Welcome Home, Mary Anne

  “Enough of what, exactly? Enough of what, Dawn?”

  “Let’s go outside, you guys,” I said. I had the feeling a big scene was coming.

  They both ignored me. “Sunny, I’m just going to say this once,” Dawn said. “It’s time to go.”

  “No way. I’m having an awesome time, and I’m not ready to go. If you’re so worried about getting home, why don’t you go ahead and leave? I’ll be just fine on my own.”

  Dawn’s face turned an even darker shade of red. “That’s not how it works, Sunny. I’m not leaving you in this city on your own. We came together, and we’re leaving together.”

  “Then we’re not leaving now,” Sunny said airily. She turned to watch as a shopper walked by, dressed in an off-the-shoulder sequined pink prom gown. (The shopper was a guy!)

  I stared at her. I couldn’t believe my ears. I had no idea how to handle Sunny, so I let Dawn do the talking.

  “That’s it, Sunny,” Dawn said. “I’ve had it. You are the most selfish person I’ve ever met. My family and I have humored you for the last two weeks. And how do you pay us back? By dragging Mary Anne and me into doing something we know is wrong.”

  “Oh, right. I dragged you.” Sunny rolled her eyes. “Up until a few minutes ago, you guys were having a blast. Now I’m my own evil twin for forcing you to come here.”

  Dawn shook her head. “You don’t get it, do you? The point is, you’ve been getting your own way ever since — for a long time now.”

  “Oh, just say it,” said Sunny. “Ever since my mother died. Is that what you mean?”

  Suddenly, I couldn’t hear any of the noise around me. It was as if the whole store had gone silent. I drew in a breath, shocked. Dawn’s face went from red to white.

  Sunny forced a grin. “Is it?” she asked.

  Finally, Dawn nodded. “Yes, Sunny, that’s what I mean.”

  Once again, I remembered how much Mrs. Winslow’s death must have affected Dawn. I could see it in her face. She had all her own grief to deal with, and here she was, trying her best to make Sunny’s visit a good one. Dawn, I realized, had probably come back to Stoneybrook hoping to sort out her own emotions, but she hadn’t had time to do that. Every minute had been taken up with frantic activity, all to suit Sunny.

  “You guys,” I said, stepping forward.

  Dawn didn’t even seem to hear me. She was looking at Sunny. “Just because you’re having a hard time doesn’t mean you have a right to treat everyone else badly. Things can’t always go your way.”

  Sunny tossed her head. “You think things go my way?” she asked, her voice hard. “Like when my mom died? Was that having things go my way?”

  “That’s not fair,” Dawn said in a whisper.

  “Oh, so what.” Sunny sounded disgusted. “Life is not fair. And, of all people, I should know.” She turned on her heel. “Forget it,” she said. “Let’s go back to safe old Connecticut.” She walked toward the exit.

  Dawn and I stood still for a second. Then we followed Sunny back out onto Broadway.

  We found a cab and took it to the train station. We made it onto a Stoneybrook-bound train with minutes to spare. And we rode the whole way home without any one of us speaking a single word.

  We made it back in time — just in time. I think Sharon’s car pulled into the driveway about eight minutes after we’d walked into the house.

  Can I just say, right now, right here, that I will never do anything so stupid again? It was so not a good idea to go to New York without our parents’ permission. We were very lucky nothing happened to us, and very very lucky to have gotten away with it.

  Anyway … we still hadn’t spoken to one another by the time we got home. Dawn threw her new shoulder bag down on the kitchen table (I picked it up and set it aside before Sharon or Richard could spot it and ask about it) and slammed out the door. I knew she was headed over to the Pikes’ to pick up Jeff. Sunny stomped upstairs to their room and slammed that door.

  Me? I just stood in the kitchen, wondering what to do. When I heard Sharon’s car, I panicked. I wasn’t ready to face her, but there wasn’t time to run to my room. So I opened the fridge and stuck my head inside.

  “Hi, sweetie,” said Sharon as she entered the kitchen. “Have a good day?”

  “Sure.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Just checking to see what we might have for supper. How about a salad and — ”

  “I thought we’d order pizza tonight,” Sharon interrupted. “I had a long day and I’m too tired to cook.”

  “We had — ” I stopped myself before I could say we’d had pizza for lunch. They don’t sell pizza at the pool. “We had a long day too,” I said, trying to cover my mistake.

  Sharon laughed. She thought I was joking.

  I laughed too. “Pizza sounds great.” I didn’t care what we had for dinner. I just wanted to be out of that kitchen before I gave something away. I closed the fridge and told Sharon I’d be upstairs until suppertime.

  “See you,” she said vaguely, waving a hand in my direction. She’d collapsed into a chair and was looking through the day’s mail.

  I climbed the stairs, suddenly exhausted. I felt as if I could crawl into bed right then and sleep until morning. The door to Dawn and Sunny’s room was closed. I wondered if Sunny was still furious.

  Then I heard it.

  A loud sniff. A sob. Another sniff.

  Sunny was crying.

  That was something new.

  Gently, I knocked on the door.

  “Go away!”

  “Sunny,” I said, leaning my head against the door. That’s all I said. There was just a little pause. Then Sunny spoke again, and this time she wasn’t yelling.

  “Mary Anne?” I heard a sob in her voice. “Could you — come in?”

  I pushed the door open.

  Sunny was huddled on her bed, hugging her pillow and looking about five years old. She let out a sob.

  I hugged her. Then I sat on the bed and patted her back while she cried and cried.

  Did you ever start crying about one thing and end up crying about every single thing that wasn’t right in your life? That kind of crying can require a lot of tears. I had the feeling that’s what Sunny was doing. She was crying about what had happened between her and Dawn, and about her mom dying, and about her father being so busy with his store, and about — everything. I just sat there with her as she sobbed. Once in awhile I said something soothing like, “It’s okay.”

  Sunny cried and cried until finally, she seemed to be all cried out.

  I stood up and grabbed a box of tissues off her bureau. “Here,” I said. “Blow your nose and wipe your eyes.” I felt almost as if Sunny were one of my baby-sitting charges.

  She took the tissues gratefully. “Thanks,” she said. She sniffed and let out a big sigh.

  “I know,” I said. “I think you needed that.”

  She nodded. “Mary Anne, I’m really sorry,” she said.

  “Don’t be sorry. Crying is okay. It’s more than okay. It’s good.”

  “Not about the crying.” Sunny shook her head. “I mean, I’m sorry about dragging you to New York. I know you only went along to humor me. I took advantage of that. I made you do something you didn’t want to do.”

  I shrugged. “I agreed to go,” I told her. “It’s not your fault. I could have said no. Anyway, it’s okay. I know your mind has been on other things.”

  “I wish.” Sunny sounded bitter. “I wish my mind were anywhere else but — but in my mind.” She shook her head. “That doesn’t make sense. What I mean is, I came here to Stoneybrook because I wanted a change. I wanted to get away from all the things on my mind. But you know what?”

  “What?”

  “Only my environment changed. I mean, Connecticut and California couldn’t be more different. But even though everything around me is unfamiliar, none of the other stuff has changed. My life is what it is. Facts are facts.”

  “I know,”
I said, meeting her eyes.

  “I can’t imagine what I was thinking,” Sunny went on. “I guess I thought that if I kept busy enough, I wouldn’t have to deal with the facts.” She looked down at the tissue in her hands. She’d been wringing it, and it was shredded. “It didn’t work.” I saw a few last tears slip down her cheeks.

  I handed her a new tissue.

  “I was silly to think it would,” she said after she’d blown her nose again.

  “No. Not silly. You were just — wishing.”

  She glanced up at me, a question in her eyes.

  “I’ve wished for things too,” I confessed.

  “Like, that your mom hadn’t died?”

  I nodded. “Like that.”

  We looked at each other for a moment.

  “Mary Anne? What’s it like not to have a mother?”

  I took a deep breath. “What’s it like? I don’t know. I don’t know what it’s like to have one, so I don’t know how to compare.”

  Sunny didn’t say anything. I saw that she wanted a better answer than that.

  “Okay. Here’s what it’s like. It’s like — it’s like you’re missing a big piece of yourself. You can still survive in the world. You can be happy and have a great life. But there’s always this thing you come back to, this piece that’s missing. This piece that almost everyone else seems to have and take for granted.”

  Sunny nodded. “You know, my dad loves me a lot. And so does my aunt. But my mom and I — we had something special. I miss that.”

  “You’ll never stop missing that. Or her,” I said. “I’m pretty sure about that. But I also know that it won’t always hurt the way it does now.”

  Downstairs I heard a door open and close. Dawn and Jeff must have been back. But Dawn didn’t come upstairs. She was probably still angry with Sunny.

  Sunny sat up in her bed, clutching the tissue. “I don’t mind how much it hurts, really,” she said. “In a way, I’m more afraid of forgetting her.” She turned her face away for a second. “Sometimes,” she whispered, “I already have a hard time remembering what she looked like.”

  “It’s okay,” I said, patting her back. “Really. She’s in your heart for always. You’ll never forget her. You don’t have to worry about that.”

  Sunny cried some more. Once she’d started, she couldn’t seem to stop. I just sat beside her, patting her back and handing her tissues. Finally, her sobs subsided again. “I think I’ve made a really big decision about something,” she said.

  “What?”

  “I think I need to go back to California. I need to go home.”

  “Really?”

  She nodded. “My dad misses me, and I miss him. I think we need to be together right now. And anyway, being here just doesn’t feel right. It’s like being in a holding pattern. You know what I mean by that? Like when you’re in an airplane that can’t land because the airport’s too busy. So you just circle and circle, waiting for something to change. That’s a holding pattern. I need to move forward.”

  I could tell Sunny was serious about leaving, and I had the feeling it was a good idea for her to go. “You’re probably right,” I told her. “But we’ll miss you.” It was true. Having Sunny around had been exhausting, but it had been exhilarating too. And I’d come to like her. A lot.

  “How am I going to tell Dawn?” Sunny asked.

  “You don’t have to.”

  We looked up and saw Dawn standing in the doorway. She must have been there for a couple of minutes without our noticing. She sat down on the bed and reached out to hug Sunny.

  Their fight was over. Neither of them had to say a word. It was just understood.

  Sunny had figured out what she really needed to do. And this time, Dawn and I could support her all the way.

  “Are you sure?” Sharon asked Sunny later that night when Sunny explained that she wanted to go back to California.

  Sunny nodded. “I’ll miss it here,” she said. “You’ve all been really great to me. But it’s time to go home.”

  My dad nodded. “I can understand that,” he said. “Have you told your father yet?”

  Sunny nodded again. “I already called him. I think he was pretty glad to hear it.” She looked down at her hands. “He says he’s missed me.”

  “I’m sure he has,” said Sharon. “And now we will. How soon do you want to leave?”

  “I was thinking Sunday,” said Sunny. “Two days after tomorrow. My dad made some calls already and there’s a flight, if you can take me to the airport.”

  “Of course.” Sharon smiled. “How about if we have a party for you on Saturday night? It can be a going-away party, plus a housewarming party for us. We have lots of friends and neighbors who are dying to see how the house turned out.”

  It was an excellent idea. There wasn’t much time to pull together a party, but we had that Sunny energy on our side. We spent the next two days running around like crazy. We planned a menu, shopped for groceries, baked some healthy but yummy carob-chip cookies and two peach pies, tidied up the house, and made at least a dozen phone calls to invite people.

  Sunny, Dawn, and I worked easily together, talking and laughing. I didn’t feel left out anymore, even when Sunny and Dawn talked about California friends. Sunny and I had bonded, and I knew we’d always have that.

  “Should we invite Cole and his friends?” I asked Sunny teasingly at one point.

  Sunny just shook her head. “Sorry about that. You seem to be doing just fine without a boyfriend. Don’t rush into anything, okay?”

  Late Saturday afternoon, we decorated the backyard with strings of little white lights. The weather was beautiful, so we set up tables near the herb garden and covered them with mismatched tablecloths we borrowed from the neighbors. My dad helped get the barbecue grill ready to go, and we filled two tubs with ice and stocked them with cans of soda.

  We finished everything about ten minutes before the guests were due to arrive. Then we changed our clothes and headed back downstairs to greet our friends.

  Kristy and Abby Stevenson (another honorary BSC member) were the first to arrive. “Wow, everything looks great,” said Kristy.

  I had to admit she was right. The barn doors were wide open, and you could see that the big butcher block counter in the kitchen was covered with food waiting to be served outside. The lights in the garden were on, even though it wasn’t dark yet. “Thanks,” I said, feeling proud.

  I saw Abby approach Sunny. “Hi,” she said. “I’m sorry you’re leaving before we got to hang out much. And — I wanted to say how sorry I am about your mother.”

  Sunny nodded. “Thanks,” she said. “That means a lot.”

  I was impressed — by two things. First of all, that Abby seemed to know exactly what to say to Sunny. I guess that’s because she lost a parent too; her dad died in a car accident only a few years ago. And second, that Sunny responded the way she did. A few days ago, I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear her change the subject or try to make some kind of joke. This was a new Sunny, a Sunny who was facing her feelings. In a funny way, I felt proud of her.

  Within half an hour, the party was in full swing. Stacey and Claudia had arrived, and so had the Pikes, including Mallory, who was back from camp. “This is like a BSC reunion,” she said. Her brothers ran off to find Jeff and raid the dessert table.

  I was feeling hungry myself by then. “Let’s eat,” I suggested. I didn’t have to say more than that. Soon we were loading up plates, grabbing burgers off the grill, and setting ourselves up under the apple tree for a big feast.

  As we were choosing sodas, I heard Stacey admiring Sunny’s tank top — the one she’d bought in New York. “I love it,” she said. “It looks new. Where’d you find it? It doesn’t look like it came from Washington Mall.”

  “It didn’t. It came from — ” Sunny looked around and caught herself. Sharon was standing nearby, spooning potato salad onto someone’s plate. Sunny gave a little cough. “I’ve had it for a while,” she
finished lamely.

  Stacey just smiled. I think she guessed the truth.

  We ate until we were stuffed. Then we just lay there talking. Claudia disappeared for a while and returned grinning. “I love your room,” she told me. “Great colors.”

  “When did you see it?” I asked. “I was planning to give you guys a tour in a little bit.”

  “Jeff beat you to it,” Claudia told me. She pointed to a cluster of people near the house. “He’s offering tours of the house for twenty-five cents. Thirty-five if you want to see his room.”

  Dawn and I looked at each other and cracked up.

  “It’s a good business,” said Claudia. “There are plenty of people here who haven’t seen the house yet. And he gives a very thorough tour.”

  “It’s true,” put in Abby. “The house looks great, by the way.”

  “You too?” I asked.

  “I was with the first group to go through,” she said, grinning.

  Dawn shook her head. “I suppose I should tell Mom, but you know what? She probably wouldn’t be mad. She’d be happy that Jeff likes the house well enough to show it off.”

  “Still, he shouldn’t be charging the guests,” I said.

  “How about if I distract him by organizing a softball game?” Kristy asked, jumping to her feet. “I brought a bunch of gear just in case anyone wanted to play.”

  The party lasted well into the evening. Just about everyone joined in the game, and we played until it was too dark to see. By then the tiny white lights in the garden looked beautiful, and so did the big square of light from the wide kitchen doors. As our guests left, almost every one of them said something about how lovely our new home was.

  I had to agree.

  Later, Dawn and I helped Sunny with her packing. It didn’t take long. She threw things into her duffel without much thought. All except for those notebooks, her mother’s journals. “Sometime I’d like to show you these,” she told me as she laid them gently on top of her clothes.

  “I’d love to see them,” I said.

  After awhile, I could tell Dawn and Sunny needed a little time alone to say good-bye, so I headed off to bed. Before I fell asleep, I heard a knock at my door.