Eric stripped the wrapper from his straw. “Adam’s freaked that Brenna’s going to dump him.”
“Adam’s smarter than I thought.”
“What, she say something to you?”
“No, but she was all over the guy who sits next to us in bio.”
“That sucks.”
“He should’ve seen it coming. Brenna never lasts longer than a month.”
“I guess.”
She licked fudge sauce off the sharp brittle edge of her spoon. “Can I borrow your SparkNotes for Mockingbird?”
“Sure.” He rolled his shoulders, the cotton of his shirt stretched taut. “My dad says he can get me a job at the loading dock this summer.”
“I thought you didn’t want to work at Gerkey’s.”
“Either that or stay at the lube shop. Gerkey’s pays better.”
“Manufacturing pays better than the loading dock. If you wait a few days, I bet a job will open up there.”
“Cut it out. I bet people spill stuff in there all the time.”
“But Fern was so freaked out.”
“Doesn’t matter. Mr. G would never fire you. Who’d feed his fish?”
She made a face at him, but he had a point. “I guess.”
It had grown dark outside. A bolt of lightning made her glance out the window. Another storm was rolling in. “My mom called Dana just before she died.”
She’d never said it out loud, both words together: mom, died.
“Yeah?”
“Dana says it’s because my mom wanted her to help figure it out.”
No need to say what it was. Eric had heard all about it.
“Why would she call her?”
“Because she thought Dana was a doctor. Because Dana was her sister. She went to the plant today, to take readings with this instrument she had.”
“No lie. What kind of instrument?”
“Who cares?” She pushed her cup away. The place was getting noisier, kids from school piling up in booths. “Let’s go,” she said, and Eric nodded.
Outside, the air was fresh with the smell of damp vegetation. Thunder rumbled overhead, and it started to rain, fat soft raindrops. Eric’s car was parked at the back of the lot. They ran as the drops came faster, silvering their vision.
Eric fumbled for his keys, extended the fob and pressed a button. A siren sounded.
“Wrong button,” he said.
She jumped from foot to foot. Another flicker of lightning.
He shook the keys and tried again. The siren silenced.
“Eric!”
“I know, I know.” He leaned past her to reach the door and slide the key into the lock. “There,” he said. “Princess.”
He stood right beside her, warm, smelling of the rain. He looked down at her, his face cast in shadow, his eyes dark and unreadable.
“Peyton,” he said. His voice sounded wondering.
Raindrops danced on her head and tapped on her shoulders. He bent toward her. She held her breath.
His lips were soft, barely touching hers. She moved closer. He tasted of ChapStick and peppermint ice cream. He made a sound deep in his throat. A thousand butterflies swooped in her belly. She could feel the dampness of his shirt against hers as he pressed her against the cold metal of the car, the roughness of his chin against hers.
“Get a room!” someone yelled across the lot.
Heart pounding, Peyton pulled away.
Eric’s eyes were dark and intent, a stranger’s eyes seeing things she didn’t recognize, wanting things she was afraid to name. Overhead, thunder grumbled. He lowered his mouth again to hers but she leaned away and shook her head. “I have to get home.”
He blinked and, just like that, he was Eric again. “Right.”
The house was dark when she let herself in, just a single lamp burning in the living room. Dana’s car was gone but her dad’s car was in the driveway. She walked through the living room and found him standing by the kitchen window watching the rain dance down the glass.
“Hi,” she said.
He glanced at her with a small smile. “Hi, honey. Got caught in the rain, huh?” He put his arm around her. He smelled the way he used to, not the sour yeastiness of beer but the clean honest scents of the factory and motor oil and very faintly of the cologne he put on first thing in the morning. She rested her cheek on his shoulder and he drew her closer. “Have a nice time with Eric?”
“Uh-huh.” I’ve had my first kiss, she longed to say. She and Eric would never be the same again, even if they both wanted to. First kisses, she now knew, were permanent.
The rain pattered on the roof. Her mom used to love the rain; she’d sit on the back deck and watch the dark clouds roll in, the wind whip the trees into a frenzied dance. At the first booming crack of thunder, her dad would open the door and make her come back in. She’d do so reluctantly.
Her dad said, softly, “It’s going to be all right, Peyton.”
But she knew that wanting it to be so didn’t make it true. It would just be different, that was all.
TWENTY-NINE
[DANA]
I SPLASHED THROUGH THE COLD RAIN, FOLLOWING the little lamps tilted along the path. Huddled beneath the overhang, I rang the doorbell, clutching the bottle of wine and shaking the drips off my arms. Busyness was behind the door—the chatter of voices, someone calling, funny kaleidoscope music. And then the door swept open to reveal Sheri, a scene of light and motion playing behind her.
“Dana?” She looked surprised, but not annoyed.
I felt ridiculously grateful, but I couldn’t help noticing the puffiness around her eyes that told me she’d been crying. I could see Logan playing in the living room behind her, laughing at something his brother was doing. He looked okay. Maybe she was just tired. “Sorry for stopping by like this.” I held up the wine. “I thought . . .”
Cartoons played loudly on the TV. Mike was busy collecting books and stacking them into a basket. I guess I hadn’t thought. I should have realized this time of night would be about the kids and their bedtimes.
“No problem. Come on in. Let me get you a towel so you can dry off. Mike, could you put the boys down tonight?”
The look he gave his wife was full of worry. “Sure.”
We sat on the back porch, lights out, wind buffeting the screens, our feet tucked beneath us to escape the cool dampness. Another stormy night. Northern Minnesota could be like that in the spring.
“I heard you were at the plant today,” Sheri said. “But you didn’t find anything.”
“You sound disappointed.”
“I’ve been thinking about what you said last night. Maybe I was too quick to dismiss it. Maybe something is going on at the plant.”
Is, she said. Not was. “What’s the matter, Sheri? What happened?”
She paused, held her head at an angle, listening for something inside the house I couldn’t hear. Then she relaxed, returned her attention to me. “So what are you going to do now?”
So she didn’t want to talk about it. All right. I could understand that. “I don’t know. I’ve run out of ideas. At some point, I have to get back to Chicago. Something went wrong on our last job.”
“Like what?”
“Someone died in the blast.” So simply said.
“Someone you know?”
“A homeless woman. She got inside the building somehow, and we didn’t find her when we did our walk-through.”
“You never said anything.”
“It happened the same day Julie died.”
“Oh, Dana. How terrible for you.”
I squinted at my glass, but the liquid was clear as water in the dark. “I didn’t see you at the plant today.”
She put back her head to stare at the ceiling. Another crack of thunder that made me jump. Sheri was unmoved, as if she’d gone to a distant place in her head. “You ever get lonely?”
“Sometimes.” Loneliness breathed on my neck in the middle of the night; it walked beside me as
I grocery-shopped, drove to work, cleaned my apartment.
Sheri sighed. “It’s funny. I’m always surrounded by people—friends, family, neighbors—but it doesn’t matter. You ever think of all those goofy little things we did? We found them so hilarious at the time. After you left, something would happen and I’d say to myself, ‘I can’t wait to tell Dana,’ and then I’d realize there was no Dana to tell.”
The patter of small footsteps in the house behind us, the firm closing of a door.
She’d been a good friend. And I’d repaid her with deafening silence. “I didn’t deserve you.”
“That’s the thing. You never felt you deserved anything.”
“That’s not true.”
“Remember how upset I was about Kurt Cobain? You had finals the next day but you spent the whole evening with me, making me feel better. All those times I called you in the middle of the night, freaked out about something or another, and you always answered. You never once called me.”
“Sure I did.” I’d stared at that pregnancy test. My first thought had been to call Sheri. I’d had my hand on the receiver, but then had slowly withdrawn it.
“It wasn’t just me,” she said. “It was Joe, too. You pushed away everyone who loved you. Even Julie.”
I hadn’t come here for this. I didn’t want to hear it. I’d stopped by because she hadn’t been at the plant that afternoon, and I was worried. And maybe feeling guilty, too, for making her so upset the night before. “Sheri, what’s the matter? You don’t sound right.”
“It’s your dad, right? His leaving like that made you feel like you didn’t deserve to be loved.”
There he was again, that shadowy figure from my past, springing up two-dimensional and looming. “That’s a cliché.”
“Doesn’t make it not true.”
“Lots of people have dads who leave them. I’m not some pathetic case, Sheri.”
“Of course you’re not,” she said. “You’re one of the strongest people I know.”
I sat back, surprised. Was that really how she thought of me?
“How are things going with you and Frank?” she asked.
She remembered how upset I’d been when Julie told me she was marrying Frank. I was sixteen. I was certain he’d make me move out, but he’d been the one to move in. I’d never given him a chance, but then again, he’d never given me one, either. “I’ve been avoiding him. Did you know he has a drinking problem?”
“Don’t tell me he’s started up again.”
“It’s not every night. I don’t think he’s drinking during the day. I saw him at the plant this afternoon and he seemed sober. I can’t tell how bad it is. I can’t tell how worried I should be.” I wanted her to reassure me. I wanted her to tell me that she knew Frank and that he’d pull himself together, but she remained silent. “He was going to leave Julie,” I said. “She was sick and he was going to leave her.”
Lightning lit up her face, distant with thought. “Marriage is tough.”
Where was she? Where had she gone inside her head? “Are you and Mike okay?”
At that she pushed back her chair and stood. “We’re fine.”
She went to the little bookshelf behind us. Reaching up into the basket on the top shelf, she pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. “Mike’s secret stash. He doesn’t know I know.”
Sitting back down, she lit up with a trembling hand, the tiny flame shaking as she held it to the tip of her cigarette.
“Sheri,” I said. “Tell me.”
She exhaled. “I heard from the doctor today.”
“Logan?”
“It doesn’t look like dialysis is working.”
“They have him on a transplant list?”
“They put him on it the minute he was first diagnosed. So we just have to hope something comes through. The doctor doesn’t think we have a lot of time.”
My throat closed.
“When he was born, I worried about all the regular things. Was he gaining enough weight, sleeping on his side, developing normally? But this was one thing I didn’t think to look for, the one thing I didn’t know to worry about.” She reached over and tapped the cigarette against the railing, a damp sizzle. “It was just a little rash across his tummy. I thought it was because of the laundry detergent I was using. The doctor thought it was a food allergy. God, what I wouldn’t give for something like that.”
The storm lashed about us. Rain ran in a steady stream from the gutters, splashing so close I could almost reach my hand through the screen and touch it.
The tip of her cigarette flared in the darkness. “I was cleaning out the attic the other day and you know what I found? That old Ouija board. Remember how we used to try and channel John Lennon?”
“You thought he could help you with your songwriting career.”
“All the things I was so desperate to find out. Did Mike like me? Would I get an A in history? Were my parents going to get a divorce? I had to know everything. I had to protect myself. But maybe I was wrong. Maybe it’s better not to know the future. We might do stupid things if we did.”
“Like what?” We were talking softly, the branches rustling and tapping the screen.
“If I had known how sick Logan would be, how he’d never have a childhood, would I have tried to have him in the first place?”
Julie had brought my baby to me that last day, wrapped loosely in the blanket I’d knitted, stitch by uneven stitch. My arms had curved instinctively to hold the trusting weight, and I’d pressed my cheek to the soft skin and inhaled. Closed my eyes to live a whole lifetime in that brief instant.
Sheri was looking at me. “Would you want to know?”
And be spared a life filled with regret? Yes. But no one could be happy knowing what was coming. That wouldn’t be living, either.
“I don’t know,” I told her. “I wish I did.”
THIRTY
[PEYTON]
NOT ALL SEA CREATURES LIVE IN THE SEA. SOME float on top of it, clinging to enormous floating mats of sargassum seaweed. These animals eat, mate, and spend their entire lives drifting with the current, while keeping a tight hold on the tangled grapelike fronds. If they lose their grasp, they sink to the bottom of the ocean and die.
Imagine always being on guard, knowing that all you’ll ever see of the world is a few inches of seawater. Wouldn’t the stress drive you crazy? Maybe one day you’d decide just to let go. As you fell through the water, you’d twist this way and that, trying to catch a glimpse of all that you’d missed. Maybe those few minutes would be worth it. You’d have to hope with all your heart it was. Because once you let go, there’s no way you could change your mind and grab back on.
The endlers had done it again.
Peyton actually had her finger against the rigid disk of the light switch when she spotted the disruption a few inches below the water’s surface, like a pearly splinter. A trick of the light? She crouched and looked through the glass. A cloud of tiny new babies, perfectly formed, utterly still, as if waiting for permission to move.
She had to hurry.
The grass was cold and damp on her bare feet, the driveway prickly with pebbles and sticks from last night’s rain as she walked fast to the garage. Over in her yard, Mrs. Stahlberg was a lumpy shape bent over her rosebushes, probably salting slugs or, worse, shaking poison all over everything to kill the Japanese beetles. Peyton had told her not to use those chemicals. They only ended up in the groundwater, but Mrs. Stahlberg had thrown her hands up in the air. Oh, Peyton. One little flower patch isn’t going to matter. Well, it wasn’t one little rose garden. It was all of them, hundreds of thousands, every rose gardener saying the same thing.
Peyton hurled her garage door along its creaky tracks, and ten feet away, Mrs. Stahlberg straightened.
“Peyton? What on earth are you doing out here, dressed like that?”
Peyton was wearing an oversized T-shirt. Everything was covered.
But Mrs. Stahlberg clearly hadn’t been
expecting company. The bun on her head dangled just over one ear as though she’d slept on it wrong, and the hem of her housedress sagged. She tugged the sides of her sweater together. “Peyton. Is everything all right?”
Peyton yanked the string to the overhead light, flooding the gloomy space with a weak light that didn’t reach the corners. “Just getting something.”
“Like what?”
Peyton didn’t have to explain everything, just because Mrs. Stahlberg wanted to know. “Something.”
Why hadn’t Peyton thought to store it under the kitchen sink, or even in the basement? It could be December with four-foot drifts of snow she’d be working through to retrieve it. But she hadn’t been thinking. This whole past year, none of them had been thinking.
“Surely you could have put on a robe, honey.”
Surely Mrs. Stahlberg could have put on a bra. “I won’t be long.”
“You never know who’s looking.”
The only one looking was Mrs. Stahlberg and maybe her creepy son. LT sometimes came around and stood in the bushes looking up at the house he had once lived in but didn’t anymore. And LT didn’t count. He was weird, but he wasn’t a perv.
The tank stood on a back shelf, the glass grimy with old cobwebs. At least the filter and heater were sealed in a heavy plastic bag. Her mom’s doing, no doubt. Another reminder of how large that space was that her mom had left behind. Peyton scowled, and walked quickly back to the house, through the kitchen, and down the hall.
She ran the water into the bathroom sink until it was warm enough, and filled the tank she’d just rubbed clean.
“Good morning, Peyton.” Dana stood in the doorway, her hair mussed and her bathrobe loosely knotted. She’d come home late the night before. Peyton had awoken to the quiet click of the back door and the sudden flare of light as Dana turned on the overhead down the hall.
“Morning.” Peyton slotted in the filter and the heater. The gravel would have to wait.
“Peyton—I need to talk to you about something.”