by David Bell
“Hayden,” he said, “do you need me to . . . I don’t know . . . come along with you on whatever you’re doing? I feel like I should.”
“No,” Hayden said, her voice firm. “I have to do it myself.”
“Can you at least tell me where you’re going or what you’re doing?” Jason asked.
“You’ll know eventually. You will.” She rose onto her tiptoes and kissed Jason on the cheek. “Thanks, big brother. Forty-eight hours at the most. Forty-eight. Then I’ll be back for my girl.”
Hayden turned away and went through the door quickly, disappearing into the night.
Chapter Six
At the top of the stairs, Jason turned right, away from the master bedroom and toward the guest room, where Sierra would be staying. Nora sat in a rocking chair, her robe belted across her middle, and Sierra sat cross-legged on the bed. Jason stopped in the doorway, feeling a little like he’d interrupted a private moment between the two women.
“Well, your mom left,” he said.
“I know,” Sierra said.
“Do you—”
Even though Sierra cut Jason off, she did it as politely as she could. “No, I’m sorry, Uncle Jason. I don’t know where she’s going or what she’s doing. Believe me, I asked. If your mom pulls you out of school a week early and drags you off to your aunt and uncle’s house, you ask questions. But she wouldn’t answer any of them. She was just like, ‘It’s nothing to worry about.’”
“Hmm.”
Sierra looked at Nora. “And what do you do when someone tells you not to worry?”
“You worry,” Nora said.
“Exactly. But Mom won’t let anything slip. She’s a vault when she wants to be.” Sierra mimed turning a key over her lips.
But Jason wasn’t ready to move on. “She said it has something to do with her AA program. Does that tell you anything?”
“Not really,” Sierra said. “She’s been apologizing like crazy. She called some guy she worked with ten years ago and apologized for not sticking up for him when he got fired. She won’t stop.”
“Has she apologized to you for anything?” Jason asked.
“Like fifty times. I finally told her to stop. I could tell she was going to do it again downstairs when she left, but she stopped herself. Enough is enough, you know? I get it. She’s sorry she was a crappy mom sometimes and a drunk. I almost went into foster care once, when she was in really bad shape.”
“You did?” Nora asked.
“It was close. A social worker came a few times and asked a lot of questions. I knew what they were thinking.” Sierra shrugged, but her casual attitude appeared to be a front. She didn’t look either one of them in the eye. “I bounced around a lot . . . my grandma’s house mostly. Then I was with Dad. I think that’s when Mom was here the last time. I know all about the wrecked car and stuff. But it’s okay. She’s better now.”
“And we’re so glad for that,” Nora said. “She looks great. Better than I’ve seen her looking in years.”
Jason came all the way into the room and sat on an ancient, leather-covered ottoman that once belonged to his parents, the material creaking under his weight. What would his mom and dad really make of all of it? Would they believe in Hayden’s transformation? Jason knew the answer—they wouldn’t. They’d remain supremely cautious, just as he was. But how much time had to pass before one’s behavior was accepted as a permanent change? Did he want to be as negative and doubtful as his parents?
“You probably want to go to bed soon,” Jason said.
“I like to stay up late. I read when the house is quiet.”
“It’s always quiet here,” Nora said. “No kids.”
“That’s cool,” Sierra said. “I always thought I’d want to live in New York like you guys did. When Mom said she was bringing me to you, I hoped you had moved back to the big city. But then she said it was just Ednaville.”
“Has your mom been in touch with your dad lately?” Jason asked.
Some of the sprightly energy left Sierra at the mention of her father. Her face turned a shade paler, her eyes just a bit flatter.
“I haven’t seen Dad in two years,” she said.
“You haven’t?”
“He had to move to Indianapolis for a new job,” she said. “I guess you didn’t hear.” She picked at a loose thread on her jeans. “He got laid off from his old job and couldn’t find anything in Ohio. I’m supposed to go see him sometime soon, but I don’t know when.”
She gave up on trying to pull the loose thread free. She smoothed it into place with her thumb.
“So, he’s not around here?” Jason asked.
“Wouldn’t Mom have brought me to him if he lived close by instead of bothering you?” She looked back and forth between Jason and Nora as though the answer were obvious. She turned to Jason and said, “Look, I know you’re fishing, and that’s cool. I’d fish too if I were you. Your nutty sister shows up with her teenage kid, and you’re all like, ‘What the hell’s going on here?’ Right?”
“She’s always been responsible when it comes to you,” Nora said.
“Yeah, she has. Mostly.” Sierra stared at a fixed point in the room, somewhere in between Jason and Nora.
No one spoke until Nora said, “But you’re worried about her a little bit? Aren’t you?”
Sierra shrugged. She started picking at the thread again. “She’s like a cat, you know? I figure she has nine lives.” She looked up at Jason. “But . . . can you maybe guess what I’m going to say next?”
Nora turned to look at him as well.
Jason said, “You’re always worried that this time is the tenth?”
Sierra nodded. She looked wise beyond her years.
* * *
Back in their bedroom, after they had left Sierra alone to sleep or read, Nora scooted toward the middle of their king-sized bed and whispered, “Did Hayden have anything interesting to say to you when the two of you were alone?”
Jason put his book down, tented it on top of his chest. “Not really. No.”
“What do you make of all this?” Nora asked. “What do you think Hayden’s up to?”
“Up to?” Jason said. “When you say it that way, you make it sound as though we can’t trust her.”
“It’s just an expression.”
“I agree, of course. We can’t entirely trust her,” Jason said. “We really can’t. But you’re always defending her, and I’m trying really hard to give her the benefit of the doubt. It’s not easy for me, so that’s why I’m surprised to hear you put it that way.”
“I don’t always defend her,” Nora said. “I just like her. And I try to balance the way you think about her from the past with new possibilities. The way you see her is screened through your parents.”
“And our smashed car. And about a million other disasters of all sizes from when we were growing up. She got thrown in the drunk tank once in Chicago, about fifteen years ago. That will drive your parents to the brink, having a child in a big-city jail and no way to talk to her.”
“I understand where you’re coming from. We don’t have to talk about it. . . .” Nora scooted back to her side of the bed.
Jason didn’t pick up his book. He didn’t want to turn into his parents, judging Hayden and never allowing her out of the box she was placed in at such an early age. Seeing Hayden again, even for such a short time, had brought a swirl of emotions. Anger. Regret. Joy and fear. He remembered their late-night talks as children, their secret and meaningless conspiracies against their parents, their shared adolescent angst over school drama and the mysteries of the opposite sex. She was his sister. His baby sister, even if she was just one year younger. He’d be lying if he didn’t admit—at least to himself—that hearing Hayden call him “big brother” again melted much of the steel he’d erected in his heart against her.
&nb
sp; “I don’t know,” Jason said.
“Don’t know what?” Nora asked.
“Hayden. What she’s here for.” Nora turned her body toward him again, listening, the sheets rustling as she moved. “I’m trying not to be cold. Not to be a judgmental ass. I’m just curious. I’m sure it’s this AA stuff like she said. Making amends, you know? I’ve been trying to think of who she might owe an apology to in Ednaville. Mom and Dad would be the obvious choice, but they’re dead and gone. There’s us, and she already dealt with that.”
The toilet flushed down the hall, followed by the sound of running water. Nora lowered her voice even more. “Who else was she close to in town?”
“She had a lot of friends in high school,” Jason said. “She mostly ran with a rough crowd. No surprise. The drinkers and the stoners and the guys who came to school in army jackets and never shaved. I’m sure a fair number of them still live here. People like that don’t leave Ednaville. But I have no idea if she owes any of them anything.”
“It doesn’t have to be big,” Nora said. “Remember my cousin Steve? He went through AA, and he went around apologizing for the smallest stuff. Like Sierra said, she seems to be sorry for everything.”
“Yeah,” Jason said.
He replayed Hayden’s words in his mind. Not what she said, but how she said it. Her tone.
“What is it?” Nora asked.
“I just worry she’s in trouble,” he said. “That she’s in over her head somehow. Even if she is recovering, she said it’s only been a year or so. That’s fragile. Someone could fall off the wagon so quickly, and the whole thing could slip away. I’ve seen her do it before. So many times she disappeared from our lives, despite all the promises.”
“You’re forgetting something.” Nora pointed in the direction of the guest room where Sierra was staying. “She’s going to come back for her. She’ll stay on the straight and narrow for her.”
“Why now?”
“Look at how well that kid is doing. You can see how proud Hayden is.”
“Sierra was around when Hayden came the last time.”
“It seems different—that’s all I can say. She’s not going to let that girl go or hurt her. Is she?”
As if on cue, the door to the guest room closed. Jason didn’t answer the question. Sierra was seventeen. It had taken that long for Hayden to clean up, so would things really be different?
Nora said, “I think it’s nice to have those sounds in the house, don’t you? Just being here, Sierra brings energy and life, right?” Nora reached out and rubbed her hand against Jason’s upper arm. “I wonder about how quiet our life is sometimes.”
“I thought we liked it quiet.”
“We do,” Nora said. “But you know you like seeing your niece.” She poked him in the arm playfully. “Don’t you?”
“I do. Of course I do. She seems like a good kid.” Then he picked up his book. “We made that decision about not having kids a long time ago, Nora. A long time. If we play a role in Sierra’s life, then that can be . . . a kind of substitute for that.”
“Sure,” Nora said, rolling back over. “Although I don’t agree with you that it’s the same. It might be close, but it’s not the same.”
Chapter Seven
Nora looked surprised when she saw Jason approaching the circulation desk of the Ednaville Public Library at four thirty. She had been bent over a stack of books, using a stubby pencil to make a note on a scrap of paper. Jason cleared his throat as he walked up, and Nora straightened, her eyebrows raised in greeting, expecting a library patron.
“Oh,” she said. “It’s you.”
“It’s me.”
“Did you get out of work early?”
“A little. They probably won’t even notice that I snuck away.”
Nora folded the scrap of paper and laid it aside. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said. “I think Sierra could use a distraction. I mean, I’m assuming you’re here to spend time with her. Right?”
Jason looked around the first floor. He didn’t see his niece. “Why does she need a distraction?”
“She’s worried about Hayden. She hasn’t really said it. You know, she’s chatty, but still a little guarded.”
“Most teenagers are guarded, aren’t they?” Jason asked.
“She’s tried to text and call her mom, and Hayden hasn’t responded since this morning.”
Something cold passed through Jason when he heard that. “Was she supposed to hear from her?”
“I’ve got two people on the phone here,” Nora said. “Sierra’s upstairs reading or studying or something. Why don’t you go up and talk to her?”
“Okay. I will.”
“You’re her uncle. She wants to talk to you.”
“We’ll see you at home, then.”
“Oh, wait,” Nora said. “There’s something else I have to tell you.” She stepped closer and lowered her voice. “There’s a dead cat in our backyard.”
“A dead cat?”
“Yeah. It’s right on the patio. I thought it was sleeping there at first, but then . . . It’s dead, Jason. I don’t know what happened to it.”
“Do you know who it belongs to?” he asked.
“It might be the neighbors’. I didn’t have time to deal with it, and I didn’t look closely. We went out to buy groceries. I cooked, and then I took the garbage out and the cat was there.” She shuddered a little. “I thought maybe you could move it so I don’t have to see it again.”
“Why do I get all the shitty jobs?”
“Because you’re a big, strong man.”
Nora picked up the scrap of paper and bustled away. Jason walked across the thin carpeting and through the hushed, air-conditioned silence to the stairs. When he was a kid, the library looked very different. They had remodeled the place sometime after he went away to college, and he never quite felt comfortable in the new space, even though Nora worked there.
When he reached the top of the stairs, he looked around. He saw a scattering of what he considered typical library patrons. Older men and women, browsing slowly. Mothers trailing small children. Disaffected teens slouching in corners. It took him a few moments to find Sierra. She sat alone at a table in the far right corner of the room, books and papers spread in front of her. She stared at a laptop screen, earbuds sticking from the sides of her head, the tinny chords of a band Jason knew he’d never heard of leaking out. She wore a black “Free Pussy Riot” T-shirt and had her hair pulled back in a ponytail. When she didn’t notice Jason, he waved his hand in front of her face to get her attention.
She pulled the earbuds out, the music growing slightly louder. “Hey.”
“I don’t mean to interrupt you.”
“It’s cool.” She shut the music off. “I’m just doing this work they assigned me.”
“Have you been here a while?” Jason asked.
“Since one o’clock. I hung out at the house with Aunt Nora this morning. She made us lunch. She’s a good cook, you know?”
“I know.”
“Oh, right. Of course you do. It’s a good thing I ate before I saw the dead cat.”
“It happens. I’m hoping a hungry dog will pass through and save me the trouble.”
“Gross.” She made a face. “Anyway, I figured I’d spend the day here rather than sitting at home. I mean, your home. I like libraries. I don’t know if I’ve ever been in this one.”
“Maybe when you were little.”
“Maybe.” She started chewing on her thumbnail.
“How old were you when you moved away from Ednaville?” Jason asked.
“Which time?” Sierra asked. “We lived here more than once.”
“I guess I was wondering when you last went to the Owl.”
“The Owl?” Sierra’s face brightened. “I haven’t been there in foreve
r.”
“If you’re hungry, we could go and get something to eat.”
“Are you kidding?” She started packing up her things. “You don’t have to ask me twice.”
* * *
In the Midwest, people called a place like the Owl a creamy whip. It was a freestanding, low, concrete building that dished up soft-serve ice cream, shakes, hamburgers, and fries through a walk-up window. No one knew why it was called the Owl, except for the presence of a comical owl, one with large eyes and ruffled feathers, painted on the sign out by the road. People usually ate in their cars after ordering or else they sat at the sticky red picnic tables in the parking lot, shooing away flies and avoiding the sun. Jason and Sierra both ordered through the tiny window, the heat from the fryers and the grill brushing against their faces. They picked up their burgers and fries, then found a spot in the shade. It was just before five, and the flock of families who came by for after-dinner ice cream hadn’t arrived yet.
During the short car ride over, they engaged in small talk. What was Sierra studying? What were her favorite subjects? The girl seemed a little distracted. She stared out the window of the car, observing the passing scenery and occasionally saying, “I remember that” or “They tore that down.” Jason tried several times to bring up Hayden and hadn’t found the right entry point. But as they ate, Sierra checked her phone over and over. The fifteenth time she did it, Jason spoke.
“Anything from your mom?” he asked.
“Not since this morning.” Sierra shrugged. “She told me last night that she might not be responding to all of my texts. I think she just didn’t want me to worry.”
“Does she always answer right away?”
“No. She forgets sometimes. She turns the sound off on her phone at work and then she forgets to turn it back on. I’ll text her a bunch of times and be like, ‘Mom, turn your phone on.’ Of course, she can’t hear me when I say that.”
“If she told you she might be out of touch . . .”