Page 81 of People Like Us

Now he grinned lazily over my shoulder while my stepmother cooed behind the disposable camera.

“Lola, your dress turned out so nice, honey.” She adjusted the flash attachment with careful fingers. “You look just like one of the Boleyn girls in that movie.”

I stared straight ahead while the camera clicked. Andy’s thumb rubbed absent circles against my jutting hip bone.

My stepmother turned toward my father, who stood near the trailer steps with his arms crossed against the cold. “What was that actress’s name, honey?”

Dad shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Oh, yes you do.” She waved him off. “We just watched it recently. The pretty one. All the men love her. She’s in everything.”

“Scarlett Johansson?” Andy offered, glancing down at me with a teasing squint.

“No, no. The other one.”

Recognition lit his face. “Oh—Natalie Portman.” He laughed softly. “Yeah, you kinda do look like her.”

I smiled automatically because that was what girls were supposed to do when someone compared them to someone pretty, but the compliment settled sour in my stomach anyway. I didn’t want to resemble women men loved collectively, like a public opinion everybody shared.

Movie stars seemed less like people to me and more like polished things trapped behind glass. My father’s church loved women like that in theory—soft spoken, lovely, admired—but only if they stayed untouchable. The second a girl became real enough to want something, people stopped worshiping her and started naming her sins like items on a grocery list.

My corsage itched against my wrist. Baby’s breath and gold ribbon hot glued together framing a magnolia I was sure Andy must’ve picked from the tree at the church.

“Can we go now?” I asked.

My stepmother sighed dramatically. “One more picture.”

Andy leaned close enough for me to smell his cologne beneath the starch of his suit jacket clinging to his shoulders. Pine and citrus. Masculine in the expensive, department-store way his mother preferred. “Smile, Los.”

I did. The flash popped again, bleaching the woods white for half a second. In the brief glare, the trees looked skeletal. Bare branches hidden deeper in the forest reached upward like crooked fingers.

“Perfect,” my stepmother declared.

Andy immediately moved toward the truck, tugging his keys from his pocket. Gravel crunched beneath our shoes. The trailer behind us glowed yellow through the kitchen window, soft and dim and tired-looking, the aluminum siding catching moonlight in dull silver streaks. From inside came the muffled hum of the dishwasher and the distant drone of Christian radio my father always left playing low enough to haunt the walls.

Andy opened the passenger door for me with a dramatic bow. “Your carriage, m’lady.”

I rolled my eyes affectionately and started toward him, but my father’s voice stopped me.

“Lola.” Something in his tone made me pause.

I turned back. His hands were shoved into the pockets of his work jacket. The porch light cast shadows beneath his eyes, emphasizing the exhaustion carved permanently into his face. For a moment he simply studied my features, and it unsettled me more than if he’d started yelling.

“Your dress looks nice,” he said finally.

The words hit strangely. My father noticed plenty of things about me—he noticed skirt lengths and tone of voice and whether I crossed my legs in church—but compliments from him were rare enough to feel ceremonial.

I smiled politely. “Thanks, Dad.”

But when I turned to leave again, his hand brushed gently against my elbow.

“You look just like your mother,” he said quietly.

My father almost never spoke about my mom. In our house her absence existed like a missing tooth you learned not to tongue. There were no photographs of her in the trailer anymore, no stories shared over dinner, no casual references to her favorite songs or foods or odd habits. My stepmother had stepped so carefully into the hollow she left behind that eventually even mentioning my mother’s name felt rude somehow, like bringing up an ex-wife at a wedding.

So hearing about her now—here, of all places—felt like accidentally uncovering a grave.

“She’d be so proud of you,” he added when I didn’t respond.