by Antony John
“That’s my girl!”
It only takes a few minutes to get to Kiana’s house. We go inside and take our usual places at the square kitchen table. Detective Richards pulls out a tub of ice cream and begins scooping it into two bowls. My mouth is watering.
“Can you guess the flavor?” he asks.
We each try a spoonful.
“It’s mint,” says Kiana.
“Nutty too,” I add.
“Not bad,” says Detective Richards. He reads the tub. “Toasted macadamia nut with fresh mint and kale.”
“Kale?” we both exclaim.
“That’s what it says.” He shows us the tub. Who knew kale tasted so good?
“Where’s Mom?” Kiana asks. “She loves kale.”
“She went for a run,” her father replies. “How’s your mom feeling, Lola?”
“Better,” I say. “I should be able to move back in with her tonight.”
“That’s great.” He puts another scoop into each of our bowls.
“You’re the best,” Kiana tells him around a mouthful of quickly melting ice cream.
“The best what?”
“The best dad!” exclaims Kiana. “And detective,” she adds quickly.
He shakes his head. “I’m not so sure about that. I’ve got a real tough case at the moment, and I just can’t make sense of it.”
“You should get Kiana to help,” I say. “She’s a natural.”
Kiana holds her spoon out. We clink.
“Well, I guess I could use the help,” he agrees.
Kiana leans in. When it comes to detecting versus ice cream, detecting wins. She’s weird like that.
“So here’s the thing,” he begins. “I got this mysterious delivery, and I don’t know what to make of it.” He takes an envelope from the top of the fridge, pulls up a chair, and joins us at the table. “It’s addressed to a Miss L. Harmon.”
He drops the envelope in the middle of the table. Kiana looks confused. Then she sees the word “AUSTRALIA” in the top left-hand corner, and her eyes get very big.
“You know anything about this?” he asks.
She slides the envelope around and studies it. “I, uh, guess it’s for Lola,” she says. “We’ll open it later.”
He slaps a hand down on top of it. “Not so fast, young lady. I’m going to take a wild guess and say you knew this was coming. And given some of the questions you’ve been asking me recently about locating missing people, I’m also guessing you know exactly who this letter is from.”
Kiana suddenly becomes very interested in her ice cream. I’ve already got a mouthful, but it takes me ages to swallow.
“Actually, I used your address without telling her,” I explain.
Detective Richards isn’t convinced. He knows Kiana’s usually the leader in our harebrained schemes. “And why would you do that?”
“Because if my mom found it, she’d work out who it’s from.”
“And you thought I wouldn’t? Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence in my detective skills!”
“No, no,” I say quickly. “I figured it was usually Mrs. Richards who checked the mail, not you.”
“It wouldn’t matter if we had a trained chinchilla checking the mail. The moment stuff starts showing up for a kid who doesn’t even live here, parental alarm bells start ringing. And before you think you’re in the clear,” he adds, turning to Kiana, “you might want to explain why you received a message this afternoon from an Australian email address. Or did Lola somehow get access to that too without you knowing?”
“You looked at my email?” she exclaims.
“No. You left the browser window open.”
“Oh.” She shifts in her chair. “So what did it say?”
“I don’t know. And neither will you, unless Lola’s mom says so.”
“But Lola wants to know who her dad is!” Kiana sulks.
“That’s between her and her mom.”
“Her mom won’t tell her anything.”
“You mean, her mom won’t tell her everything. There’s a difference. Fact is, Veronica could have a hundred reasons for not telling Lola about this. Knowing the whole truth and nothing but the truth ain’t always so great.”
“You don’t believe that. You’re a detective!”
He stretches the skin around his mouth. “It’s precisely because I’m a detective that I do believe it. Now hurry up and eat. Your ice cream’s melting.”
I’m really not hungry anymore, but I don’t want to be rude so I eat it anyway. So does Kiana.
Detective Richards watches me the whole time. “Lola, you know that Kiana’s mom and me, we love you, right? Love you like you were our own kid.”
He pauses. My mouth is full and I don’t want to be gross, so I nod.
“But I can’t let you have this envelope. Or the email. Not until you’ve spoken to your mom. Understand?”
“Yes sir,” I say, because I do understand. Momma deserves the chance to tell me her side of the story, and I have to be the version of myself who is strong enough to make her. Not the old Lola, but the other, better me.
It’s funny. When I thought about my first day back at home with Momma, I imagined we’d be making breakfast for dinner and putting up Halloween decorations. The conversation we’re about to have is a different sort of nightmare.
Kiana takes my hand and gives it a squeeze like she knows exactly what I’m thinking. “You can do this,” she says.
“I know,” I tell her. And that’s the honest truth.
30
All the Reasons Why
I’m sitting on the exercise bike when Momma gets home. It’s easier to think when I’m pedaling, and I have a lot to think about.
Momma starts crying before she even reaches me. I hop off the bike and turn on the little pumpkin light at the top of the tree. She’s laughing as she wraps me up in a hug.
“I missed you, sweetie.”
“I missed you too, Momma.”
She rocks me back and forth, which she can do because she’s still a lot stronger than me. We stay like that for a nice long time. When she lets go, she waves me inside. “You’ve got to try something,” she says.
I follow her into the kitchen. Momma pulls a mostly empty jug of lemonade from the fridge and pours a glass for me.
“Ms. Archambault gave it to me,” she explains. “Best lemonade I’ve ever tasted.”
I bust out laughing. “I’ll tell Nick you said so.”
“What’s Nick got to do with it?”
“He made it!”
“Oh.” Momma pours herself a glass too. When she takes a sip, her face lights up. “You should invite him around more often.”
There’s a piece of paper on the kitchen table. The handwriting at the top of the page is mine: Reasons I should get to keep Katherine’s swimsuit.
My heart starts beating faster. Other Me is whispering in my ear, telling me not to back down, but—
“It’s a good list,” Momma says, following my eyes.
“Uh, really?”
“Yeah. And I can’t argue with your reasons.”
“But you still hate the swimsuit.”
Momma sighs. “When you were five and asked me for a two-piece, yes, I thought it was a terrible idea. Same when you were seven and eight. But you’re ten now.”
“You mean . . . ?”
“You’re ten,” she says again, like I might’ve missed it the first time. “I didn’t say you could never have a swimsuit like that. I just didn’t want you to grow up all at once.”
“But you took it from me.”
“Because you didn’t ask me first. We’re a team, Lola, but a team only works if we talk.”
I look at the paper again. My handwriting’s pretty neat, which shows how much I cared. A lot neater than in the letter I mailed to my daddy, anyway. I wonder if Detective Richards has told her about that.
I hope not. I’d like for her to hear about it from me.
“Can we go for a
walk on the beach?” I ask.
She has only just sat down on one of the old kitchen chairs. After what she has been through recently, she’d probably like to lie down on the sofa. But she nods. “Sure,” she says. “I’d like that.”
We climb in the car and drive south. We take Sixth Avenue to Ocean Drive and park at one of the public beach access points. There are no other cars around and only moonlight to guide us along the path between the dunes. It reflects off the ocean and glistens like tinsel at the crest of every wave.
We stand still and don’t say anything for a minute or so, just listen to the waves breaking. They sound like the ocean’s heartbeat.
I could stay like this forever, just Momma and me, and the cool sand slipping over and around my sandals, and the gentle ocean breeze, but it’s not why we came. And putting things off isn’t helping.
I begin walking again. The breeze presses against me, but Momma matches me, step for step. “I’ve been doing research,” I say. “About my daddy.”
“Uh-huh. And what did you find out?”
“That he visited us six years ago. He was married. Only, you didn’t know.”
“No,” she says. “I didn’t.”
I feel like I did when I tried Savasana in Ms. A’s yoga class. Like the tension that has been building for weeks is slowly ebbing away, all because we’re sharing the truth. Which makes me realize something.
“Do you mean you didn’t know Daddy was coming,” I ask, “or you didn’t know he was married?”
“Either,” says Momma. “Both.”
Another kernel of truth, but this piece of the puzzle is new. Daddy showing up out of the blue is one thing. Doing it without even saying you’re married to someone else seems . . . cruel.
“The first time I ever met your daddy was just after I got to North Myrtle Beach,” she continues. “He never told me he was working illegally. I didn’t know he’d overstayed his visa. One day, he was driving a friend’s car and got pulled over for a broken taillight. The police ran his license, but that was fake too. The first I knew about it was when he called me from the airport to say he was being deported.”
Momma’s breath catches. Even though it happened a long time ago, I can tell it still hurts.
“When he got back to Australia, he told me he wouldn’t be allowed back to the States for three years.” She wipes away a tear. “He said I should come join him, but he didn’t even have a job, and I couldn’t work out there. Plus, I was pregnant with you. I said I’d get a job with good health insurance, and I’d come over to see him as soon as possible. But it took me six months to save, and by then, it was too late for me to fly. He wasn’t even with me the day you were born.
“He did a good job of calling at first. He’d wave to you through the computer screen, and you’d wave back. I thought we’d be okay. Then he got a new job with long hours. Because of the different time zones, it was hard to talk. Our weekly phone call became a monthly phone call. The emails dried up. Then one day, he wrote to say he was going to visit. And at the very end of the note, he told me he’d met someone. He said he was sorry, but things just weren’t meant to be between us.”
“What did you do?” I ask.
“I told him to stay away.” She breathes in through her teeth with a hissing sound. “You know most of the rest. When he visited, he looked different. Short hair, big beard. Nothing like the man I knew . . . or you knew either. He came inside and told me he wanted you to know your other family—his family. Said he wanted to do right by you. He told me they were staying nearby for a couple weeks so they could see you every day and get to know you before they took you to Australia . . . without me. He said Christmas would be best, because December is summer in Australia. He said I might appreciate the alone time.”
“Is that when you got angry?”
Momma nods. “Looking back, I think he expected me to be impressed that he’d planned everything. Except he never asked me! And that’s when I realized he’d always been this way. He didn’t think twice about lying to get a job at the Wyndcrest. Even worse, he never even told me the truth. How could I let someone like that take away the person I cared about more than anyone in the world?”
Momma stares at the ocean. Her eyes seem to glow in the moonlight. The breeze ruffles her hair, but she doesn’t tuck it behind her ears like usual. She looks beautiful and powerful.
“Ms. Archambault talked to me a lot that evening. She said he’d done a bad thing, but this was about you too and what you might want in the future. So the next day, I went to talk to him. When I got to the hotel, he’d already checked out. I called him, but he was already on the plane back to Australia. For once, he’d actually listened to me!
“At first, I blamed myself. But Ms. Archambault said no way—that if a few angry words could scare him off, he wasn’t serious at all. But after that, I never knew what to tell you about him. I wasn’t sure if you’d understand why I did what I did, or if you’d blame me for sending him away.”
I look straight ahead at the empty beach and the high-rise buildings dotted with light. It must’ve been so hard for Momma to raise me all by herself. And when my daddy finally returned, he let her down all over again. It’s not fair.
Mallory was right. I don’t know my father at all. I thought detective work would bring answers, as if a few pieces of information could make up for a lifetime apart. Maybe I’m just as thoughtless as him.
“Am I like my daddy?” I ask.
Momma wraps her arm across my shoulders and pulls me close. “A little, yeah. He was beautiful and energetic and fun. He wanted people to like him, just like you. But I don’t think you’ll ever turn your back on someone you love.”
“I went behind your back to find out about him,” I remind her. “Sent him a letter. Emailed him too.”
She nods. “Kiana’s father told me. He says your daddy replied too.”
“Have you read what he wrote?”
“No. That’s for you, not me. You deserve to decide what to do with it.”
We stop walking and stare at the ocean. We’re alone, Momma and me. Just the two of us, like it’s always been. But two doesn’t feel like such a small number anymore. It’s easy to hold tight to one other person. Harder when it’s more.
“I have an envelope for you at home,” she says. “There are two letters inside—one from me and one that your father sent me years ago. Mine is the story of everything that happened to us. I’ve never read his letter. I imagine he’s saying he’d like to be a part of your life. And it’s possible he’s a very different person now than he was back then. What you do with the letters is up to you. If you want to contact him, I’ll understand.”
I lean my head against her arm as we retrace our steps to the car. We don’t talk on the drive home, and when we arrive, I head to my bedroom. I don’t know what I want to do. And I guess I don’t have to decide right now, anyway. So I lie on my bed, close my eyes, and imagine that Ms. Archambault’s yoga music is playing all around me.
At first, the loud thoughts in my head fight for attention. But slowly, slowly, they drift away. There’s only this moment in this place. And it’s a good moment in a good place. I feel calm and relaxed here. And more like myself than I have in months.
31
Snowflakes on Halloween
As soon as she sees me at school the next day, Kiana gives me a big hug. “Your mom called my mom last night. Said you talked.”
Talked, yes. But some conversations feel bigger than others.
We walk to our seats at the back of the room. Kiana pulls two envelopes from her bag and places them on the desk in front of me.
“What’s this?” I ask.
“You know what it is. One’s the letter from your dad. And this one”—Kiana taps the second envelope—“is the email. My dad printed it out to give to you.”
“But—”
“It’s okay. Your mom knows. She asked him to give them to you.”
Nick leans over. “You’re no
t going to open those in class, are you?”
Actually, I don’t know what I’m going to do. Our Other Me presentations are today, and I still don’t know what I’m going to say.
What if I did open them? Then I’d have answers. Maybe I’ll find out that my daddy is sorry and wants to know me. Or that I got the wrong address and nobody knows a guy named Robbie Howell. Either way, Other Me might be waiting inside those envelopes.
Ms. Del Rio claps her hands, and we get quiet. She calls out our names and puts the attendance sheet away. She seems to be in a hurry. Or maybe she’s excited. She perches on the front of the desk, which is what she always does when she has something special to share.
“Today’s the day,” she says. “I said we’d be done by the end of October, and today’s Halloween. You probably didn’t know that,” she adds with a wink.
The class gets a little noisy. It’s what happens when candy is on the line. I wonder what costumes everyone’ll be wearing tonight. I wish they’d let us wear them to school.
“Tobias, you’re up first.”
Tobias doesn’t bother using notes. Or maybe he doesn’t have any. He just leaps up and tells us about Other Tobias, daredevil space explorer of the twenty-fourth century and destroyer of green space monsters. It sounds a whole lot like how Krunden neutralizes shmorpels, but I don’t say so. I just clap loudly when Ms. Del Rio cuts him off after three minutes and says, “That’s lovely, Tobias,” in this weird, strangled voice.
Other Kiana boasts about being able to track people down and uncover any secret. I love it, because it’s actually true. But everyone already knows she wants to be a detective, so no one gets too excited for her.
Other Nick is a champion freestyle pool jumper. He doesn’t even need a diving board to pull off 720 backflips. I think I get it: He’s the perfect team player, but he’d like to stand out once in a while. Only, not everyone seems sure what a 720 backflip is. By the time Nick is done explaining multiples of 360-degree rotations, it sounds like we’re having a math lesson.
One by one, the other kids give their presentations. Ms. Del Rio says something nice every time, but I think she’s a little disappointed. She wanted our stories to be fictional and show deep thought. Everyone’s good at the fictional part. But I’m not sure they’ve done much deep thinking.