Don't Let Go(77)

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The next morning started with a ring of my doorbell that I expected to be Seth. I had coffee ready, as well as biscuits and honey. Just in case. Not from scratch or anything, let’s not get crazy. And I figured that serving him a sliced apple probably wouldn’t have screamed motherly.
The view I received when I opened the door was even better. Nana Mae, arm in arm with a grinning Seth. Her with big fat tears in her eyes, a photo album, and a big bag of donuts. She understood mothering a lot better than I did.
“Look who I found outside!” she said, her voice trembling with joy.
We had a sugar feast, went down a deeper rendition of memory lane, and fought Harley for the donuts and biscuits, although I suspected that Seth was sneaking her bites on the side.
Becca got ready early for school and actually stuck around for a bit before leaving. Granted, the contraband food didn’t hurt. There still wasn’t conversation of any real quality between she and I, just the obligatory Q&A, but that was on her this time. She was going to have to throw the first flag. Truancy, boys in her room, and alcohol—all in one day—my mother would have stroked on the spot. I was doing pretty well, I thought. It dawned on me to call Hayden. He would think I should. Which was precisely why I didn’t.
Nana Mae and Seth left together, her insisting that he come over and help her get some things down from the attic. She hadn’t been up in that attic in over five years, maybe more, but I kept that little detail to myself.
I plopped onto the couch after they were gone and leaned over onto a pillow so Harley and I could be eye to eye. Also because I honestly could have fallen asleep like that. Meeting Seth the day before, wondering about his dinner with Noah (that I had not asked one word about over coffee, I was proud to say), on top of Becca’s antics had put my brain on overdrive. It just wouldn’t shut off.
I was mostly ready for work, anyway. Ready in a very going-casual-today kind of way. Jeans again. How far I’d fallen. My mom would have grimaced. And on that note, I wondered what Ruthie would say if I showed up in my robe.
At any rate, a few minutes of lazy time couldn’t hurt, and Harley was closing her eyes as well as I scratched her favorite spot under her chin. It was one of those comfortable moments when you feel that pull into the black hole, when—the doorbell rang again.
Harley jumped, her closed eyes now wide in panic as she ran to the door and sniffed once and took up her barking medley. I groaned and pulled myself off the couch, wondering who had forgotten what and when my door had become so friggin’ popular.
And opened the door to Shayna. Before I could even register that something was off about her—the crooked and straggly ponytail, the red puffy eyes and no makeup—she came running in past me.
“Um, what’s the matter?” I asked, shutting the door.
A new wave of tears flooded her eyes and streaked down reddened cheeks.
“Is Noah here?”
What? Guilt, panic, and major backpedaling flooded my brain. “Here? No! Why would he be here?”
She took a deep breath of something that looked panicked, and yet a little relieved at the same time.
“Noah’s gone.”



Chapter 20

Noah’s gone.
The last time I heard those words they were coming from Ruthie, as she had burst into my bedroom breathlessly. She didn’t have a car yet and had run all the way from the diner. She flopped across my bed where I was curled up in hiding, and heaved like she’d been chased by rabid dogs.
I remember how my hand had gone straight to my belly at the sound of his name, it still being soft and mushy and not quite shrinking yet. Drawings littered the floor—my practice drawings for what would be the painting.
“He’s gone—like really gone,” she had said. “Moved to his Uncle Gerard’s in San Antonio and joined the Navy! Linny was crying about it.”
Linny didn’t cry back then. That made it real.
Everything went sideways after that.
Shayna standing in my living room looking like she’d just done a running of the bulls and lost, telling me those same words, made my throat close up.
“What do you mean, he’s gone?” I said, the words falling off my tongue like someone else was saying them. Echoing like déjà vu.
She held her hands over her face and sank onto the arm of the nearest couch. Near the rug. Too near the rug. It was sick that that was what spurred me into motion, but I rushed forward and guided her around to sit on the couch. Where neither of us could see the place where I’d nearly banged the father of her child. Although technically he was the father of my child, too.
“He left,” she said tearfully. “Sometime last night.”
“Last night?” I repeated. “No, he was with Seth last night.”
Why would he leave? His son was here, she was here, his baby was here. I’m here.
“After that,” she said, sobs making her breaths come in jerky little gasps. “When he finally came home. During the night sometime after we—I thought he’d gone to sleep.”
“Why finally?” I asked, knowing I sounded too interested but unable to stop. “What do you mean, finally?”
“I had to tell him,” she said. “I couldn’t stand it anymore.”
“Tell him what?” I asked.
“As soon as he left the house to get Seth, I knew,” she said. “I couldn’t wait. I called and called. Was going to tell him to come home early, but he wouldn’t pick up.”
“Love Shack.”
She was talking like a zombie. Like I wasn’t in the room and she was just unloading her burdens to the air. And it was a little bit freaky. Shayna was the most calm and together person I knew besides Ruthie. Or at least as much as I could tell in the week I’d known her. And she was unraveling in front of me.