Stealing Our Way Home

by Cecilia Galante

This time I don’t kick him. I don’t flail my arms or try to punch him or hit him on the shoulder.

  I just wrap my arms around his neck and hold on.

  “You’re still worried about Mr. Thurber, aren’t you?” Nibs grunts as she yanks a particularly stubborn weed out of her garden and straightens up. A big smear of dirt sits just at the top of her forehead, like a thick, lopsided rainbow, and the knees of her overalls are dark with mud.

  It’s twilight. The sky stretching across the lake is a periwinkle blue, the sun just a lemon slip of memory. Kind of like the day we just had. Almost over. Almost gone.

  Nibs turns her head, looking out across the water, and sighs. “You’ve got to have faith, Pip. He’ll come back before he leaves for the winter. I know he will. Herons love to check on things before they take off. They’re very conscientious animals.” She reaches down for another weed. “How’s the knee? You feel all right?”

  I nod, glancing down at the white bandages. It hurts, but not nearly as much as before. No more throbbing or pulsing inside. It’s just sore, mostly.

  “Your brother did a nice job cleaning you up,” Nibs says. “He’s a good boy, Jack.”

  He did do a nice job, although it took him over twenty minutes to wipe the dried blood off my leg and clean all the dirt and pebbles out of the wound. I held on to his neck with both arms as he poured liquid from a brown bottle over the whole thing. It fizzed and sizzled and stung like five thousand bees, but he kept talking real softly to me and telling me that it would be over soon, and when he squirted on some ointment and wrapped gauze around it and fastened it with tape, it really did start to feel better again. Afterward, he made me a peanut butter sandwich and sat with me until I fell asleep on the couch. When I woke up, he wasn’t there anymore. But Nibs was outside, working in her garden, so I went out to sit with her.

  “Where’d he go, by the way?” Nibs straightens up again and scans our property with a gloved hand. “I haven’t seen hide nor hair of him for the last few hours. He all right?”

  I’m not one hundred percent sure, but I point to the tree on the other side of our yard.

  “Tree house?” Nibs asks.

  I nod. It’s where Jack always goes when he needs to think.

  Nibs squints into the distance. “Well, what’s he doing, sleeping up there? He’s not working on that floor again, that’s for sure. I haven’t heard any hammering.” She pauses, winking at me. “Or any swear words.”

  I smile a little and nod. Jack doesn’t actually say a lot of bad words, but when he does, we usually hear them drifting down from the tree house.

  The sound of a car on the road behind us makes me turn around. I gasp a little and sit up straight. It’s the blue Eldorado.

  Dad! I limp toward it as fast as I can, patting on the window with my hand before it comes to a stop. Dad’s eyebrows narrow as he turns off the engine and gets out of the front seat. The tie he was wearing earlier is gone, and his dress shirt is unbuttoned, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows.

  “What happened to your knee, sweetheart?” He bends down and examines the bandage, touching the edges of it gently. “Did you fall off your bike?” I nod. “But it wasn’t too bad, was it? This bandage looks good and tight. Did Jack help you out?”

  I nod again and put my arms around him. He’s home! Early!

  Dad glances over at Nibs and then kisses the top of my head. “Listen honey, I have to talk to Nibs for a moment. Would it be too much trouble to run inside and make me a few peanut butter sandwiches? You can just throw them in a bag. I’ll take them with me.”

  I pull away. He’s not home early. He’s just home to do something quick and then leave again. My eyes fill with tears. “Oh honey, if it’s too much … ” Dad starts, but I shake my head, fiddle with the hem of my shorts. A tear slides down my cheek. He squats down so that he’s at eye level with me and wipes the tear away with the pad of his thumb. “I’m sorry I have to leave again, Pip,” he says softly. “But it’s just because I’m trying to make things better for us. It won’t always be like this. I promise. It’s just for right now. Just for a short time. Please try to understand. Don’t be angry.”

  I put my arms around his neck and hug him tightly. If only I could tell him that I’m not angry, that I’ve never been angry. I just miss him. I want him home the way he used to come home, right before dinner when he’d swoop me up at the door and put me on his shoulders. He’d dance around the house, holding both of my hands over his head like a giant puppet, and then he’d make his way into the kitchen, where Mom was making beef stew or chicken pot pie, and pull her away from the stove and spin her around the floor. My stomach would fill with butterflies, looking down from my perch at the tops of their heads, and when they pressed their foreheads together, I would slide my hands around the backs of each of their necks, feeling as if my heart would burst. I’d give anything for that again, just once.

  I’m halfway to the kitchen when I see Jack looking out the window of the tree house. I wave with both arms and point to Dad. Jack’s face darkens and then disappears. My stomach tightens. He’d better not come down and start an argument. Dad’s trying so hard.

  I make a few peanut butter sandwiches, wrapping them neatly with tinfoil and settling them inside a paper bag. I add two cans of orange soda and a bunch of paper towels so Dad can wipe his hands, and then I take out my pink glitter pen and write DAD in big pink letters on the front. Underneath his name, I draw a heart and a smiley face. Finished, I glance back out the kitchen window. Dad is still talking to Nibs, who’s wiping her hands on the front of her overalls and nodding. Jack’s there too, just standing quietly. No sign of any arguing. I grab the bag of sandwiches and hobble out the door.

  “Hey, sweetie.” Dad takes the bag from me and peeks inside. “Thank you so much. You make the best peanut butter sandwiches, you know that?” He puts an arm around my shoulders and squats down so that I can see his eyes. “Listen, I have to go do some business in Middlebury tonight, and I have to take Jack with me. We won’t be back ’til late. Nibs said she’d stay with you.” He squeezes my arm. “You okay with that?”

  I glance over at Nibs, who gives me a wink.

  I pull out my pink pad from my back pocket and write: “Why can’t I come?”

  Dad stares at the little pad for a moment and then looks back up at me. “Where did you get that?”

  I point to Nibs.

  He glances up at Nibs, his face flushing. “Wow,” he says after a moment. “What a great idea. Thank you.”

  Nibs smiles.

  I tug on Dad’s pants and point to the pad again. I want to know why Jack gets to go with him and I don’t.

  But he shakes his head. “It’s something only Jack and I can do right now. I’ll explain it to you later, okay?”

  I scowl and write again on the pad. “What time will you be back?”

  “I’m not sure,” Dad says. “But late, honey. You’ll be asleep.”

  I slide my pen and pad back in my pocket. I feel a little heartbroken, but I don’t know how to write that down on my pad. And after that, there’s really nothing left to say.

  Dad leans over and kisses me on the cheek. “I’ll bring you back something, all right? A surprise.” He gives my nose a tweak. “Be good for Nibs. Remember your manners.” He stands up straight. “Get in the car, Jack. I just have to grab a few last-minute things inside.”

  I stand in the middle of Lake Road and wave after Dad and Jack leave. I wave and wave until the blue Eldorado becomes a little dot on the road and then disappears around the bend. I know that I just have to get through tonight and then go to sleep and that when I wake up I will see them again, but right now, it feels like a really long time.

  “It’s supposed to be a nice night,” Nibs says, returning to her weeding. “Maybe we’ll build a little fire in the pit and make s’mores after dinner. Would you like that?”

  I nod and stare out at the lake.

  Sometimes, if I look hard enough, I actually think t
hat I can see Mr. Thurber. A funny-shaped tree branch will look like his beak, or the outline of a cloud will really, for a split second, look just like one of his wings. But then I’ll blink or rub my eyes, and I’ll know it wasn’t real. That I just imagined it.

  I trace the outside of my bandage with the edge of my thumb. I’m glad it’s there. If it wasn’t, I might wonder if I imagined getting hurt, too.

  It’s kind of amazing how fast things can happen sometimes. How you can be flat on your back in a tree house one minute, trying to figure out what to do, and in a car with your dad twenty minutes later, driving toward the Great Unknown. I’m going to call it that for now, because I don’t have any idea where we’re going or what’s going to happen when we get there. All I know is that Dad wants me with him, which, if you consider all the stuff he’s been keeping from me in the last few months, feels like a pretty big deal.

  “I can’t believe I didn’t think of getting Pippa a little notepad like that,” he says as we get to the end of Lake Road. “I must really be out to lunch.”

  Lunch and dinner and maybe breakfast, too. “It’s okay,” I say out loud. “I didn’t think of it either.”

  “It’s such a simple thing.” He shakes his head as he pulls the car onto Route 30. “God Almighty.”

  He sounds so sad just then that I reach out and put a hand on his shoulder. “You’ve had a lot on your mind, Dad. It’s okay.” He might’ve missed the boat when it came to finding a way to help Pippa communicate, but at least he’s not the one responsible for her not communicating at all. And for just this second, I’m glad he’s not. If there was one more thing on his shoulders, he might collapse.

  “I’m glad she has Nibs,” Dad says. “I really am. She needs someone like that around.”

  Someone like that. I guess he means an adult. A woman. Someone who can be a friend and maybe even a little bit like a mother at the same time. Not Mom, of course, but someone a little bit like her.

  “She’s had her own share of heartache,” Dad goes on. “Nibs, I mean. I think she kind of gets it.”

  “What do you mean? What kind of heartache?”

  “Mom never told you?”

  “Told me what?”

  Dad puts on his blinker and settles in behind a bright red Honda Accord. “She lost her husband and her little boy in a car accident. A long, long time ago. Down in South Carolina, where she used to live.”

  Something in my stomach twists. A hollow sound rings in my ears. Hearing something like this—out of the blue—about someone I’ve known all my life feels as if the floor has just dropped out beneath my feet. “I … I didn’t even know she was married.”

  “Happily married.” Dad accelerates past the red Honda. “At least that’s what Mom said. They talked about it a few times, I guess.”

  Why didn’t Mom ever say anything? Maybe it was too private. Too hard to talk about.

  “So … I mean, what happened?” I ask. “There was a car accident?”

  “Nibs was driving through some pretty bad weather.” Dad’s voice is grim. “Rain, sleet. The baby was in the back in a car seat, and her husband was up front, sleeping. A tractor trailer coming the other way started sliding and just barreled into them. She didn’t know what happened until she woke up in the hospital two days later.” His jaw clenches. “She was the only one who survived.”

  I press my lips together, stare numbly at the passing scenery.

  “Sometimes I think people go through certain things so that they can help the rest of us make sense of the stuff we don’t understand.” The trees outside the window are coming back into focus. The fields are fields again. The sky the same sky. “You know, the hard stuff. Like with Mom. Or maybe that’s just true of Nibs. You know what I mean?”

  I think I know what he means. Maybe a little bit.

  Or maybe I don’t.

  “They’ll have fun tonight.” Dad’s shoulders relax a little as he pulls off an exit that reads MIDDLEBURY. “I don’t think there’s any rain in the forecast. Maybe Nibs’ll build a fire.”

  I sit up as the highway sign disappears behind us. “Wait,” I say. “We’re going to Middlebury?” Middlebury is over an hour away. And except for the time Mom took Pippa and me there once so we could get a real Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream cone, we’ve never spent any time there. There’s no reason to. Middlebury is a rich town with big, fancy houses and expensive storefronts. Not really our kind of place.

  “We are indeed.” Dad’s fingers clench around the steering wheel.

  “You know someone there?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Then why are we going?”

  “We have a job to do. In town.”

  “We do?” I feel excited suddenly. “Oh Dad, that’s great. I was just trying to think of ways that I could help out, you know? Like with the bills and stuff. I was even going to go down to Perry’s and ask … ”

  “Oh no.” Dad cuts me off with a wave of his hand. “Absolutely not, Jack. One, you are twelve years old. It’s not even legal for you to work yet. And two, I don’t ever want you going into town and giving people the impression that we’re so bad off that you have to wash dishes or scrub someone’s floor. You hear me?”

  His voice has escalated so steadily that by the time he finishes talking, I’ve pressed myself all the way back into the seat. “What are you yelling for?” I ask.

  “I’m not yelling. I’m just telling you how things are going to be.”

  “Fine.” I cross my arms over my chest. “Whatever.”

  The car rolls on in silence for a few moments. How is it that we’ve just had one of the longest and most substantial conversations since forever, and in the next second we’re arguing? What’s wrong with him? What’s wrong with me?

  “I’m sorry, buddy.” Dad puts his hand on mine. “I know you’re just trying to help. I really do. And I appreciate it more than you know.”

  I stare straight ahead, forcing myself not to shrug his hand off mine. It sure doesn’t sound like he appreciates it.

  “Jack, look at me.”

  I hate it when he does this, taking his eyes off the road for a few seconds so that he can make eye contact with whomever he’s talking to. I used to watch him from the backseat when he’d do it with Mom, my heart leaping around like a jumping bean until he’d finished what he had to say and shifted his attention back to driving. Now, I give him a quick glance and then look away again. “You’re supposed to keep your eyes on the road.”

  “Fine.” He turns his head again. “But I need to tell you something and I want to make sure that you hear it.”

  “I’m sitting right next to you.”

  “I’m not talking about hearing with your ears. I’m talking about hearing it here.” Dad taps his chest with two fingers. “Inside. Where you can keep it.”

  I don’t say anything. Part of me still wants to give him a hard time for snapping at me, but another part of me wants to tell him that I’ve heard every single thing he’s ever told me in my entire life and that it’s all in there, that it will always be in there, forever and always. “Okay,” I say softly.

  He takes a deep breath, puffing his cheeks with air, and lets it out again. “You know how much I loved your mother, right? How much I still love her. How much I’ll always love her.”

  “Yeah.” My nose starts to tingle.

  “And you know how much the house meant to her. I mean, it was her whole world.”

  “I know.”

  The lake house had always been Mom’s baby, passed down through several generations. I knew Grandma and Grandpa Hession had given it to her as a wedding gift and that it was her pride and joy. She even referred to it sometimes as her “mini Taj Mahal,” telling friends that it was just as beautiful as any palace in India. She’d grown up in that house, fishing off the dock, blowing out her birthday candles on the kitchen table, and learning how to drive up and down Lake Road. She’d even met Dad there, after he’d been accidentally invited to her high school graduat
ion party and walked into the kitchen to ask for a can of orange soda. It had always been Mom’s house. Her heart.

  “She left it to me when she died,” Dad says. “So it’s mine now. And when the time comes, it’ll be yours and Pippa’s, which means that maybe one day you’ll be able to give it to one of your children.”

  I nod, staring out the window. Where is this conversation going? And why do my armpits feel sweaty all of a sudden?

  Dad takes another deep breath. “Do you know what a mortgage is, Jack?”

  “Like the money you give to the bank every month to pay off the house?”

  “Exactly. And a few years ago, even though Mom owned the house, she and I took out another mortgage so that we could fix it up some more. You know, add in that bathroom upstairs and build on the deck.”

  “So you’re still paying that mortgage back?”

  “I am.” Dad reaches up and yanks on an earlobe. “Or at least I should be. Here’s the story, buddy. I’m really, really far behind on the mortgage. Which means that the car lot isn’t the only thing that’s going to be a distant memory if I don’t do this job in Middlebury.”

  “Okay.” I sit up a little straighter. “Well, whatever it is, Dad, let’s just do it.”

  He nods, biting his lip. “It’s just—” He clears his throat. “I want you to know that it … well, it’s not a good job.”

  It feels very still in the car suddenly, as if all the molecules and particles in the air have come to a stop. “What do you mean?”

  “It’s … ” he starts again. “It’s a bad job, actually.”

  My brain is racing. What is he saying, exactly? And what isn’t he saying? “Bad, how?”

  “Against the law,” he says again. He turns his head and looks directly at me. “But here’s the thing, Jack. We won’t get in trouble. We won’t get caught. And once it’s over, I’ll be out of the woods. I’ll be able to make the mortgage payments I’ve missed, get the electricity turned back on, buy you and Pip some good school clothes. We’ll be able to get a little bit ahead so that I can go out and find real work. Good work. I just … ” He looks back at the road. “I can’t lose that house, Jack. I just can’t. After taking care of you guys, it was the only thing your mother asked of me before she died. I can’t lose it, do you understand? I’ve got to do whatever it takes to make sure I don’t lose that, too.”