A Lily in the Light(45)
“Your mother is so sad,” he said. “She started working with a private investigator. Tom. He stops by often. He might be there this weekend. No news from Detective Ferrera, but what else is new? Don’t tell your mother this, but I’ll be surprised if there is at this point. It feels hopeless. I don’t mean to sound heartless, but what are we supposed to do?”
He paused to change lanes. “The refrigerator’s broken. Just stopped working. Everything’s in coolers in the kitchen, so don’t be surprised when you get in. I don’t want to upset your mother.”
Esme didn’t respond. The more he talked, the more invisible she felt, like a confessional. When he paused, she wondered how many Hail Marys she should tell him to do.
“Dad?” She cut in during a long pause. “I learned a new piece this week for a show in February.” It was a safe topic, the kind of thing she would’ve brought up at the dinner table.
“Oh, yeah?” He honked at a car in front of them, cutting into their lane. Red taillights popped up like two angry eyes. Esme waited for the distraction to end, hoping Andre would ask more about it, but he didn’t. The seat belt pressed against her throat.
“I don’t know what to do anymore.” He sighed. The disappointment stung. Her father was lost in his own box of thoughts. She stared out the window, resting her head against her fist as the endless concrete wall rolled past, punctuated by metal bolts. She toyed with the zipper on her backpack, wondering what Amelia would do without her. Maybe she’d go on a date and wear one of the million pairs of high heels in the hallway, and the house would still smell like perfume when Esme came back. It was only one night, Esme reminded herself, confused by not wanting to go back to the home she missed.
When they pulled up in front of the house, Madeline was sitting on the stoop with a book. Her sister looked so small, knees pulled to her chest, hair windblown into ropy strands. Madeline wouldn’t admit it, but Esme knew she was waiting for her. Esme hopped out, throwing her backpack over her shoulder, and slid in beside Madeline.
“Hey,” she said. Madeline looked up, eyes bleary from reading for too long.
“Hey,” she said, pulling a pile of glossy pages from the back of her book. “You can have these if you want.” McDonald’s scratch offs. “I stole them from everyone’s bag.”
Esme pictured her wandering hallways, stealing ads from Pennysaver bags, sorry she hadn’t been there to help. It was almost an apology or at least a truce. Maybe it was true that she didn’t want to see what was on the other side of the after curtain, but for now, she didn’t have to.
They took turns scratching the silver smudges with a quarter. It didn’t matter if they won a soda or fries or a Happy Meal. Anything would be enough, even if it wasn’t a trip to Disney World or a car they couldn’t drive. The chill of the stoop shivered down the length of her legs. Her muscles would cramp later. They already felt tight. She was supposed to drink water and have protein for muscle repair, but Esme was content to sit shoulder to shoulder with Madeline, scratching stupid ads in the cold. There was only a small window before she’d go upstairs and find her mother curled up with one of Lily’s toys, face streaked with dried salt, and pretend her world with Amelia didn’t exist. Esme inched closer to Madeline, thankful someone’d missed her enough to save scratch offs.
They finished the last ad in silence. They’d won fries and a soda.
“Keep them.” Esme folded the winners into a square and handed them to Madeline.
“Fine,” Madeline agreed. “You probably can’t eat this stuff anyway.”
“No.” Esme sighed, thankful Madeline had acknowledged her new life.
“You’re not missing much.”
Esme knew her sister wasn’t talking only about fries. Their father’s cab circled the block for the millionth time. A plane passed silently overhead. Madeline stood and stretched.
Their window was a dark hole. If Lily was here, she’d be bouncing in that same window, hair flying, and there’d be a mess of scribbled pictures narrating everything Esme’d missed all week, but there wouldn’t be any new crayon pictures upstairs. Esme followed Madeline anyway, hiding in her sister’s shadow, praying for the right words to take her to San Francisco.
Chapter Twelve
“No,” Cerise said. “Absolutely not.”
San Francisco was over in three words. They buzzed through her head like flies, but she couldn’t slap them away.
“Let’s talk about this.” Her father put his hand over Cerise’s on the table—or tried to, but Cerise moved it away. Esme ignored the hurt on her father’s face and the pile of pillows and blankets on the living room couch, her father’s new bed. She wasn’t sure when he’d started sleeping there instead, and she didn’t ask why. It was too much.
“The answer is no. It’s impossible right now.” Cerise gestured toward the heap of untouched fabric on the sewing table. She slid her chair back and put her shoes on by the door. She would go back to the trailer and stare at the map on the wall covered in circles and pins.
There was only one dream for her mother now, a long-ago, half-forgotten version of the way life had been before. Everything that came after would always reach for it. There wasn’t room for dance anymore in her mother’s heart. There wasn’t room for Esme. There wasn’t room for anything except the void Lily had left behind.