Homewrecker

10 ~ 𝓯𝓸𝓾𝓷𝓭

Where I was sleeping, it turned out, was actually the floor. More specifically, the floor in the bedroom that Andi and Natalie had shared together for every summer they could remember, two twin-sized mattresses against either side of the lavender painted walls that had been stripped of their sheets, suitcases already piled on top of the exposed padding.

The floor was at least carpeted—and unstained, much unlike the orange one that used to be in our trailer—and Amy brought me a sleeping bag after refusing to let me sleep on another couch, claiming it was bad for my back, neck, my whole body really. I wasn't sure how sleeping on a somewhat stuffed sleeping bag on a bedroom floor was much of an improvement, but Natalie looked excited at the prospect, showing me a couple of long unoccupied spaces on the floor where I could lie down the sleeping bag that still smelled new.

Amy told me that they would get a bunk bed for the room soon, something more comfortable, but I shrugged as I tossed down a pillow still wrapped in the plastic, ten times fluffier than the lumpy one I had back home.

"You don't have to do that," I told her, glancing out of the corner of my eye through the window where Andi was standing outside in the backyard, on the dock beside Taylor-Elise, staring out over the water with her arms crossed over her chest like I had been a few minutes earlier. "It's not worth it for a couple nights."

Amy hesitated for a moment, uncertainty glinting her eyes before she looked away at Natalie, who was in the process of claiming most of the dresser drawers before Andi unloaded all of her clothes into them. "Well, it would still be good to have," she said, "in case you ever wanted to visit."

I nodded, although not because I was really agreeing with her that yeah, sure, order a bunk bed for the summer lake house for whenever I decide to drop by but because I didn't really want to get into it. Because getting into it might mean that she would try to prepare me for what would happen if they couldn't find my mom, or even if they did find her. I didn't need to be prepared for something like that, especially not by someone who pretended like she knew me, like she cared about me all these years with nothing but radio silence on their end. Even if David didn't want anything to do with me until the state legally required him to, that didn't stop her from doing something, writing or calling, anything.

But she hadn't wanted to either, instead deciding to preserve this perfectly assembled family and now that she couldn't, her sense of practiced diplomacy from years spent in front of cameras and media scrutiny had crept in. She was like a gracious host, giving me a tour around the house and the best food from her fridge, all while expecting me to return to my own home before the end of the night.

I spent the rest of the day in the bedroom, on my sleeping bag, going through the apps on my phone over and over again, texting Indie about the lake house and how everything—and everyone—seemed so weird here, but also how it was probably a reaction to me being there, an unwanted half-sister slash illegitimate child.

Natalie eventually left the room after asking if I wanted to go kayaking, paddle boarding, or swimming all probably in the same sentence and I told her that I was tired and sore from the tornado, which wasn't entirely untrue. Andi hadn't been to the room yet, even though David came to the room to depose of her lights and suitcases, looking down at my set-up on the floor before I turned away from him, pretending to type on my phone like I wasn't paying attention to him.

The light coming in through the windows steadily started to dim, the sky turning a soft shade of pink, and I could hear laughter coming in from the kitchen downstairs. David had lit the grill at some point, cooked some sort of meat and eggplant for Kimberly, apparently, who I still hadn't met yet, but I was more than fine with that. She probably was too.