“You hate it,” she said accusingly. “You made me come here and now you hate it!” Summer wanted a fight; sometimes it was the only way to draw the truth out of her mother.

“I never said that.” Lorraine was digging around in her purse, murmuring something to herself that Summer couldn’t hear.

“I want to stay.” She almost stomped her foot but thought better of it.

Her mother’s head snapped up.

“Why, because they gave you cake and a basket of T-shirts?” Lorraine slapped her forehead once, twice, and then she got up and strode across the small room. She opened the door, looked out and closed it again.

“Well, you’re going to get your wish for a little while yet, Summer.” Her voice wasn’t nice. Summer didn’t like it.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Lorraine dropped her voice. “Look, we don’t have another option right now, so we have to stay...but not for long, okay? Just to get on our feet.” She was talking to herself now, pacing the small space between the beds. Summer sat down cross-legged on her own bed to listen and to get out of her way.

“Why don’t you like it?”

Her mama stopped abruptly and looked at Summer like she had a thousand things to say. Summer braced herself for a lecture, but instead she got only a handful of words.

“This place isn’t right. He’s different than I remember. I don’t trust anyone here and you aren’t to, either, do you hear me?”

Summer nodded, her eyebrows lifting on their own. “But they paid all of your credit cards. I thought you said—”

“We’re going to be foreigners in their land—do you know what that means?”

“Um, no,” Summer said.

“We live here, we eat their food, we heal up and wait, but we are not to think like them. Their ways are not our ways.”

Summer smiled. She only cared about the food, anyway.

“How long can we stay?”

“I don’t know yet. I’m trying to decide if I should call your grandparents.”

“You hate them. You said living with them was a nightmare,” Summer reminded her. It wasn’t fair! Her mother couldn’t just drag her around the country, could she? She had to go to school and have stability. Her mother used to yell that at her dad when they fought. “Summer needs stability!” And she was about to bring that up when her mother said something that made her shut her trap.

“Some nightmares are worse than others.”

6

Now

She didn’t want to lie to him when she was already omitting most of her truths, so when Grant brought up the girls’ trip again while they were having dinner in Seattle, she took a large sip of her water and buckled down for a squall.