by Sara Zarr
“First, like, don’t think I’m the worst . . . but Taylor and I broke into our mom’s phone.”
Emily stood up, tilted her head a little; and he detected the slightest judgment in her eyes. “Go on.”
“I know. It’s a violation of privacy. And I wish I hadn’t let Taylor talk me into it.”
“The woman hath made me eat of the fruit!” she said in a deep voice.
He laughed. “What?”
“Adam and Eve? In which the downfall of humanity is blamed on the wife? Anyway, continue.”
“My mom is planning to meet up with her boyfriend this week. Right in town.”
Emily clutched her head. “Seriously, Aunt Karen?”
“I’m so tired of it all, Emily. Especially of not knowing what to do, if I’m even supposed to do anything. I feel like I let this whole thing just . . . steal my life.”
She stepped closer. “I know,” she said. Then she grabbed his hand. “Come on.”
They stepped into the bunkhouse and stood in the middle of the now-roofless structure. The trees almost made a canopy over them.
“I loved sleeping out here when we were kids,” Kyle said. “I can’t believe we’re never going to do it again. Man, it sucks so much.”
“You know what you were saying about Bakers and feelings? You’re pretty good at having them. I don’t think you have the same problem as your dad or anyone else.”
“Yeah, having them is no problem.”
The afternoon light washed her in soft yellow. She had bedhead, and dirt under her nails, and there was a small streak of blood on her white shirt from where she’d brushed her hand after pulling out a splinter. Kyle felt like his heart was being crushed by the realness of her, but in a good way.
“Yeah,” he continued. “I definitely have feelings.” He touched his chest. “I just don’t know how to get rid of them.”
“You say that like they’re termites or something.”
He laughed. “Kind of.”
“My point is, I know you pretty well, Kyle.”
He listened so hard, desperate for her verdict on him.
“And I’ve witnessed a lot of your feelings,” she continued, “and how you deal with them. And if you’re worried you’ll turn out like your dad or Grandpa or whoever, you’re not. Also, whatever happens with your parents, I know you’re going to be okay.”
He brought his knuckle up to his mouth, chewed on the skin where his index finger bent.
“I mean, you know you’re going to be okay too,” she said. “But I guess I mean . . . whatever it feels like, you’ll be able to handle it. All these feelings, they hurt, but they’re not going to kill you.”
“You sound so sure.”
“My dad is always saying that to Alex, who has the biggest feelings around, and she’s not dead yet.”
She smiled at him and he wanted to say something as good as what she had. All he could do was hold her eyes with his and be glad for the moment.
A bluebird flew overhead, over the roofless roof. “We could sleep out here tonight,” Kyle said. “Before we tear out the bunks.”
“Yes!” She bounced on her toes. “That’s perfect. Yes.”
There were footsteps outside, and in a second Martie appeared in the doorway. “There you are. My dad is about to put chicken and carne asada on the grill and Grandma sent me to get you because we’re supposed to set up the rest of the stuff for tacos.” She stepped farther in, her arms crossed, looking around the bunkhouse. “History.”
“We want to sleep here tonight,” Emily said. “Like we used to.”
“With no roof? Or mattresses?”
“I bet there are some camping mattresses in the basement.”
“I have a very comfortable bed at home only twelve minutes away,” Martie said. “I’ll think about it.”
They started on the path up to the house to chop onions and tomatoes and cilantro, and grate cheese and slice avocados, like they had for every taco night since always.
“Did your mom make tortillas?” Emily asked Martie.
“No. We got store-bought.”
“Aw, man,” Kyle said.
Martie shook a rock out of her flip-flop. “I guess she didn’t feel like being the tortilleria for you guys. She already has a job.”
Kyle stopped walking for a few steps, then started again. “Just saying . . . I like her tortillas.”
Martie lifted her arms in an exaggerated shrug. Then she turned around and walked backward. “Did you guys hear Megan is coming?”
“Are you serious?” Kyle said. “Taylor talked to her?”
“I guess. I saw her on the phone walking through the orchard, like it was all private. Megan’s getting here late tonight or maybe in the morning.”
If he’d gotten that news at the start of today, he’d have been so happy. She was the last missing piece of this week. But now, knowing that Taylor must have told her about all the texts from Troy Partel, he didn’t know if she was coming to be part of the family, or coming to confront their mom and blow it all up.
6
WHILE THE cousins had been working on the bunkhouse, the aunts and uncles had been cleaning out more of their stuff. Uncle Mike had on a Van Halen concert T-shirt from 1985 that stretched tight across his chest. Kyle’s dad had a Sunday school participation ribbon pinned to his collar. During dinner, Aunt Jenny and Uncle Dale sat at the corner of the smaller table, like they were already tired of their Baker in-laws.
Kyle’s mom sat with them. She looked pretty. And sad, even when she was talking or smiling. Kyle was so mad at her, but also, like, part of him got it. How you could want and intend to be a certain kind of person but also keep getting deeper and deeper into the hole you had dug for yourself. It was hard to climb out. At least when he’d messed up with Nadia, she’d eventually drawn the line, and in a weird way, that had helped him start to get unstuck. Whereas with his mom, it seemed like they were all letting her just stay down there.
But whose job, exactly, was it to get her out?
The cousins and Great-Aunt Gina were all around the big table. Kyle sat with them and listened to Alex tearfully try to talk Gina into taking Larry the horse back to the convent with her.
“We don’t have a fenced area, honey. Or anyone who knows one thing about horses.”
Kyle tuned out, imagined Megan pulling up in a cloud of dust and stomping out of her car straight to Mom and being like, “What’s this shit about you using farm week as an opportunity to do some more cheating?” Flipping tables, some big scene.
When his mom stood up, he tuned back in.
“I didn’t bring my migraine medication with me,” she said, “and I feel a bad one coming. I’m going to run into town and get my prescription transferred to the pharmacy here.” She smiled a tense, fake smile, which did sort of look like the smile of someone who was about to get a migraine.
“I’ll go with you,” Taylor said. “You shouldn’t drive if you’re about to get one of your bad ones.”
Maybe Taylor really was worried about her driving, or maybe she wanted to be the one to give Mom the assist and tell her to stop. Maybe Kyle should say he’d go to the store with them and they could do an intervention. Maybe his dad should wake the hell up and act instead of stuffing tortilla chips in his face.
“Get ice,” Aunt Brenda said.
“We just got ice,” Grandma said.
Uncle Dale laughed. “Two words, Helen: margarita machine.”
Meanwhile, Kyle’s mom stood there, her smile frozen. “I’m fine on my own, and I really . . . I need to make just the one stop and get the meds so I can knock this thing out.”
Kyle’s dad reached for more chips and guac.
“Okay then,” their mom said. “Be back shortly.”
In the kitchen, Taylor made massive amounts of noise rattling plates and cups and silverware while she rinsed.
“You’re going to break something,” Kyle said.
“I want to break something.”
/> “What did you think was gonna happen if you went with Mom? It’s not like you need to catch her in a lie to know the truth.”
Taylor handed him a couple of glasses. “For one thing, I thought she might really be getting a migraine and might need me to drive. For another, what she’s doing is wrong and it makes me crazy how she can be so wrong and not care, and I care and I thought maybe I could say something and stop it.”
“I know,” Kyle said. “I felt exactly like that when I first found out.”
“Kyle, don’t do that. Don’t be all, ‘When I was your age,’ especially when I’m older, okay? You’re the baby.”
He put a row of plates in the dishwasher. “I’m trying to help you because I know it sucks.”
“Sorry,” she said quietly. “Now we’re going to look back on our final farm week and it’s going to have this extra garbage on top.”
“You told Megan about the texts, didn’t you.”
“Of course I told her. I told her the guy was here and Mom is seeing him and we needed her. Anyway, I thought you wanted us all here? Nothing motivates Megan like anger.”
“Yeah,” he said, “but I didn’t want angry Megan here. I just wanted Megan. Our sister Megan.”
He could picture Megan at ten, eleven, her two dark braids and how she wasn’t afraid of anything and would step on the spiders in the attic with her bare feet. How she’d turn off the flashlight when they were walking around the farm at night and let everything be pitch-black until Taylor or Kyle or Emily begged her to turn the light back on.
“Ugh, I’m so mad. Migraine medication. Using a real thing she has that way. It’s trash.”
“I guess I think it’s probably kind of complicated,” he said, then hated himself for using that cop-out word. “Anyway, what about Dad? Why isn’t he doing anything? Maybe there’s a reason Mom went looking.”
“Are you seriously defending her?”
“No. I’m just saying.”
There was a tap on the sliding door; Martie stood outside with her arms full of dishes. Kyle opened the door. “I think this is everything,” she said, and put them on the counter. “I decided I do want to sleep out with you guys tonight,” she told Kyle.
“Me and Emily thought we should sleep in the bunkhouse tonight,” Kyle explained to Taylor. “Before it’s gone.”
“There’s no roof.”
“So?”
“I like being indoors. Anyway, I want to wait here for Megan.”
“I’ll go get Alex to help me dig out the camping mattresses and stuff,” Martie said.
Kyle and Taylor finished with the dishes, and Kyle went out onto the patio while Taylor snuck another look at her phone. Emily and Great-Aunt Gina were walking up from the lake, Pico trailing behind them.
When he saw Emily, he felt both better and worse than he had in the previous moment of not seeing her. Better because she kept saying amazing things to him and he felt so understood. Worse because in a few days he would go back to hardly seeing her at all, and then what?
The aunts and uncles were hanging out around the big patio table, playing poker. They’d lit citronella candles, and the table was covered with beer bottles and a bottle of tequila and a bag of quartered limes.
Emily came over to Kyle and draped her arm around his neck. “I guess they don’t need the margarita machine if they’re just drinking straight tequila.”
“Saves on ice.”
“Em!” Aunt Brenda called out. “Come over here, I’ve barely seen you all day, I miss you.”
Emily dropped her arm and went over to the table and perched on the edge of her mom’s chair. “Are you winning?”
“Not yet.”
Kyle stood behind his dad, who had pocket tens. Uncle Mike was dealing, and a ten came on the flop. Finally, some tiny amount of good luck for his dad.
Aunt Brenda touched the back of Emily’s neck. “I wish you hadn’t cut your hair.”
“So you’ve mentioned.”
“I wish you’d done, like, an intermediate step. Long to bob before pixie.”
Emily leaned away from her mom’s grip. “My body, my choice. Like with your tattoo.”
Kyle’s dad looked up from his cards. “Uh, what?”
“Her tattoo,” Emily said. “Didn’t you show them?”
Aunt Brenda folded her cards. “Wow, Emily. Way to throw me under the bus.”
“Mom!” Kyle’s dad called, meaning Grandma, who sat in a patio recliner with a book. Great-Aunt Gina sat in the chair next to her, her face lit by the glow of her e-reader.
“Jeff!” Aunt Brenda reached across the table to hit his shoulder. Aunt Jenny and Uncle Mike looked like they were going to burst out laughing.
Grandma set her book down. “It’s getting loud, kids.”
“There’s no one around here for ten miles, Mom,” Mike said.
“There’s your father, who’s resting, and I’m sure he’d like to be able to hear himself think.”
“One of your kids got a tattoo,” Dad said. “Guess which one?”
Grandma’s eyes immediately went to Aunt Brenda. “You didn’t.” After a pause, she asked, “Where?”
“A place near campus,” she answered.
Aunt Jenny and Uncle Mike lost it. “She means where on your body, Bren,” Jenny said, and then everyone else laughed too. Everyone but Grandma.
Emily took her mom’s arm, about to help her roll up her sleeve, but her mom grabbed it away and stood. “Now I’m not showing it. It’s personal.”
“Oh, come on,” Dad said, holding out his hands and accidentally showing his cards. “You have to!”
“Nope, I actually don’t. Trip tens, Jeff? Nice.”
Kyle’s dad threw his cards in. “You’re going to wear long sleeves all week? In this weather?”
Emily’s mom shoved Emily off the chair—kind of joking but kind of not. Kyle watched Emily’s face. She retained her usual chill except for one twitch of her eyebrow that told Kyle she didn’t like being shoved by her mother.
“We’re sleeping in the bunkhouse,” Kyle announced.
“Oh, I don’t know, honey,” Grandma said.
Great-Aunt Gina set down her book. “They’ll be fine, Helen.”
“You’ll have to round up all the gear yourselves. Oh, there’s Karen. . . . I hope she was able to get her pills.”
Kyle’s mom’s car crunched on the gravel drive. She’d been pretty fast. Maybe she’d gone to town just to tell Troy goodbye forever, or maybe she really was getting pills. Maybe she’d only wanted to be alone, away from this chaos of all the Bakers all at once.
He wondered if he’d ever be able to trust a simple explanation again.
“This was a dumb idea.” Martie sat on a top bunk, swinging her legs.
“This was a great idea,” Emily said.
They’d inflated mattresses, laid out sleeping bags and pillows, put up a few battery-operated lights. Emily was already in one of the bottom bunks with a book. Kyle was amazed at how she could do that—serenely read with people moving and talking around her. No wonder she got such good grades.
“We need snacks,” Alex said. She slapped at her thigh. “And bug spray.”
“Yeah, why don’t you guys go get some food and stuff?”
“By ‘you guys’ you mean me and Alex because you think you can boss us around? Just because you’re oldest?” Martie said, lightly kicking Kyle’s shoulder.
“I don’t mind!” Alex headed to the door.
“You don’t know enough about life yet to mind,” Martie said to Alex.
“You do?” Kyle asked, laughing.
“Don’t treat me like a baby.”
“Don’t act like one.”
Emily put her book down. “Kyle.”
“Sorry,” he said.
“It’s fine. Hey, get the Mexican to do it.” Martie climbed down the ladder from the top bunk. “That is the whole history of this bunkhouse, after all.
“Sorry,” she continued, “but I fo
und out that when Grandma and Grandpa Baker sent out an email to your parents and Kyle’s parents about selling the farm, my mom and grandpa weren’t on it.”
“That’s messed up,” Emily said.
“My dad was on it, and Grandma is trying to play it off like she just assumed he’d tell my mom, but literally everyone but the kids got the email.”
“I’m sorry, dude.” Kyle tried to remember if Grandpa Navarro had participated in any of the family email chains Kyle had been on. “Is your grandpa even on email?”
“Yes, Kyle, he’s on email! He’s not some ancient Mexican riding around on a burro, wondering how email works! How do you think he runs this whole farm? Oh my god.”
Alex was by the door, listening, eyes big.
“Yeah that was a stupid question,” Kyle said. “I’m sorry.”
“Super dumb.” Martie looked around the bunkhouse. “You know what, I don’t want to sleep out here. It’s a fun yay cousin camp thing for you, but . . . I think I don’t ever want to come out here again.”
“Staayyy, Martie,” Kyle said, jostling her shoulders.
She shook her head. “I don’t want to.” Her face crumpled, like the adrenaline of her anger had morphed into something more sad, and she turned and left. Alex watched her go, looked at Kyle and Emily, then ran after her.
“Wow, I really said all the right things.” He imitated himself in a dumb-guy voice: “‘Is your grandpa even on email?’ Idiot.”
“She’ll forgive you,” Emily said. “Really she’s mad at Grandma and Grandpa.”
“She should be.” Kyle sat on the bunk opposite Emily. “When I went to see Megan that time, and told her about my parents, she said all this stuff about our family I’ve never thought about. Our house and cars and the fact that we could be buying like a herd of goats for a whole village instead.”
Emily laughed gently. “What are you talking about?”
“I don’t even know. I’m talking about our family, I guess.” He lay back so he could look up into the trees. A robin seemed to stare down at him and then fly away. “My mom’s affair isn’t, like, the one thing that’s messed up. I mean, I know we have our issues, but when I brought Nadia here for Thanksgiving, I felt like we were a pretty good family to meet.”