by Trish Doller
“I’m not.”
The smile slips from her lips. “Callie—”
“It’s true, Mom. Sometimes when you were asleep or at work, he would come to my room—”
“No.” She shakes her head and I hear Frank whisper I told you so. “That can’t be right.”
“He would take off my nightgown.” My voice is shaking. My hands are shaking. I close my eyes and think of Alex, pacing angrily at the side of the highway as I told him this truth. It gives me the courage I need to keep talking. Tears stream down my cheeks and curl under the edge of my chin, trickling down my neck. “You remember the one with Hello Kitty on the front? And he would put his fingers—”
“Callie, stop it!” She clamps her hands over her ears, as if silencing me will block out the truth. Frank is laughing his phlegmy laugh. I told you so.
I wipe my face on the bottom of my T-shirt. “You know what? You’re never going to change. You’ll spend the rest of your life running away from reality and making one bad decision after another. Believe me or don’t, but Frank hurt me, Mom, in a way no little girl should ever be hurt. And you let him.”
“I didn’t know.” Her eyes are glazed with tears, her voice husky with remorse. “Callie, you have to believe me. I didn’t know.”
“Yeah, but you should have.”
I look over at the primer-freckled Porsche where Ariel is waiting and watching. Even from a distance I can see the concern on her face. For me. Someone she barely knows. This is what good people do for each other. Unless she gets help, my mother will never be that kind of good.
“We won’t go to Oregon.” There’s desperation in the way she clutches at my hands. As if a change in destination will solve everything. “You can pick the place this time.”
“I love you, Mom.” I give her hands a gentle squeeze and then I let go. “But I’m going home.”
I don’t look back as I walk to Ariel’s car because I’m afraid if I do, the guilt will send me running back to my mother. Or, worse, I’ll turn around and she’ll already be gone. I don’t look back because if I never see her again, I want to remember her with tears in her eyes. Feeling something for me.
Sadness spreads inside me, organ to organ, cell to cell, until it feels as if I’m made of pain. It hurts to think. It hurts to breathe. Ariel asks only where I want her to take me and even giving her Greg’s address—my address—is painful. But I don’t cry anymore. I’m finished.
The driveway is still empty when she drops me off, and at first I wonder why Greg and Phoebe have been away so long, but then I realize I’ve only been gone a little more than an hour. Not long enough for anyone to notice I was missing. Not long enough to even be missing.
Ariel lifts my baggage from the truck. “Are you going to be okay?”
“I don’t know.” I was so certain I’d be leaving Tarpon Springs today that I have no backup plan. “I’d have been lost without you today. Thank you.”
“No problem.” She gets in the Porsche and rolls down the window. “Hey, have you thought anymore about the job?”
Only now do I realize that I walked away from the gift shop in the middle of my shift. Even though I’m pretty sure Theo secretly wants to fire me, he’ll probably take me back if I show up for work tomorrow morning. I think it’s time to let us both off the hook. “I’ll take it.”
“Yes!” Ariel’s grin is huge as she reaches up for a high five. “Stop by after the holidays and I’ll teach you everything you need to know about selling books, okay?”
When she’s gone, I return everything to where it belongs—Phoebe’s suitcase included—until there’s no evidence that I ever left, and get in my bed. A second later, I nearly jump out of my skin when the screen door slams.
“Oh, thank God.” Kat is standing beside me. The grit in my eyes and the alarm clock on the dresser behind her tell me I’ve been in bed longer than a second. She crawls in beside me. “I’ve texted you eleven billion times and you didn’t answer. I’ve been crazy worried.”
“I’m sorry. I just—there was something I needed to do.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not really.” Right away I feel bad because I know Kat wants me to be the kind of friend who confides in her. “I mean, I do, but right now it’s too hard. Give me some time?”
She rests her head on my shoulder, her hair tickling my nose. “Sure.”
“You’re a space invader, you know that?” There’s no unkindness when I say it. Kat might not be the person I imagined having as my best friend, but now I can’t imagine anyone else.
“Does it bother you?” she asks.
“Not at all.”
We lie quietly for a minute or two, the afternoon sun sending a shaft of gold across the comforter, making it sparkle. I find my thoughts drifting to Alex. Wondering what he’s doing right now.
“Stop thinking about him.” Kat breaks the silence.
“I’m not.”
“Liar.” She props herself up on her elbows. “It’s classic breakup behavior to think about him, but Callie, he’s an idiot. I mean, he’s pissed off because you made him do something he didn’t want to do? So what?”
“Isn’t he an idiot for not liking you back?”
“Please.” She rolls her eyes. “I’ve always known it was just a stupid crush, but you—you mean something to him. And if he can’t get over this, then he doesn’t deserve you.”
“I’ve never thought of myself like that.”
“What? Someone to be deserved? Of course you are,” Kat says. “And any guy who can’t see that is an idiot.”
“Hey, Kat?”
“Yeah?”
“Would you hate me if I quit the shop to go work at the bookstore downtown?”
“Can I still come over and invade your space?”
I nod. “Absolutely.”
A devious smile dimples her face. “Do I get a discount on books?”
I laugh. “I don’t know. Maybe?”
“Good enough.”
There’s a knock on the door. “Callie, may I come in?”
It’s Phoebe.
“Sure.”
Kat stands and hauls me into a hug. “I’m going to take off, but I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Nope.” She laughs as she passes Phoebe in the doorway. “You’re stuck with me now.”
My stepmother and I share an awkward pause until she clears her throat. “So, um—I stopped by my parents’ house this evening to check in on Mom and found her sitting at the kitchen table with my brother.”
I look at the floor. I want Alex to make peace with his family, but hearing about it feels like salt in the wound.
“She was—” Phoebe’s voice cracks. “He’d been there most of the day, and she was just so happy.” She wipes a tear away with the back of her hand. “Thank you.”
“I really didn’t do anything,” I say. “I just had a stupid idea. Yiayoúla did all the work and I chickened out at the last minute.”
“For the first time in years, our family feels whole again,” she says. “Georgia didn’t make it happen, Callie. You did. I’d call that a miracle.”
A miracle?
Saint Michael Taxiarchis must have misunderstood.
This was not the miracle I wanted.
Chapter 22
On Christmas Eve, the house looks as if it was torn from the pages of a decorating magazine, with fresh wreaths on every window and a Christmas tree that stretches toward the high living-room ceiling. There’s no indication of the sweat we put into getting everything moved. Everything decorated. There’s no evidence that the only words that Greg and I have had time to say to each other were things like: Grab an end? Or, have you seen the screwdriver? We haven’t said anything meaningful. We haven’t apologized.
The house fills quickly as Greg’s brothers arrive with their wives, then Yiayoúla with a towel-wrapped casserole dish of cranberry-apple stuffing, and finally the Kosta famil
y.
Kat declared my cream-colored Christmas dress to be “smoking hot” when she helped me pick it out, but there’s little consolation in that when Alex comes in the front door with his tanned face shaved clean and his tattoo peeking out from the pale-blue cuff of his shirt. He is beautiful and there’s nothing Kat could have done to prepare me for it. He hands Phoebe a bottle of wine and Greg takes a shopping bag filled with gifts, nestling it among the mounds of brightly wrapped presents surrounding the Christmas tree.
“Merry Christmas.” Alex’s voice is low as he greets me, but there’s no trace of his usual warmth. We are strangers, even though my body wants to lean into him. By the time I say “Merry Christmas” back, he’s walking away.
I retreat to the kitchen to pour a glass of sparkling cider, but the kitchen is part of the great room, so there’s nowhere to hide. My grandma comes up alongside me and ruffles one of the tiers on the hem of my dress. “You look like the Christmas angel,” she says.
I hand her my glass and pour a second. “Maybe they should build me a shrine.”
“Save feeling sorry for yourself for some other day,” Yiayoúla scolds. “He’s been living at home ever since we took Evgenia on the tour. Look at them, Callista. Really look. She is finally at peace.”
I watch Alex laughing as his mother writes something on her whiteboard and I can almost see the love between them, gold and shimmering, and I know she needs him more than I do.
Greg taps his glass with the edge of a knife, calling for everyone to take their places at the table. There are cards lettered with all our names. My seat is beside Alex. The soft fabric of his shirt brushes my bare arm, and a shiver runs down my spine. We don’t speak to each other at all during dinner, and afterward he goes outside to the deck with the men, while the women clear the table and do the dishes. Tucker is underfoot, asking over and over when we’re going to open presents, and in the post-dinner chaos, we almost miss the doorbell.
“Callie, will you get that, please?” Phoebe asks.
I open the front door, and Kat barges through with two shopping bags like the ones Alex brought in earlier.
“I come bearing gifts,” she announces. “Phoebe, this bag is from our family to yours. It’s cookies and all kinds of other Christmas treats. And, Callie hid all her presents at my house so none of you would peek, and then forgot to bring them home.”
She hands me the second bag, then pulls me up the steps to my bedroom, our heels tapping on the wooden risers.
“Oh my God, Callie, this dress looks even more amazing tonight than it did at the store,” she says. “Alex is probably outside right now plotting a way to get you under the mistletoe.”
“Why did you do all this?”
“I told you,” she says. “I love Christmas. And I hated the idea of you sitting here feeling bad that you didn’t have any presents to give. Besides, someday I’m going to need you and you’re going to come through for me in a big way. Because that’s what friends do, right?” But before I can answer, Kat just keeps talking. “Oh, I almost forgot.” She rummages through the shopping bag and produces a tiny Christmas-colored envelope. “This is for you.”
Inside is an evil eye bead knotted on a black cord, just like the one she’s wearing.
“I can’t guarantee it will keep away evil,” she says, as she loops it around my wrist and tightens the knots until it’s a perfect fit. “But maybe it will remind you that you’re not alone. You have me. You have Greg. You have this whole big, crazy, annoying Greek family and we all love you.”
This time it’s me who hugs her. “You’re the best.”
“And I will never let you forget it.” She looks at her watch. “But now, I gotta jet. My mom’s waiting and she’ll kill me if I linger too long.”
“Merry Christmas, Kat.”
She kisses my cheek, then wipes the gloss off my face with her thumb. “You, too, Callie. Love you.”
Her heels clomp on the stairs and she calls out “Merry Christmas!” as she dashes out the door. From the office dormer I watch as she runs down the walk to her mom’s car. After they’ve driven off, I find my phone and send her a text.
Love you, too.
The Christmas Eve presents are unwrapped and Tucker is thrashing around in the discarded papers as if they’re autumn leaves—his new toys already forgotten—when Phoebe suggests pie. In the dessert rush that follows, I go upstairs and trade my Christmas dress for a pair of jeans and the red cashmere sweater that Yiayoúla gave me as a gift. No one notices when I slip out the front door.
Outside the air is crisp, the night silent, and only one car passes me in the time it takes me to ride my bike to Ada Street. I can’t help wondering where my mother is tonight. Did she leave Tarpon Springs? Is she safe? I imagine her out West somewhere, maybe in the desert where the Christmas lights are real, scattered across the night sky, and I imagine her missing me as much as I miss her.
The old house looks sad in its emptiness as I prop the bike against the porch. Old Mrs. Kennedy next door spies me through her kitchen window and waves as I pass, and somewhere in the neighborhood someone is listening to “O Holy Night.” The sound is thin, diluted by distance, but it walks with me as I cross the yard to the Airstream.
The first thing I see when I open the trailer door is the worn-away velveteen of my mother’s black ballerina flats, and my brain just cannot process this because they’re on her feet. And she’s lying on the floor.
“Mom?”
I rush inside and switch on the overhead light. Her skin is waxy white and as I drop to my knees beside her, I notice that the edges of her lips are tinged blue and she’s barely breathing.
“Mom!” This time I shout, but she doesn’t respond. She doesn’t move. “Oh, God. Mom. What did you do?” I give her shoulders a violent shake, but she remains limp and she won’t wake up. Hysteria bubbles up from my chest and out of my mouth as I shake her again and scream. “What did you do?”
My hands are trembling so badly it takes me two attempts to get to the keypad screen on my phone.
“Why would you do this?” I talk to my mom as if she was conscious, as if she can hear me. “If I call for an ambulance, everyone will know where you are. You’ll go to jail. But if I don’t—” I look at her again and this time she doesn’t appear to be breathing at all. “No. You can’t do this to me. No, no, no, no …” I say the words over and over as I dial 911.
The female voice on the other end of the line is calm as she asks about my emergency, but I am running on pure panic.
“It’s my mom. She’s unconscious and I can’t tell if she’s breathing.” The words fall as fast as my tears. “I don’t know CPR and her lips are blue and—please help me. I don’t want her to die.”
“Calm down, sweetie. Can you tell me where you are?”
I give her the address and explain that we’re in an Airstream behind the house.
“Is your mother taking any medications?” she asks.
“I don’t think—” I look around. Beneath the table is a crumpled plastic bag containing a single green tablet. I crawl under and grab the bag. “I found a pill.”
“Can you describe it?”
“It’s green,” I tell her. “With an 80 on one side and the letters OC on the other.”
“Do you have any idea how long she’s been unconscious?”
“I don’t know. I just found her.”
“An ambulance will be there shortly,” the dispatcher says. “Is there someone nearby who can wait with you?”
My mind goes immediately to Greg. “Yes.”
As always, he answers on the first ring.
“Dad?”
“Callie, what’s wrong? Where are you?”
“At the Airstream,” I say. “Mom is here and she’s not—I need you.”
“I’ll be right there.”
I sit down on the floor and lift my mother’s head onto my thigh. Her skin is damp and cold, and her hair feels coarse under my hand as I stroke her head. �
�I’m here, Mom.” Tears and snot mix on my face and I wipe the mess on the sleeve of my sweater. “I’m so sorry I left you, but I’m here now and I’m not going to leave you again. We can go to Oregon, if that will make you happy. I promise. Just stay with me, Mom. Don’t go.”
The ambulance arrives first, and the world grows fuzzy around the edges as the trailer fills with people using medical terms I can’t understand. They feel my mom’s neck for a pulse and speak in numbers. They pull back her eyelids to shine a light into her vacant eyes, and their voices are replaced by the hum of bees in my ears. One of the paramedics says something to me, but the buzzing is too loud and all I can do is blink in reply. They take Mom away from me, lifting her onto a gurney and sliding a needle into her vein that attaches her to a bag of clear fluid. And then they leave. I scramble to my feet to go after them as Greg comes into the Airstream and catches me up in his arms.
“I have to go with her.” Even my own words sound as if they’ve been dredged through maple syrup, and I’m shivering. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. “I told her I wouldn’t leave.”
“I’ll drive you.” Greg says, taking a blanket from the backseat of the SUV and wrapping it around me. Beyond him, the paramedics are closing the doors of the ambulance and the flashing red lights blend in with the Christmas decorations on the house across the street.
“But—”
“We’ll be right behind them,” Greg says, opening the passenger door. “I promise.”
My eyelids are thick and sticky as I open them, and the only familiar sight is Greg, sitting in a chair beside me. I’m not sure where I am, but his presence is comforting. The worry lines on his forehead relax and he smiles. “Hey, hi,” he says softly. “You’re awake.”
“Hi.” My throat is dry and it takes almost too much effort to speak. “Where—?”
“We’re at the emergency room.”
Everything rushes back in bright flashes of memory. Airstream. Mom. Paramedics. Overdose. I try to sit up, but my body is heavy with a weariness that feels as if I’ve lived too many lifetimes. “Mom? Is she okay?”