them.
With the motor running and the air-conditioning on full blast, Liv put out her cigarette and thought of her mother’s house, her childhood home. Did she secretly wish it had been washed away by the hurricane? She wasn’t able to decide. She knew it was time to go back, but mainly because she had nowhere else to go.
The end of her stint at the Caledonia had been a bad scene. It was the real estate agent who did the dirty work. The agent, middle-aged with a recent face-lift, was terrified that Liv would attack her so she called the cops. Liv had only left the apartment once in sixteen days—to eat her favorite meal at her favorite restaurant—but mainly during this stretch of time she’d remained drunk and high, plotting cherry-picked marriages on the walls in Sharpie. (One of the cops was a single woman and had actually
The box probably contained some proof. If Herc Huckley’s son knew about The Amateur Assassins Club, what else did he know?
She sat up and planted her shoes squarely on the floor.
Ingmar had given up on his nose-whining and was likely dozing. The house was completely quiet.
She stared at the closet.
This was what had come to her. This was what had bobbed to the surface of the storm—
for her.
This was what she could no longer ignore.
She walked to the closet door and put her hand on the knob.
She would open the box, spread its contents on her bedspread, and allow what was to come.
Liv knew that Ru would know where to find her, if not consciously then instinctively. Liv had picked Ru up at this airport twenty years earlier—when Ru was sixteen and had disappeared for twenty-one days. Just like last time, Liv parked her mother’s wood-paneled Wagoneer in a handicap spot in the short-term lot and smoked a cigarette out the open window.
Liv was nervous because she was always nervous. She missed the quiet routine of the spa-like rehab center—the persistent smell of tea tree oil, the quiet watercolor painting lessons, the soothing blink of the EMDR lights, and the long, winding conversations about her childhood—the one she invented bit by bit, loosely based on her own past. Ru wasn’t the family’s only storyteller! Liv didn’t tell her therapists her main secret, that she was lucky—weirdly, perversely, and oddly lucky. Yes, she worked for things here and there, but overall the world extended offers she couldn’t explain, and she took them. She simply had learned to accept it.
Frankly, she didn’t trust therapists, and she’d hated the rehab center’s trust-based activities—trusting addicts is counterintuitive. She didn’t really fully trust anyone, and certainly not herself.
She was taking an antidepressant, and the occasional Xanax for spikes of anxiety. She’d scored a few Valiums—her favorite antiques, as she called them—from a friend whom she visited briefly after rehab for the express purpose of possibly scoring her favorite antiques. She took a Xanax now—not wanting to waste a Valium—and lit another cigarette. She was well aware that Ru had taken her place as the youngest in the family, the baby, and hadn’t even had the courtesy to be the opposite gender, which would have allowed Liv to be the baby
daughter,
if not the actual baby. On top of that thievery, Ru had also been a bit of a genius though airheaded and impractical in that way geniuses are allowed to be. It was Liv’s lifelong job to take Ru down a few pegs, to keep her humble, to make sure that she had firm footing in the real world.
It was exhausting and didn’t make Liv feel like a good person, deep down. But that was her role and so she stuck with it. Changing roles at this stage would only disrupt all of the familial patterns, causing great upset to everyone involved, and wouldn’t actually last. The old roles were like ruts in a well-traveled dirt road. Eventually they would be drawn back to them.
With the motor running and the air-conditioning on full blast, Liv put out her cigarette and thought of her mother’s house, her childhood home. Did she secretly wish it had been washed away by the hurricane? She wasn’t able to decide. She knew it was time to go back, but mainly because she had nowhere else to go.
The end of her stint at the Caledonia had been a bad scene. It was the real estate agent who did the dirty work. The agent, middle-aged with a recent face-lift, was terrified that Liv would attack her so she called the cops. Liv had only left the apartment once in sixteen days—to eat her favorite meal at her favorite restaurant—but mainly during this stretch of time she’d remained drunk and high, plotting cherry-picked marriages on the walls in Sharpie. (One of the cops was a single woman and had actually
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