Return to Me

  What assurance could I possibly have that a seventeen-year-old boy with raging hormones could be faithful when Dad couldn’t remain true to his vows? To have and to hold—what was so hard about keeping that promise? In sickness and in health—how could Dad have been so reckless with Mom?

  Since we moved in, the backyard had regressed from tidy flower beds into a meadow of sprawling, puff-headed dandelions. I glared at the disarray of weeds, this enemy encroaching on my mother’s usually well-tended territory. Rather than conscript Reid and me into her gardening crew, Mom had ignored the rioting yard as though she knew we were battling an even more insidious enemy. Now I knelt down to yank a dandelion from the mulchy ground, but its roots were so deeply buried, so stubbornly entrenched, that all I grabbed were flimsy green stems. Worse, my hasty wrenches had only blown dandelion seeds around the yard, where more weeds would take root.

  How different was that from Jackson and his “my dad’s affair saved my parents’ marriage” philosophy? Didn’t that kind of thinking sow more weeds in a relationship? What else could it justify? Maybe Shana had it right: It was better to be alone than with the wrong boy. Maybe the single status of all the women in my matriarchal line wasn’t so much a curse as a blessing: Stave off heartache. Stave off betrayal. Stave off sexual diseases.

  With cold recollection, I remembered what Jackson had told me when we first met: He believed in asking for forgiveness rather than permission. So what stopped him from cheating on me, then expecting my forgiveness?

  The answer was as clear as if my sixth sense were a well-tuned, well-used instrument. The answer shivered its way down my spine, curved inward to my stomach, and nested in my heart.

  What assurance did I have?

  None at all.

  It was weeding season.

  Chapter Seventeen

  You’ve been hard to get hold of,” said Jackson, his voice serrated with irritation, as though he knew what I intended to do by conversation’s end. The birds must have known, too. They stopped singing. The garden was graveyard-silent.

  “I had to take my mom to the doctor’s office. STD testing,” I said bluntly, and moved to the shadows under the crab apple trees to escape the hot sun. Perhaps that was too much personal information to share, but was it, really? It was hard, painful truth no one should hide from, not when the risks were so real.

  “How is she?” Even more gently, he asked, “And how are you?”

  Strumming beneath Jackson’s palpable frustration was a constant refrain of concern; it was in his every question, his every “Rebel.” But that flash of intuition only threatened to change my mind, threatened to melt my resolve, threatened to reroute me from this path called self-preservation.

  So I envisioned Mom on the examination table, her legs spread apart, her tears afterward.

  And I remembered how easily that could have been me.

  Before I could chicken out, I plunged in: “I don’t think this is working.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “This. Long distance. Us.”

  Silence answered me on the other end, stoic and chilly. Belatedly, I realized I should have broken up by text, the way Shana ended all her relationships—one hundred sixty efficient characters, clinical as Mom’s examination room, cold as surgical instruments.

  “I’m not your dad,” Jackson said.

  “I know that!”

  “You’re holding it against me that I told you that my dad’s affair saved my parents’ relationship.”

  “I’m not.” Now I shivered in the shade, but I knew the sun was too hot. There was nowhere I could find a comfortable shelter. A neighborhood dog barked in agreement.

  “You’re scared that that’s me,” Jackson said, “and what I’d do to you.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Well, I’m not my dad. And I’m not your dad. If I wanted to date someone else, I would have ended this before you left.”

  “Good news: You can date other people now.”

  “Are you listening to me? I want to be with you. With you, Rebel.”

  Jackson’s words felt too much like soothing aloe vera on fresh sunburn, relieving the initial sting even before the damaged skin had a chance to heal. But I couldn’t sink into his solace now, not when I could still feel Mom clenching my hand in the waiting room after her examination. She’d been so pale and shaken that the doctor herself had hastened after my mother to hug her in the lobby. When did that ever happen? I’ll tell you when: when the gynecologist herself says, “You’re better off without him. Trust me, I’ve been there.”

  “Look,” I said, exactly as I had rehearsed in my head, “the fact is, it’s hard to maintain a long-distance relationship. Everybody warned me about this, but I didn’t realize how true it was until now.”

  One of the only advocates for staying with Jackson, despite our distance, was Dad. Of course he’d told me that some relationships were worth the effort, even if they didn’t make sense. Dad had been gabbing about his girlfriend, justifying his actions. Words and promises, they meant nothing. Not even love itself. However much I loved Dad, that hadn’t stopped him from leaving us.

  “That could be because you haven’t answered my calls today. Or my texts,” said Jackson relentlessly. He paused, waiting for me to respond.

  A part of me wanted so badly to give Jackson the answer he needed, to reverse my way out of this conversation, to assure him that a heart-damaged lapse of judgment had impaired my thinking. How easy would it have been to jump the divide between hope and fear, but the chasm… That chasm was littered with broken vows and lonely examination tables. I had almost drowned once because I had misjudged my ability to swim. I had learned my lesson. Stay safe. Step away. Don’t jump in.

  “Come on, Rebel. Don’t run from me.”

  What neither of us realized was that I had a few days’ head start on this breakup path, sprinting alone before I even knew I was fleeing. The truth was, a relationship—any relationship—was too risky. Shana had been right from the start: Heartbreak now was less painful than heartbreak later. As raw as I already felt, I chose now.

  “Good-bye, Jackson,” I said softly, and pressed the end-call button, a guillotine that cut myself off from Jackson and who we were together and what we could have been in the future.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Sobs shook me awake at four in the morning. My hand trembling, I flicked on my bedside lamp. A wave of fresh sorrow snagged my heart, a real weight pressing against my chest in both dream and reality. This ache went beyond missing Jackson; it was mourning stripped of blinders, a permanent lump in my throat.

  Part of me wanted to run into Mom’s bedroom now and ask her for reassurance. But she needed what little rest she could grab after yesterday’s taxing visit to the doctor. Besides, all I truly wanted was Jackson’s arms around me.

  Too rattled to sleep and too scared about what I might dream next, I forced myself from my bed, shrugged out of my sweat-dampened T-shirt, and scrounged for a sweatshirt on my closet floor. I figured now was as good a time as any to tackle our finances.

  Carefully, so I didn’t rouse Mom on the off chance she was dozing, I tiptoed past her bedroom and downstairs to Dad’s office. Despite the family photos on his imposing cherrywood desk and the wall of fame dedicated to his diplomas from college and business school, I didn’t sense Dad in here. I sat at his desk, placed my hands flat on the smooth writing surface. No trace energy of him. He had been absent longer than we knew.

  “What’re you doing?” Reid asked from the shadowed corner. Partly startled and partly embarrassed, I yanked my hands off the desk.

  “Reid! You scared me!” My voice was mother-sharp. I frowned at him and scooted back from the desk. “What are you doing up? It’s late.”

  “Working.” His challenging tone could have been me responding to Mom’s terseness, Mom’s questions. Now I wondered if I had misread her tone. When Mom demanded to know where I had been, what I had been doing, was it concern for me, rather than h
er need to control, that sharpened her voice?

  More gently, I asked, “On your novel?”

  Reid shrugged from the nest he had constructed in the corner out of a faux-fur brown blanket I recognized from Dad’s man cave. My heart wrenched as I knelt in front of the protective wall of pillows surrounding him. It was as if Reid were wrapping himself in any proxy of Dad that he could. “How many nights have you been working in here?”

  Again, Reid shrugged, keeping his eyes firmly on his leather journal.

  If Mom were here, she’d nag him to go to bed, lecture about how sleep triggered the growth hormone during this critical stage of his development. But I wasn’t Reid’s mother. So I switched to the safe topic of writing and said, “Tell me about your story.”

  “The oracle’s chained up in the evil emperor’s dungeon.”

  “Geez, Reid! Poor oracle.”

  “Oh, that’s nothing compared with what’s going to happen.”

  “Heartless.” I squeezed his bare foot before covering it with the blanket.

  “Yup.” Reid turned a page.

  Discomfited, I stood, then dragged myself back to the dungeon of Dad’s desk. My first inclination was to keep my forensic accounting to myself, but Grandpa had a point: Reid and I were both old enough to hear the truth and old enough to help where we could. So I said, “I thought I’d figure out how much money we have.”

  “Did Dad use it all?” Over the last few days, Reid may have been acting all blasé, like he was cool, totally cool. But his wrinkled forehead belied how much he had been worrying inside.

  It was tempting to pawn Reid off with feel-good platitudes, but real information and hard truth were the only way to allay our concerns now. Besides, I couldn’t defend Dad anymore. The truth was this: Dad had left us before without ensuring that we had everything we needed. Had Mom been on the ground in New Jersey first, she would have made sure we had food, transportation, and emergency cash.

  “That’s what I’m going to find out,” I told Reid. But as I rounded Dad’s desk, I knew I could reassure Reid on two points with absolute certainty: “Even if Dad left, he loves us, so I doubt he’d leave us with nothing. Plus, Grandpa George and our friends will never let anything bad happen to us.”

  My words smoothed the concern from Reid’s face. He flipped back a few pages in his journal and bent over his story again.

  The most sophisticated my personal finances ever got was my savings account at Wells Fargo Bank, opened when I was five. A couple of allowance deposits here, a couple of withdrawals for gifts there did not a financial wizard make.

  Accompanied by the comforting scratch of Reid’s pen, I opened the first drawer and placed the main credit card file on the examination table that was Dad’s desk. Taking a deep breath, I opened the file. Dad had said he’d been seeing Giselle for the last couple of months. So I started with March and found a four-night stay in Paris.

  “No way,” I breathed at the five-figure dollar amount. What was Dad thinking?

  Quickly, I glanced at Reid, grateful he was immersed in his story. He hadn’t heard me. And I needn’t reveal anything yet.

  On the statement from May, when Dad had moved by himself to New York, I found a long list of exorbitant dinners, not a single one less than a hundred dollars. Three hours later, I located my parents’ investments. The sum total of next to nothing couldn’t fund one retirement, let alone two. My first year at Columbia had been paid for, but what they saved couldn’t fund all of our college tuition. Not for Reid. Not for me.

  Where was all their money?

  Two hours later, in the chill morning air on our front porch, I called the university’s financial aid office to arm myself with more facts. The woman there was polite enough about listening to my tale of woe, but her diagnosis was a rude awakening all the same: It didn’t matter that our savings had dwindled alarmingly or that my parents might be divorcing or that Mom hadn’t worked in eleven years. As long as Dad still made a heck of a lot of money, I wouldn’t qualify for financial aid. And besides, we had a house that could be mortgaged.

  I hung up with a heart drenched in worry. If I couldn’t trust Dad to stay with us, if I couldn’t trust Dad to safeguard our future, how could I trust him to pay for college? Maybe I should really and truly put off starting college this fall?

  Enough, I thought, and pushed away from the front steps, intending to leave for a long walk to who knows, who cares where. I didn’t have the strength to discover all the other betrayals that lurked within the recesses of Dad’s office.

  Even though it was early, I wanted to call Jackson.

  Jackson would understand. Jackson would help me sort through all of this. Only then did I remember that I had ended our relationship. He was no longer mine to call.

  Defeated, I began to lower myself onto the steps. As I did, I heard Grandma Stesha, her voice firm: Isn’t it better to know?

  In the still of the morning, my thoughts laced chaotically over and under each other like a crazy tapestry of memories, emotions, and realizations. I hauled myself inside to face the never-ending files. From the corner of Dad’s office, I heard Reid rouse: “What? What did he do now?”

  I wanted to say, Nothing.

  I wanted to say, Everything is going to be just fine.

  More than anything, I wanted to chastise Reid for assuming that Dad had harmed us yet again. But none of those could I say.

  It was time to stop closing my eyes and face the dark truth confirmed in every file folder and by every document. Dad had concealed his affair from us with ease and deft skill. It was time for Mom to stop hiding from this reality, too. So I gathered the most damning evidence and set the papers on the kitchen table along with a note: Mom, you need to see this.

  Chapter Nineteen

  In my head, I still carry a snapshot of the kitchen table the morning Mom took over my reluctant role as the forensic accountant of Dad’s double life: the tidy stacks of bank and credit card statements. A pink highlighter, uncapped, its tip drying out. A pad of paper covered with numbers, circled and underlined. And Mom’s laptop opened to an Excel spreadsheet. Luckily, Mom wasn’t in the kitchen—otherwise I’m not sure what I would have done if she heard the soft whimper-sigh that escaped me.

  A small movement outside the window betrayed Mom’s whereabouts on the back deck, arms gathered around herself while she stared, stared, stared up at the hazy gray sky. Way back two days ago, I was scared—and yes, wallowing in self-pity—when Ginny pushed me to help out. Way back then, I was furious that Mom wasn’t being the adult. You’re the mother, I had wanted to scream at her. You investigate. You decipher these bills and accounts.

  And way back twenty-four hours ago, I had heard my mother sobbing at the doctor’s office, teetering on the thin ridgeline separating breaking down from broken.

  Now I leaned against the barren windowsill. The last thing I wanted was for Mom herself to tackle the painstaking task of scraping the layers of intricate wallpaper covering her marriage and finding the insidious dry rot of betrayal.

  Peter, our architect, had once explained at our job site the concept of sistering—how sometimes when wood was beginning to rot, you could add a new plank next to it. Side by side, the old plank could remain next to the new. Side by side, the two planks were stronger. Side by side, they could hold up a house. Side by side, they might hold up a heart. So I refilled the kettle and placed it on the back burner to start the water boiling while I walked out to the deck. There, I took hold of Mom’s cold hand, and side by side, I led her back inside the warm kitchen.

  As long as I can remember, Friday evening has been Muir Family Pizza and Movie Night. Tonight, when it was just the three of us on the sofa watching MythBusters, I literally couldn’t remember the last time Dad had joined us, not even when he had lived with us on Lewis Island.

  What I had been able to count on was Jackson hanging out at these end-of-week gatherings. Right on time, his text chimed on my cell phone as I went to open the door for th
e pizza delivery man: Eat a slice for me, Rebel.

  It seemed so unnatural to ignore the text, which was what I was supposed to do, right? Delete the text because we had broken up? Instead, I found myself rereading those six words throughout the first half of the show, each one bombarding me with homesickness for my mountain biker.

  Five slices of pizza later, Reid’s distended stomach gurgled from his gorging, not that he noticed any personal discomfort. Too immersed in the MythBusters’ quest to build a mammoth LEGO boulder, he didn’t even notice the house alarm chiming as the front door opened. I flinched: intruder. Damn it, had I left the door unlocked? I jerked off the couch.

  Not an intruder but Dad, who bounded into the entry, grinning at us like the father we knew and loved. I had missed that good-natured father so much, my throat clenched. The Thom Girl in me hastened toward Dad no differently than I had as a little girl of seven, eager to bask in his attention: Yes, Dad, I can swim….

  Reid bolted for Dad, too, throwing himself at our father first.

  “Rebecca,” Dad said, reaching one hand out to me as though nothing had happened.

  I had almost drowned once stupidly trying to prove to Dad that I, unlike Mom, wasn’t afraid of the water. As much as I wanted to burrow into his arms and smell his familiar Dad scent, I was drowning where I stood, no more able to breathe in this living room than I could underwater all those years ago. This time, I didn’t reach for Dad. He was no longer my solid and reliable hero.

  I glanced back at Mom instead. But she, too, was immobilized, on the couch. By the time my gaze resettled on Dad, he had turned his back on us and was headed upstairs.