Chapters (46)
- Cover
- Other Titles
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Friday
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- Saturday
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- Sunday
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- Monday
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- EPILOGUE
- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
“Come to Duluth with you?”
“What are you, fucking deaf?”
“Nicki, I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. I’ll pick you up in half an hour.”
“Why doesn’t Finn go with you?”
Laughter erupts from the phone. “Because Finn is a selfish, irresponsible brat who always fucks everything up? Because she doesn’t really give a shit what happens to Mom, let alone to my daughter? Because the thought of spending three hours in a car with her makes me want to drive chopsticks through my eyeballs? I don’t know, you pick a reason.”
“You know none of that’s true, Nick. I mean, except for the chopsticks part, maybe. You don’t give her enough credit, you know. She cares about you.”
Nicki sighs. “I don’t care. I don’t want Finn to come with me, I want you.”
“You can’t get everything you want all the time, Nicki.”
“I never get anything I want,” she says. “That is the great Parker myth. Oh, Nicki always gets what she wants. As if I ever wanted any of this!”
Shawn pictures her standing in the middle of the kitchen at Victor Street, sweeping her arm through the air. This. This house, this family, this life. It’s true, she didn’t choose it. But I did, Shawn wants to tell her. And it’s a pretty fucking good life when you consider the options. “Just ask Finn,” he says. “I promise it will all work out.”
“I hate you,” Nicki says and hangs up.
“I love you, too, Nicki,” Shawn says to the silent phone. When he turns around to face the kitchen again, Katriina is gone. The garbage bag is still sitting in the middle of the floor, a rogue Cheerio lying defiantly next to it. How is it that everything could fall apart all at once?
Shawn pockets his phone and puts his hand on the back of his neck, trying to release some of the tension. If this were a movie, I’d chase after her and win her back, he thinks. But he has no energy left for that, so he starts to make a fresh pot of coffee instead.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Finn wakes up to a pillow being thrown in her face. “Get up!” Nicki screams at her. “Where the fuck is my daughter?” Finn barely has her eyes open when a second pillow slams into her gut. “Where. The. Fuck. Is. London?”
Finn had been dreaming that she was back in her own house. There was nothing more to the dream than that, just Finn, in her house, sitting on her couch, breathing her air. Alone. Now, she struggles to remember where she is, what is going on. She pushes the pillow off her face and sits up. “In her room?”