Girl Out of Water(10)

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I’d always imagined Nebraska to be some giant, flat dust bowl, a place my mom would want to run away from at seventeen, but as we speed down the interstate toward Aunt Jackie’s house in the Omaha suburbs, grass stretches in every direction. It’s slightly yellowed from the heat of summer, but it’s grass all the same. The tall stalks wave in the wind, like Nebraska’s pathetic attempt at an ocean.

“You’ve been here before,” Dad says.

“What?” I look at him. He’s staring out his own window. “I’ve never left California.”

“You were barely a year old,” he says, turning to face me. “It was the first time your mom left, and I panicked. Booked a flight. We stayed with Jacks while I tried to track down your mom. Your aunt was only twenty then, in college, living alone in the house since both your grandparents had passed away. The look on her face when I showed up with you—it was like…” He trails off.

“Like what?” I ask.

“Like she’d been expecting me. Your mom lived with me for two years straight. I wasn’t familiar with her…her habit.”

“I didn’t know,” I say. I have a dozen memories of my mom’s famous disappearing acts, but of course I wouldn’t remember one from that long ago. I glance at Dad, wondering yet again how he raised a kid with an absentee wife. No, not an absentee wife. Worse than that. A wrecking force, flying in and out without notice, not caring what destruction she leaves in her wake.

When I was younger, I remember Gabriella, one of Dad’s only serious girlfriends, left him because she found out he was still technically married. My mom never had the courtesy to sign divorce papers. I wonder if he was ever tempted to quit parenting too and what my life would have been like if I’d had two parents who didn’t want me instead of just one. I run my fingers over the rough texture of the seat belt as the taxi pulls into a neighborhood. We must be close. “Did I like it?” I finally ask.

“What?” His forehead wrinkles.

“Did I like Nebraska? The first time?”

Dad pauses and then gives a short laugh and shakes his head. “You cried for three days straight.”

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The house is two stories of chalk-white bricks and blue shutters. A bicycle sits haphazardly in the small yard, its front wheel sticking up to the sky. Shrubs dot the borders along the neighbors’ properties. I think of our beautiful, dilapidated beach home and try to keep my expression bright. I think of my mom living here as a kid. I try not to think of my mom living here as a kid.

Dad pays the taxi driver, and we grab our bags and head up the concrete driveway. As we approach, the front door slams wide open, and two compact figures rush out. “Uncle Cole! Anise!”

They crash into us with energetic, small-armed hugs. “Hey guys.” I smile down at my younger cousins, hugging them back. Parker and Nash are nine-year-old twins. Technically they’re fraternal, but if it weren’t for Parker’s jet black hair and Nash’s lighter brown, it’d be impossible to tell them apart.

Emery emerges from the house, trailing behind her brothers. I falter when I see her. This is definitely not the kid I played with last summer. Emery is almost thirteen and seems to be a few inches taller than she was last year. She’s wearing a flower-print romper, and her dark hair is pulled back into some fancy braid that puts my plain ponytail to shame.

After getting over my shock, I walk over and give her a hug. “Hey, you.”

She hugs me back, kind of, and then quickly steps away and mumbles, “Hey, Anise.” Her gaze lingers on me, maybe taking in my outfit—worn-out jean shorts and a cotton tank top.

“Come on,” Dad says to everyone. “Let’s get our things inside so we can go see your mom. How’s she doing?”

Aunt Jackie is still at the hospital, where she’ll be for her second surgery and several weeks after that for recovery. One of her friends stayed over with the kids last night, and a neighbor has been checking in all day until we could get here to take over.

The cousins lead us inside the house. Parker and Nash even help grab the bags. I hold back from saying anything as they struggle with the weight.

“She’s okay,” Parker answers Dad, panting.

“No, she’s not!” Nash says.

“Yes, she is!” Parker repeats.

“Guys! Shut. Up.” Emery bites out the words, low and sharp.

The boys quiet immediately, and Dad and I exchange worried looks. Emery has always played her big sister role but never with a sharp tone. I wonder if she’s always like this now or if she’s just freaked out. She was seven when her dad passed away, and her remaining parent was just in a near-fatal car accident. I tense, remembering a few years ago when Dad fell off a roof at a construction job and was one wrong angle away from breaking his neck. I was so scared of losing him, of having no one left. I want to say something to Emery, but I can’t think of the right words, so instead I wrap an arm around her skinny, freckled shoulder as we head to the house. She looks up at me with a small smile. “Come on,” she says. “I’ll show you guys your rooms.”

Parker and Nash drop our bags at the foot of the staircase and veer left into the living room where I can hear a television on. Dad and I follow Emery up the carpeted stairs. It’s weird to walk on the soft fabric when I’m so used to the familiar creaks and groans of our wooden floors. Family photographs line the beige wall. I focus on a black-and-white one of Uncle Scott with the twins as newborns. They only visited once as an entire family before he passed away. I was eleven that summer, and for a few weeks, my whole family, including my mom, was together. But the night before Aunt Jackie, Uncle Scott, and my cousins were supposed to leave, my mom disappeared again. She stayed fewer days than ever that visit, almost like with more family there, the more she wanted to leave.