Burn Our Bodies Down(66)

“It’s quite all right.” Gram comes all the way in and presses the door shut, leaning her back against it. Keeping other people out, maybe. Or keeping us here. “They’re just sorting the mess. It’ll be back to normal in a minute.” She smiles at Tess, warm and inviting. It feels more real for how small it is. “It seemed like quite an emotional thing. There was…well, let’s just say there was some talk I recognized. About a situation I think you might be in.”

“What?” I say. A situation? But Gram doesn’t even look at me.

“My daughter got pregnant young too,” she says. I stare at her. How could she have guessed?

She crouches at Tess’s feet, and I watch her lay her palm on Tess’s knee. It’s what she did with me, in the kitchen.

Exactly what she did with me. A sick, heady feeling sweeps over me, leaving chills in its wake. This isn’t how it should be. “Gram,” I say, but she waves me off, eyes fixed on Tess.

“I helped her through that,” she says. “I can help you. You have options. Whatever you want to do,” she says. “There are a million roads open to you.”

It’s the right thing to say. But it sounds all wrong. Because Gram isn’t saying it to be good, or to be kind. Why would she choose now to look after Tess, when I don’t think she ever has before?

“And the father,” Gram continues, “whoever he is, he’ll support you. We’ll make sure of it.”

No, I think, sudden and clear through the fog, through the confusion. No, Tess, don’t, but Tess is already opening her mouth, and Tess is already saying, “That’s the problem.”

Gram’s brow furrows. “What do you mean?”

“We should get back,” I cut in. Tighten my arm around Tess’s and tug, as subtly as I can. Don’t say another word. Do not trust this. She is playing you the same way she played me. “Your parents probably want to talk to you.”

She meets my eyes. I watch hers widen with understanding. “Yeah, you’re right.” Together, we get up and sidle around Gram, toward the door.

“No, wait a minute.” Gram stands up, brushes invisible wrinkles out of her skirt. “Theresa, is there a father?”

Is there one. Not who is he. How does Gram know to ask that question? Here I am, still trying to get my head around how this could happen at all, and Gram goes straight to the heart of it. Like she already knows.

Tess turns. Her voice hitches, comes out in a whisper. “Why would you ask that?”

And Gram. She looks at me.

It’s not much. The smallest thing, and she breaks away so quickly I think she couldn’t have meant to do it. But it rips through me, echoes in the empty spaces where my own father has never lived. Not even a question I wanted to ask. Why would I, when I had Mom to figure out?

“I’m not sure what you mean,” Gram says. “I’m just making sure you girls are all right. Let’s get you back to the party.”

I barely have time to move before she’s nudging the door open and ushering us into the community room with a hand at our backs, firm and unyielding. Music too loud, air too cluttered with competing perfumes. I need fresh air. I need Gram to not be watching me so closely, like she’s waiting to see what I’ll do.

More than that, I need to get to Mom. And when Gram looks away from me for half a second, I’m bolting for the door.





twenty-four





outside. Evening coming on. I steal a bike from the rack in the green and ride through town. Breathing hard, every blink warping the world. Nothing’s what I thought. No father, no father, and that never bothered me, and I wondered if he was out there, sure, and I thought sometimes about what he might’ve looked like, about what kind of face could have mixed with Mom’s and disappeared completely.

No face at all. Just her, and then me. Is that—

I pedal harder, try to press everything down. The Nielsens in those photographs, in the dining room. They didn’t look alike the way Mom looks like Gram, the way the three of us look like each other. And something is there, something is waiting for me to look it in the eye, but I can’t do it alone. I need Mom.

I don’t know exactly where she’ll be, but I figure there can’t be too many motels in a town this size. I’ve seen most of the west side with Tess, or in the truck with Gram. So I follow the highway east. Up ahead I can see a long, low building, white with blue trim and a small dusty parking lot. A sign flickers between VACANCY and NO VACANCY.

It’s the only motel I’ve seen in all of Phalene, so she must be here. I pull in, careening over the unplanted flower bed.

Mom’s car isn’t in the lot to tell me which room is hers. Did she go for food, or maybe to find me? I leave the bike on the sidewalk and rush into the office. A boy a bit older than me is at the desk, his feet propped up on an old box fan while he nurses a beer.

“Shit,” he says, tipping upright when he sees me. “I swear I’m legal.”

The gray hair. It catches people sometimes, when they’re not paying attention. “Sure,” I say. “I’m looking for my mom.” Don’t bother with her name. It’s probably obvious. “Which room is she in?”

“Your mom?” He frowns. “There was someone in the farthest room, but—”