Inevitable and Only(65)
“Cadie!” said Mom, jumping up to grab paper towels. “What is it? What did we say?”
“Um,” I said, trying to cover my rising panic. Mom deserves to get Dad back. This is a good thing. Stop being selfish, Acadia Rose Greenfield. I pointed to Josh, then to myself. “Joshua Tree. Acadia Rose. Yosemite?”
Mom and Dad burst out laughing.
“Don’t worry,” Dad said, smiling around the table at all of us, “I think our family is complete just the way it is.”
I forced myself to smile back, but inside, I wasn’t so sure. Was I just supposed to pretend that this would fix everything that had gone wrong? I didn’t know what I wanted from Dad anymore. But this didn’t seem like enough.
So it was settled. Mom and Dad were leaving right after my Sunday matinee—in fact, they were catching an airport shuttle directly from Fern Grove. Rina Crane overheard me telling Micayla and Heron this news at rehearsal on Monday night.
“Oh, cool!” she said. “So you’ll be hosting the cast party, right? Parents out of town, time to party down!” She did raise-the-roof motions and danced around in a little circle.
Micayla, Heron, and I stared at her.
“Um,” I said, “I don’t think my parents would really—”
But Rina had already run over to Tori, Sam, Kieri, and Priya, and I heard her telling them, “Cadie’s parents are going out of town and she’s hosting the cast party Sunday night! Spread the news.”
I looked at Micayla and Heron, who shrugged helplessly.
“We’ll watch out for you,” said Micayla. “It’ll be fine.”
Heron nodded. “Yeah, we’ll be the bouncers. Anyone gets too drunk or rowdy, we kick ‘em out on their asses.”
My eyebrows shot up to my hairline. “You think people will bring booze?”
They both burst out laughing.
“Girl,” said Micayla, “you are so cute sometimes. I forget you’re only a sophomore.”
“And a drama virgin,” Heron added.
“What the hell is that?” I demanded, feeling grumpy.
“It’s your first play,” Heron explained. “Your first time treading the boards, as Robin would say.”
“Don’t remind me,” I groaned. Opening night was four days away, and my stomach felt like a volcano getting ready to blow. Gross, I told myself. Never be a poet.
We had full-cast rehearsal every night that week, which meant I barely had any time at home. But when I was home, I noticed the difference in the air as soon as I opened the front door. Mom wasn’t bringing work home with her anymore. She seemed to be humming constantly. And she was playing the piano again—her old favorite Beethoven sonatas, Chopin nocturnes, even Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. I couldn’t believe she remembered all that music after not playing for so long. Dad was coming home early from Fine Print—Cassandra wanted to work some extra hours, he said. He and Mom went out to the grocery store together after work, and then she’d perch on a stool at the counter and sip a glass of wine while he cooked. One night, dinner wasn’t ready even by the time I got home, so I went up to my room to start on homework. Ten minutes later, I flew down the stairs because I thought I heard someone shouting, and instead I found Mom and Dad roaring with laughter at the kitchen counter.
It was good to see them getting along again. I couldn’t deny it.
But also, it meant I was the only one left who was still mad at Dad. And that made me feel like an island of misery that everyone else had sailed past. I was disappearing on the horizon. I was a speck. Forgotten.
It didn’t help that Elizabeth still wasn’t speaking to me. Not that anyone else would’ve noticed. She was very polite, as always, and if I asked her a direct question, she’d answer. She’d just use as few words as possible. As we were getting ready for bed one night, I tried again to apologize for what she’d overheard Raven and me saying about her on Anti-Colonial Thanksgiving, but she just shrugged and said nothing.
I wanted to ask Dad what to do, but there was an awkwardness between us anytime we were alone together—which didn’t happen very often, since I never went to Fine Print after school anymore, what with my busy rehearsal schedule. Every time I thought about talking to him alone, one-on-one, my stomach twisted a little. I knew it wasn’t fair, but I couldn’t help feeling like he was a different person than I’d thought he was. And somehow, Mom forgiving him for it made me feel even weirder. What else was there that I didn’t know about Dad? About Mom? They’d had lives before they were my parents—strange as that was to imagine. There were things about them I’d never know.
I couldn’t tell if it was these thoughts that were keeping me awake every night, or if it was the countdown to Friday.
Opening night.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
When Tori and Rina tried to sneak a peek at the crowd from behind the curtains, Robin almost had a stroke.
“Get away from there!” he hissed, chasing them back into the wings like they were a pair of errant geese.
He’d gathered us all backstage to do our centering exercise together. Since we were already costumed and couldn’t sit on the floor, he had us do a walking meditation. We walked in a clockwise circle at the pace of a snail with our eyes closed, fingertips brushing the shoulder blades of the person in front of us, for five full minutes. Then Robin gave a short speech.