Chapter 7: The Reckoning of the Sun
I didn’t go home right away.
I stayed until the last ballad faded into the static of the speakers. I danced with Marcus, I ate lukewarm pizza with Sarah, and I laughed until my ribs ached. For the first time in five years, the air didn’t feel heavy with the expectation of a sigh or the scent of lilies. The ghost of my mother didn’t feel like a tragedy in that ballroom; she felt like a bodyguard.
When Marcus dropped me off at 2:00 AM, the Victorian house stood like a dark silhouette against the starless Oregon sky. But one window was glowing—the library.
I walked in, the midnight blue satin swishing against the hardwood one last time. The house smelled of spilled wine and something burnt.
Dad was sitting in his leather wingback chair, a single lamp casting long, skeletal shadows across his face. He was holding a glass of amber liquid, his eyes fixed on a spot on the rug. Upstairs, a muffled, rhythmic thumping suggested Carol was throwing things into a suitcase—or perhaps just throwing things at the wall.
“Jocelyn,” Dad said. He didn’t look up. His voice sounded like it had been dragged over gravel.
“Hi, Dad.”
“I got a call,” he whispered. “From Mrs. Henderson, the head chaperone. She told me what happened. She told me Carol made a scene. That she was… covered in punch? That the whole school was filming her?”
I sat on the ottoman across from him, my heels discarded on the rug. “She wasn’t drunk, Dad. She was just… herself. She came there to make sure no one looked at me. She came there to be the twin, remember?”
Dad finally looked up. His eyes were bloodshot, rimmed with a raw, red exhaustion. For the first time, he didn’t look like a man trying to keep the peace; he looked like a man who had realized the peace was a lie.
“She came home screaming,” he said, his voice trembling. “She called you names I wouldn’t repeat to a stranger, let alone my daughter. She blamed you for the floor being slippery. She blamed you for the bowl being full. She even blamed your mother for ‘cursing’ the dress.”
He put the glass down on the mahogany table with a sharp clack.
“I finally saw it,” he whispered. “The way she looked at you when she thought I wasn’t watching. It wasn’t ‘adjustment,’ Joss. It was a siege. I brought a parasite into our home because I was too cowardly to be alone with our grief.”
“She told me I was ugly, Dad,” I said softly, the words finally coming out after years of being swallowed. “She told me I didn’t have the figure for the dress. She dug through my trash to find the receipt so she could copy me.”
Dad’s face contorted. He stood up, and for a second, he looked like the man who used to carry me on his shoulders—the man who wasn’t made of paper.
“CAROL!” he roared. The house seemed to flinch.
The thumping upstairs stopped instantly. The silence that followed was deafening.
“Pack your things!” Dad yelled, his voice echoing up the curved staircase. “You’re going to your sister’s. Tonight. I’ll have your remaining boxes couriered by Monday.”
“David!” Carol’s voice drifted down, shrill and desperate, stripped of its musical lilt. “You can’t do this! I’m your wife! That brat humiliated me in front of the whole town! She tripped me!”
“You humiliated yourself the moment you put on a teenager’s dress to spite a child!” Dad bellowed back. “And you’ll never call her that again. Get out of my house, Carol. Now.”
