How (Not) to Fall in Love(16)
Mom nodded, her eyes welling with tears.
I reached down to pet Toby. I’d give anything to trade places with him, to spend my time chasing squirrels and rabbits while the humans dealt with all this drama, which was getting worse by the minute.
I frowned. “Is this whole mess J.J.’s fault? Did he screw up somehow?”
She stared into her wine glass. “I don’t know.”
My heart pounded. “So what he said about Harvest going broke? It’s really true?”
Mom’s face sagged. “Oh honey, you have no idea how much I wish it wasn’t. But I’m afraid it is.” She poured herself more wine. “After meeting with the board, it sounds pretty bad.” She forced a wobbly smile. “At least your tuition is paid through the year, so you don’t have to leave your friends at Woodbridge.”
Right. Friends like Chloe.
“What are we going to do?” I didn’t recognize my own voice.
Mom swirled the wine in her glass, not meeting my gaze. “Right now, we just have to put one foot in front of the other.”
I glared at her. “You sound like Tri Ty.”
Her smile was wistful. “It’s good advice, no matter who it’s from.” She shivered, rubbing her jacket sleeves. “Anyway. Dad’s old truck is here. You could drive it back to town tomorrow. It’s not fancy but at least it runs.”
I thought of Charlie being car-free. I’d been so set on getting back my Audi, but now that felt selfish.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “I think I remember how to drive that beast.” Dad had shown me how to work the gearshift when I’d first learned to drive. “Because you never know,” he’d said. “Life doesn’t always have an automatic transmission.” I smiled wistfully at the memory, at how my dad could turn anything into a “Tri Ty” cliché.
Suddenly I was completely blindsided by tears. It was like a cosmic hand from the universe smacked me upside the head and I suddenly knew deep in my soul that all of this was true and I couldn’t stop it. I’d been living in some weird state of denial these past few weeks, but now I shook with sobs as reality sank in.
Mom knelt next to my chair and hugged me. “Let it out, honey, just let it out. It’s the only way we’re going to make it, by facing this head-on. And it hurts like hell, doesn’t it?”
In spite of my tears, I almost smiled when I realized Mom had cussed. That was twice in one week. She was making progress.
“Mom is not going to be some fake-baked realtor like Chloe’s mom,” I whispered into Toby’s floppy ear. It was early Tuesday morning and I was sneaking in one last hike before we headed home. Toby wriggled out of my hug and took off, having caught the whiff of something much more interesting than me.
Dad loved our mini-Stonehenge. He and I had built it the summer I was nine. We’d spent a whole weekend arranging rocks into a circle, laughing and messing around. Every time we came up to the cabin we checked on it, fixing parts that fell down and adding new rocks. Even when I whined about being away from my friends, I still loved our Stonehenge hikes.
As I came around a bend in the trail, I saw the stones. Toby waited for me, panting happily. The circle was only about ten feet in diameter since the clearing was small. Rocks of all sizes balanced on top of each other. Dad and I had used a photo of the real Stonehenge as our guide, but our replica was hardly exact. I approached the circle and knelt to raise some of the fallen rocks.
“Stay, Toby,” I commanded. He stayed, not venturing into the circle. He’d destroyed it once as a puppy, crashing into the circle and sending the rocks tumbling. He sighed heavily and flopped to the ground, sending up a cloud of dust while I busied myself with the stones.
It felt good to lift and move the rocks, to feel their rough surfaces anchoring me to a place where I felt safe. In the middle of the circle lay a small stone Dad and I had found years ago. It was a perfect skipping stone, flat and smooth, yet somehow it had morphed into almost a heart shape. Dad and I took turns holding it each time we visited, making wishes.
Today I hesitated to pick it up. It felt off somehow, doing this ritual by myself, but I needed to feel the smooth stone for myself. I held it in my hand and traced its shape with my forefinger. “Dad, please come home,” I whispered. “You’re the one who always says we can handle anything, as long as we face it together.”
I closed my eyes and pressed the stone to my chest, stone heart to human heart, and sent a prayer, a wish, a plea to the universe, to God, to whoever or whatever was listening.
“Bring him home. Even if we lose everything else, please bring my dad home safe.”
As I packed to leave the cabin, I glanced around my bedroom, at the bulletin board full of bumper stickers for Greenpeace, Wahoo Fish Tacos, and the Broncos, the posters of Phoenix, Snow Patrol, and my favorite movie stars. There were photos of Dad and me building a snowman, of Mom and me decorating a Christmas tree by the cabin’s fireplace.
I zipped up my duffel and then ran my hands along my bookshelves full of all my favorite series, especially Harry Potter, which I re-read every winter break in front of the cabin’s roaring fireplace. I didn’t want to believe this was the last day I’d spend at Camp Covington, but I feared it was.
As we drove back to town, me following Mom in Dad’s ancient Ford truck, I practiced visualizations like Dad told people to do on his DVDs. I imagined his BMW in the garage. I saw him closeted up in his office on the phone with J.J., somehow fixing this disaster. I pictured him greeting us with bear hugs, grinning like he always did under the spotlights.