If I'm Being Honest(48)

“Cameron?”

My mom’s voice pulls me from the memory. I fold the jacket in my arms and turn toward the doorway, where she’s waiting with one hand on the frame. Her eyes move from me to the box on the floor, and she frowns.

“What are you doing with that?” she says. “Andrew and Deb will be here any minute.”

“Can I borrow some of this stuff?” I ask.

Mom walks into the bedroom, eyeing what I have in my hands. “I don’t know why you’d want to,” she says, an edge entering her voice, “but okay.” She stares into the box on the floor for a long second, then the boa on the bed. Her frown deepens. Finally, she averts her eyes. “Throw everything away when you’re done.”

I turn to face her quickly, stung by her resignation. “Come on, you don’t mean that,” I implore. Reaching into the box, I take out the black satin dress she wore for her only starring role. She played an heiress in a small, critically acclaimed short film. “This stuff is great.”

She reluctantly places a hand on the dress I’m holding, fingering the fabric, her eyes straying like she’s remembering. “Your father came to the screening we had in L.A.,” she says after a moment. “It was our second date.” She drops her hand from the dress. “For all the good that brought me.”

I blink, pushing down her painful implication. “You can’t get rid of all this,” I try again. “You were really great. Remember this play?” I hold up a 1940s evening gown. The play was And Then There Were None. I remember the murders even if I wasn’t old enough to understand the plot.

I’d thought my mother, under the lights in her gown and pearls, was the most beautiful woman in the world. I was six.

“I remember. Your father was in town,” she replies, her voice turning cold. He was, and I was dropped off for a conveniently timed sleepover with Morgan following the play. I only realized why a few years ago, once I’d come to expect the extra layers of bitterness and depression I’d find in my mom every time I came home after. Every time he rejected her after briefly rekindling whatever screwed-up semblance of a relationship they had.

“Your father said I wasn’t right for the part,” she reminds me.

“He was wrong. I remember,” I say. I don’t know how often I’ve wished I could just erase from the fabric of time every awful thing my dad’s said to her.

She laughs ruefully. “What did you know? You were just a kid.” She walks to the door. I will her to pause, to retract her words, to say she’s proud of her past on stage. To grow a spine. “Take whatever you want. I’ll toss the rest,” she says instead. “No use holding on to that dream. Your dad was right. He always is,” she adds and leaves the room.

I hear her walk down the hall to the kitchen.

I stare down into the open box.

Before I’ve even decided what I’m doing, I’m packing every scattered piece of clothing back into the box. The feather boa goes in on top of the slippers and the satin dress. I’m charged with defiance—defiance of my mother, who let her dream die, and defiance of my father, who crushed the life out of it with a million cruelties.

I fold the flaps closed and haul the box to my room, where I push it under my bed, hiding it behind old yearbooks and shoes I inherited from Elle and Morgan. I stand upright, looking for something in my room to straighten, to dispel my stress. I shuffle the small pile of recent homework on my desk, revealing the Wharton brochure from the college fair. I hastily close it and put it in a drawer, not wanting to dwell on the future the representative laid out for me—the future I’m beginning to doubt my place in.

I’m pulling my hair into a high ponytail when I hear the front door open. Deb’s voice echoes down the hall, greeting my mom.

I fly into the front room and find Andrew waiting in the doorway, dressed in his running shorts and shoes and a Beaumont shirt. He’s holding a plastic bag I know contains clothes to change into before dinner. When he catches sight of me, he smiles.

Day made.

“Want to go?” he asks.

The moms have moved into the kitchen, where they’re gossiping at full strength. I hear mention of Laura Walter’s dad drunkenly hitting on waitresses at a fund-raiser. “Definitely,” I tell Andrew, and we’re out the door.

It feels exactly like I hoped it would. We leave in the direction of our normal route. It’s sunset, and the sky, behind a tangle of telephone wires and streetlights, is breathtaking. Even this far from the beach, the light paints the evening a vibrant gradient of oranges and violets. To warm up, Andrew and I jog the hill from my house to the corner.

When we hit flat ground, I pick up the pace. I’m expecting Andrew to fall in step behind me. Instead, he matches my stride, catching me off guard. We run side by side in the direction of Olympic Boulevard. I push the pace, forcing myself to run faster and faster.

I keep waiting for him to drop back. He doesn’t.

Finally, I notice I’m winded, and we’re running much faster than we usually do.

“Damn, you really haven’t slacked off,” Andrew says, echoing my thoughts.

Wondering what it means that he’s not running behind me, I ease off the pace, and we come to a corner where we have to wait for the light. “What?” I chide. “Don’t tell me you’re out of shape. Doesn’t your coach have you do distance runs?” I glance at him when I bring up the team, nudging the conversation in the direction of what I know he’s told Paige.