Sorry. I love you. I’m fine. Really. I love you. I miss you. I won’t disappear.
No one texted back. Dad had sent about three texts, ever, in his whole life. Claire always had her phone on vibrate because she couldn’t stand any ringtone out of the billion available, which was fine so long as she had her phone in her pocket or could hear it scuttling across a table. Mom was on a plane somewhere over the Rockies, and Ruthie was up in Alaska at a summer camp for science geeks, miles and miles from any cell reception at all, and about as far away from me as she could possibly get.
I could feel my pulse throbbing all the way to my fingertips.
Stop it, Maeve. Breathe.
Maybe he would finally come and I’d be passed out on the floor. He’d see the security guards and the firefighters and the paramedics standing over me.
I needed to go home.
Coming to Vancouver had been a terrible idea.
Gut churning. Heart pounding and pounding and pounding. Fingers tingling as I dug in my backpack for the stupid paper bag that actually worked. I pulled it out and breathed into it, the top bunched in my fist. Three boys strode past in matching jerseys, laughing and pointing. I pulled the bag away.
“It’s glue.” I held it out, already feeling better. “Want some?”
They shook their heads, laughing.
I checked my phone with trembling fingers. No messages.
My throat was so dry that it hurt to swallow. I dug for some change to go buy a drink and felt something bunched up at the bottom of my bag. I pulled it out. It was the silk scarf Mom always wore. It was tied into a loose knot, with something inside. I brought it to my face and inhaled. Roses and geraniums and Mom. Now I could slow my breathing down. Inhale. Exhale. Now I could try to calm down.
I could be home by lunchtime the next day. And Mom would be there, even if she wasn’t. Her clothes in the closet, the way the furniture was arranged, the quilt she’d made me, with the stars in all colors and sizes, the garden and all the vegetables that we’d planted, growing and growing, as if they were ignoring the fact that she was gone. As if that were possible.
Dan offered to keep an eye on me while Mom inoculated babies and swooned over her new geriatric boyfriend at his clinic in Haiti. He said he’d love to, in fact, and other than his shifts at the hospital, he was a homebody just like me. Sometimes he spent the entire day in his fuzzy one-piece rainbow-unicorn pajamas playing the guitar and drinking coffee. His house was only five minutes through the woods, or ten minutes along the road. He’d even offered to have me over for dinner every night. He was a really good cook. Plus he was a nurse. So he could handle things.
“Maeve, no.” Was that pity in her eyes? Disappointment? I couldn’t tell. It was no, that much was for sure. “Not this time.”
And I knew why. Because the first and last time I had been left alone had been a complete disaster.
“What if I stayed at Dan’s place the whole time?”
“And you’d crawl into his bed in the middle of the night instead of mine?”
We both laughed. This was not as weird as it sounded. Dan liked big hairy men who looked about as gay as your stereotypical hockey player. And I liked girls.
Or, one girl so far. For not quite a month.
—
I untied Mom’s scarf and a card fell out. On the front was a picture of us that Dan had taken the fall before. We were sitting on the porch with our pumpkin harvest all around us. Seventeen pumpkins, lined up on the steps.
I love you, pumpkin. Don’t worry. Xoxoxo, Mom.
It was like she had texted me back. Sort of.
I wound the scarf around my wrist and then unwound it. Wound it around again. Unwound it. I would not cry in the bus station. I would not.
—
I should’ve taken out my sketchbook again. I should’ve drawn the old woman eating a sandwich all by herself, or the man mopping the floor, his sleeves rolled up, his back stooped. I should’ve drawn one line and then another and another until it built something apart from my worries. But instead I just wound and unwound the scarf until my wrist felt hot.
I didn’t want to call Dad again. If he was on his way, he shouldn’t pick up. He knew better, but he still talked on his cell while he drove, even though I told him not to. Every year over three thousand people died because of distracted driving. And that was just in the States. Not as bad as the one death every forty-eight minutes from drunk driving, but bad enough. Dad had already been lucky in that category once. Once that I knew of, anyway.
Or what if he was looking for his phone when I called and it was in his bag and he leaned over too far and lost control? What if he was in the hospital on life support and they couldn’t find a number to call because his cell phone had been destroyed in the crash and he’d forgotten his wallet at home again? What if he was all alone, with a tube down his throat and machines keeping him alive? Or maybe not. It could be even worse than that. What if he was dead? Dead. What if he was dead and I was sitting there waiting for a dead person who would never be coming?
An accident at work. He’d fallen off a catwalk on set and broken his neck and they just hadn’t called Claire yet.
William “Billy” Glover, aged 41, died tragically in a workplace accident. He leaves behind his wife, Claire; his daughter, Maeve; his two young sons, Corbin and Owen; and his unborn child due in September. After a successful career as a musician with the Railway Kings, Billy became a scenic artist in the film industry, working on major films such as—
Would it mention Mom? That would require a rewrite:
William “Billy” Glover, aged 41, died tragically—
Stop it, stop it, stop it.
He was not dead. He was late. People were late all the time; it didn’t mean that they were dead.
And then, as if to prove it, he hollered my name from the door.
“Maeve! Let’s go!” He had no idea that I was composing his obituary. “I’m double-parked, kiddo.” I barely had time to stand before he grabbed me in a bear hug and crushed the breath out of me. He stood back and took my wrists. The one I’d twisted the scarf around so much still throbbed, hot in his grip. “Look at you, all adult and shit. I just saw you a few months ago. You were, what, three years old?”
“Funny.”
“Come on, I don’t want to get a ticket.” He lugged my suitcase toward the exit. “Want to drive?”
“No. I do not want to drive,” I said. “It has wheels.”
“What?” he said. “The truck? Of course it does.”
“The suitcase,” I said, fuming. “It has wheels. You can pull it.”
“It’s not that heavy.”
—
His truck was parked with two wheels on the sidewalk in a no-stopping zone, right in front of the girl with the violin. She was playing something classical now, and as I came around the front of the truck, she smiled at me.
She smiled at me. But why? What kind of smile was that?
Your dad is an asshole?
Nice parking job?
Serves him right?