[COMPLETE]
When Hanna Haddad embarks on what's supposed to be another uneventful summer as a lifeguard on Cape Cod, a trip to the past comes as an unnerving surprise. The discovery of her estranged mother's journal opens up the world of tragedy and...
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The Cape held so many loose ends in my life, I was surprised it hadn't fallen apart already.
I left my mother and Ben to enjoy the last of their reunion, while I ran away from my breakup. Technically, the only thing I was running was the engine of my car, cruising at a liberating seventy-miles-an-hour along ocean-lined backroads.
I relaxed my foot on the gas pedal when that accident flashed before my eyes again. Seeing a bloody and broken body in the middle of the street, I slammed the brake and screeched to a halt. When I blinked, I realized he was just a college-aged man, now at the other end of the crosswalk.
"Fuck," I breathed, squeezing the wood of the steering wheel. "Fuck, fuck, fuck."
How much trauma can one brain take?
I began driving again, at a cautious forty-miles-an-hour.
And why am I ready to add more?
I rolled down my windows and let the breeze tousle my hair and my thoughts with it, unsure where I was driving anymore, only that muscle memory would take me where I needed to go. The familiarity of every bend and curve in the road suffocated me, acquainting me with a new type of poison: that of nostalgia.
At least if I came close to death, this house had already seen it before.
Blowing out a shallow breath, I crept up the road of my neighborhood, counting down the plots of land until I reached my own. On the second-to-last one, I rolled to a stop and took in the differences from last summer. There were a couple new flowers planted near the base of the mailbox, a sign bearing the name of the company that had paved a new layer of asphalt on the driveway, and when I squinted, I could swear the shutters were a different shade of gray.
The biggest change of all was parked in the middle of the driveway—a shining black BMW. Mind swirling, I ripped my gaze away and slowly drove up to my house.
Maybe that's his dad's car, I tried to convince myself, remembering it was a holiday weekend. It was about time Marc put his house to use, anyway.
But maybe the car was Colin's, replacing the hunk of twisted metal that had once haunted me at night.
Steeling myself, I slid out of the front seat and stepped onto the overgrown grass, feeling the blades tickle my ankles. I kept walking until I landed in the middle of the front yard, eyes trained on the front door, the last place I'd seen my father's body alive.
There was a reason I hadn't stepped foot inside this house since I'd vacated my room after the funeral, only driving by with wistful glances. At least my parents had kept the same joint ownership agreement even after the divorce. The right of survivorship had given my mother full control over the property, but I didn't know how often she visited, supposing it was often enough to keep the dust off the furniture, the pipes intact, and the flowers blooming in the spring.
