The trees had only the past few weeks before started to grow back their leaves. That was the main difference. But in the dark, the highway looked the same. As Darcy sped south past the city, she wasn't in the driver's seat, in her car, Eli sitting in the passenger's seat.

She was sitting in the back seat of Henry's SUV. Henry was driving. Lois was in the front seat. They were whispering back and forth on the drive down, the street lamps zipping past them as they took the same route, less than a year earlier.

Darcy had insisted she go with them. He was her brother, she claimed. Henry and Lois didn't have an argument against that. Darcy sat in the back while they sent worried whispers to each other and reassuring smiles back at her. Everything is going to be fine, they said.

"Everything's going to be fine."

Darcy's eyes came back into focus, the rear headlights of the car ten lengths ahead of them fading back into view. Darcy glanced away from the highway for a second. Eli was watching her.

"Everything's going to be fine, Darcy," he repeated.

Darcy could hear the lingering "I promise" he wanted to tack on to the end of that sentence but she knew there were no promises when it came to Gina.

She could be at the Cape house, simply enjoying being back in the place she grew up. Or the house could be burning down to ashes. Darcy's head was running all possible scenarios while also reliving that horrible night ten months ago. It was a miracle she managed to drive at the same time.

They rode in silence. Darcy stared straight ahead. She could feel Eli's eyes every time they moved from the road over to her.

Henry called, confirming that he and Lois had left the dinner. They would meet Darcy down at the Cape. Then silence. Marianne called. She confirmed that her spare key to the Cape house really was gone, she couldn't find it anywhere. She wished Darcy good luck then hung up. She called back three minutes later and confirmed that she was getting into her car now and she would meet them down at the Cape.

And then nothing. It was just Darcy and Eli, sitting silently in her car as they raced toward the unknown.

Halfway through, Darcy's breathing started growing shallow with each passing mile. Her hands gripped the stirring wheel as if for dear life. She focused on her breathing. She ignored the images of burning houses playing on repeat in her head.

"Darcy."

Darcy didn't answer.

"Darcy. It's okay. Everything's going to be okay."

Darcy forced herself to meet Eli's eyes. He nodded. She nodded. She kept trying to breathe deeply. Eli shifted and laid his hand down on the center console, palm up, open, waiting.

Darcy looked at it and then back to the road. It lay there empty for a long moment before Darcy tore one of her hands from the stirring wheel and placed it in Eli's. He squeezed her hand once, then twice, the pressure reassuring.

It was not lost on Darcy's muddled and panicking brain that it wasn't her brother that was currently in trouble that night. It was Eli's. That Eli's main worry in that moment wasn't his younger brother doing who knew what. His main worry was Darcy, his focus on her. Darcy had already lived through this nightmare. Eli's own version was unfolding before them. And yet, she was his priority.

Darcy could see the house from down the road. Her worst-case scenarios were becoming reality as a glow lit up the night sky half a mile away. None of their neighbors were down on the Cape yet. The season hadn't begun. The Bingley house was the only one currently occupied. And Darcy could only pray that the glow and the noise greeting them as they rolled down the quiet street was coming from the lights of the house and not from flickering flames.

Darcy had one second to breathe a sigh of relief as she pulled the car into the driveway because she was climbing out and slamming the car door behind her as soon as the car came to a complete stop.

It was impossible to hear Eli's car door slam after hers. The wall of sound that greeted them drowned out any competition.

The glow was from the house lights. Every single room was lit up inside and the wall of windows exposing the living room was a beacon out into the night. Darcy rushed for the front door, passing Gina's car.

She recognized the car. She had grown up in that car. It had been Henry's car for years, the one he used to commute into the city. He had upgraded to an SUV when Darcy was fifteen. He had gifted his old car to Marianne to give as a present for Gina's sixteenth birthday.

The car was another reminder of the Bingley's generosity that Gina had chewed up and swallowed without some much as a thank you.

The music only grew louder as Darcy came to a halt just inside the front hall. Eli almost crashed into her with how quickly she stopped once inside.

A few steps down led to the neat pristine living room Darcy had spent her childhood running around, reading in the deep white cushions of the couch, enjoying the view of the sliding glass doors that led out to the deck and then the ocean beyond.

What Darcy found was a disaster. The couches were overturned, the glass coffee table had been shattered, the insides of the cushions were still raining down from where they had been flung. The place had been torn apart. Darcy didn't need to check to know that the rest of the house would look the same.

She moved to the wall and pushed opened a secret panel that controlled the in-house speaker system and cut the music just as a war cry came running from the kitchen.

Kit entered the living room at breakneck speed, screaming to compete with the music that was no longer playing, two bottles of very expensive wine held high over his head. He froze when he found Darcy and Eli waiting for him.

But Darcy wasn't looking at Eli. Her eyes were trained on the figure leaning against the railing of the deck, past the opened glass doors, taking in the soft sound of the waves greeting the shore only a few yards below her.

At the lack of sound, Gina turned from the view. She met Darcy's eyes and smirked. She took her time reentering the house. She moved as if she owned the place as if the havoc wrecked around her was a decorating choice and she was proud of her eye for design.

"Darcy. So glad you could join us."

Her words had lost all attempts at friendliness. They were cold and bitter and mean, matching her hard smile.

"Eli, take my keys and get Kit home. Call the cops on your way out."

"Darcy, I can't just-"

"Just do it."

There was something in Darcy's voice that told Eli not to fight this one. She held out her keys and he reluctantly took them. She wasn't willing to have her drama, her issues, in any way harm Eli's family, their reputation. Kit was an idiot and Darcy had a feeling Mrs. Bennett would do something about that. But Darcy couldn't stand the thought of Gina's actions harming Eli.

"Kit, we're leaving."

"What? But I-"

"Now!"

Kit's shoulders sunk. He set the two bottles of wine on the floor and slunk off after Eli. Eli paused at the door. Darcy spared him one glance before nodding and turning back to face Gina. Darcy's shoulders straightened at the sound of the door clicking shut. She was alone with Gina, but she wouldn't be for long. Her family was coming. The cops were too.

"Of course you'd show up. Because that's what you do, right? Spoil everyone's fun?"

Gina laughed a nasty laugh. Her pace remained slow, calm, as she wound her way through the debris of her tantrum. She casually grabbed one of the bottles of wine and held it as if inspecting it.

"You're no fun, Darcy. You never were. It's not enough that you have to ruin your own life, no. Of course, it isn't. You have to go and ruin everyone else's, too."

Darcy saw the change in Gina's eyes right before she raised her hand and threw the bottle of wine as hard as she could against the floor. Her eyes turned dark, menacing. She watched Darcy as the bottle hit the ground, as the dark red wine poured out and sprayed everywhere, staining the multitude of white surfaces around them, even getting on Darcy's shoes.

But Darcy didn't flinch. She refused to. She was done cowering under Gina's wrath.

"I didn't ruin your life, Gina. You've done a bang-up job of it yourself. You never needed my help."

"YOU ruined ME! You and your stupid little family! You took everything from me! Everything!"

Gina's screams reverberated off the walls as she hurled them at Darcy.

"You took everything from yourself, Gina. You're the one who got your mom fired. You're the one who ruined our friendship."

Darcy forced her words to come out even. Gina was erratic enough for the two of them. She started laughing at Darcy's words, the sound sour and harsh.

"Friendship? What friendship? I wasn't your friend. I was NEVER your friend. Don't you get it? I HAD to be your friend. I knew the Bingleys would NEVER lift a finger to help me unless I sucked up to their helpless, friendless orphan."

Darcy swallowed hard. Her mind was reeling but somewhere in her gut, she knew everything Gina was saying was finally the truth.

"I didn't have to bother with Charlie. That girl could make friends with a rock. Carson's too self-obsessed to care about anyone other than himself. And George has his music."

Gina sneered at her last words as if the mention of the person she had pretended to care about all last summer made her sick to her stomach. Darcy's fingers clenched into a fist without her knowledge.

"So that left you. The Bingleys' own poor little orphan Annie. With no one to love, and no one to love her back. They bought my little act hook, line, and sinker! I mean, of course, little Darcy's only friend has to go to private school with her. How else would she make friends? Goodness knows she can't on her own!"

Each word, each sentence was a bullet that would have wounded Darcy to the core if she had heard them a year ago. But they bounced off her now, each one falling to the ground, useless. Gina's snarl grew with each insult she sent that didn't affect Darcy. She grew closer, and closer, the second bottle of wine in her hand.

"You took EVERYTHING FROM ME!!!" Gina screamed, throwing the second bottle of wine hard down onto the tile.

"No, Gina. I didn't. You did."

The sweet sound of sirens racing down the street met Darcy's ears and she smiled. Gina's expression dropped. So did her shoulders and her sneer.

"It's over, Gina."

The cops came bursting in, racing past Darcy to the girl who stood with wild eyes and a mess behind her. Gina's glare still shone, her hatred trying to burn a hole through Darcy's forehead as she was forced to her knees, her hands pinned behind her back, her Miranda rights read out to her.

Henry and Lois showed up soon after the police did. Marianne arrived fifteen minutes later. Darcy had to take a seat on the bottom of the staircase that led up to the second floor, all the fight gone out of her.

She watched as officers interviewed Gina, her responses coming out short and clipped. Marianne did her best to be helpful. She even placed a reassuring hand on Gina's shoulder. Gina shrugged it off with all the force she could muster with her hands cuffed behind her back. Marianne waited a beat and then placed the hand back on Gina's shoulder, tighter this time.

Henry and Lois stood in front of Darcy, standing guard. Down in the family room, a photographer was capturing stills of what was officially a crime scene.

Darcy told her story to one of the two officers who had arrived first on the scene. She then told it to another officer of a higher rank. And then told it a third time to the police chief, when he finally arrived after being called in from home.

Henry and Lois ended the interviews when the clock was about to chime one in the morning. They had to remind the police chief that Darcy was a student and still had school in the morning, not to mention a two-hour drive home.

There were promises of answering calls and returning to town to assist in the investigation and persecution of Gina's crimes. The police chief knew Marianne and knew of her connection with the family and so asked the Bingleys twice whether or not they wanted to press charges.

The first time he asked, Henry and Lois looked to Darcy, who nodded without a second thought. The second time he asked, Henry and Lois were adamant in their decision.

Gina was placed in the back of a police car and taken to the station. Marianne followed. Darcy watched them leave from the front door, Henry and Lois standing on either side of her.

"Time to go home, sweetie."

Darcy let Lois lead her to the car. She was barely aware of climbing into the back seat, of the car pulling out of the driveway, of reaching the highway, and heading home.

Her chest loosened with each passing mile they put between themselves and the scene they had just left. Darcy felt like she could truly breathe for the first time in almost a year.

As she watched the street lights fly by, her heart swelled with love and admiration for the two people she got to call parents, sitting in the front seat.

Her brain told her it was the worst possible time to finally tell them about her plans for college but her heart knew the right moment had finally arrived. She phased it as a possibility, out of respect for everything her parents had gone through to raise her, take care of her, provide for her.

In her heart, it was a done deal, a decision she had already made. But she wasn't in this alone. She knew that now. She had other people's feelings to consider.

And so, speaking out into the night, breaking the silence that had hung in the car since they had pulled away from the house, Darcy finally told her parents the secret hope she had been harboring inside her chest for the last year.

"I don't want to go to college next year. I want to work at the gallery full time. I want the chance to travel with my dad." Darcy took a breath before finishing. "I want to finish the work my mother started."

Darcy could hear Henry and Lois hold their breath, then release them slowly, in unison.

"That's certainly an idea worth considering," Lois finally replied, after a long and tense pause.

"Let's discuss it this weekend. Just the three of us," Henry said.

Darcy smiled as the car sped homeward.

A/N:

AGAIN with the roller coaster of emotions!!!!

How are we doing? Are you guys okay? What are we thinking?

I don't even know what to say this chapter just took it out of me! I feel like I'm out of breath!

Well, here's your meme.