“I started remembering about six months ago,” Dad explained.
He was holding his coffee mug real tightly, almost like keeping a barrier in front of him. Finally we were getting to the truth, even though we’d been talking for over two hours. There’d been some brief hugging, too, at first. Brief and intense. I had never forgotten the feel of Dad’s arms around me. That part was the same. He had a strong grip, like Casey’s but different. And even though I knew that things might not work out in the ways I’d dreamed of, I knew when my father hugged me tight that he meant it. That he loved me. I just didn’t know if that alone would be enough.
“I think once I knew how long I’d been gone,” Dad said slowly, “it made it that much harder to come back. I don’t expect you kids to understand. I just don’t want you to hate me for it. I had no idea that I was that kind of man.”
But it was more than that, I knew. It was the stuff he’d written about in those sports columns. The words that hinted that even if Renfroe hadn’t screwed with our lives, being Mike Samuels might not have been enough. That was the part I couldn’t accept quite yet. I knew that both Casey and I wanted him to say something in particular. Or a few things. That we were all he thought about. That Renfroe’s scheme was so ass-backward that it kept him from coming home. That he didn’t want to jeopardize our safety by showing his face. But he never did.
“I thought I was this big shot investigative reporter,” Dad told us. “I’d hit it big for all of us if I tracked down this story. I didn’t last five minutes. I put everyone in danger. I don’t know how I could have been so stupid.”
Amber stayed mostly quiet. She brought us our tacos when they called our number. Then she said she had to duck outside to make a phone call. I’m sure she was just giving us our privacy.
My pulse started dancing when I took a bite of my potato and egg breakfast taco—extra guac, no cheese. It tasted like sawdust. I eyed my new Ariats suspiciously. Was this damn thing starting over again? Only this time with an EMT angel poisoning my boots? I nipped another tiny bite. Chewed carefully. Swallowed. Nope. Not poison. Just old-fashioned nerves. I blinked. Chomped a huge bite. This wasn’t going to turn out good, but I was damned if I would let it ruin my love of breakfast tacos.
Once Amber was gone, Dad turned to Casey. “You look good, son. Real good. So, um, tell me about football. Bet you’re still a superstar, huh?”
My heart jolted.
But Dad smiled. I realized he thought he was being nice. I blinked a few times, not wanting to cry again.
Casey met his gaze. “Had to quit,” he said. He reached over his back and rubbed his shoulder blades, right where one of those wing nubs sat, hidden under shirt: the wings he’d spread wide when he flew to save me.
Dad looked surprised. Like he had not understood until just that moment that his absence meant anything more than lost years. Truth? He looked at Casey like he was seeing him for the first time.
“I took care of things while you were gone,” Casey added. “I did the best I could.”
I leaned across the table, eyeball to eyeball with our father. “Casey’s been the man of the family. He’s done a damn fine job.”
OUR FATHER CAME back with us to Houston. But by then we were all clear that he wasn’t coming home for good. Maybe things would work out one day, maybe not. He rode up front next to Casey. I was surprised that Amber let Casey drive, but she said that Casey and Dad needed father-son time. So Amber and I lounged in the back.
We only stopped once, at a kolache place on 290 that Amber knew. For someone who didn’t have to eat, she had definitely kept up specific gastronomic habits.
“What is it with those things?” I asked as we waited to be rung up. “They’re like crack to you or something.”
Amber paid the checkout lady and peered outside to the parking lot, where Dad and Casey were huddled in intense conversation. “Sometimes. I just like to remember who I used to be,” she said. “It isn’t the big things you miss. It’s the little ones. Red hawthorn berries that grew outside my house every fall. Bluebonnets in the spring. The smell of fresh kolaches hot from the oven.”
I swallowed, wanting to make her feel better. “But you’re still eating them. And you can still see the other stuff. It’s not like they all disappeared.”
“I know.” Her eyes shimmered with a brief golden glow. “That’s the point. As long as I’m here, like this, I get to have it. So I aim to have as much of it as I possibly can.”
The white waxy sack of pastries sat between us the rest of the ride home.
MOM WAS AT the front door when we pulled up to our house. Her face lit up in the glow of the Gilroy’s decorations. It was after nine and dark outside. For the first time it occurred to me that it was almost Christmas and we had done nothing about a tree.
My heart was pounding and my throat dried up. I was glad I hadn’t snuck one of Amber’s kolaches.
Dad climbed out of the car first. He stood there for a few long seconds. I could see Mom rocking back and forth like she was being torn between staying and running toward him. Casey solved the problem, of course.
“Hey,” he shouted as he shoved the Camaro in park and swung out of the driver’s seat. The door slammed. “We’re here.”
Dad walked slowly, then faster and faster up the walkway. He stopped in front of Mom. I kept holding my breath. Amber appeared next to me, the kolache bag clutched in her hand. Somehow this calmed me down. Was it the angel thing? Maybe just the kolaches. Like she’d told me: the little things.
Mom held her arms open. Dad spread his wide, too, and then they were hugging and holding each other and crying and he kissed her on the lips and then the cheeks and pressed his face to her neck, stroking her hair.
I wanted it to last forever. I wanted it to be like it was. It could be, I thought. It would be. Why not?
Then I thought about the column that Casey had showed me.
Did anyone really live like dying was around the corner? And why couldn’t you do that right here at home?
I looked away from them. And saw that Amber’s gaze was fixed on the edge of our yard, at a wild hawthorn tree we’d neglected to cut down. The whole yard had fallen apart when we’d forgotten how to live. Red berries were blooming in the darkness.
The night after we returned, Casey and Lanie went on that date they’d planned. He took her out for ice cream and then to the indoor skating rink that the mall folks set up every year from Thanksgiving through New Year’s.
Mom had insisted that Lanie come to the house first. She couched it as “wanting to say hello.” She remembered Lanie from before, she said. But I was more glad than annoyed. Mom was coming back.
The excruciating and awkward five minutes of small talk felt like five hours. Mostly Lanie talked about how nice it was to see me and Mom again. Her eyes flitted to Dad, but what could she say about him? He hadn’t existed until now. “I like your outfit, Jenna,” she added. I was wearing my new boots with a ruffled denim skirt and black sweater. Maggie and I were working on a signature look for me. If Lanie approved, then maybe this wasn’t it.
I heard my father exhale a sigh of relief as Casey and Lanie left. Inwardly, I sighed, too, but probably not for the same reasons. I watched out the window as my brother and Lanie headed down the driveway. Casey reached one finger under Lanie’s chin. He pulled her close and kissed her. Their lips stayed pressed together for a long time. The air around them lit golden.
I still wanted to hate Lanie Phelps. Maybe I would even be glad when the day came and Casey was gone and she was the one who was dumped without warning.
Except I knew I wouldn’t. Nobody deserved that.
RIGHT BEFORE NEW Year’s Casey drove Dad back to Austin. We would see him once every couple of weeks. At least that was the plan.
“I’ll be freelancing for awhile,” Dad told us. “Houston Chronicle and Austin Statesman. Get my following back.” He said this firmly like he was confident it would happen. I hoped that it would.
/> In between the sports-writing gigs, he’d work on his new book—about the Minor League Baseball circuit.
“Might as well capitalize on where I’ve been,” Dad said. “You know. Lemonade out of lemons.”
“Damn lot of lemonade,” my brother observed.
I’d have commented that he was being sour about things, but I figured the joke would fall flat. Instead I said, “If you ever do a sequel to the barbeque book, I’m your girl.” By then we’d all agreed that it would be best if he abandon the Tex Mex restaurant guide idea. Manny’s, by the way, had closed down indefinitely. Amber had mentioned that Terry had told her that the government had taken over the investigation from the cops, looking into whether Manny had managed to sell Renfroe’s drug to anyone who was a true world threat.
There was an uncomfortable moment where Dad suggested the possibility of a tell-all book about what had happened to our family.
“You really want people knowing you’re not living with us now?” Casey asked.
“But that’s part of the fall out,” my father said.
Casey frowned. A few beats later, Dad dropped the idea.
ABOUT A WEEK after Dad returned to his new home, Texas Children’s Hospital called, offering Mom a part-time gig as an in-house speech therapist. Amber had gotten her the interview. I was still not sure what to make of Amber Velasco. Would she ever tell me the rest of her story? Had she told Casey? Somehow, I suspected he knew. But right now he was in the happy bubble with Lanie. I decided not to press him.
“I’m so nervous,” Mom said the morning she was due to start. “What if I’m not good at this anymore?”
I gave her my best “you can do it” look. “It’ll be like falling off a log,” I said. “Just watch out for doctors with too much chest hair and poison vitamins.”
“Bad joke, sweetie,” she said.
“Agreed,” I acknowledged.
THAT SAME AFTERNOON, Casey was waiting for me when I got out of school. This was a surprise. I had started taking the school bus home in the afternoons again on the days Maggie’s mom wasn’t available to give us rides. I was wearing my Ariats and a pair of black jeans that Mom had bought me for Christmas (her first step toward New Mom Normal; she’d gone with Casey to the mall), a scoop neck gray tee, and a new red hoodie with fuzzy fake lamb’s wool lining, a gift from Casey. Honestly? I looked pretty fine.
I guess Ryan Sloboda thought so, too, because there he was at my elbow when I ambled out of Ima Hogg into the cool January air. “Love the lining,” he commented. He flicked a finger over the fake lamb’s wool stuff.
Ryan’s braces had come off over vacation. They’d definitely done the trick with that pesky overbite, but he was still pretty awkward about socializing.
“Thanks,” I said. I was pretty awkward about it all, too. My brother was not exactly a role model in this regard. BAI (Before Angel Incident), he’d been too stoned to care most days. AAI (After Angel Incident) he was suddenly visible to females again. Not that he noticed. He had eyes only for Lanie. Now that they were an official couple, they spent lots of time doing annoying official couple things, like making out in the backseat of the Merc. Better than the laptop shenanigans at least.
Ryan was still hovering in my personal space. He smelled like oranges and sweat and possibly the burrito he had eaten at lunch. Not as bad a combination as you’d think.
“Um,” he said. “You going to the basketball game later?”
I had a feeling that more was going on here, but neither of us were quite sure how to get to it. Two possibilities were blinking in my brain: Run. And I wonder if his lips taste like oranges.
“Jenna Samuels!” My brother’s voice rang out from the car line. “Ain’t got all day. Get a move on.”
I frowned. Ryan backpedaled a few steps. The distance let me notice his hair, which was spiked up just a little. I found myself wondering what those spikes would feel like if I ran my fingers over them.
“Jenna!” Casey bellowed again.
Ryan hightailed it toward the buses. But he stopped at the curb and stood there watching me.
I stomped over to the Merc. Amber—in jeans and a sweater, not her EMT outfit—was riding shotgun. Must be her day off.
“Get in,” Casey directed me. “And stay away from football players. They’re trouble.” (The day before, Casey had expressed interest in trying out for football again, a plan that Amber described as “reckless and imprudent,” two of my new favorite words. Look them up!)
“You are a mental case,” I told my brother. I waved to Ryan, taking my time about it, then slid into the backseat. “Don’t you have anything better to do?”
“He does, actually,” Amber said.
“What do you mean? What’s going on?”
“Jenna,” Amber replied, “don’t you think it’s weird that the cops bought my stupid stunt-diving story without even bothering to question it? And now there’s this whole huge global case that the government has taken over?”
Yes. It was weird. But this was not how I wanted to learn that my brother had more to do than just protect me from bad stuff, or at least from Ryan Sloboda’s lame attempt at romance. Of course, two seconds later I saw Casey’s gaze lock onto the shapely butt of Cammie Northrup’s older sister. Guess he was scouting a backup plan in case the whole Lanie romance fizzled. Unlikely, of course: at least until Lanie discovered that my brother’s angel pheromones had bamboozled her into that backseat with him.
“Someone up there likes me,” Casey said with a cocky-looking grin.
Angel Test Question #6: Is the A-word acting like an egotistical jerk?
Check. I didn’t want to smile back, but I did.
“The world might need him,” Amber persisted. “I’m serious.”
“Then the world,” I told Amber Velasco and my brother, “is totally screwed.”
Jen Rofe, for butt-kicking, boot-stomping, and insisting that I can get it right. Also for the occasional therapeutic cocktail or two when I’m in LA.
Daniel Ehrenhaft, for knowing what I mean even before I figure it out myself, and for patience and insight and thinking I’m funny. In a good way. This one goes to eleven.
Rick, Jake, and Kellie, for ignoring me when I’m whiny and obsessive and for making me laugh and laugh and laugh.
Critique partners, fellow writers—including but not limited to my retreat buddies from the Lodge of Death—for walking the walk with me and building the craft. You are my village.
To the rest of you—consider yourself thanked.
Joy Preble, The Sweet Dead Life
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