So I slid open the passenger door, said, “I’m glad,” and left.
I stood on my dark doorstep and watched Decker finish cleaning his car under the overhead light. I strained my eyes across the street, into the darkness. I knew Troy was out there. I knew he was waiting for me.
I went inside and locked the door securely behind me. I even locked my bedroom door, just in case. And I watched out my bedroom window until Decker made it back inside. Just in case.
Chapter 18
I slept in like a typical teenager, except I wasn’t a typical teenager, and I never slept this late. The smell of Mom cooking breakfast usually woke me up way earlier than this. When I got downstairs, Dad was fidgeting around the kitchen, scrounging for food, and it was obvious that Mom hadn’t made it downstairs yet.
“I’m kind of pathetic on my own,” Dad said. “I had cereal for breakfast. Now I’m thinking about toast for lunch.”
I turned for the pantry. “I can do it, Dad. What do you want?”
He looked at me carefully, and I tried to bury my face in the pantry—hiding my bloodshot eyes, my face swollen from tears. “Delaney,” he said. “How was the funeral?”
“Horrible,” I sputtered. “Isn’t that how funerals are supposed to be?” Then my breath started coming too rapidly and he put down the loaf of bread.
“I’ll tell you what,” he said. “Let’s go out for lunch.”
“Where’s Mom?”
“Still sleeping,” he said, casting a glance toward the counter. I followed his gaze and noticed my vial of medicine on the counter, not hidden away above the fridge. I opened my mouth, but before I could talk, Dad cut me off. “Subs. I could go for a sub. You up for it?”
“I’m up for it.”
We drove to the next town over, to the street where Dad worked, where the sandwich makers all knew him.
“I remember you, sweetie,” one of them said. “’Course, you were just about this high last I saw you.” She raised her hand to her waist. I smiled, trying to be polite, and followed Dad to our booth. But I felt her watching me while I ate my turkey sub. I didn’t know whether she was staring at me because I used to look a lot different or whether she was staring at me because I used to be dead. Either way, it messed with my appetite.
So I shot my head up and stared at the woman behind the counter. But I was wrong. She wasn’t looking at me, she was looking at Dad. I didn’t notice anything different about him, any reason for him to be stared at. His hair was still gelled enough to withstand a tornado. He still went to work every morning, dressed in his usual attire. He still got way too enthusiastic when he talked about money. And I didn’t think he needed to be medicated for sleep. He picked at his sandwich, and for the first time, I noticed the faintest black circles under his eyes.
He cleared his throat. “Go order something for your mother.”
I shook my head. “Tell me what to get . . . I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” He brushed his hands over his tray, leaned back, and said, “No, I guess you don’t know, do you?”
Everything began to close—first my stomach, then my chest, then my throat. Dad was speaking to me like I was someone else.
“Well, you should know,” he continued. “One day, when she was younger, your mother left home and never went back. Just . . . walked out the front door and never returned. And I think maybe she thinks—she thought—the same thing was happening to her as a parent. Some sort of karma. Obviously, not the same situation at all, but it’s her deepest fear.”
“She just left?”
“I guess I shouldn’t say ‘just.’ There are many different types of abuse. Some are more obvious than others. Her father—your grandfather—was obsessive about the home, and everything inside it, including your mother. And his punishments were mental. He’d throw out her clothes if she didn’t do her laundry. Forbid dinner if there were crumbs on the carpet. And one day, the last day, when she was about your age, she missed curfew. When she got home, he locked her in the basement with no way out. Locked her in for that night and the entire next day. When he unlocked the door the next night, she didn’t come out at first. She just waited. I guess she decided that that was enough. So she walked through the living room, walked right past him sitting on the couch, and left. Hopped around from friend’s house to friend’s house, moving farther and farther away. And she never went back.
“So maybe that will help you understand her,” he said. I stared at the menu over the counter because I didn’t know where else to look. “You didn’t know that,” he said, “but you do know her.” He patted my hand, so I could feel his logic. If he believed that I still knew my mother, he believed I was the same Delaney. “You know her,” he repeated.
I got up to order, and I realized I knew something else—something Mom didn’t tell him. She didn’t leave because of her father. She’d told me as much. She left because of her mother. Her mother who did nothing while she was locked in the basement.
Who else was sitting on that couch when she walked out of her house for the last time? Her mother, doing nothing? Like me, Mom understood that nothing could be worse than anything real. Like the dark. Nothing can be the most terrifying thing of all.
When we pulled into the driveway, I saw a figure on our porch. Mom was leaning forward on the porch swing, one hand clasping the metal chain, hair flying wildly with the wind. Dad sighed and went through the garage door entrance.
“Tell your mother we brought her lunch.”
I walked slowly down the driveway and across the front lawn, crunching the snow under my heavy steps, her grip on the chain lessening with every step I took. I sat next to her, jerking the swing to the side. “Where were you?” she asked, not bothering to mask her concern.
“We brought you lunch.” I held up the white paper bag, leaking mayonnaise out the bottom.
She took it from my hand, not bothering to look, and put it down beside her. I wished she would eat something. I wished she would say something. I wished she would see that I was still right here.
“Mom,” I said.
She jerked her head a little, answered with a noise in the back of her throat.
And I asked her the thing I’d been planning to ask that old woman before Troy showed up. “If you had one day left to live, what would you do?”
She shrunk away from me, shook her head to clear the words from her mind. “Don’t say that,” she hissed.
I put my hand on her arm, so she knew I wasn’t going anywhere. And I said, “What would you do?”
Her eyes skittered frantically, searching for answers, and she mumbled, “Lots of things. Like not letting you play on that lake.”
I squeezed her arm. “You can’t change that. I mean now. If this was it. What would you do today?” I wondered what that old woman would’ve done if I’d given her the chance. I wondered what I would’ve done differently before I fell through the ice. What I would’ve said.
I watched Mom’s eyes scan the sky, and when they settled on something, I strained to see what it was, but it was just a wisp of cloud. Nothing unusual about it. But her mouth opened and a breath escaped and she didn’t take her eyes off the cloud. And she said, “This.”
The cloud floated with the wind, but Mom’s eyes stayed fixed. I tilted my head and looked harder. Clear blue sky, nothing more. I didn’t understand, so I said, “Mom?”
But she didn’t answer. She kept rocking, propelling herself back and forth with her toes, like she hadn’t even heard me. I turned to face her. Her head was back against the wood, and her eyes were closed. But she wasn’t sad or angry or frustrated. She was something else entirely. Something here and not here. Her face was turned toward the sun, soaking it in, like it was the hottest day of summer.
And when she moved her hand to cover mine, I gripped her tight. Because I realized what she meant by this.