ALSO BY EMILY CARPENTER
Every Single Secret
The Weight of Lies
Burying the Honeysuckle Girls
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2019 by Emily Carpenter
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781503904217
ISBN-10: 1503904210
Cover design by Faceout Studio, Lindy Martin
For Kevin,
who helped me survive
CONTENTS
MARCH
1 PERRY’S JOURNAL
AUGUST
2 ERIN
3 SHORIE
4 ERIN
5 SHORIE
6 ERIN
7 SHORIE
8 ERIN
9 SHORIE
10 ERIN
11 SHORIE
12 ERIN
13 SHORIE
14 PERRY’S JOURNAL
15 ERIN
16 SHORIE
17 ERIN
18 SHORIE
19 ERIN
20 PERRY’S JOURNAL
21 SHORIE
22 ERIN
23 SHORIE
24 ERIN
25 ERIN
26 SHORIE
27 ERIN
28 SHORIE
29 PERRY’S JOURNAL
30 ERIN
31 ERIN
32 SHORIE
33 ERIN
34 SHORIE
35 ERIN
36 SHORIE
37 ERIN
38 SHORIE
39 PERRY’S JOURNAL
40 ERIN
41 SHORIE
42 ERIN
43 SHORIE
44 PERRY’S JOURNAL
45 SHORIE
46 ERIN
47 SHORIE
48 ERIN
49 SHORIE
50 ERIN
51 SHORIE
52 ERIN
53 SHORIE
54 ERIN
55 PERRY’S JOURNAL
56 SHORIE
57 ERIN
58 SHORIE
59 ERIN
60 SHORIE
61 PERRY
TWO AND A HALF YEARS LATER
Epilogue ARCH
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MARCH
1
PERRY’S JOURNAL
Friday, March 1
TO DO:
Take Shorie for ice cream
Pick up wings, beer, pinot gris
Work on Shorie’s letter
Shorie’s new Jax budget for school
DO NOT OPEN SLACK OVER WEEKEND!!
(except latest Error Message—kick to Scotty?)
(and Global Cybergames guy—kick to Sabine?)
March’s Oulipian constraint—N+5
How do I love thee? Let me count the weddings.
I love thee to the design and breaker and herb
My southeast can reach, when ferrying out of silence.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “How Do I Love Thee?” N+5
AUGUST
2
ERIN
I was the one who insisted on the going-away party. Surprising exactly no one, I’m sure, because of how colossally bad an idea it was.
In fact, I have no doubt they discussed the issue behind my back in the days leading up to the dismal event. Just another instance of me forging blindly ahead, I’m sure they all agreed, trampling underfoot good sense, prudent measures, and the basics of self-care.
Proof positive that I was in dire need of a break.
Case in point: Shorie, my daughter, didn’t even want to go away. Instead of accepting her scholarship and going to college—fulfilling her late father’s wishes—she wanted to stay home and work at our tech company, Jax.
Additionally, the venue left much to be desired. For cost and conveniences’ sake, I’d planned to have the party at Jax’s office. Our startup, which launched a personal budget app, is run out of the funky loft space of a defunct department store in downtown Birmingham. The building is located smack-dab in the middle of the Birmingham Civil Rights Heritage Trail, and all day, you can see groups of tourists retracing the steps of Martin Luther King Jr. and the protests he led. Possibility and hope fill the air.
At least they used to before Perry died. But now—five months later—the place never fails to put me in a dark mood. When I’m there, I feel like a scuba diver trapped underwater, desperately trying to fight my way to the surface, all the while knowing my oxygen is running out. I love my job, but I hate the daily reminder of what I’ve lost.
So, not the best place to have a party.
In my defense, no one tried to talk me out of it. Sabine, my ever-loyal best friend, assured me everything would be fine. “Shorie will have a great time,” she said in that soothing yoga-instructor voice she uses to persuade me to do things I don’t want to do. “She may be the CEO’s daughter, but we all consider her family.”
I believed her and relaxed. Sabine has that effect on me. Behind my back, people call her the Erin Whisperer. A somewhat embarrassing but fair assessment. Truthfully I don’t know how I would’ve survived Perry’s death without her. She’s been a lifeline for me, at work and with Shorie.
Sabine sent out the e-vites and ordered all the food, enough for the fifteen Jax employees and the handful of friends and family Shorie was inviting. Sabine said decorations were no big deal, just some flowers and Auburn swag to spruce things up. She even offered to take Shorie shopping for a new outfit.
I tried, I truly did. I plucked my unruly eyebrows, made sure to pick up my old workhorse black dress at the cleaners, and got my nails done, fingers and toes, for the first time in months. I had Shorie’s gift cleaned and wrapped, a delicate band of emeralds that my mother gave to me when I went away to Auburn.
And then, the afternoon of the party, I unraveled.
It wasn’t a Chris Stapleton song or the smell of an Altoids mint on somebody’s breath or the way some man’s light-brown hair curled up against the edge of his starched white collar. This time it was fast food.
I had popped into the hole-in-the-wall where Perry and I used to sneak off to revel in the forbidden glory of a chili slaw dog. In the shoebox-size space, I ordered what my Jax app had suggested to me—Have Sloan’s Special Dog, only $5.99!—and found a table near the door, being careful not to smudge my newly glossed black nails as I sat. Then the vortex descended.
Perry lay on the hospital bed in the shadowy emergency room. In the curtained area, I could barely look at him, he was so bloody and still. He’d been driving from Columbus, Georgia, to meet us at the lake for a family camping trip, first one of the season. On 73, between Waverly and Roxana, he’d fallen asleep at the wheel, the police said. Veered off the narrow road and smashed his car into a pine tree. He hadn’t been wearing a seat belt, that idiot.
After his meeting in Columbus, but before he’d gotten on the road, he’d met someone for drinks. A friend from college, Roy. Roy later swore to me that Perry only had one beer. The doctors did a blood test and didn’t find anything to warrant concern, but what did it matter anyway? This
motionless body covered in blood was not my husband. My husband was gone.
How to explain grief to someone who’s never experienced it? It’s like a cross between a panic attack and a case of acute appendicitis, only it happens all over your body. It never goes away, and it permanently alters who you are. There is no escape, only temporary reprieve. That afternoon, I raced out of the hot dog place without my food. At home, I vomited into the kitchen trash can, then locked myself in the guest room. The room had the only bed I could sleep in, one without any memories hiding between its sheets. I crawled under the blanket, fully clothed, and immediately fell asleep.
I awoke to the sound of someone tapping gently on the guest bedroom door. It was Sabine, who must have let herself in with her spare key. It was 9:30 p.m. Thirty minutes before Shorie’s party was scheduled to be over.
3
SHORIE
The party’s going okay, I guess. However parties are supposed to go. The nineties mix Sabine put on is playing so loud, it’s making my heart keep time all the way down in the last cubicle.
I’m with one of Jax’s yearlong, paid interns—Hank?—who has the darkest hair and palest skin I’ve ever seen on a human. Not with with; I’m just showing him some of the inner workings of the proprietary GPS program Jax uses. The way my dad used conditional constructs—the if-then-else statements of programming—to tailor it to a typical Jax user’s needs.
I love tinkering like this, digging up the bones of a program, so to speak, but the truth is I have ulterior motives. Hank’s skills seem pretty basic—rudimentary, if I’m being polite—and I’m hoping if I show him something cool, he’ll give me something in return. Maybe tell me what Ben, Jax’s lead developer, has him working on. Possibly send a problem or two my way when I’m at school. Just something on the sly for me to mess around with. He could obviously use the help, no offense.
As I type, I tell him about one of our former interns, a doofus who actually used the password password for his admin account. The story makes Hank (or is it Henry?) laugh. That trips me up, and my fingers freeze momentarily. I’m not used to making boys laugh.
And then Mom rushes into the cubicle, ruining the moment.
“Oh my God, Shorie, I’m so sorry.” She’s not wearing yoga pants, thank God, but her makeup looks kind of half-assed, and the tag is sticking up from the back of her dress. She’s also got that glassy, confused look in her eyes. The look that’s become all too familiar in the past five months—she’s just woken up from a nap.
The intern snaps to attention at the sight of his boss. “Hey, Erin.”
“Hello, Hank.” Mom’s face looks strained. “Mind if we have a minute?”
He doesn’t even glance at me before fleeing the cubicle, and she moves to the desk. Taps her fingers on it. “Shor, I feel terrible.”
I wait for the explanation to follow.
“I was out, running errands, and I went home. I was just going to lie down for a second. But I was feeling kind of off, and I must’ve fallen asleep—”
I push out of the chair. “It’s okay.”
She pulls at the neck of her dress, and I reach out and straighten it for her. It’s the same one she wore to Dad’s funeral, which pisses me off but at the same time makes me want to cry. How could she do that? Wear that dress again? And at my party?
But I don’t cry or yell. What’s the use? It’s easier to be Robot Shorie—which is what my best friend, Daisy, called me one time in ninth grade when I refused to fight with her.
I do wonder what Mom’s been doing all day. Not helping Sabine and me set everything up, that’s for sure. I wonder if it occurred to her that she might not want to take a nap right before my going-away party. I want to slap her, then comfort her, then demand she apologize. All those emotions make me feel so nauseated, I could throw up.
“You look nice,” is all I say.
She doesn’t answer, just bites her lip.
When we rejoin the festivities, Daisy rushes up and presses a flute of what she pointedly announces is sparkling apple juice into my hands. I look around. Somehow Mom’s already got a drink in her hand, real champagne, and is tipping it back.
“That guy likes you,” Daisy says, her eyes like lasers on mine. “That intern, Hank.”
I take a sip and make a face. She’s smuggled me the real deal. I prefer the apple juice. “Yeah, I don’t think so.”
She shakes her head. She’s been doing this for me since we met in fifth grade at robotics club—telling me which guys are interested in me. I never seem to be able to figure it out on my own.
“But if he does, maybe he can put a good word in for me with Ben.”
She lifts her brows. “Oh, Shor. Forget all that. You’re going to love school. It’s going to be so much fun.”
“Not as much fun as staying home and working at Jax,” I retort, feeling bolder already. I’m kind of a lightweight when it comes to alcohol. And, no offense, but Daisy doesn’t really understand where I’m coming from. She’s 100 percent thrilled about heading off to Georgia Tech, where her parents went. She’s basically been packing for college since she was in diapers.
I head over to talk to Gigi and Arch, my grandparents. They’re all decked out for the party—Gigi in a green dress with a giant diamond starburst brooch on her shoulder and Arch in a natty suit and his favorite Yale tie, blue with little bulldogs all over it. He makes another crack about me going to Auburn instead of his la-di-da alma mater, and Gigi shushes him. But I’m glad to hear him joking. Ever since Dad died, he’s seemed so sad. When I look around for Mom again, it appears she’s melted away. Just then Sabine taps her glass, and the room quiets.
“I’d like to thank everyone for coming,” she says. “We really appreciate every single one of you showing up to wish Shorie success in the next phase of her life. Before we say good night, we’d like to invite you to make a toast. One sentence, short and sweet.” She winks at me. “I promised not to embarrass her.”
“Me first,” Ben says, raising his flute and clearing his throat theatrically. “An ode to Shorie. Looks like her daddy, codes like him too. But don’t think you can have her. She’s mine, Yahoo.”
Someone shouts, “What’s Yahoo?” and everybody laughs. Half of me feels suffused with happiness. The other half wants to run down the stairs and out into the street and never return. I really don’t enjoy everybody looking at me like this.
“Okay, that was three sentences,” Sabine says. “And nobody owns Shorie.” She casts Ben a reproving look, but he just grins and points at me. I try to smile back. If he really wanted me, though, he’d talk Mom into letting me stay home and work. I’ve known him since I was a baby, and I love him like family—I even used to call him Uncle Ben before I figured out he wasn’t really related to me—but I’m furious at him too.
Layton Marko, Jax’s lawyer, raises her glass next. “You may be the smartest person I know, Shorie Gaines, but you never rub our noses in it.”
Somebody yells, “Not true!” and breaks everybody up again.
“And comp-sci degree aside,” she continues, “you can still go to law school afterward, like the cool kids.”
I lift my glass to her while everybody hoots and hollers.
“My turn,” Sabine says. She dabs at her nose, and I can see she’s gotten misty-eyed. My heart twists a little. “You take our hearts with you, Shorie . . . so promise you’ll come back.”
Right then, I see Mom. She’s standing beside Ben, who’s got his arm around her. It isn’t that abnormal; they’re both huggers and have been friends forever. But for some reason it irks me. Mom catches my eye and raises her glass. Ben lets his arm fall away.
“Mine isn’t one sentence either . . . ,” she begins. The room quiets immediately, which is a thing that always happens when my mom speaks. “But first I’d like to say, I’m sorry for being late tonight. I lost track of time.”
I gaze down at my sandals and my lemon-yellow toenail polish. It looked cheery in the nail salon, but und
er the fluorescent office lights, it makes me look like I’ve got a kidney condition. How is it even possible that the room just got quieter?
“That said,” Mom continues, “I want you to know I am in your corner, one hundred percent, no matter what. Woo-hoo, Shorie!”
Ben’s arm pops back up to Mom’s shoulders, and he gives her a squeeze. But, at the same time, I see him and Sabine exchange glances. They’re not falling for Mom’s falsely upbeat tone.
“Anyway. I will always be here for you. I love you. Go get ʼem, kiddo.”
The guests clap. It might be my imagination, but the applause seems subdued, polite, like everyone senses there’s something wrong with Mom. They know. I do too.
When Dad found a bug in Jax, there was a simple protocol. He would just assign the problem to someone, and they would work on it until the issue was fixed. If only we could deal with people the way we deal with computers. Mom needs to be fixed. Maybe it’s not that simple with a human being, but I don’t know. I think finding someone smarter than me—a professional with experience—is worth a try.
Because clearly something is very wrong with my mother. And tonight, for the first time, I’m afraid if it doesn’t get fixed, something terrible is going to happen.
4
ERIN
Two days after her party, Shorie and I are hauling her bright-yellow Huffy cruiser up three flights of stairs in Amelia Boynton Hall—the dorm for all incoming freshmen with engineering scholarships—when she abruptly announces that she’s tired and stops dead on the landing.
“We should keep going,” I say, just as a fresh wave of kids and parents surge into the narrow space, filling it up and pressing us back against the wall. They must’ve let in the next group on the schedule, or else someone ahead of us is maneuvering an entire three-piece living room suite through one of the doorways, slowing the traffic. Whatever it is, now we’re in a bottleneck to end all bottlenecks, and I’m reconsidering our decision to bypass the long lines for the elevators.
Lines of kids file slowly past us in both directions, ants bearing armloads of twinkle lights, rugs, microwaves, and coordinated bedding. The girls let their long hair hang down their backs, even in the ruthless, soul-crushing Alabama humidity.
Until the Day I Die Page 1