Where We Belong

by Hyde, Catherine Ryan

  I sat up, rubbing my head. Then I wrapped myself in my own arms to try to stay warm. It didn’t work.

  “I think about it all the time. Every day.”

  “Every day? I had no idea you thought about it every day. It was eight years ago.”

  “It was a pretty big deal, you know.”

  “Of course I know. How dare you talk to me like I need to be taught that?” Every now and then, when I hit a special sore nerve in her, she suddenly got very mother-like. “He was my husband, and I adored him. It was a big deal for me, too, kiddo. More than you know.”

  “But you don’t think about it every day?”

  “I hate this line of questioning. Hate it. I have no idea why we have to discuss this.”

  “You’re still ducking my question. Did they catch the guy?”

  “Or guys. Might have been two or three guys.”

  “Still ducking.”

  “No! No, all right? No. They didn’t catch him. Or them. Now can we talk about something else?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  And I meant it. Because if someone’s going to lie to your face, there’s really no point in talking to them anymore. It gets you exactly nowhere.

  Apparently, I’d spent the last eight years of my life getting exactly nowhere. I just hadn’t known it until that moment.

  “We’re all going to take a nice shower, and then I have to go take the trailer back. It sucks that we couldn’t take it back yesterday. I’m really upset about that. That’s a big bite out of our food money.”

  I didn’t answer. Because I was officially not speaking to my mom.

  I got the feeling she hadn’t noticed.

  I wanted to ask where we were supposed to find a place to take a nice shower. I definitely would have, if I’d been speaking to her. I didn’t know yet that the campground had public showers for the campers.

  I found out soon enough, though, because I tagged after my mom and Sophie, and that’s where we ended up.

  The showers ran on quarters.

  My mom took Sophie in with the quarters we had and gave me a dollar. If I wanted a shower, I had to go to the campground hosts and get change.

  It was early, and I was afraid I’d wake them up. But then I saw his wife go by the window inside their trailer.

  I ducked under their awning and knocked.

  The door opened with a light creak, and she peeked out. She had deep wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and mouth, but I could tell she used to be pretty. Or… actually, she sort of still was. Just old pretty instead of young pretty. I saw that scar on her chin right away. It was small, but it was hard for me to look away.

  “Good morning,” I said. “You must be Mrs. Campground Host.”

  She laughed. “Geralynne,” she said.

  “I was wondering if you could give me change for the showers.”

  “Of course.”

  She took my dollar and disappeared. When she came back with the quarters, I knew they weren’t even half of what I wanted. I stared at my palm as she dropped them into my hand without touching me.

  “I also wondered if your husband was around.”

  She gave me a curious look.

  “No, he’s out checking tags.”

  I didn’t know what tags were, and I didn’t ask. It didn’t really matter.

  “Oh. I wanted to thank him for yesterday.”

  “Are you the girl who lost her sister?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “We didn’t do much. Just kept an eye on your campsite in case she wandered back.”

  “Well, I appreciate it.”

  “We’re just so glad she’s safe.”

  I was beginning to realize that this conversation had something in common with the quarters. Turns out it wasn’t really what I was after, either.

  “I wanted to tell him I was sorry for something, too.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. He was telling me about your son, and I—”

  The look on her face stopped me cold. She turned to stone. Right before my eyes. Fast, too.

  Then she looked over my head and said, “Here he comes back, so you can tell him yourself.”

  She disappeared into the trailer, leaving the door hanging partway open.

  “Good morning,” the man whose name I didn’t know said.

  “Hi. I came by to get change for the showers. But your wife helped me with that. And to thank you for yesterday. And also to say I was sorry for something, but I think I upset your wife just now, so I guess I have to be sorry twice.”

  I waited, in case he wanted to say something. But he just looked a little confused. So I kept going.

  “When you told me about your son, I think I was kind of rude. I didn’t mean to be. But I shouldn’t have said, ‘We’re not doing that.’ Because I don’t know what we’re doing. I can’t really know. I just know what I want. If she starts hurting herself, or even if she gets big, and we can’t handle her, and we’re just getting too hurt… or if she starts running off all the time… maybe we won’t have any choice. I shouldn’t have said it like you were wrong. You probably did what you needed to do. I hope we don’t have to do that. That’s all I should have said.”

  I watched him take in a big, deep breath. I thought, He’s like my mom. Doesn’t like to get hit with heavy stuff first thing in the morning. Then I felt like it was my fault, and I was doing life all wrong, always in everybody’s face about stuff that’s better left alone. Me, of all people. The one who hates to talk about everything. Or at least, who always did before.

  “Don’t think of it like it’s the worst thing in the world,” he said. “There are some nice places. They’re like group homes. They could teach your sister to do as much on her own as she’s able to do.”

  “She’s six,” I said. “She’s barely old enough for school.”

  “But later…”

  “Oh. Later. Yeah. Actually… I hadn’t thought of that. Maybe when she’s eighteen or something. Maybe I’ll grow up and go off on my own and get a job, and she’ll grow up and go to one of those homes and learn stuff. That might be okay. Thing is, if we had to do it now, it would be like we didn’t even raise her. Like we had her and then just sort of changed our minds. Anyway, you don’t need to know all that. I just wanted to say I was sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  He went back into his trailer, and just as I stepped through the gate in their picket fence, I heard Geralynne say, “Why on earth did you tell her about Gary?”

  Then I felt bad again, like I was always upsetting people. Always remembering things they wanted to forget. I think I had a broken forgetter.

  While I was walking back, I also thought about how I’d said, “We had her.” We. Like I had Sophie just as much as my mom did. Then I remembered when Nellie said just the opposite. That my mom had her, but I didn’t. That Sophie wasn’t really my problem. But I didn’t like thinking about Nellie, so I put the whole thing out of my head as best I could. Which—between that and the situation with my dad—didn’t turn out to be a very good job.

  My mom stood by the car with her hands on her hips, glaring at me. She was still mad at me for asking what I asked about Dad. But she wasn’t admitting it.

  “You’re going? After all you said about not wanting to go?”

  “I’m not going. You’re going to drop me at Paul’s.”

  “We’ll be hours.”

  “So? I’ll sit and talk to him. Or I’ll help him unpack. Or if he doesn’t want me around, I’ll just walk the dog and then sit at the bottom of his stairs and wait for you.”

  She came in my direction fast, moved in really close, and it startled me.

  “And Sophie?” she asked, too quietly for Sophie—who was already strapped into her car seat—to hear. “The whole point is to take her on the walks with you.”

  Amazingly, I’d forgotten that. I’d been thinking of going to Paul’s as sort of its own reward.

  There was lots of not admittin
g going on that morning. Lots.

  “I’ll bring Rigby out to the car when you come back to get me. And Sophie can see her then. She’ll come with us the next day. Otherwise, what am I supposed to do? Just sit in the tent for hours? I’d rather visit with Paul.”

  She took a step back, looked at me strangely, then got in and started the car before I could even scramble into the passenger seat. Slammed it into gear before I had my seatbelt on.

  Fortunately, our camping space was the kind you can drive all the way through. My mom wasn’t good at backing up that trailer.

  We drove halfway into town without either one of us saying a word.

  Then she said, “You sure this guy’s not a perv?”

  “Positive.”

  “And… if he hates everybody… how did you two get to be so buddy-buddy?”

  This was starting to feel too much like speaking to my mom, who I wasn’t. Speaking to, I mean. So I just shrugged.

  Besides, it was a question I really had no answer for. I’d been wondering about it a lot myself. I hadn’t even coughed up so much as an educated guess.

  “Is it okay that I’m still here?”

  I had my head half into a huge cardboard barrel in his kitchen. I was handing him up dishes, and he was arranging his cupboards whatever way he wanted them to be.

  “It’s fine. Why?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t want to be somebody who just invites myself in. I promised I’d walk the dog and then get out of your hair.”

  “It’s fine. People who are willing to help unpack are always welcome wherever they go.”

  We worked in silence for a few minutes. I kept looking at Rigby, who was stretched out across the kitchen floor. From the front of her front paws to the back of her back paws was just about the whole width of the kitchen.

  “I sure love that dog,” I said.

  I hadn’t meant to say it out loud. It came out too emotional. More love than I’d meant to admit. It’s strange to love somebody else’s dog that much. It’s hard.

  “Me, too,” he said. “She’s a good girl.”

  If he thought I was being weird, he didn’t say so. So I jumped in even deeper.

  “When you told me yesterday that she was old, I didn’t think about it that much, because I couldn’t. Sophie was gone, and I was supposed to find her, and I wasn’t sure if we’d ever see her alive again. But then when I was trying to get to sleep last night, I started to think about Rigby being old. And it was sad. It really bothered me. But then, everything is sad right now. I’ve got so many things bothering me, half the time I can barely tell where the sad is coming from.”

  I looked up, and he was looking right into my face. It made me nervous. Even though he looked interested, and he was obviously being nice. I thought about the time when we didn’t used to get along. When he’d been grumpy and told me to go away. For the second time in as many days, it felt like another lifetime completely.

  Why is it that years can go by, and it feels like nothing moves, and then the whole world changes three or four times in a couple of weeks? I could never figure that out.

  “When I was six,” I said, still halfway wondering if I was really going to do this, “my dad died.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry. Of…?”

  “A gun.”

  “Suicide? Or did someone kill him?”

  “Someone killed him. I was too young to really understand what was going on at the time. So I’ve always just gone by what my mom told me. She said it was a robbery. She said they knew it was a robbery because when they found him, his wallet and watch and wedding ring were missing. It seemed kind of weirdly random, you know? Like he just went out for a pack of cigarettes, and then all of a sudden, the whole world fell apart.”

  “I can imagine how it must have made you feel. But it happens.”

  “Yeah. I know it does. But I’m not sure now if that’s how it happened with my dad. You know I told you we got kicked out of my aunt’s. So my mom threw all our stuff in boxes and bags and bins and threw it all in the trailer. Really fast, you know? No special order. And then yesterday, I was looking for towels, and guess what I found?”

  “Can’t imagine.”

  Rigby stretched, her front paws pressed up against the wall on one side of the kitchen. It seemed strange that she should be so relaxed. I was so tense, it was making me sick.

  “His watch and wallet and wedding ring. She had them stashed away in an old jewelry box.”

  “The police must have given them back to her.”

  “But they were supposed to be missing.”

  “Maybe they found the killer, and he had the items on him.”

  “Right. That’s what I thought. So I asked her this morning if they ever found the killer. She said no. She really didn’t want to talk about it at all.”

  “Hmm.” He scratched at one of his sideburns. “So, two things I can think of. Either the police found the items without finding the killer—like maybe somebody sold them illegally, and they came into police custody—or they were on him when he was found. Despite what she told you.”

  “And what would that mean? If they were on him when he was found?”

  “Well. I don’t know. It means it probably wasn’t a robbery. But I don’t know what it means it was, then. I’d need more information. Why don’t you try again asking your mom?”

  “Because I think she’s lying to me about it. And it does no good at all to ask somebody questions if you’re pretty sure they won’t tell you the truth.”

  “Hmm,” he said again.

  I tried to hand him a stack of pottery soup bowls, but he didn’t take them from me.

  He just asked, “Are you online?”

  “Me? No. We’re camping. We not only don’t have a computer, we don’t even have an outlet to plug one in.”

  “You want me to look into it for you?”

  “How could you do that?”

  We still weren’t putting the bowls away, and it was making it harder to talk to him, because I didn’t want to look at the person I was talking to at a time like that, and I didn’t know where else to look.

  “Shouldn’t be hard. It was a crime, so it must have been in the papers.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  “Write down his name before you go today. And where you lived at the time. And the date, as close as you can figure it. Only thing is…”

  The pause made me nervous.

  “What? The only thing is what?”

  “Are you sure you want to know? Might be that your mom lied to you because the truth is hard to take. Sure you want to know the truth?”

  “Um. No. Not positive. Depends on how hard a truth. Maybe you could find out and then tell me how bad it is.”

  “Sounds like a tough judgment call.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “You won’t have to judge. Once I know there’s a truth that’s different from what I thought, I have to know what it is. Right?”

  “That’s how it would be for me.”

  “Maybe you could just give me the details one at a time if it’s really bad. And I could say, ‘That’s enough’ when I didn’t want to hear any more.”

  “That might work.”

  He took the bowls out of my hands. Which surprised me. I’d forgotten they were even there. He put them up in the cupboard while I dove in for some drinking glasses individually wrapped in newspaper.

  “That’s not exactly something to be ashamed of,” he said.

  I had no idea what he meant.

  “Who said it was?”

  “What I mean is, even if your mother lied, that’s a bad thing about her. Not you. Although… I guess you wouldn’t want me to tell anybody…”

  “Oh. That. The thing. I forgot I was going to tell you something about me. That wasn’t the thing. It was just on my mind. And I couldn’t talk about it with my mom.”

  “You don’t have to tell me anything about you.”

  “No. I will. I don’t mind. I just forgot to thi
nk of anything.”

  “It’s okay. I trust you. I know you won’t say anything to anybody about… my situation. Just don’t tell your mom, whatever you do. She has a way of sticking her foot in it. I wouldn’t want it getting back to Rachel.”

  “She doesn’t even know how you feel?”

  “Hey. I didn’t say I was willing to go into detail.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  We worked without talking for a while longer. We emptied that whole huge barrel and then started in on a box of silverware and cooking utensils.

  “I think I might be gay,” I said.

  I halfway knew it was about to come out a second before it did, but I didn’t plan it, and there wasn’t much I could do to change it by then, anyway. And I guess maybe part of me thought it was better said.

  He stopped putting silverware away and looked at me, but I didn’t look back.

  “Is that the thing?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. It’s a thing.”

  “It’s still not something to be ashamed of.”

  “Neither is being in love with somebody. It’s just one of those things I wouldn’t want you to tell anybody.”

  “Would your mom be upset?”

  “I think she would, actually. She wouldn’t be hateful about it. But she really wants me to be a girly girl, because she was. Is. She wants me to grow my hair long. She says pretty soon it’ll matter, because I’ll be getting interested in boys. I mean, duh, Mom. I’m fourteen. How old do I have to get before she figures out it’s not happening like that? God knows she’s watching close enough.”

  “You don’t seem fourteen. You seem more like twenty. Just maybe a little shorter.”

  “Everybody tells me that.”

  “So… not to be nosy. And not to make you go into detail if you don’t want. But… you think you might be? Or you are?”

  “I am. That was just an easier way to say it the first time.”

  “Right. I thought so.”

  “Why did you think so? How did you know?”

  “I didn’t mean that. I didn’t know. I never thought about it. I just meant, when you said it, I thought, When somebody thinks they might be something, it’s usually because they are.”

  Then we didn’t talk for a while, and it felt strangely okay. Not like we were afraid to say more. We just put pots and pans and stuff away, and that was enough.