Catherine (28 page)

Why hadn’t I realized it before? This was what my mother would have wanted me to do.

“She tried to tell you,” I concluded. “She looked everywhere for you, so she could
explain. She tried to file a missing persons report. She even lit candles in church.
And when she did find you… you know.” I couldn’t finish that sentence, but the look
of shame that crossed Hence’s face told me he knew exactly what I was talking about.

“Please,” he said in a choked voice. “You can’t know how I wish I could go back and
undo what I did to her. I’ve wished it every day since it happened.” He looked at
me with something like hope in his face. “Would you show me the journal? If I promise
not to take it away from you?”

How could I trust him? And yet, I wanted to. I dug for it in my pack, thinking quickly.
“First, you have to know that Cooper had no idea I was in the building. I sneaked
into the club this afternoon. Just now, when he saw me, he tried to stop me….”

“You’re a terrible liar.” Hence didn’t sound angry. He took the journal from my hands
and brought it up to his face, inhaling deeply, as if he could smell her on it. “I
remember this,” he said, wonder in his voice. “Catherine brought it with her everywhere
she went. When the band was recording, I’d look up sometimes and find she’d slipped
away. She’d be curled up in a corner, writing furiously.”

“You can read the whole thing later,” I told him. “For now… let me show you.” I flipped
toward the end. “There.”

He let me read over his shoulder as he devoured each page. When he’d read as far as
I had, I stopped him. “So you see. You should have listened.”

“I know,” he said. “At first I was too angry to think straight.
And by the time I realized my mistake, she’d married your father. They’d had you…”
He stopped, his voice cracking as though the wound were still fresh.

I waited for the rest.

“I sent her that postcard. I was going to make it all up to her. Then I got to The
Underground and she was just… gone.”

Disappointment swept through me. I’d been so sure I was telling him something new
and life-changing. I gestured toward the book. “I guess this doesn’t mean anything
to you, then.”

Hence looked down at the open book, then back up at me, baffled, as if I were speaking
some alien language and he was trying to pick out familiar words. “Of course it does.
It means… a lot. It’s like getting a piece of her back.” To my surprise, he shut the
book and put it in my hands “What happens next?”

“I haven’t reached the end yet. I’ve only got a few pages left.”

“You finish it first,” he said. “I’m afraid of what I’ll find in there.”

“I’ll bring it to you when I’m done,” I said. “It shouldn’t take me long. It’s a matter
of making myself finish. I don’t really want it to be over.”

“I know,” he said. “It’s all we’ve got left.” He got to his feet and started toward
the office door. For a few minutes, I had forgotten about the world beyond that door,
about the last of the customers finishing their drinks and heading out into the night,
about Stan and Rat Behavior and even Coop.

“Are you going to say good-bye to your friends?”

“I can’t talk to them right now,” he said. “You can tell Cooper I’m not angry. Have
him tell Stan I’ll be in touch.”

“But where are you going?”

“For a walk,” he said. “To think.”

As I watched him go, a thought occurred to me:
Maybe I should be worried.
He might be about to do something rash—throw himself off a bridge or a rooftop. But
why should I even care? What was he to me, anyway? Some guy who wished my father had
never married my mother. And yet, as messed up as it was, I did care.

“I’ll come with you.” I scrambled to my feet.

He looked at me absently, his mind already elsewhere. “No,” he said. “You stay here.”

Okay, so he didn’t want me tagging along. “I’ll get Coop,” I said. “He’ll go.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t do anything crazy.” He hit the light switch.

“You’re sure?”

He nodded, and my hand shot out to grab his arm. “Wait. I have to ask you something.
When did she write that song?”

“She meant it to be a poem,” he said. “I don’t think she saw it as lyrics. She wrote
it toward the end of our time together. It was a birthday present for me. She even
baked me a cake—chocolate with caramel frosting.” His smile was rueful. “It was the
best cake I’ve ever tasted.”

“But that song was so sad.”

He nodded. “After I ran off, I thought it had been her way of telling me she was planning
to leave me. I was glad I’d beaten her to the punch.”

“What happened to the one you wrote for her? The one you named after her?”

“I could never finish it. At first there weren’t any words that could capture how
she was. How amazing. And later I was too hurt and angry.”

“But you don’t have to be angry at her anymore,” I said.

Hence dug his hands into his pockets. “No, I guess I don’t.”

Suddenly I felt awkward. “You’ll tell me more about her? I really want to hear more.
Everything. Anything.”

He hesitated.

“I don’t mean right now,” I added hastily. “Will you, though? When you’re ready?”

He nodded and was gone.

I lingered in the hallway, unsure what to do next. That’s how Cooper found me. “What
just happened?” He was pale with worry.

“It’s okay,” I said. “He’s not mad at us.”

“He’s not?”

“I showed Hence my mother’s journal,” I said. “Now he’s going for a walk. Can we sit
down somewhere?” Exhausted, I followed Coop up to Hence’s apartment, sank into his
deepest armchair, and accepted a can of ginger ale. “Do you have any chips? I’m starving
all of a sudden.”

“First tell me what got into you. Hence could have freaked out.”

“I know I shouldn’t have, but when he sang my mother’s song, I couldn’t help myself.”
I filled Coop in on the details of how Hence had heard only part—the worst possible
part—of my mom’s heart-to-heart with Jackie, and how he’d paid her back.
“I tried to tell Hence I sneaked into the club all by myself. He didn’t believe me,
but he isn’t mad….”

“I’m not mad, either,” Coop said.

“You’re really not?”

“You did the right thing. He had to know the truth.”

Relieved, I followed Coop into the kitchen, where he dug through the cupboard and
came up with a box of oyster crackers. I tore into them. “You should have seen the
look on his face when I ran up to him.”

Coop grinned. “I can imagine. Are you going to share those?”

I handed the box over. “There’s hardly any left.” I followed him out to the living
room and we both stood at a window that looked down on Houston.

“I wonder where he is,” Coop said.

“He promised he wouldn’t do anything drastic.”

Coop looked doubtful.

“He’s okay,” I told him. “He has to come back to read the rest of the journal, right?”

Coop sat down on the couch and I collapsed into the love seat across from him, hugging
the nearest throw pillow to my chest.

“If he does come home, he’ll find you here with me,” Coop observed.

“And accuse us of the high crime of being alone together?” I put my feet up on a nearby
ottoman. “I don’t think he will. Not after tonight.”

“Neither do I.” Coop shut his eyes but kept talking. “I’ve been thinking. Before the
show I talked Hence into giving me the day off tomorrow. Of course I didn’t tell him
what I needed it for—”

“Really?” I interrupted. “That’s fantastic.”

“But wait.” Cooper held up a hand. “I was thinking maybe we should tell him where
we’re going.”

“Why would we do that?”

“As long as you’re coming clean with him, why not tell the whole truth? Maybe he would
want to come with us.”

“Come with us? Why would we want that?”

“Quentin doesn’t sound like the most stable guy in the world. Did you ever think he
might not be thrilled to see us?”

I grabbed another throw pillow and rested my head against it. “He’s my uncle.”

“He could be dangerous.”

“He’ll be happy to see me.”

“Right. Maybe he’ll throw you a party.”

“Besides, he hated Hence.
Despised
him. He’d take one look at Hence and slam the door in our faces.” I shut my eyes.
“Seriously, Coop. Don’t, don’t, don’t tell Hence. Okay?”

“Okay, okay.” Coop sounded sleepy.

What felt like a few minutes later, I woke with a start, scared to find myself in
a strange room. Somebody had spread a throw over me. I stared into the darkness until
my eyes adjusted and I recalled where I was. That was when I noticed the soft current
of someone else’s breath in the room and remembered Coop.

A swath of light from the streetlamp outside fell on the couch, where he lay on his
back, blanketless, arms crossed for warmth. I let the sound of his steady breathing
calm me, and then I got to my feet and tiptoed closer. Asleep, he looked unguarded,
vulnerable,
his eyelashes making dark crescents on his cheeks, his lips curled upward as if he
was dreaming about something happy.

“Mmph,” he mumbled, crossing his arms even tighter. He really did look cold. I grabbed
the throw and covered him with it. He uncrossed his arms, the curl of his lips turning
into a full-fledged smile.

While I hovered over him, half praying he wouldn’t wake up and half hoping he would,
a crazy thought popped into my mind:
What would happen if I leaned in and gave him a kiss?
Would he kiss me back, still thinking he was dreaming? What kind of kisser would
he be? Rough and clumsy? Or gentle and sweet?

And what would he think if he woke all the way up and realized it was me he was kissing?

Cooper mumbled again and rolled onto his side. I snapped upright, coming to my senses.
What was I thinking? I didn’t have those kinds of feelings for Coop, and even if I
did, I couldn’t risk acting on them. After all, I needed his help. I couldn’t afford
to make things all weird between us.

I knew I should take the train to Jackie’s. But I hadn’t thought to call and tell
her where I was going, and she might be furious at me for taking off without leaving
so much as a note. It was certainly too late to call her now; it must be at least
two in the morning. Was Hence back? Probably not; he’d have woken us if he’d come
in. Returning to my love seat, hugging myself for warmth, I willed myself not to worry
about Hence, or about what lay before us in the morning. I slowed my breath till it
matched Cooper’s and I was calm enough to fall back to sleep.

In the days that followed, I worked out a plan. I would leave for Cambridge as soon
as I’d turned in my last final exam. There was no reason to stay in New York beyond
that. Graduation was for girls with families. Jackie and her mom understood why I
needed to go, though they kept insisting their house was my house and I could live
in their guest room forever if I needed to. But the narrow little room with its brass
bed and potpourri aura brought back a thousand vivid memories of me and Hence together.
I’d wake up hopeful and happy from dreams of him, but the knowledge of where I was
and why would come rushing back, and my mouth would fill with bile.

Besides, the fact that I might bump into Hence—or, worse, Hence and Nina—on the street
made me want to run away screaming. So I stopped going out unless I absolutely had
to. I
hurried to school in the morning, did my work, and hustled straight back to Jackie’s
for the rest of the day.

In the long hours between school and bedtime, I made plans and phone calls. A friend
of Dad’s from college had gone on to be the dean of students at Harvard. He pulled
some strings and got me into a dorm that would stay open during the summer for students
with internships. He even offered to help me find an internship of my own, maybe something
in publishing, although I didn’t much care if it was in public relations, plumbing,
or pancake-flipping. Anything would be better than staying in New York.

I didn’t see the guys in the band anymore. When I called to tell them I’d found Hence,
Stan had handed the phone to Andy, who thanked me for the news and quickly found an
excuse to hang up. Hence rejoined the band and they forgave his disappearing act.
While I didn’t think they knew exactly what had passed between Hence and me, they
knew it had been bad, and, with the possible exception of Ruben, they knew whose side
they were on.

I learned all this when Ruben came to Jackie’s house to pay me one last visit. He
said he was sorry for how things turned out and that he thought Hence was making a
huge mistake and acting like a major jerk. In his zebra-striped jumpsuit, he looked
comically out of place on Jackie’s mom’s couch, holding a glass of her iced tea on
his jiggling leg, the ice cubes clattering noisily. “That Nina chick is a mess,” he
told me apologetically. “He doesn’t really care about her. He’s trying to get back
at you.”

“He told you that?”

“He didn’t have to. When she’s speaking, he rolls his eyes. Not that I blame him;
she’s dumb as a post.”