Along for the Ride (25 page)

‘You’re leaving?’ I said again. Still weird.

He bent down, picking up the bag I’d not spotted until now, which was by the stairs. ‘It’s complicated,’ he said. ‘Just give us some time. Okay?’

I just stood there, speechless, as he walked past me to the door, pulling it open. Here I was, with finally a chance to say everything I hadn’t two years earlier, the do-over of all do-overs. I could have asked him to reconsider, to think of other options. To stay. And yet nothing came. Nothing. I just watched him go, again.

I stood there for a long time, thinking this had to be a joke. It wasn’t until I had watched him pull out of the garage, flip down his sun visor, and drive off that I walked over and locked the door.

When I went upstairs, Heidi’s door was closed, but as I passed Isby’s room, I heard something. Not surprisingly, at first, I assumed it was a cry. But listening another minute, I realized it wasn’t. Tentatively, I pushed open the door, peering in. She was in her bassinette, looking up at her mobile, waving her arms around. Not wailing. Not shrieking. Even though these would have been perfectly acceptable and expected any day, but especially this one. Instead, she was just murmuring, making little baby noises.

I went closer, to the edge of her bassinette, and peered down at her. For a moment, she kept kicking, intent on the ceiling, but then she suddenly looked at me. Her face relaxed, changing entirely into something new, something amazing. A smile.

      Chapter

      THIRTEEN

‘I didn’t even want to call you,’ I heard Heidi say. ‘I was sure you’d just tell me you told me so.’

For three hours I’d been up in my room, trying to fall back asleep, but with no luck. Instead, I’d just lain there, remembering it all again: waking up so happy with Eli, my walk home, and then being blindsided by my dad’s departure, take two. But of all these images, it was Isby’s smile, so sweet and unexpected, that had stuck with me the most. Whenever I closed my eyes to try and sleep, it was all I could see.

‘No, not really,’ Heidi continued. ‘But I wouldn’t blame you. It’s just such a mess. I still can’t believe any of this is happening.’

I walked past the table, where she was sitting, the baby in her arms, and headed to the cupboard to get myself a mug. Outside, it was another bright and sunny day, gorgeous like all the others.

‘Hey,’ Heidi said suddenly, glancing at me, ‘let me call you back. No, I will. Okay, then you call me. Ten minutes. All right. Bye.’

She hung up, and I could feel her watching me as I poured myself a cup of coffee. Finally she said, ‘So, Auden. Can you sit down a sec? I… I have to talk to you about something.’

She sounded so sad and worried I could barely stand it. ‘It’s okay, I already know,’ I said, turning around. ‘I talked to Dad.’

‘Oh.’ She swallowed, looking down at the baby again. ‘Well, that’s good. What did he…’

Isby suddenly let out a little squawk. Instead of crying, though, she just buried her face in Heidi’s chest, closing her eyes.

‘He said you guys had some stuff to work out,’ I said. ‘And that he was staying at the Condor for a while.’

She nodded, her face looking pained. ‘So,’ she said, ‘are you doing okay?’

‘Me?’ I said. ‘I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be?’

‘Well, this is kind of unsettling, I’m sure,’ she said. ‘I just… you can talk to me anytime, all right? If you have questions, or concerns…’

‘I’m fine,’ I said again. ‘Really.’

Just then, I heard a buzzing noise: Heidi’s phone. She glanced at it, then sighed, putting it to her ear. ‘Hello?’ she said. ‘Hi, Elaine. No, no, I got your messages, I just… How are you? Right. Of course. Well, to be honest, I haven’t had much of a chance to think about the Bash yet…’

She stood, shifting Isby in her arms, and walked over to the glass doors, still talking. I sat there, thinking of how I watched my dad driving away earlier, the way it felt like another do-over, but with the same outcome. Maybe some things could never change, or be fixed, even with time.

A moment later, Heidi returned to the kitchen, putting her phone down on the counter. ‘That was Elaine, the chair of the Colby Visitors’ Council,’ she said in a flat voice. ‘She wants a theme for the Beach Bash, and she wants it now.’

‘The Beach Bash?’ I said.

‘It’s this annual event we have at the end of every summer,’ she explained, sitting down again. ‘It’s in the hall on the boardwalk. We sell tickets, all the merchants participate, it’s the last big thing of the summer. And for some reason, I always volunteer to organize it.’

‘Really.’

‘It’s total masochism.’ She shook her head. ‘Anyway, last year, I did a pirate theme, which was kind of cute. The year before, we did a whole Renaissance thing. But this year… I mean, what am I going to do? I’m not exactly in a festive place right now.’

I watched her as she ran a hand over Isby’s cheek, then tucked the blanket more tightly around her. ‘You’ll think of something.’

Just then, her phone rang again. She picked it up, settling it between her ear and shoulder. ‘Hi, Morgan. No, it’s fine. I was just talking to Elaine.’ She sighed, shaking her head. ‘I know. And I appreciate that. But it’s just… I can’t believe this, you know? Last year at this time, all I wanted was for Robert and me to get pregnant, and now…’

She gulped, then moved a hand to cover her face, even as I heard whoever was on the other end start talking, their voice low and soothing. I pushed out my chair, then put my cup in the sink as once again, I found myself on the outside, watching something I’d never really known and didn’t understand. Most perplexing of all, though, was the tightness of my own throat and the sudden lump I felt there. I pushed back my chair, slipping out of the room, into the foyer, thinking again of my dad walking out that same door, bag in hand. It
was
terrible and awful when someone left you. You could move on, do the best you could, but like Eli had said, an ending was an ending. No matter how many pages of sentences and paragraphs of great stories led up to it, it would always have the last word.

By the time I left the house two hours later, Heidi and the baby were both sleeping. The house seemed almost peaceful, if you didn’t know better.

I, however, felt entirely unsettled, which made no sense, because first, Heidi was not my mother, and second, when this
had
happened with my parents, years earlier, I’d been just fine. Sure, I was disappointed and a little sad, but from what I remembered, I’d adapted pretty quickly to the new arrangements. Aside from the whole not-sleeping thing, of course, but that had been going on already. What I didn’t remember was the weird, panicky feeling, now still lingering, that had come over me watching my dad drive away from the house earlier. It was the way I usually felt around midnight, knowing that so much of the night was still to come and I had to find a way to fill it, the certainty of time passing so slowly until daylight.

Thank God I had work to do. I’d actually never been so happy to walk into Clementine’s, which was bustling with customers in a late afternoon rush. Maggie, consulting with a mother and daughter on some jean shorts, waved as I passed, grabbing the receipts and invoices on my way to the office. Once inside, I shut the door, flicked on the light, and prepared myself to buckle down into the numbers until closing. I’d just managed to lose myself in the check register when my phone rang.

MOM
, the caller ID said. I watched the screen, the little phone jumping up and down as it logged one ring, then another. For a moment, I considered answering and telling her everything. Then, just as quickly, I realized that this was the worst possible idea ever. It would be like Christmas and her birthday rolled into one, the satisfaction she’d get, and I just couldn’t take her smugness. And besides, she’d hung up on me the day before, making it more than clear that she didn’t want to know me. Now it was my right to distance myself, as long as I wanted.

For the next two hours, I immersed myself in Heidi’s books, more grateful than ever for the dependability and static nature of numbers and calculations. When I finished the register and the payroll, I turned my attention to the desk, which had been cluttered since the day I started. I could almost feel my blood pressure dropping, bit by bit, as I organized Heidi’s pens, throwing out the ones that didn’t work and making sure the rest had caps snugly on and were all facing upright in the pink mug where they lived. Then I moved on to the top drawer, sorting little scraps of paper, stacking random business cards into neat piles, and collecting all the paper clips into an empty Band-Aid box I found lying nearby. I was just about to tackle the next one, when there was a tap on the door and Maggie stuck her head in.

‘Hey,’ she said. ‘Esther’s going to Beach Beans, you want anything?’

I reached into my pocket, pulling out my wallet. ‘Large triple-shot mocha.’

Her eyes widened. ‘Wow. You pulling an all-nighter, or something?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m just… kind of tired.’

She nodded, running a hand through her hair. ‘I hear you. My mom started in on me first thing this morning about my roommate forms. Apparently she wants me to fast track my pick because she’s worried otherwise we won’t have enough time to properly coordinate our linens. As if anyone else cares about that.’

I had a flash of my own mother, her clipped tone when I dared to question her choice of the Pembleton Program. ‘That’s what she’s worried about?’

‘She’s worried about everything,’ Maggie said, flipping her hand. ‘In her mind, if I don’t have the perfect college experience, it will be an unparalleled tragedy.’

‘That’s not such a bad thing, though,’ I said, ‘is it?’

She sighed. ‘You don’t know my mother. I’m never, you know, enough for her.’

‘Enough?’

‘Girly enough,’ she explained, ‘because I was so into dirt bikes. Social enough, because I only had one boyfriend all through high school and didn’t “play the field”. Now I’m not embracing college enough. And it hasn’t even started yet!’

‘Tell me about it,’ I said. ‘My mom’s riding me about the roommate thing, too. Except she wants me to enroll in some program where you do nothing but study twenty-four/seven and fun is not allowed under any circumstances.’

‘Really?’

I nodded.

‘I should sign up for that. My mom would lose her
mind.
’

I smiled. Then the front door chime sounded, and she looked down at the money in her hand. ‘Large triple-shot mocha,’ she said. I nodded. ‘I’ll let Esther know.’

‘Thanks.’

The door shut back with a click, and I pulled open the second desk drawer. Inside was a stack of old checkbook registers, topped with a couple of yellow legal pads, covered with scribbles. As I pulled them out, I glanced at the writing, which was clearly Heidi’s. There were lists for inventory, various phone numbers, and a few pages in, this:

Caroline Isabel West

Isabel Caroline West

Emily Caroline West

Ainsley Isabel West

Each was written carefully: you could almost feel her deliberation as she added them, one by one. I thought back to the day she’d admitted her dislike of the name Thisbe, and how I – and my mother – had judged her for giving in to it anyway. My father was selfish. He got what he wanted, and even then, it wasn’t enough.

I closed the pad, pushing it aside and digging down deeper into the drawer. There were various invoices, which I set aside to file properly, a flyer for the previous year’s Annual Colby Beach Bash –
Ahoy, Mateys!
– and, at the very bottom, a stack of pictures. Here was Heidi, with a paintbrush dabbed with pink paint, standing with a wide smile in front of a white wall. Heidi again, posing before the front door, the
CLEMENTINE’S
sign arcing over her head. And finally, at the very bottom, a shot of her with my dad. They were on the boardwalk, her in a white dress, her belly round and full, him with his arm around her. The date stamp was early May, just a few weeks before Isby was born.

‘Auden?’

I jumped. Somehow Esther had managed to slip in the door right behind me. ‘Oh,’ I said, looking down at the drawer, the contents spread across the desk, ‘I was just –’

‘Your caffeine,’ she said. She was holding out the cup to me when suddenly, something blurred past behind her. Something red, which then crashed against the end of the hallway with a loud, bouncy bang.

‘Hey!’ Esther yelled out the door. ‘What the hell was that?’

‘What do you think?’ I heard a male voice – Adam, I thought – yell back.

She opened the door wide, just as a red rubber ball rolled slowly past in the opposite direction, heading back toward the sales floor. ‘Oh, man. Seriously?’

‘That’s right,’ Adam hollered. ‘Kickball. Tonight. Get ready to get wet.’

‘And who,’ I heard Maggie say, ‘decided this?’

‘Who do you think?’

Esther stepped out into the hallway, picking up the ball. ‘Not Eli.’

‘Yup.’ I heard footsteps, and then Adam came into view, holding out his hands. Esther handed over the ball, and he nodded at me. ‘Came in late today, with this under his arm. He actually seemed cheerful.’

‘Really.’

‘Yup. We were all
totally
freaked out.’ He gave the ball a bounce. ‘But he was serious. First game of the season, tonight after closing. Drawing for second base commences sharply at ten oh five.’

‘Oh, God.’ Maggie groaned, joining them in the hallway. ‘If I have to be second base, I’m not playing.’

‘That,’ Adam said, pointing at her, ‘is a quitter attitude.’

‘Last time I got totally soaked!’ she protested.

‘Last time was over a year ago. Come on! Eli’s finally pulling out of this thing. The least you can do is get a little wet.’

‘It is pretty major that he’s up for it,’ Esther said to her. ‘I wonder what changed.’

I started to turn back to the desk, taking another sip of my drink. But not before I saw Maggie look right at me.

‘Who knows?’ Adam said. ‘Let’s just be glad and get on with it. See you at ten!’

And with that, he was gone, bouncing the ball as he went. Esther sighed, then followed him, but I could feel Maggie’s eyes still on me as I carefully stacked everything back in the drawer, stuffing the pictures in on top. ‘Hey,’ she said. ‘You all right?’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I’m fine.’

This should have been true. After all, I’d had the same night as Eli, and he’d woken up with a whole new attitude. I should have been just coasting and happy, more ready than anyone to jump into kickball, especially with Eli there. And yet, as the nine o’clock dance passed and the minutes of the next hour ticked down, I could feel my stomach getting tighter and tighter.