The Good Goodbye

  “What have you heard, Detective?” Vince says. “Do you know if our girls were in any kind of trouble?”

  “We’re just starting to track down the kids who lived in the dorm with Arden and Rory. You’d think they’d come forward and volunteer information, but teenagers have a weird code of conduct. They’re at that age where they think the police are the bad guys. And, for some of them, we are.” He taps the tip of his pen on his notebook, looks at me. “Do you know why your daughter wasn’t at the pep rally?”

  I didn’t even know there had been a pep rally. I shake my head. “Why does it matter?”

  “Homecoming’s a big deal around here, and the pep rally’s almost as big as the game itself. Everyone goes. So far as we can tell, Hunter, Rory, and Arden were the only ones in the dorm last night.”

  Out of the hundreds of kids who lived there. It makes the hair on my arms rise. “But we saw kids in the emergency room when we first arrived.”

  “They went in to try and save their belongings. They didn’t get far.”

  The flames must have been showing in all the windows, the smoke spiraling into the sky. And kids had still gone in, heedless. Only Hunter hadn’t made it out. Why?

  “Mrs. Falcone? Do you know why Rory wasn’t at the rally?”

  Gabrielle stirs herself. “I don’t know. She told me she was planning to go. I don’t know why she changed her mind.”

  Detective Gallagher jots a note. “Did either girl complain of illness recently? Any possibility they went to bed early? Maybe took some cold medication?”

  Theo and Vince are silent. They aren’t the lifelines to the girls. Gabrielle and I are, and because Gabrielle isn’t saying anything, I do. I answer for us all. “Arden seemed fine when she called Wednesday afternoon. She didn’t say anything about feeling sick. You think they were asleep when the fire broke out? But it wasn’t that late.”

  “Maybe they’d been drinking,” Vince says, and I look at him. I don’t want to, but I do, because this makes a little sense.

  “Do you think that’s what happened?” I ask. “A party that got out of control?”

  “Accelerant,” Theo says, and I frown. Right.

  “All right. Well, I appreciate your time.” Detective Gallagher closes his notebook.

  “That’s it?” Vince says.

  “For now. I’ll let you know if I have any other questions. In the meantime, if you think of anything at all that could be relevant, give me a call. You have my number.”

  “Do you think you’re going to find this person, Detective?” Gabrielle asks.

  “It’s a priority for all of us. I’m going to be talking with Hunter’s parents, too, when they arrive to pick up their son’s body.”

  Not a body. Their child. They’d watched him grow up; they’d had dreams for him, hopes. How were they going to make it through this?

  “Of course,” he says, “the best thing would be for Arden and Rory to tell us what they remember when they wake up.”

  It’s a soaring thought. When they wake up. I’m eager to get back to Arden. I’ve been in here too long. A million things could have happened in my absence, and the nurse might not have come to let us know. We’ve been in this hospital less than a day, and every single minute stretches to eternity. Still, I hesitate and look to Detective Gallagher. “Are you certain this wasn’t some kind of prank?”

  I’m not naïve. I know terrible things happen every day, but not to me. Not to my daughter. I don’t want this to be a crime. I want this to be an error, an accident with a tragic outcome. “Kids can do the stupidest things.” In culinary school, it had been the price of admission to a party that Vince and I desperately, for some reason, wanted to attend. All over campus, mailboxes had been pried free and dragged away. A federal offense, but none of us could possibly have cared less at the time.

  “Kids don’t typically set fires as a prank,” Theo says. Of course he’d know this. He works with teenagers; his degree is in child psychology. He asks Detective Gallagher, “Do we know for certain our daughters jumped?”

  I look at my husband with surprise. Where is this coming from?

  “We don’t,” Detective Gallagher replies, and I feel surprise give way to horror.

  —

  “You can’t really believe they were pushed,” I say to Theo in a low voice. We’re hurrying down the hall and we’re alone—Vince and Gabrielle having gone to the cafeteria for a sandwich—but there are still people around.

  Theo holds open a door for me. “I don’t want to, believe me, but you have to admit it’s a possibility.”

  “It’s horrible. Who would do that? How did they escape?”

  “Who says they did?”

  He means Hunter. We’ve reached Arden’s room, but I stop and stare at him, shocked. “Jesus, Theo. What are you saying?”

  “What do you know about him, anyway?”

  “Nothing. He’s just a boy. He was Arden’s friend.”

  “You ever meet him?”

  “You know I haven’t.” Now I’m angry. I feel helpless, riddled with doubt and regret. Why hadn’t I met Hunter? Why had I waited for Arden to call me instead of calling her myself? But I know the answer. I didn’t want to be one of those moms. I didn’t want to be Gabrielle.

  “Why don’t you go lie down, Nat? You didn’t sleep a minute last night. Try the family lounge. I’ll come get you if anything happens.”

  I frown. Like any of this can be solved with a nap? “I’m fine.” I grab the door handle to slide open the door to Arden’s room but Theo puts his hand on my arm, stopping me.

  “For now,” he says, “but I know you. You’ll push yourself too far. You’re no good to Arden if you don’t take care of yourself.”

  I shake free of his grasp. “Stop it, Theo. I know what I’m doing. If I need to sleep, I can sleep just as well in the chair in Arden’s room as on that awful sofa down the hall.” But I can’t sleep. Every time I close my eyes, I see Arden falling. I hear her calling for me and I snap awake, stare wildly around me only to remember where I am, and why.

  “Fine. Well, I guess you don’t need me.” His annoyance is plain. He looks behind me and I turn to see Vince and Gabrielle headed down the hallway toward us. “I’ll go check on Rory. She should be out of surgery by now.”

  I let myself into Arden’s room and slide the door closed behind me. It’s a hushed and gloomy space, the curtains hanging open so the nurses can see in. I don’t know what they can see from the hallway; it’s so dark. I go over and look down at my sleeping daughter. Her mouth is slack. Her eye is closed. I glance to the heart-rate monitor, see the line zigzagging in exactly the same pattern. I look at the pressure monitor. The number holds steady. I look back to my child. “Who did this to you, baby? What happened?”

  She doesn’t move. Her eye doesn’t open. The numbers don’t flicker.

  “You’re going to get better, darling. Daddy and I are right here.”

  A clock ticks on the wall, its round face glowing like a moon, like a sun. The hour hand points to four. Morning or afternoon? I think about this, parse through the day to decide it’s the afternoon. Of course it is.

  I pull my chair close to Arden’s bedside. I need a cookbook to page through, something to transport me to a happy place. Vince and I used to spend Sundays at my kitchen table paging through cookbooks, debating, arguing, laughing. We came up with some of our best menu ideas that way. Theo would sip coffee and lean against the counter, refereeing. Oliver would climb into my lap, and I’d rest my chin on the top of his head. Beets? he’d suggest, and Arden would groan. You’re just saying that to torture me. Henry would tell us he wanted hot dogs for dinner, please?

  Raised voices out in the hall. Theo. And Vince? Something’s going on. Rory.

  I push myself up. “I’ll be right back, honey,” I murmur to Arden. Of course there’s no answer. Still, I pause and reach to her cheek, my hand hovering there.

  Theo and Vince stand outside Rory’s door, Vince with his hea
d lowered and Theo patting his arm. They’re the same height, the same coloring. Our girls had taken after their fathers. “Let’s not talk about this here,” Theo’s saying. He glances to me and I see the worry in his eyes.

  Vince shakes his head. “I don’t care who hears me. Let them hear me.”

  “What’s going on?” I say, sliding the door closed behind me. “Is it Rory? Is she out of surgery?”

  “She just got back to the room,” Theo says.

  “And?” I glance through the glass and into Rory’s room, a mirror of Arden’s with its dim shadows and blinking monitors. Gabrielle stands there beside her daughter’s bed. “It went okay, didn’t it?”

  “Yeah, the surgery went fine.” But Vince sounds so bleak.

  I look to Theo, confused.

  “When they went in,” he says, “they found the bone had crushed a vein. She’s been bleeding the whole time.”

  I’m stunned. “Since last night?”

  “Yeah.” Vince raises his head to look at me. I see Rory in his features, fearful and troubled, asking for my help. A dart of sorrow. I had let her go, too. “They would have found it sooner,” he says, “if they hadn’t bumped her from the damn schedule, but they decided someone else was more important. It’s not like Rory could say, Daddy, I don’t feel so good. Do you think you could check it out? No. She’s counting on me to take care of her, and I screwed up. I dropped the ball. I should have insisted. I should have told them, Get my little girl in there. But I didn’t.”

  “Hey, come on, Vince,” Theo says. “This isn’t your fault.”

  “It’s somebody’s fault. Somebody has to pay.”

  “But it’s okay now,” I say. “They got it under control.”

  “No,” Vince says. “That’s the thing. They can’t stabilize her blood pressure. It’s all over the place. And her heart’s racing. It’s too much for her. They say she can’t handle it much longer.”

  “Of course she can,” Theo says. “She’s strong. She’s healthy. Rory’s a fighter.”

  “But she doesn’t even know there’s a fight going on!” Vince hasn’t shaved, the dark bristles a startling contrast against his skin. “You send your kid to school; you expect her to be safe. You don’t expect something like this to happen.”

  “No,” Theo says. “You don’t.”

  “All I wanted was to make a better life for them,” Vince says to me, pleading. “You get that, don’t you? You understand.”

  “Of course.” Theo looks at me.

  I know he wants me to assure Vince that none of this is his fault. But is it true? If we unravel everything all the way back, doesn’t it all start when he took that gamble and lost? Arden should be three thousand miles away. Rory should be in Boston. They shouldn’t be here. This is the last place they should be.

  “It’s okay,” I say again. “Our girls are going to be okay.” This is as close as I can get to saying the words. “I’m going to check on Gabrielle. She shouldn’t be alone.” I don’t look at Theo as I turn away.

  Arden

  THIS IS HOW it happens.

  A girl gives you a pill from her stash and you think, Why not? Nothing happens and you’re disappointed. You say to yourself, Can’t you even get this right? But then the leaves turn bright green, their edges so sharp they cut the sky into pieces. Facts and dates and words zoom out of the darkness, so fast you can barely keep up. The snarky comments sail with them, twisting and turning before disappearing into the ether without the slightest prickle. You are brave. You are magic. Then the sparkling sky dims and the leaves turn muddy-colored again. You ask the girl for another pill and she gives you a look. What do you think they are—free?

  —

  I think they’re finally asleep, my dad says.

  We drive through twirling snow dense as lace, our headlights carving a tunnel through the darkness. The car radio’s on, playing Christmas songs that fade in and out. Oliver and Henry sit on each side of me, asleep in their booster seats, their heads lolling. They smell of animal crackers and milk, their little hands curled like shells on their small chubby legs. Percy’s curled up in my lap, softly snoring. My parents are talking about Grandma Lorraine and Grandpa Howard, who are now living in separate houses, and I’m listening to all the secret things they’re saying. It won’t be the same, my mother says and sighs, and my father reaches over and puts his hand on her thigh. She slides her hands over his, her strong battered hands that carry burbling pots from burner to burner, hoist me onto a stool so I can stir, too, tuck a long stray strand of hair behind my ear, tickle my ribs to make me giggle.

  Henry’s awake now, excited about Santa Claus coming. He kicks his legs and then Oliver does, too. Our tires crunch the crusted snow and we bump onto Grandma Lorraine’s white wonderland driveway. My brothers blink at the glowing strings of colored lights twisted all around the trees and bushes. We’re here, my mother says, and Henry starts to cry.

  Snow falls into my shoes, icy and wet, and I stomp them on Grandma’s welcome mat. I am prepared for bad news—the unpleasant shock of strangeness—but her house smells exactly the same, of cinnamon candles on the hearth and sugar cookies on a plate. Pine floor cleaner and bleach. Things change, I see, but they can stay the same, too.

  —

  It’s always the same routine at the playground: first Henry and Oliver want to swing on the swings, then go down the slide. Then the jungle gym—Henry hanging there and blocking Oliver until he can’t hold on anymore—then the haunted house, which is really supposed to be a pirate’s boat, but the big metal wheel fell off and sat there on the splintery wood until someone finally carted it away. But their favorite is the merry-go-round, which they always save for last.

  They both climb on and Henry orders me to go, so I grab the rounded rusting bar of the merry-go-round and run, my shoes digging into the dusty mulch. Henry shrieks with joy, one arm lifting like he’s riding a bucking bronco. Oliver sits in the middle of the platform, grimly wrapping his arms around his bent legs. But if I stop to let him off, he’ll shake his head and refuse to move. Sometimes I wonder about my little brother, about why he pushes himself to do the things he’s afraid of. Then I think I should try to be more like him.

  My mom says I used to beg to go to the playground, and that I could spend hours there and never want to go home. I don’t know. An hour’s way more than I can stand of the same mindless repetitive action, so after I’ve run around in so many circles my head pounds, I grab Oliver’s hand and firmly say, “Time to go.”

  “One more time,” Henry pleads.

  But I’m already marching away, kicking up sodden piles of last year’s leaves that no one got around to raking away. I feel bad for my brothers. They’re the only kids who ever play in this lame park.

  I wouldn’t be here, either, except that my mom came out of the kitchen to ask me to take the boys to the park while she and Dad headed over to Uncle Vince and Aunt Gabrielle’s. That was the third surprise, because she’s never home this time of day and who’s running Double if she and Uncle Vince both aren’t there? I dropped my book bag on the floor, all ready to complain that I was beat and, besides, I hated that creepy playground, when the twins came charging down the hall, Percy running alongside them barking, his long ears flopping. The twins threw their arms around me, making me stumble. “Finally! We’ve been waiting FOREVER!” Henry was on my right side and Oliver was on my left, their two blond heads pressing against my waist. Percy was leaping to reach my face, trying to kiss me, and that was the second surprise. Because I said, “Fine.”

  The first surprise had come an hour and a half earlier, when I found out I had to take the bus home from school instead of getting a ride with Dad, something he didn’t even think to mention this morning on our way in, leaving it to his assistant headmaster to come out of her office and tell me, her eyebrows crawling up her big forehead—Tyra Banks would call it a fivehead—that my dad had already left for the day. Seriously? Was he pissed because I spent too long in the art s
tudio? No. That’s not how my dad is. He doesn’t try to teach me life lessons. Dad’s whole thing is to let me figure things out for myself.

  My mom didn’t answer her cell phone. And neither did Dad. So I stood at the bus stop and waited with a bunch of strangers for the bus to appear over the rise of the hill. When it did, groaning to a stop a few feet away and making all of us shuffle to the door creaking open, I climbed up the steps and politely said hi to the driver as I dropped in my money, even though I knew she would pretend not to hear me. She always did. Why do you even bother? Rory hissed the one time she grabbed a ride home with me, before she got her license and her own car. You’re such a suck-up, Arden. I’d shrugged. Anyone could see the woman hated her job.

  Three surprises all in one afternoon, which was plenty if you ask me, but the fourth one was waiting for me when I got back from the playground with my brothers and found my mom and dad both home and wanting to talk to me.

  “We know how much you wanted to go to USC.” My mom reaches across the dining room table to slide her hand over mine. There are lines around her eyes. Tangles of hair have escaped her ponytail and hang loose around her face. She’s upset and trying not to show it. “Sweetheart, I’m so sorry. Your dad and I have been around and around this.”

  Snap! I’ve gone from thinking everything was going to be okay to knowing it isn’t. “But we already sent in the deposit.” I’m desperate, snatching at anything.

  “They’ve agreed to apply it to next year’s tuition,” my dad says. “See? It’s not forever. It’s just this one year while we try and get ourselves back on our feet.”