What Happens to Goodbye(97)

When we stepped out to the parking lot, the wind was stiff and cold, the sky a flat gray, the sun, barely visible, rising in the distance. As my mom pulled out her keys, I said, “What about the twins? Don’t you need to get back to them?”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “Heidi called in two of her sitters, Amanda and Erika. They’re covered. We have all the time in the world.”
All the time in the world, I thought as we pulled out onto the main road, my dad following close behind in his truck. If only there was such a thing, really. In truth, though, there were deadlines and jobs, school years ending and beginning, time running out with every breath. As we drove past Gert’s, though, the OPEN 24 HRS sign still on, I looked down at the bracelet I was wearing, twisting it across my wrist. Maybe I didn’t need all the time anyway. Just a couple of hours, a good breakfast, and a chance to talk with the two people who knew me best, no matter who I was.
We were the first ones at the Last Chance, there when a blonde woman in an apron, looking sleepy, unlocked the door. “You’re up early,” she said to my mom. “Kids have a bad night? ”
My mom nodded, and I felt her eyes on me before she said, “Yeah. Something like that.”
We took our menus, flipping over our coffee cups as the waitress approached with the pot. In the kitchen, past the counter, I could hear a grill sizzling, someone playing a radio, the notes punctuated by the register bell ringing as another waitress opened the drawer, then shut it. It was all so familiar, like a place I knew well, even though I’d never been there before. I looked at my mom beside me, and my dad across the table, both of them reading their menus, here with just me, just us, for once. I’d thought that I didn’t have a home anymore. But right there, right then, I realized I’d been wrong. Home wasn’t a set house, or a single town on a map. It was wherever the people who loved you were, whenever you were together. Not a place but a moment, and then another, building on each other like bricks to create a solid shelter that you take with you for your entire life, wherever you may go.
We talked a lot that morning, over breakfast and the many refilled cups of coffee that followed. And we kept talking once we went back to the house, where my dad took a walk on the beach with me while my mom hung out with the twins. We didn’t make any huge decisions, not yet, other than I’d stay the week in Colby, as planned, and we’d take that time to figure out what would happen next.

After more conversations, both in person with my mom and on the phone with my dad, it was decided that Hawaii wasn’t an option, at least for me: they were a united front on that. Which meant, in the end, I’d be finishing out my high school career in the same school where I’d started it, back in Tyler. I wasn’t exactly happy about this, to say the least, but I finally understood it was really my only option. I tried to see it as bringing things full circle. I’d left and, in doing so, fractured myself. By returning, I’d be able to be whole again. Then, in the fall, I would start over again somewhere new. Although this time, I’d be one of many in a freshman class doing the same thing.
I spent a lot of that week at the beach thinking about the last two years, picking through my yearbooks and pictures. I also hung out a lot with my mom, and as I did so, I realized I’d been wrong about assuming that she, too, had fully reinvented herself when she left Katie Sweet behind for Katherine Hamilton. Sure, she had the new family and look, as well as a huge beach house and the entire different world of being a coach’s wife. But I still caught glimpses here and there of the person I’d known before.
There was the comforting familiarity I felt, this strange sense of déjà vu, when I watched her with Connor and Madison, sitting on the floor building block towers or reading Goodnight Moon, both of them snuggled into her lap. Or how, when I found her iPod on the fancy portable stereo, I’d turn it on to find some of the same music that was on my dad’s: Steve Earle and Led Zeppelin mixed in with the Elmo and lullabies.
Then there was the fact that every night, when the twins were asleep, the first thing she’d do was take a glass of wine out to the deck, where I’d find her looking up at the stars. And despite the high-tech kitchen created to make gourmet meals, I was surprised and pleased to see that she stuck to her old basics, fixing dinner casseroles and chicken dishes that began, always, with a single can of Cream Of soup. The biggest proof, though, was the quilt.
I’d brought it to my room with the rest of the stuff in the bins when we came back from the Poseidon. A couple of nights later, when the temperature suddenly dropped, I pulled it out and used it, wrapping it around me. The next morning, I was brushing my teeth when I stuck my head out of the bathroom to see my mom standing by my bed, where I’d folded it over the foot, holding one corner in her hand.
“I thought this was packed away downstairs,” she said when she saw me.
“It was,” I said. “But I found it when I found the pictures and yearbooks.”
“Oh.” She smoothed her hand over one square. “Well, I’m glad it’s getting some use.”
“It is,” I replied. “It was a godsend last night. The twins clearly had lots of warm clothes when they were babies.”
She looked at me. “The twins?”
“The squares are made of their baby clothes. Right?”
“No,” she said. “I ... I thought you knew. They’re yours.”
“Mine?”
She nodded, holding up the corner that was between her thumb and forefinger. “This cotton bit here? It was from the blanket you came home from the hospital in. And this embroidered piece, the red one, was a part of your first Christmas dress.”