I'd Give Anything(32)

“I’ll think about that,” I said, nodding. “But look! We’re talking about me again. I need more info about Mary Nash.”

“You can meet her if you want,” he said. “She and my dad, Nathan, still live nearby.”

“In your old house?”

“Yep. Georgia and I live about a block away.”

“Wow,” I said. “You didn’t just come back, you came back to the same neighborhood.”

“Which should have been weird, except that, at the time, I think I just had too many other things to think about.”

Daniel stood, but then Dobbsey batted the toe of his sneaker, so Daniel bent down and scooped him up.

“Keep talking,” I said, snapping my fingers.

“Bossy,” said Daniel.

“Go ahead. Why did you come home?”

“After Libby died, Georgia and I tried going it alone for a while, and I wasn’t doing a terrible job. I made dinner, did laundry, got to most of the soccer games before they were over. And my parents would come for a week or so every couple of months to help out.”

“That’s nice,” I said.

“Really nice. But then, after one of their visits, I found Georgia crying. She cried a lot in that first year. So I figured it was that she missed her mom. But when I asked, she said no, that wasn’t the reason, not this time. And what she said was ‘I miss you.’ She said, ‘When Gram and Grandpop are here to help with stuff, you talk to me. But when they’re not, you don’t.’”

“Ouch,” I said.

“No kidding. She said, ‘It’s not your fault. I know it’s just because you’re so busy.’ I felt like a jerk.”

“So you moved home.”

“It feels more like home now than it did when I was in high school, that’s for sure.”

“If I know Mary Nash and Nathan, they love having you two here.”

Daniel smiled. “Nathan’s idea of having fun with a twelve-year-old is to just do what he always does but with Georgia. They go birding. And golfing. And out for coffee on Saturday mornings with his buddies. And every Sunday, he brings over sticky buns from his favorite bakery, the New York Times crossword puzzle, and two pencils.”

“In case you don’t have pencils,” I said.

“Exactly.”

“I’ll bet she loves it.”

“She does.”

“What about my friend Mary Nash? What does she do with Georgia?”

“Well, right now, she’s teaching her how to paint.”

“Walls?”

“Paintings,” said Daniel. “Mary Nash is a painter.”

“Really? I used to want to be a painter,” I said. “And a writer. I was in love with the idea of making something out of nothing. What are her paintings like?”

“Mary Nash paints portraits of people for a living, mostly children, from life, not photographs. She loves the making something out of nothing, but she loves that part of it, too. The people part.”

Impulsively, I reached out and tugged on Daniel’s coat sleeve. “You know what you are? You’re one of those people who grew up with good parents.”

“True.”

“Lucky,” I said. “That’s what you are. Blessed.”

And then out of nowhere, I heard my mother saying, You went full tilt, didn’t you? Headlong into everything. You were something to see back then.

Mose and Walt had ceased adventuring in the gloom and were sitting in the grass nearby, their tails slowly wagging—Mose’s golden plume and Walt’s thumb-size stub—as if, even with nothing much happening, there was still cause for joy. I wrapped my arms around myself.

“Hey,” said Daniel, softly. “You’re crying.”

I took off my gloves and touched my cheeks with my fingertips and found that he was right. I turned to look at him.

“What if she liked me all that time and I never knew it?” I whispered.

Daniel took a step toward me, handed me Dobbsey, and then he put his arms around us both.





Chapter Nine




November 3, 1997

I can’t breathe.

Or make my brain work.

I can’t write it down.

I can’t write it. I can’t write it.

I can’t.

Nothing is what I thought it was.

I feel like I got lied to by the entire universe.

I don’t even know who I am now.

Not Zinny.

Or even Ginny.

Not anyone.





I stayed home from school today because maybe I don’t have a fever or a sore throat, but if anyone was ever sick, I’m sick.

The day before yesterday, he called and said we needed to talk. That’s how everything bad begins, isn’t it? In movies or stupid TV shows. I should have known. Anyone else would’ve known that something terrible was about to happen. But us talking has always been good, a completely good thing. So I wasn’t ready. I am so stupid.

I trusted him. I believed every single word he has ever said to me.

He picked me up in his car. He didn’t kiss me. But I was so happy to see him that I didn’t even notice. I hate myself when I remember how happy. I was practically bouncing in my seat like a little kid.