Tease(64)

“You’re just gonna set the table. In the dining room.”

Sigh. “Right, exactly,” I say. Back to normal. Whatever that means.

I’m sitting on my bed, staring at the notepad from Teresa’s office, when there’s a quick knock and then my door is being pushed open.

“What the—” I start to say, expecting one of my brothers. But instead I see my mom.

“Can I come in?” she asks, hovering in the open door. She’s changed into her night clothes, yoga pants and the old Huskers sweatshirt. Her hair is up and she’s wearing her glasses, which always make her look younger. She used to come into my room every night around this time, just to talk, just to spend a little “girl time” at the end of the day. Obviously that never happens anymore. And obviously this must be about something else—I mean, who has time for “girl time”? Not us. Not the girl who killed Emma Putnam and that girl’s mom.

“Yeah, okay,” I say. I shove the notepad behind me, under a pillow, and pull one of my textbooks closer, as if I’d been working on . . . right, European history. I don’t think I’ve even opened this book more than once. And in fact, it snaps when I flip it to a random page now, that obvious new-book sound making me flinch. The pages slap open in the middle of a chapter about the Holocaust. A gruesome black-and-white photo of three emaciated men with giant eyes stares at me. I shut the book again.

Mom is at my desk, looking at my corkboard, just like Tommy did the other day. “Did Carmichael make that for you?” she asks, pointing at one of the CDs. Of course it’s the one with Carmichael Is Awesome Sharpied onto it. It was supposed to be a joke, back when I thought we were the kind of friends who made jokes. Or any kind of friends at all.

“No,” I say, hoping she’ll drop it. Luckily she just nods.

“Listen,” she says, finally turning around and walking closer to my bed. For a second she hesitates, since the whole mattress is covered in my books and backpack. I reach out an arm, knocking my English and science books onto the floor. I see her roll her eyes, but she sits on the part of the duvet I’ve cleared and goes on. “Natalie and I spoke about the statement you’re writing.”

I don’t respond or nod or anything. I know all this, or anyway I figured.

“She said you’re going to let her read it?”

“Yeah, I think I have to. She’s the lawyer and everything.”

“Sure,” Mom says. “Do you think—I mean, would you mind if I read it too?”

I blink. She—what? “Why?” I ask, too startled to make more words.

She shrugs a little, that one-shoulder shrug that she and Alex do exactly the same way. One of those weird, random family traits. Like, after the zombie apocalypse, I’ll know who I’m related to because of how they shrug.

“I’ve spent the last six months wondering . . . I just want to know how you are,” she says quietly. “You don’t talk to me.”

I can see there are tears in her eyes now, and I take a breath to say . . . I don’t know, but I need to say something, don’t I? But she reaches over and grabs my hand quickly, holding it in her soft, lotioned hand, the hand that wears a curled sterling silver ring instead of a wedding band.

“You don’t have to talk to me, Sara. You’re growing up so fast, I know. I know you have a life outside this house. I know things are . . . complicated.” She stares at our hands and so do I, the shapes of our fingers so similar and so completely different at the same time. My nails with their chipped gray paint and hers with their almost unnoticeable pink at-home manicure. My wrist wrapped in a rubber band from the school binder that’s already falling apart, hers still wearing her slim gold-and-silver watch. The watch her mom gave her for her high school graduation. I think I’m supposed to get it for mine. I’d totally forgotten about that. When I was little I thought I’d be so happy the day I finally got that watch. I thought I’d be so grown-up. Pretty and confident. With hands like my mother’s.

“I thought it might be easier to tell me, you know, how you feel, if it was in writing, that’s all.” She looks up again and smiles, the tears gone. “I remember how much I hated talking to my mom when I was seventeen, eighteen. She didn’t know anything.” Mom laughs, and I find myself smiling too. Grandma is pretty cool, though we don’t see her much since she moved to New Mexico a few years ago. Mom obviously doesn’t have a problem talking to her anymore—they spend like three hours a week on the phone now—but I always like hearing stories like this.

But I guess it’s not a story night. Mom lets go of my hand and sits back, glancing at my books on the floor. As she picks them up she says, “So anyway, if you want to show it to me, I’d like to read it. But of course I’ll be there on Tuesday, too, when you read it.”

She stacks the books back on the foot of my bed and gets up to leave. I still haven’t said anything. My hand is still warm from where she was holding it. I didn’t even realize how little I’ve said to her all summer, all year—I thought she was the one not talking to me. But maybe it was the other way around? Maybe I’ve had everything wrong, mixed up, the whole time?

She’s at my door now, but she stops and looks back, like she can hear what I’m thinking. “You know, baby—you know I love you, right?”