Save the Date(130)
“Wait,” Linnie said, looking around. “Did they take the papers with them? We never got to see the last strip.”
“I can show it to you,” my mother said, gesturing out toward the office. “I have the original, you know.”
“I kind of want to see it in the actual paper,” Mike said, and Danny nodded too. I felt the same way—we’d waited so long for this, it didn’t seem right to see the print my mom would have in her office, uninked, with penciled-in numbers for the colorist. I wanted to see out the Grants’ story properly—in the comic section of our paper, the way I’d been reading it my whole life.
“We got the paper,” I said, and Mike nodded.
“We finally got one?” my dad asked, eyebrows flying up.
I nodded. “We were falsely accusing Sarah Stephens.” I looked around, finally spotting it on the kitchen counter under an empty donut box and shaking it out of its plastic wrapper. “Don’s been stealing it this whole time.”
“Don?”
“Don,” Mike confirmed.
“Really?” my mother asked, not sounding upset by this, but intrigued.
I gave her a look. “You’re upset you can’t write about this, aren’t you?”
“Well . . . ,” my mother said and then laughed. “I mean . . . it just would have been such a nice ending to the Sophie plotline.” She shrugged. “Ah well.”
Silence fell, and we all looked at the paper sitting on the counter. There, folded inside, was the way my mom had chosen to end the Grants’ story.
“What do you think?” my mom asked as she picked up the paper, unfolded it, and turned to the comic section. “Should we do this?” She looked at each of us in turn, and I nodded.
My mom held it, and the seven of us crowded around her. I knew we could have taken turns, or passed it around, but nobody did. Without having to talk about it, I could tell that we all wanted to experience this moment together.
My dad was on one side, next to Mike. J.J. was next to him, with Danny on his other side, and I was in between Danny and Linnie, with Rodney holding down the other end and my mom in the center. I looked around at all of them for a moment. I wasn’t sure when we would be here like this again—all of us, together, in the same house. But maybe to be here with them, in this moment, was enough.
“Ready?” my mom asked. We all nodded. And then she took a breath and opened the comics to the place that Grant Central Station had always occupied, the top left-hand corner. She held the paper open so we could all see.
And then we leaned forward to read it, together.
SEPTEMBER
* * *
CHAPTER 30
Or, Once Upon a Time in Connecticut
* * *
ARE YOU SURE YOU HAVE everything?” my dad asked for what had to be the millionth time. “You didn’t forget anything?”
“I’m sure,” I said, but even so, I glanced into the back of the car just to double-check, though all I could see were suitcases and boxes. It was absolutely packed to the gills—which made sense, since the car was packed with all the stuff that not one but two people would need for a year at college.
“I don’t like the idea of you driving halfway across the country all by yourself,” my mother said, shaking her head, and Mike straightened up from where he’d been arranging boxes in the backseat.
“Hey,” he said, raising an eyebrow. “What about me?”
I looked over at Mike and smiled. We were standing in the driveway of my dad’s new town house. He’d found it at the very beginning of May and was totally moved in by the first week in June, the weekend before the new owners took over.
It had been really hard saying good-bye to our house—seeing all the furniture vanish from the rooms, the pictures from the walls. But we’d all been there to clear it out together, which had helped a lot. Even Danny had come back from California, as opposed to just sending someone to do it for him, like J.J. and Rodney had been betting he would. But it had been all of us saying good-bye to the house, sitting on the floor of the empty family room, eating pizza off paper plates, since we no longer had furniture or dishes. Linnie and Rodney had even brought Waffles with them. They’d adopted him after the GMA interview—they both felt guilty that our interview had damaged his chances of anyone else taking him. And though they’d tried to change his name, he steadfastly refused to answer to anything other than Waffles.
My dad’s place was much smaller than our house had been, but there were still enough bedrooms for all of us to be there together, if you counted the pullout couch he’d gotten for the basement. He’d already gotten started on his new garden and had shown me the plans for it. I didn’t mind being there, not the way I’d thought I would. It didn’t feel like home—at all—but there was a piece of me that figured maybe it shouldn’t. We were all still figuring out what this new family arrangement of ours looked like, so maybe nothing would feel like home until we got used to the fact that things had changed, that they were different now.
“He has a point, El,” my dad said, smiling at my mom. “She’s not actually going to be driving alone. Our capable youngest son will be with her.”