by Sarah Dessen
I blinked, not sure I’d heard her right as she moved down the model, carefully wiping her finger along an intersection. “Count? ”
“To ten,” she explained, standing back up. “It’s what I do instead of panicking. Ideally. Although sometimes I have to go to twenty or even fifty to really get calmed down.”
“Oh. Right.”
“And then,” she said, taking another step before crouching to adjust a church steeple, “we lost Dave, which was a huge deal, especially since you were already gone. I had to go count and breathe for that one.”
“What?” I said.
“Breathe,” she explained. “You know, big inhales, big exhales, visualizing stress going with it—”
“No,” I said, cutting her off. “Dave. What do you mean, you lost him?”
“Because of the whole grounding thing,” she said. When I just stood there, confused, she looked up at me. “With his parents. You knew about that, right?”
I shook my head. The truth was, I’d felt so embarrassed about calling him, especially since he never showed up, that I’d not ever tried to contact him, even though I knew I should. “What ... what happened?”
“Well, I haven’t heard all the gory details,” she replied, standing back up and stretching out her back. “All I know is they caught him sneaking out one night last week with the car, there was some big blowup, and he’s basically under house arrest indefinitely.”
“Whoa,” I said.
“Oh, and the Austin trip is off. At least, for him.”
I felt myself blink. “Oh my God. That’s awful.”
She nodded sadly. “I know. I’m telling you, it’s been nonstop drama here. I’m just hoping we can get this done without any more disasters.”
I took a step backward, leaning against a nearby table as she made her way around the opposite side of the model. So that was what had happened to Dave. All this time I’d thought he’d changed his mind about coming down, but in the end, it hadn’t even been up to him. “So ... he hasn’t been here at all?”
Deb glanced at me over her shoulder. “No, he has. But just in the last couple of days, and only for an hour here and there. They’re keeping him pretty close, I think.”
Poor Dave. After all that time spent toeing the line, doing the time. And now, all because of me, he was right back where he started. I felt sick.
“His parents can’t really take that trip away,” I said after a moment. “I mean, maybe they’ll reconsider, or—”
“I said that, too. But according to Riley, it’s unlikely.” She crouched down, sitting back on her heels, and pressed a loose house down, making it click. “They already decided to use some of the fund to pay off Heather’s car debt, so she can go. There was a meeting about it and everything.”
“A meeting,” I repeated.
“Here, while they were all working. It was serious multitasking.” She smiled proudly. “I felt honored to get to witness it.”
As she bent back down over the model, peering closely at a row of town houses, I just stood there. It was unbelievable to me that for the past week that I’d been in Colby piecing together what came next for me, all of Dave’s plans, which had always been so clear, were falling apart. I’d thought he let me down. But clearly, it was the other way around.
When I woke up later that morning at the Poseidon, I was alone. I sat up, looking around me: the notebook I’d written in was now closed, set aside on the bedside table, all the pictures and yearbooks stacked neatly on a nearby chair. The front door was slightly ajar, the wind whistling through the screen just beyond it. I got to my feet, rubbing my eyes, and walked over. There, outside on the steps, were my mom and dad, sitting together.
“I feel like the worst parent ever,” she was saying. “All this stuff, the different girls ... I had no idea.”
“At least you can claim you were at a distance. It was right in front of my face,” he replied.
My mom was quiet for a moment. “You did your best. That’s all you can do. That’s all any of us can do. You know?”
My dad nodded, looking up at the road. It had been so long since I’d seen them like this, just the two of them, that for a moment I just stood there, taking it in. He was rubbing a hand over his face, while she held a coffee cup with both hands, her head cocked to the side as she said something. From a distance, you couldn’t guess all the history and changes. You would have just thought they were friends.
My mom turned then, seeing me. “Honey,” she said. “You’re up.”
“What are you guys doing here?” I asked.
I watched as my dad got to his feet. “You left your mother’s house in the middle of the night, Mclean. Did you really think we wouldn’t be worrying?”
“I just needed some time,” I said quietly, as he came closer, pulling open the door. Once inside, he put his arms around me, squeezing tight, and kissed the top of my head.
“Don’t scare me like that ever again,” he said, before moving on so my mom could join us. “I mean it.”
I nodded, silent, as the door banged shut behind her. And then it was just us three, alone in the room. I sat down on the bed. My mom, taking another sip of her coffee, took the chair by the air-conditioner unit. My dad, by the window, stayed where he was.
“So,” he said after a moment. “I think we all need to talk.”
“You read my notebook,” I said.
“Yes.” My mom sighed, brushing her hair back from her face. “I know it was probably supposed to be private ... but we had a lot of questions. And you weren’t exactly up for answering them.”
I looked down at my hands, knotting my fingers together.
“I didn’t realize ...” My dad stopped, cleared this throat. Then he glanced at my mom before saying, “The different names. I thought they were just ... names.”
God, this was hard. I swallowed. “That’s how it started,” I said. “But then, it got bigger.”
“You couldn’t have been happy,” he said. “If you felt like you needed to do that.”
“It wasn’t about being happy or unhappy. I just didn’t want to be me anymore.”
Again, they exchanged a look. My mom said slowly, “I don’t think either of us really realized how hard the divorce was on you. We’re ...”
She looked at my dad. “We’re sorry about that,” he finished for her.
It was so quiet, I could hear my own breathing, loud in my ears. Outside, the ocean was crashing, waves hitting sand, then pulling back to sea. I thought of everything being washed away, again and again. We make such messes in this life, both accidentally and on purpose. But wiping the surface clean doesn’t really make anything any neater. It just masks what is below. It’s only when you really dig down deep, go underground, that you can see who you really are.
Thinking this, I looked at my mom. “How did you know I was here?”
“Your friend told us,” my dad said.
“My friend?”
“The boy ...” He glanced at my mom.
“Dave,” she said.
“Dave? ”
She put her coffee on the floor by her feet. “When I realized you were gone, that you’d taken the car ... I just panicked. I called Gus, and he left the restaurant to head down here, to help me look for you.”
“I stopped by the house first, to pack up,” my dad said. “And, just as I was leaving, Dave came over. He told me where to find you.”
“He was worried about you, too.” My mom slid a hand over my shoulder. “He said you were upset when you left there, and when you called you were crying....”
She stopped, clearing her throat. My dad said, “I wish you’d felt like you could have called one of us. Whatever was going on, you know we love you, Mclean. No matter what.”
Warts and all, I thought as I glanced at the notebook, the pictures and yearbooks piled near it. I swallowed, then said, “When I found out about Hawaii, and then came down here and everything was so different, the house ...” My mom wced, loo
king down at her hands. “I heard you talking to Heidi. About how having me here wasn’t what you expected.”
“What?”
I swallowed. “You said you thought you’d wanted me to come, but—”
She was just looking at me, clearly confused. Then, suddenly, she exhaled, putting a hand to her chest. “Oh, God! Honey, I wasn’t talking about you when I said that. I was talking about the party.”
“Party?”
“To watch the ECC tournament,” she said. That was an acronym I knew well: Eastern College Conference, the one to which Defriese and the U belonged. “I’ve had it here the last few years, when I didn’t go with Peter. It was planned way in advance for this week, but once we got here, I realized I didn’t want to have to deal with it. I wanted it to be ... just us. That’s what I meant.”
So that was the party Heidi had mentioned. “I just assumed ...” I stopped. “I just felt lost all of a sudden. This was the only place that was familiar.”
“This place?” my dad said, glancing around the room.
“We had a lot of good times here,” my mom told him. “It was where we always stayed when we took road trips to the beach.”
“You remember,” I said.
“Of course; how could I forget? ” She shook her head. “Don’t get me wrong, I love Colby. And Peter’s right, there isn’t much here anymore. But I still drive down here now and then. I like the view.”
I looked at her. “Me, too.”
“Although I have to say,” she added, “I don’t remember it smelling quite so mildewy.”
“It did,” I told her, and she smiled, squeezing my shoulder.
For a moment, we all just sat there, no one talking. Then my dad looked at my mom before saying, “Your mom and I think we all need to sit down and talk. About what happens next.”
“I know,” I said.
“Maybe, though,” he said, “we can talk and eat. I don’t know about you but I’m starving.”
“Agreed,” my mom replied. She tipped her wrist up, glancing at her watch. “Last Chance opens at seven a.m. That’s only ten minutes.”
“Last Chance?”
“Best diner on the beach,” she told him, standing up. “The bacon will blow your mind.”
“You had me at bacon,” my dad said. “Let’s go.”
Before we left, though, they helped me pack up my boxes, each of us adding books and pictures. It seemed like a ritual, something sacred, putting all of these pieces back away again, and when I slid the tops on, pressing them shut, the sound was not so different from the one made when you pushed a piece onto the model. Click.
When we stepped out to the parking lot, the wind was stiff and cold, the sky a flat gray, the sun, barely visible, rising in the distance. As my mom pulled out her keys, I said, “What about the twins? Don’t you need to get back to them?”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “Heidi called in two of her sitters, Amanda and Erika. They’re covered. We have all the time in the world.”
All the time in the world, I thought as we pulled out onto the main road, my dad following close behind in his truck. If only there was such a thing, really. In truth, though, there were deadlines and jobs, school years ending and beginning, time running out with every breath. As we drove past Gert’s, though, the OPEN 24 HRS sign still on, I looked down at the bracelet I was wearing, twisting it across my wrist. Maybe I didn’t need all the time anyway. Just a couple of hours, a good breakfast, and a chance to talk with the two people who knew me best, no matter who I was.
We were the first ones at the Last Chance, there when a blonde woman in an apron, looking sleepy, unlocked the door. “You’re up early,” she said to my mom. “Kids have a bad night? ”
My mom nodded, and I felt her eyes on me before she said, “Yeah. Something like that.”
We took our menus, flipping over our coffee cups as the waitress approached with the pot. In the kitchen, past the counter, I could hear a grill sizzling, someone playing a radio, the notes punctuated by the register bell ringing as another waitress opened the drawer, then shut it. It was all so familiar, like a place I knew well, even though I’d never been there before. I looked at my mom beside me, and my dad across the table, both of them reading their menus, here with just me, just us, for once. I’d thought that I didn’t have a home anymore. But right there, right then, I realized I’d been wrong. Home wasn’t a set house, or a single town on a map. It was wherever the people who loved you were, whenever you were together. Not a place but a moment, and then another, building on each other like bricks to create a solid shelter that you take with you for your entire life, wherever you may go.
We talked a lot that morning, over breakfast and the many refilled cups of coffee that followed. And we kept talking once we went back to the house, where my dad took a walk on the beach with me while my mom hung out with the twins. We didn’t make any huge decisions, not yet, other than I’d stay the week in Colby, as planned, and we’d take that time to figure out what would happen next.
After more conversations, both in person with my mom and on the phone with my dad, it was decided that Hawaii wasn’t an option, at least for me: they were a united front on that. Which meant, in the end, I’d be finishing out my high school career in the same school where I’d started it, back in Tyler. I wasn’t exactly happy about this, to say the least, but I finally understood it was really my only option. I tried to see it as bringing things full circle. I’d left and, in doing so, fractured myself. By returning, I’d be able to be whole again. Then, in the fall, I would start over again somewhere new. Although this time, I’d be one of many in a freshman class doing the same thing.
I spent a lot of that week at the beach thinking about the last two years, picking through my yearbooks and pictures. I also hung out a lot with my mom, and as I did so, I realized I’d been wrong about assuming that she, too, had fully reinvented herself when she left Katie Sweet behind for Katherine Hamilton. Sure, she had the new family and look, as well as a huge beach house and the entire different world of being a coach’s wife. But I still caught glimpses here and there of the person I’d known before.
There was the comforting familiarity I felt, this strange sense of déjà vu, when I watched her with Connor and Madison, sitting on the floor building block towers or reading Goodnight Moon, both of them snuggled into her lap. Or how, when I found her iPod on the fancy portable stereo, I’d turn it on to find some of the same music that was on my dad’s: Steve Earle and Led Zeppelin mixed in with the Elmo and lullabies.
Then there was the fact that every night, when the twins were asleep, the first thing she’d do was take a glass of wine out to the deck, where I’d find her looking up at the stars. And despite the high-tech kitchen created to make gourmet meals, I was surprised and pleased to see that she stuck to her old basics, fixing dinner casseroles and chicken dishes that began, always, with a single can of Cream Of soup. The biggest proof, though, was the quilt.
I’d brought it to my room with the rest of the stuff in the bins when we came back from the Poseidon. A couple of nights later, when the temperature suddenly dropped, I pulled it out and used it, wrapping it around me. The next morning, I was brushing my teeth when I stuck my head out of the bathroom to see my mom standing by my bed, where I’d folded it over the foot, holding one corner in her hand.
“I thought this was packed away downstairs,” she said when she saw me.
“It was,” I said. “But I found it when I found the pictures and yearbooks.”
“Oh.” She smoothed her hand over one square. “Well, I’m glad it’s getting some use.”
“It is,” I replied. “It was a godsend last night. The twins clearly had lots of warm clothes when they were babies.”
She looked at me. “The twins?”
“The squares are made of their baby clothes. Right?”
“No,” she said. “I ... I thought you knew. They’re yours.”
“Mine?”
She nodded, h
olding up the corner that was between her thumb and forefinger. “This cotton bit here? It was from the blanket you came home from the hospital in. And this embroidered piece, the red one, was a part of your first Christmas dress.”
I moved closer, looking at the quilt closely. “I had no idea.”
She lifted up another square, running her fingers over it. “Oh, I loved this little denim piece! It was from the cutest overalls. You took your first steps when you were wearing them.”
“I can’t believe you saved all that stuff for so long,” I said.
“Oh, I couldn’t let it go.” She smiled, sighing. “But then you were going, and it seemed like a way to send some of me along with you.”
I thought of her sitting with all those squares, carefully quilting them together. The time it must have taken, especially with twin babies. “I’m sorry, Mom,” I said.
She looked up at me, surprised. “Sorry? For what?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Just ... not thanking you for it, I guess.”
“Oh goodness, Mclean,” she replied, shaking her head. “I’m sure that you did. I was a total emotional wreck that day left. I barely remember anything about it, other than you were leaving and I didn’t want you to.”
“Can you tell me about the rest?” I asked, picking up my own corner, where there was a pink cotton square.
“Really?” she said. I nodded. “Oh, well. Let’s see. That one there was from the leotard you wore for your first dance recital. I think you were five? You had fairy wings, and ...”
We stood there for a long time, with her moving from square to square, explaining the significance of each. All these little pieces of who I’d been once, with her to remember for me, stitched together into something real I could hold in my hands. There was a reason I’d found it, too, that night I’d run away. It was waiting for me. Your past is always your past. Even if you forget it, it remembers you.