Girl Out of Water(51)

Dad sighs, puts a hand on my shoulder, and meets my eyes. “I know this is not the summer you had in mind for yourself. But it’s the right thing to do, and you’ll be glad you did it. I promise.”

“I know, you’re right,” I say. But inside my stomach twists because not only have I been torn away from home this summer, but now home is tearing Dad away from me too.





Eleven


“You know, sweetheart,” Aunt Jackie says, “You don’t have to keep checking on me every five minutes.”

“It’s not every five minutes,” I mumble.

Aunt Jackie sits propped against, like, eighty pillows, a book in one hand and her phone in the other. “True. Much closer to every seven.”

What else am I supposed to do? Dad left me here alone with an aunt on the rebound from a near-fatal accident. Well, not technically alone, but Emery’s still hiding out in her room, Nash can’t do anything without accidently breaking something, and Parker just discovered a three thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle of Mount Rushmore hiding in the garage, so unless you’re looking for the three-pronged piece of Abe Lincoln’s nose, he’s not interested.

I wish I could have gone in Dad’s place. Handle the construction complaints and see my friends. I know he’s right. I need to be here for my family. I want to be here for my family, but that doesn’t ease the growing pain of seeing picture after picture of my friends. It’s like I’m disappearing from their lives, like if I scroll down their feeds far enough, I’ll have even vanished from the pictures I know I’m in.

Plus, it wasn’t until after Dad left for the airport that I realized I still hadn’t told him about the postcard. He has no clue my mom might show up at the house. Not that she normally sends warning anyway. But I left that note on the bathroom mirror… What if he sees it and knows I’ve been hiding this secret from him all summer? I hate being dishonest with him. Even in her absence, the power of my mom’s destructive forces are immense.

Aunt Jackie says, “If I need anything, I can always call.” Then she waves her phone at me. “Or call.”

“I know, I know. I just like checking in.” Aunt Jackie is markedly happier since her party, but she’s still anxious from being cooped up for so long. Literally. I sit down on the bed and run my hand over the comforter, so much smoother than the tattered edges of Tess’s quilt. If I’d had more time to pack, I would’ve put it in my suitcase so I could curl up with it at night while reading a Detective Dana novel. “Can I get you anything?”

“Healed legs.” She cocks a half grin. “Kidding. I do miss running, though. Your mom turned me on to running—did you know that? It was her favorite sport. She turned your dad on to it too.”

The irony doesn’t escape me that my mom’s favorite sport is running.

“One time,” Aunt Jackie continues, “I think it was my spring break freshman year, I went to visit your parents in Santa Cruz. They’d been dating for a while then, about nine months. It was a miracle. It was the longest she’d stayed in one place since leaving home. Actually, I think she was already pregnant with you at the time, but she didn’t know it yet. Anyway, we all went for a run on the beach. It was one of those perfect nights, cool and still, just the lightest breeze coming off the water. So we started running, and we’re all a bit competitive, family trait, so no one wanted to be the first to stop. So we kept going and going. Every now and then someone would slow to a jog so sluggish it was basically a walk, but then we’d pick up the pace again. We ran for miles and miles down the beach.

“It wasn’t until the sun had long set that we all gave up and collapsed in the sand. I can’t remember ever being so exhausted in my life. It knocked me out more than those painkillers do. Well, next thing I knew, I was waking up to the sun rising and the tide washing over us. We watched the sunrise together and then walked home along that perfect blurred line, you know, where the water meets the sand.

“Took us about six hours to walk back, and the only food in the house was a loaf of bread and those orange cheese slices, the Kraft ones, so we ate grilled cheese sandwiches and then promptly fell asleep. When I woke up later that day, I found your mom in the living room blasting Stevie Nicks on the stereo and dancing. It’s like she was born with this extra cosmic energy. Maybe she—”

Aunt Jackie stops speaking midsentence and reaches forward, brushing my cheek with her hand, and I realize I’m crying. Not crying crying, but a few tears drip down my face. Chances are I’ll never get to run down the beach at night with my mom, and I know plenty of people in the world have it a lot worse than that, but the truth is, deep down, I think it’d be nice to wake up to the sunrise and eat grilled cheese sandwiches and dance to Stevie Nicks with her.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” Aunt Jackie says. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

I tilt my head down and scrub my face. “It’s fine.” I clear my throat. “You didn’t. I’m just tired.”

“Of course you are. And you miss home and your friends. Those painkillers have me rambling again. Your mom puts us through hard times, but I want you to know about some of the good ones too.”

She says this as if a moment of my mom’s presence can counteract years of her absence.