I leaned forward and hugged him for a long time. “Thank you, Dad.”
He rubbed my back. “I love you, Meg,” he said. “I couldn’t stand it if anything happened to you.”
“I know. Don’t worry.”
He stood slowly, said goodnight and closed my door behind him.
Dear Wyatt—
I know it’s been a while since I’ve written. I wish you could see Chapin right now. It’s all decked out with twinkling lights on every building and huge tinsel candy canes on every light pole in town. Dad and I are going to bite the bullet and fly to Pittsburgh this morning even though I’m not sure we’ll be welcome.
I had this weird dream last night. We were all together at the beach house. You and Mom were flying a kite and Dad and I were building a sandcastle. Your kite kept taking a nosedive into the dunes, and the waves kept dissolving our castle. And none of us could figure out what we were doing wrong. Finally, we all got frustrated and walked away. You left your kite tangled up on the dunes, and the castle washed away. Instead of walking away together, we went in different directions, alone. And none of us looked back. It felt so real. I thought you’d come back to me.
Merry Christmas, Wyatt. I love you.
Meg
The long flight to Pittsburgh gave me a chance to do a lot of mental preparation for seeing my mom. I wore my headphones but never turned on my iPod. We had planned to get a shuttle to Aunt Catherine’s house, but when we got to baggage claim, I saw my Uncle David leaning casually against a wall. He grinned when he saw us, and walked slowly over with his hands in his pockets. He’s a neurosurgeon, which could be intimidating with the whole brilliance thing, but he’s really nice so people feel comfortable around him. He drives one of those fast sport motorcycles, and he took me to a couple of Dave Matthews concerts on the back of it. He used to take Wyatt to Steelers games—he has great season tickets. He’s got a smile that stops you cold; I’ve seen women watching him in restaurants and stores. But he’s always only had eyes for Catherine, and she knows it.
“Hey, you wouldn’t happen to be my niece, Meg, would you? Because you look a lot like her, except she’s shorter and scrawnier. And her knees and elbows are usually bleeding.” He winked and pulled me into him for a hug.
He shook Dad’s hand and then hugged him, too. The emotion that passed over Dad’s face was painful for me to watch. I looked away from them and scanned the luggage tracks for our bags. I saw Dad’s immediately and grabbed it while David and Dad talked quietly and privately about Mom. My suitcase followed pretty quickly and I pulled both bags over to a row of plastic chairs where I sat and waited. I knew one thing for sure—I didn’t want to be involved in whatever discussion they were having. Dad looked down and shook his head a lot, and David patted his back and looked grim. They both got quiet and stared at nothing in particular and then Dad seemed to make a decision and he walked away from David, toward the rental car desks.
“You didn’t need to come for us,” I said when David sank down into a chair next to me. “We could’ve taken a cab.”
“No family of mine is going to get a cab to my house. How are you, Meg?”
“I’m okay. I’m a little nervous about seeing her again. I’m not sure how to act, or what to say.”
He took my hand. “I know, Meg. None of us know what to say, or how to act. We’re all learning together.”
“Why’s my dad renting a car if you’re here?”
“Because your mom isn’t at our house, Meg. She left this morning, after you guys boarded your plane. I wasn’t home, but Catherine said she threw some things in a bag, climbed in her car and left. Didn’t say a word. We don’t know where she went.”
“I assume she knew we were coming?”
“She knew.”
“Where does Dad think she is?”
“He thinks she went to New Jersey. To the beach house.”
“So he’s going to follow her? Try to find her?”
“He’s going to follow her. Try to find her.”
“And I’m not going with him?”
“It would be best if you stayed here, with us, Meg. That’s what he wants. But you do get a vote.”
I thought about my vote for a minute. If I went with Dad, I would make him even more uncomfortable. He would feel like he needed to take care of me, instead of using all of his energy looking for Mom and bringing her home. If I stayed, I could be here in case she came back to Catherine’s house. I could help Catherine clean up the mess that I’m sure my mom has left in her wake.
I sighed and then laid my head on Uncle David’s shoulder.
“Ready to vote?”
“I think I’ll stay here if I won’t get in your way.”
“Good girl.”
He patted my leg. “The girls will be thrilled to see you. We’ll have a semi-normal Christmas morning tomorrow. Sound okay to you?”
“Sure. Thanks, Uncle David.”
Dad hurried over with his rental car agreement and a key to a sedan. He searched my face for a moment and then asked if David had filled me in.
“Yes. I think I’ll stay here, Dad, in case she comes back tonight.”
He leaned over and kissed me on the cheek.
“I’ll find her, Meg. We can fix this. I’ll call you when I get to the beach house.”
And with that, he turned and walked away. He suddenly looked ten years older, but he had a determined gait and he stepped through the automatic doors before I could even take a breath.
David and I walked to his black Mercedes parked in thirty-minute parking across from the terminal. Within minutes we were turning onto the interstate toward Canning Mills.
“Thanks for taking care of my mom. I’m really sorry we’ve had to burden your family like this. It’s definitely above and beyond.”
He squeezed my hand. “Meg, this is what families do, right? It’s no burden. You know what? It’s really only been difficult since just before Thanksgiving. I think the thought of the holidays was too much. Before that, she was pretty easy to live with—and she was even planning to move back to your old house. We just feel so bad for you and your dad. I know Jack’s driving himself crazy and blaming himself for everything.”
We passed all the familiar places from my childhood—my old dance studio, my elementary school, Wyatt’s best friend’s house, our favorite restaurant. Finally we turned down the drive of David and Catherine’s house. The old stone house built in the 1920s was always my idea of the perfect house. I have this memory of seeing it for the first time right after they bought it. I danced around inside the empty rooms for hours feeling like a princess before their movers arrived. Wyatt built a tree house in a huge old live oak in the backyard. He must’ve worked on it for a year. I don’t know why he built it here instead of at our house. He’d build a part, and then rip it out if it wasn’t perfect. He even made a little table and chairs and hauled them up with a rope. We spent hours and hours sitting in the tree house with our feet dangling off the edge, talking about important things. When the headlights raked across that tree, I saw that they’d left the tree house intact.
David smiled. “Yeah, I left it. Wyatt was like a master carpenter or something. It’s a thing of beauty. Our girls pretend it’s a fairy house. They want to paint it pink and purple.”
“I’m glad you left it. It seems like the right thing.” I smiled back and took a deep breath to prepare myself for what I was about to face.
The door opened wide and my cousins, Audrey and Ana Kate, slipped out and ran to their daddy’s car. They squealed when they saw me and jumped on my back. I tickled them for a while and then carried them to the porch. David carried my bag in and I looked for Catherine. I found her standing at the stove stirring something. She looked weary and she’d lost weight. I felt her burden crushing me as soon as I saw her eyes.
She stopped stirring, took the pan off the flame, and pulled me into a hug.
“Oh, Meg. I’m really glad to see you.”
“I’m
glad I’m here, Aunt Catherine. I wish my parents were here, too.”
“I know, honey. It’s going to be okay, though. Jack will find her and things will start getting better. They just need some time to talk, don’t you think?”
“I hope.”
We ate together in the formal dining room. The girls were dressed in little red dresses and they looked precious. David and Catherine tried hard to make things feel normal for me. But there’s nothing like Christmas to call attention to all your problems, and put the ‘fun’ in dysfunctional.
I decided to go to bed early. David and Catherine bathed the girls and then read The Night Before Christmas to them in their little beds. If my cousins had any idea that such drama was taking place in their house, they didn’t show it. Bless Catherine’s heart for shielding them so well.
The guest room had a private bathroom with a huge bathtub. Catherine stocked the bathroom well with expensive bubble baths and bath salts. I ran a steaming hot bath and loaded it with every product I could find. Then I submerged myself and tried to forget what might be going on in my dad’s head as he sped toward the coast.
Later, in the dark quiet of my room, I called his cell phone and he picked up on the first ring.
“Hi, baby. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, Dad. Did you find her?”
“We’re both at the beach house, Meg. I was just getting ready to call you. She’s not happy with me, but she’s staying put. I think maybe we’ll try to spend a few days here, if you’re okay with that. What do you think?”
“I think if she’ll agree to that then you should definitely go for it. You need time to talk. I’m okay here. I think I’ll go to our house tomorrow. I can hang out there, and maybe get Allie and Krista to stay with me.”
“That sounds good, Meg. I know you’ve missed your friends. There’s not much in the house, though. Probably no sheets for the beds.”
“I’ll borrow some from Catherine.”
“Okay, Meg. Don’t stay there alone.”
“I won’t. Tell Mom that I miss her so much and that I love her.”
“I’ve already told her. She knows, honey.”
I hung up and drifted to sleep thinking of Henry who had promised to camp out in his living room with Whit to wait for Santa. At least the Whitmires were all together, safe, warm, and happy.
Before it was even light out, I heard little feet running down the wood floor of the hall outside my room. I finally dragged from my sleep-addled brain the fact that it was Christmas morning, and Audrey and Ana Kate were running downstairs to the tree and the paradise that surely awaited them.
I slowly got up and decided to take a quick shower and brush my teeth before joining them. The girls were squealing and ripping through presents when I came in. Catherine handed me a steaming cup of apple cider and David aimed the camera my way. He only tried that once, though, when he saw how unenthused I am about early-morning pictures.
I sat in an overstuffed chair next to the fire and their chocolate lab, Stewart, lay down on my feet. Catherine handed me a present wrapped with birthday paper, and said, “Merry Birthday, Meggie.” It was a hoodie from Harvard, wrapped around an application packet.
“Subtle,” I said, chuckling.
“Yeah, well I’ve never been known for that.”
“Mom and Dad would not be happy with me if I picked Harvard over Penn.”
“I know. Never hurts to try, though. I’ve still got connections there.”
“I’ll let you know if by some extraordinary miracle I decide to apply to Harvard. Thanks for the hoodie. I will wear it with pride.”
We ate brunch and then the girls went down for a nap. David got called to the hospital and Catherine sank down next to me on the couch.
“Want to talk about your mom now?”
“Can we?” I asked, turning to her and tucking my legs under my body.
“Sure, honey. I thought she was doing pretty well until yesterday. I reminded her that you and your dad were coming, and she mumbled something about not being able to handle that, and then she was gone.”
“Do you think she’s improving at all?”
“Oh, I don’t know. She’s angry. She’s depressed. She has trouble getting out of bed. But she is doing some painting in the garage. And she talks about moving back to your Canning Mills house. She doesn’t talk about going back to Wyoming.”
“What about medication?”
“Well, I think she self-medicates a lot. She seems to take a lot of valium. She’s supposed to be on a pretty high-dose of an antidepressant but I don’t think she’s taking it. It’s like I told David—it feels like it could go either way at this point. She’s teetering on the edge of being okay and being totally gone. A push either way will send her off.”
“So what should I do?”
Catherine twined her long, graceful fingers into mine.
“You should keep doing what you’re doing. Your dad says you’re doing great in school. You’ve made friends. He likes Henry.”
She smiled a bit. “You should pray that your mom gets done with grieving and gets involved in life again. I don’t know. Maybe it will help her to live on her own for a while, to realize that she needs you guys more than she’d ever admit.”
“Thanks, Catherine. Thanks for everything. I don’t know how we’ll ever be able to repay you for what you’ve done for us.”
“You would do the same for me. If we ever needed you, you’d be here in a heartbeat.”
“Yes, I would,” I said, and I squeezed her hand. “Do you guys still have your old Volkswagon in the garage?”
“Yes. I can’t bear to part with it. Why? Do you need a car to go somewhere?”
“I was thinking of going to our house. I’d really like to be there for a few days while I’m this close. Dad said I can invite Allie and Krista to stay with me.”
“I completely understand. You go when you need to. I’ll get the keys and some sheets and towels. I don’t think you guys left anything useful in the house.”
She walked into the office and came back with the keys to her old yellow VW. I’d only driven it once and it was a stubborn little car, but I was pretty sure I could make it to our house.
As I packed up, Catherine came in with sheets, blankets and towels, enough for all the beds in the house. And she packed a bag with a huge container of left-over beef stew, bags of cookies, and bottles of juice and water. I loaded everything into the Volkswagon, kissed her goodbye and headed out.
When I pulled down our old street, my heart jumped into my throat. There was the sidewalk where Wyatt and I rode our bikes and Big Wheels. There were the driveways of the friends who let us skateboard up and down, getting in their way, making too much noise. There was where we always had little Fourth of July parties with fireworks. There were the trees that taught me the value of good, strong low branches for climbing. There was the house where Wyatt and I felt safe and sheltered and endlessly loved. Where we could open the door and leave behind all the meanness of the outside world. Where we knew what to expect and knew what we were capable of giving.
I pulled in and parked next to the front walk, grabbed my suitcase, and went to the front porch. For a while, I just stared at the beautiful Craftsman windows, and then I caught my favorite view—my bedroom window. My parents chose the front, upstairs room for me. It was unique in that the builder put the wrong kind of window in it. It drove my dad crazy. He wasn’t sure if his dad had included it in the plans or if the builder put it in because he ran out of Craftsman windows. My beautiful, glorious, arched window was not Craftsman—it was a Tudor cottage window. The kind that has tiny diamond shaped panes encased in thick, sturdy metal. Wyatt and his friends sent baseballs flying through just about every window of this house, but when they would hit my window, the balls would ping against the metal and fall back, disappointed, to the ground.
I could open my window by cranking open the heavy doors of glass and metal. They opened out, and when I had both doors
cranked open, our house looked so cool—like it was yawning lazily in the sun. Or throwing open its arms to welcome an approaching storm. I loved my window. I’ve missed my window.
Mr. Hucks, the man who had been our next door neighbor my entire life, was outside shoveling snow. When he saw me he walked over to say hello, and even though I’ve known him all my life, I still felt awkward every time I talked to him. That’s probably because of the time he caught me peeking through his windows to catch a glimpse of his son. I was about eleven when, not realizing Mr. Hucks was home, I crept into his backyard to look through the kitchen window. When Mr. Hucks saw me looking through the window, he opened the door and asked if I needed something. I told him my mom needed to borrow an egg. He sort of smiled, said, “Just one?” and handed it to me. I was careful to avoid eye contact from then on. Today, he seemed glad to see me and he asked all about Wyoming and my parents. When he turned to go, I took a deep breath and walked to our porch.
I turned the key in the lock and opened the front door and the familiar smell of home hit me in the face. I kicked the door closed behind me and dropped to my knees, feeling like the breath had been knocked out of me. We were everywhere. I heard Wyatt’s laugh in the next room. I caught Mom’s shadow in the kitchen, and I heard Dad’s printer humming in his office. We were here. We were so here.
I had planned to call Allie immediately but I realized now that I needed to be alone for a while. It would take some time to soak this all into my pores again and I didn’t want to share the sacred air with anyone yet. I carried my bag up the wooden steps that have supported members of my family for seventy years. I’d fallen down these stairs more times than I could count. Wyatt used to ride the laundry basket express down them when we were here alone. I could still see the grooves that the sharp edges of the plastic basket left in the wood. It drove Mom to distraction trying to figure out what left the marks on the stairs. She would watch us go up and down them to see if we were scraping our shoes against them. She inspected our shoes for embedded rocks. I don’t think she ever guessed Wyatt’s secret.
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