Where the Stars Still Shine(54)

I leave my bike by the street and go the rest of the way on foot, crossing the scrubby grass and sand lot to the house. The differences are marked from the last time I was here. The windows have been installed, and as I climb the steps to the new front door, I wonder if Mom could even get inside. Of course, this is my mother. She’s developed a knack for getting inside locked places.

The front door is secure, but one of the sliding glass doors facing the bayou is not.

“Mom?” My voice bounces through the empty house and I slide off my flip-flops to silence the echo of my steps. I switch on the flashlight I found in Phoebe’s kitchen junk drawer and slide the beam around the room. The skeleton frame of walls has been covered with dry-wall and the concrete floor covered with a rich brown wood. An L-shaped counter marks the boundary of the new kitchen and I can picture Phoebe preparing dinner there, looking up from time to time to admire the water or check on the boys.

The stairs to the second floor are finished with a handrail in the same wood, but with modern-looking stainless-steel balustrades. Like downstairs, the walls are hung, and the dormer overlooking the front of the lot is finished and wide enough for Greg’s drawing table. I enter my room—my room—and the big hole in the outside wall is gone. In its place is a window seat with a set of French doors leading out onto the balcony. And around the window seat is the built-in bookcase he promised. Lying on one of the shelves is a hardcover copy of Mandy. I pin the flashlight beneath my chin, pick up the book, and open the cover. Inside is a note from Greg:

Callie,



I can’t give you a shell cottage of your own, but I hope this will do.





Love,

Dad

My eyes fill with tears as I tuck the note back into the book and place it on the shelf, hopefully in the same spot he left it. Clearly I was not meant to see this until tomorrow. Sadness and joy tangle in my heart as I make my way back downstairs. I want this house. This room. This family. But the price is my mom, and I’m not sure I’m prepared to pay it.

When I reach the bottom of the steps, the orange glow of a lit cigarette cuts through the dark house, and I catch my mother in the beam of the flashlight. “Mom, you can’t smoke in here.”

“Look at you,” she says, as I swipe cooled ashes into my hand from where she’s tapped them onto the kitchen counter, and carry them out to the back deck. “Just a regular little daddy’s girl now, aren’t you?” The amusement in her voice follows me and I hate it.

“No one is supposed to know you’ve been here.” My hands are dusty with ash when I come back inside. I wipe the residue on my jeans. “Why do you have to trash it?”

“You know, I find it interesting that you care so much about a place that’s not your home.” She sends a deliberate breath of smoke into the air and I can hardly stand the smell of it anymore. “Or, maybe you’d rather stay here with him. Is that what you’re saying?”

“No, of course not.” I answer too quickly and I worry that it’s a lie. That she’s seen the book upstairs. “Greg has been kind, Mom, and it’s just—he’s excited about showing me the house. So stay away tomorrow until we’re gone, okay? Please?”

She doesn’t even acknowledge the request. She leaves me standing in the dark uncomfortable silence until the only thing that feels right is to leave. And I’m no more certain about what will happen tomorrow than I was when I arrived.





Chapter 17


“You doing okay, Cal?”

Greg catches me picking at the pepperoni on my slice of pizza, my stomach so knotted by worry that we’ll arrive at the house and find Mom there that I can barely eat. I want to enjoy this father-daughter moment, but instead I tell him a half-truth to cover the reality. “Just really excited.”

I am looking forward to seeing the renovations with him, and I can’t wait for him to give me the book he thinks will be a surprise. But … there’s always a chance of “but” when my mother is involved.

Greg’s enthusiasm is almost too big for his body to contain. At this moment, I can see heredity in play. He’s just like Tucker. “We can go now,” he says. “If you want.”

We bike from the pizza place to the house on Chesapeake and enter through the front door. In daylight it’s even prettier than in the dark, and the weathered gray shingles, even though they’re new, keep the house looking like the one that’s been standing in the same spot for decades. As we kick off our shoes in the front hall, there’s no evidence my mom’s even been here.

“So the choice is yours,” Greg says, as we make our way toward the great room and the stairs to the second floor. “We can do the whole house tour first and save your room for last. Or start with your room.”

I’m on the lookout for stubbed-out cigarettes or crumpled fast-food bags—classic signs of Mom—but relax when there’s not even a sign of leftover ash on the kitchen counter. “My bedroom, definitely.”

Following him up the stairs, I feel my own excitement build inside me like the fizz in a soda can, even though I’ve already seen his surprise.

“Ready?” He opens the door—

—and I see it.

The hardcover shell of the book is lying open in the middle of the floor with all the pages torn out and scattered around the room. Along the spine of the book, nothing but ragged little page stumps remain, and the thought of Mom, here in this room, deliberately destroying a book that was meant for me, hurts as badly as anything I can remember.