“I mean, to me it does.” Meg gazed at him, baffled. “I don’t get how—”
“It’s done, okay? That’s all that matters. And I already texted Moira and told her I was leaving the warehouse, so—”
“But how can it just be done?” Meg couldn’t help pressing. It seemed like an infinitely fixable problem to her, the kind of thing that could be solved with a carefully worded email or call. “I’m sure if you just call that guy back and ask—”
“Can you stop it?” Colby exploded. The anger in his eyes, in his body, seemed endless; it reminded her of the middle of the ocean. It reminded her of staring up into space. “I know you think everyone who doesn’t agree with your way of handling a situation at any given moment is a dumbass who just hasn’t thought the big thoughts like you have, but you might be surprised to learn that’s not actually how it works.”
“That’s not what I think,” Meg interrupted, even as she was dimly aware that it kind of had been; God, she didn’t know which one of them annoyed her more. She hated this, standing out here fighting where anyone could see them. It was exactly what she’d spent the last year and a half trying to avoid. And he knew that! He knew that, and still . . . “You’re being so enormously unfair right now. Like, what exactly is your problem with me all of a sudden?”
“My problem is you are so completely divorced from reality—”
“How am I the one divorced from reality?”
“You can’t even tell your best fucking friend you don’t want to go to Cornell!” he bellowed, throwing his arms out like he was daring the sky to open above him, and that was the moment Emily came through the front door of the restaurant.
“Wait, what?” Emily’s eyes narrowed, her gaze darting back and forth between them. “Um. Meg? What’s he talking about?”
“Nothing,” Meg said, eyes blurring with tears as she kept her gaze trained on Colby; he’d dropped his arms now, a boxer with no one to fight. “I’ll see you inside in a minute, okay?”
“Meg—”
“Everything’s fine, Em. Really.”
“I just—” Emily broke off. “Okay.”
Once they were alone, Meg stared at him another minute. “Um,” she said, and it came out like a whisper, “I think you should probably go.”
Colby nodded once, just faintly, glancing around the parking lot like he was surveying for physical damage. Meg understood the impulse. It seemed like there should be broken glass around him, dishes smashed on the concrete. It seemed like it ought to be the end of the world.
“Yeah,” he said. “I guess I should.”
Thirty-One
Colby
Colby did a quick mental inventory of everything he’d left at Meg’s house, decided it was nothing he couldn’t live without, then got in his car and headed straight for the highway, turning up the radio as loud as it would go. He wanted to forget her smile. He wanted to forget that he’d come here at all. Most of all, he wanted to forget the way she’d looked at him: like he was so fucking disappointing, like everything she’d worried was true about him actually was.
So? he thought, the city disappearing in the rearview. Let her be disappointed, then.
It started raining somewhere near Lancaster, only then it didn’t stop, water sluicing across the windshield faster than his shitty wipers could take care of it. Colby gritted his teeth and kept driving, shoulders hunched and jaw clenched hard enough to ache. He hated weather like this; it was exactly how it had been the night his dad—
Stop it.
He pulled over at a service station outside Allentown to piss and buy a Snickers and use the rest of the cash in his wallet to fill his gas tank, which he hoped was enough to get him home. The clerk was a pale blond girl with a small, painful-looking mountain range of acne across her jaw. “Have a good night,” she said, picking up the battered sci-fi novel she’d been reading. Colby thought this would be the loneliest job in the world.
By the time he got back on the highway, it was really pouring, his toes curling up inside his uncomfortable shoes like he could keep better traction on the road that way. The night was black as the inside of a grave. He turned the radio down so he could concentrate and flicked on his high beams . . .
Just in time to see the deer darting out into the middle of the road.
Colby swerved at the very last second, the car fishtailing all over the empty highway before skidding to a stop three inches from the guardrail. The deer scampered off into the woods. For a second, Colby just sat there, fingers white-knuckled around the steering wheel and the iron tang of his own heart in his mouth.
Then, before he knew exactly what he was doing, he wrenched off his seat belt and got out of the car.
The rain was apocalyptic. Colby’s hair plastered against his forehead; his shirt soaked through right away like a second skin. The roar of it was incessant, deafening, just like it had been that afternoon last year when—
Cut it out, he ordered himself, but he already knew it was useless. He dropped his shoulders and let the memory come.
He’d been dicking around with Micah outside the office park, the two of them playing chicken with the nearing rolls of thunder; it was only once the sky had finally opened that they’d dashed into their cars and called it a day. Colby thought about that a lot, though he knew it was probably useless—that maybe if he’d been home a little earlier, if they’d just microwaved some mozzarella sticks and watched fucking Beaches on cable or whatever—
Anyway.
When he got home his dad’s car was in the driveway instead of in the garage, where it usually was. Colby let himself in through the back just like always, found Tris losing her mind at the door. “Buddy, if you gotta go, you gotta go,” Colby scolded mildly, nudging the dog out into the sodden yard and getting himself a glass of orange juice. Tris plastered her furry body against the slider and howled until Colby let her inside again. “What’s up with the dog?” he called into the living room; when his dad didn’t answer, he raised his eyebrows at Tris. “Where’s Dad?”
The TV was dark in the empty living room, and the shower wasn’t running. He wasn’t taking a nap in his bedroom, which he’d been doing more lately, though all of them seemed to have agreed to act like they didn’t notice. Colby finished his orange juice, put his empty glass in the dishwasher.
That was when he opened the door to the garage.
Once, when Colby was in middle school, Tris had disemboweled a giant possum and brought it into the house as a present, and his mom had walked right past it on the living room floor. “I honestly didn’t see it,” she insisted later, even though everyone kept saying she must have. “I think my brain just protected me.”
Which was to say: for a long fucking time, maybe a full minute, all Colby registered in the dank, mildew-smelling garage was the sound of the dog barking her head off and the single shoe that had fallen onto the concrete floor.
Now he wiped his face even though it was useless. He never let himself think about that night, and this was exactly why. He stood there for another long moment, the rain pooling in his ridiculous dress shoes as he remembered the rest of it: how he’d tripped over himself and scraped the palms of his hands in his scramble to find something to cut his dad down with, how he’d called 911 and done clumsy CPR.
How he’d tried so hard—holy shit, he had tried so fucking hard—and it hadn’t meant anything at all.
Colby watched the place where the deer had disappeared. Then he got back in his car and headed home.
Thirty-Two
Meg
When the party was finally over, she helped her dad and Lisa load presents into Lisa’s SUV, waving at the two of them as they pulled out of the parking lot and toward Lisa’s house in Penn Wynne. She thought for sure Emily had left, too, but as Meg headed for her Prius, she caught sight of her sitting on a bench by the back door of the restaurant, a bottle of prosecco she’d filched from somewhere clutched in one manicured hand.
“Hey,” Meg said—ap
proaching carefully, no sudden movements. “You’re not going to drive home, are you?”
Emily shook her head. “Of course not,” she said, her eyes glittering in the dim light coming off the restaurant. “Mason didn’t drink anything. He’s getting the car now.” Then, lifting her chin like a challenge: “Did he leave?”
Meg swallowed hard, not bothering to ask who she was talking about. “Yeah,” she said. “He left.”
Emily nodded. “Is it true, what he said? Are you not going to come to Cornell with me?”
Meg sighed. “Em, can we just—”
“Yes or no, Meg?”
Meg took a deep breath, and then she just said it. “Probably not,” she admitted. “No.”
Emily seemed to absorb that for a moment, taking a swig from the bottle of prosecco before setting it down on the pavement. “Don’t text me, okay?” she said, getting unsteadily to her feet. Then almost to herself: “Yeah. Just, like . . . don’t.”
“Emily,” Meg said, “come on,” but Mason was already pulling up in the car by then, the slow crunch of tires on concrete. She could hear Bob Dylan playing on the stereo as Emily got clumsily inside.
“Tell your dad congratulations again,” Mason called, waving through the passenger-side window. Meg watched the taillights until they disappeared down the street.
The house was dark when she got home, just the sound of the cicadas through the window and the hum of the refrigerator clicking on and off. Meg was grateful for the quiet—she wanted to get into bed and sleep for a hundred years without trying to spin tonight into something that a) wasn’t a disaster and b) wouldn’t somehow hurt her mom’s feelings. She changed into leggings and a T-shirt and scrubbed her makeup off in the bathroom sink, pointedly avoiding looking at the guest room, but as she was creeping down the hallway, her mom’s door opened.
“Is that you?” she asked, blinking a little, swaying the same as Emily had back in the parking lot and curling her hand around the door frame for balance. Her blond hair was mussed and her face was creased from the pillow, but she was still wearing the clothes Meg and Colby had left her in that afternoon. She must have passed out, Meg realized dully, though not for long enough to sleep off whatever it was she’d drunk in the first place.
“It’s me,” Meg said, pasting what she hoped was an even expression on her face and heading down the hallway in her mom’s direction. “You okay?”
“I’m fine,” her mom said, turning and shuffling back into the bedroom. If it occurred to her to ask where Colby was, she didn’t let on. “How was your thing?”
Hearing her mom describe it that way made Meg want to cry more than anything else had all night, though she couldn’t have explained why in any articulate way. “It was nice,” she lied.
Her mom nodded, heading into the master bathroom and shutting the door behind her. Meg sat down on the edge of the rumpled bed. It smelled stale in here, though, so she got up again and opened the window above the hope chest that held her christening gown and baby pictures. She was doing the one near the TV when the bathroom door opened again. “Leave that,” her mom said, though instead of getting back into bed, she fished a pair of Birkenstocks out of the overflowing closet. “It’s too cold.”
Meg frowned. “What do you need your shoes for?” she asked. “Where are you going?”
Her mom didn’t look at her. “Errand to run.”
“What?” Meg shook her head, already knowing what it was in the pit of her stomach; the gas station at the end of the street sold cheap, syrupy-looking wine. “Now? It’s after eleven, Mom.”
“Are you the parent now, Meg?” her mother snapped, raking her hands through her bedhead. Then, more gently: “It’ll be quick.”
“Mom,” Meg said, following her down the narrow hallway. “Come on. What is it? I’ll get it for you.”
Her mom ignored her, trailing a hand along the wall for balance. Meg blew out a breath. What was she supposed to do? Her mother was a grown woman. She couldn’t just tackle her to the ground. “What if I make you a sandwich?” she tried finally. “And then if you still want to go out after that—”
“Enough, Meg,” her mom said. “I’ve had enough from you tonight, okay?”
“I haven’t even been here tonight,” Meg argued, stung by the unfairness of it. “And I’m just saying—”
“Yes, Meg, I know,” her mom interrupted. “You’ve been with your father and his blushing bride.”
That stopped her. “Mom,” she said. “Really?”
That was when her mom tripped on the runner at the top of the stairs.
It was a bad fall, loud and sloppy; Meg thought both of them screamed. She ran the few feet to the top of the staircase just in time to see her mom land crumpled at the bottom of it, her left leg twisted unnaturally underneath her. Blood seeped from a gash in her head. “Mom,” Meg said, thundering down the stairs so fast she almost fell herself and had to grab the railing hard to keep from stumbling. “Mommy. Can you get up?”
Her mom was still screaming, the kind of cries Meg would have expected out of a child; adrenaline coursed like ice water through her veins. “You’re okay,” she forced herself to say, though her mother obviously wasn’t. “I’m going to call 911, okay?”
The ride to the hospital was a blur. The EMT couldn’t have been that much older than Meg, a skinny dark-haired kid who looked like Andrew, Emily’s brother. It felt like years ago that they’d argued at the party; it felt like even longer since Colby had left. “Is she on anything?” the EMT asked as he slid the backboard underneath Meg’s mom and lifted her onto the stretcher.
Meg hesitated. Her instinct was to lie—her instinct was always, always to lie—but when she opened her mouth to deny it, she found she’d run out of ways to make any of this all right. She thought of Colby asking her, weeks and weeks ago, and how she’d known the truth then, even if she hadn’t been able to utter it.
“She’s drunk,” Meg said now, taking a deep breath and climbing into the ambulance behind them. “She’s an alcoholic.”
“Okay,” Meg said, sitting beside her mom’s hospital bed a couple of hours later, squinting at the clipboard the nurse had handed her to fill out. “It says they need a full medical history.”
Her mom made a face. “Because I fell?”
“I’m just telling you what it says, Mom.”
“I know. I’m sorry.” Her mom leaned back against the pillows. “Leave that,” she said, closing her eyes briefly. “I’ll do it in a little while.”
Meg frowned. For some reason, it felt important to complete this task as quickly and efficiently as possible, but it wasn’t like she was making any progress, so she set it down on the windowsill and tucked her chilly, clammy hands between her legs. Her mom had a broken ankle, a sprained wrist, and a bruise on her cheekbone that was already starting to blacken; they were watching her for signs of a concussion, though the doctor didn’t think it was severe. The guy they’d seen had been kind of an asshole, brisk and dismissive; he’d barely even looked at her mom, and Meg had felt herself bristle. This is my mother, she’d wanted to say. She hated him. She hated her mom. She hated herself most of all. She should have prevented this somehow, should have taken more precautions. She should have done more to make sure everyone was fine.
“I’m sorry,” her mom said now, opening her eyes again before reaching out and laying her good hand against Meg’s face. “Tonight was a disaster. I never wanted you to see me like this.”
I see you like this all the time, Meg thought reflexively. Tonight was just worse than usual. “I know” was all she said.
Her mom fell asleep not long after that, her breathing deep and even; Meg watched her for a while, wondering what on earth to do next. Every time she thought about what could have happened, her stomach turned over. She had no idea how to make sure it didn’t happen again.
She was looking at her phone to see if Colby had somehow called without her noticing—he had not—when there was a quiet knock at the door.
She looked up and there was Lillian in a thin gray hoodie and high-tops, Phillies cap perched rakishly on her head. “Hey,” she said, holding up a Tupperware. “I got your text.”
Meg bit her lip to stop it from trembling. “I’m sorry,” she said, scrambling awkwardly to her feet. “I know it’s the middle of the night. I just kind of didn’t know who else to call.”
“No worries,” Lillian said, tucking the brim of her cap into the back pocket of her jeans. “Like I told you, I stay up late.”
“How’d you get them to let you in?” Meg asked, pulling her bag off the second chair so that Lillian could sit down and taking the Tupperware—lemon bars, she saw—and reaching out to squeeze Lillian’s hand. “It’s gotta be past visiting hours, right?”
Lillian shrugged. “My mom is an RN at Mercy,” she explained. “I speak nurse.”
Meg smiled. “I’m really, really glad you came.”
“Anytime.” She looked over at Meg’s mom, who was snoring quietly. The IV had already started to bruise her arm. She looked older than Meg thought of her as being, a line of silver showing at her roots where her hair dye had begun to grow out. “So what’s the plan?” Lillian asked.
“I don’t know,” she said, blowing a breath out. “I thought I could just keep everything spinning if I worked hard enough, you know? Like if I just convinced everybody that life was normal and okay and, like . . . proceeding as planned, then it would be.”
“You realize that’s not how life actually works,” Lillian pointed out.
“I mean sure, now,” Meg said, gesturing around at the hospital room, although truthfully, she’d known it wasn’t working for a long, long time now. After all, hadn’t that been the miracle of Colby to begin with? That he was the one person in her life who didn’t believe her sales pitch—and liked her anyway?
Well. At least for a little while.
“You gotta talk to your dad, Meg,” Lillian told her. “And not, like, at some amorphous down-the-road future time. You guys were in the emergency room tonight, you know what I’m saying? That makes this an emergency.”
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