When We Collided(48)
Instead, she whispers, “I knew it.”
She whispers this to herself, like how you say dammit under your breath after you drop something.
“I’m so sorry, Jonah,” Ellie says. “Maybe it’s none of my business. I’ve just . . . had this feeling about it.”
“God, don’t apologize.” I try to laugh, but it sounds bitter. Because I am. “We’ve been trying to give my mom some time—Naomi and Silas and me. But they go off to school at the end of August, and I can’t take care of the three kids on my own. Silas is talking about putting college off for a year. I don’t want him to, but I don’t know what else to do.”
We walk a few slow steps, and I’m conflicted. As relieved as I am to let all this out, I feel like I’m doing something behind my family’s back.
“Hey, you two!” Mrs. Albrecht calls from across the street as Edgar pauses to sniff at the fire hydrant. Ellie and I both wave, but my face burns. It’s embarrassing the way that someone walking in on you in the bathroom is embarrassing. Caught in a private moment.
By the time we’re out of earshot, Ellie and I are standing at the corner where we have to go different directions.
“You do realize that, after everything with Diego, we know a lot about depression—medication, therapy, listening to one another, and talking.” Her eyebrows are scrunched together, but I can’t tell if she’s confused or hurt. Or both. “Why haven’t you told my dad?”
“Because . . . because it’s only been seven months. Because, in a weird way, it feels like her business, not mine. I don’t want to embarrass her. There are a lot of reasons, I guess.”
She nods slowly. “Fair enough. What can I do?”
“Nothing.” Just like that, I snap shut. It’s an instinct, after seven months. “I mean, thanks, but we’re fine.”
Now is the time to go our separate ways. But neither of us moves. Ellie’s looking up at me, waiting. She’s smoking me out with silence. If I go much longer without saying anything, it will become painfully awkward instead of just a little awkward. It’d be easy enough to stammer Okay, see you later and walk away, but my mouth and legs won’t cooperate.
“Actually,” I say, before I even mean to, “I keep chickening out of talking to your dad. I know my mom stopped doing the books for the restaurant after everything happened, but if your dad asked for her help again, I think she’d like that. Do you think you could suggest that?”
Ellie nods like it’s totally normal to ask your friend to ask her dad if he can ask your mom for accounting help. “Of course. I’ll bring it up with him subtly. Maybe that’ll sort of open the door between my dad and your mom. And, Jonah, please tell me if I can babysit or pick up some groceries or I don’t know what. Anything. I’d really like to help, if I can. And if you ever need to talk, really . . .”
“Thanks. We’re actually doing pretty well most days. It’s after Naomi and Silas leave that freaks me out. But Vivi keeps saying she might actually persuade her mom to stay in Verona Cove longer, so she might be around to help, too.”
Ellie smiles. “That would be great.”
“And thanks for coming up with ideas for the restaurant.” We’re inching apart now.
“It was fun. Think them over when you have a chance. I already showed them to my dad. We can talk about it on Thursday if you want. See ya!”
She’s a few steps away when I call out, “What’s happening Thursday?”
“Nothing. It’s just our next overlapping shift.”
I turn back as we walk away, and she does the same, waving at me. Maybe I should feel guilty for outing my mom without even running it by Naomi or Silas, but I don’t. I feel like we’ve added another person to our team. Or maybe just realized that there was someone else there all along.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Vivi
Here is why I ransacked my mother’s room: I had to know. I’ve been thinking about it ever since the night of my birthday when Jonah and I talked about our dads at the lighthouse. Jonah’s dad was always in his life, so that loss is a staggering subtraction. I wonder now—could my dad be a meaningful addition to my world?
So many years, I told myself, I don’t need to know about my dad. But I think that might be some sort of myth that I created about myself: I am no man’s orphan, not a silly girl who is having an identity crisis, nothing like that. Except what if I am, you know? Like, what if I let myself be that girl for a minute?
So I did. I gave myself a tiny open window to really feel what I feel, and a gust of curious wind poured in. I studied my own face in the mirror yesterday, searching for clues of him on my very flesh. I have my mom’s button nose and full lips, but she has dark eyes, and I have blue. So these are his eyes, which I guess I’ve always known—his genes are right inside my eye sockets, and I don’t even know what his first name is. My natural hair color is darkest blond, and so is my mom’s. But my eyebrows. My eyebrows are full, and my mom’s are sparse; she fills them in with eyebrow pencil anytime she leaves the house. My mom has long, slender fingers, and my hands are teeny. I have his eyes, his eyebrows, his hands, what else? When I emerged from the bathroom, it had been over an hour.
If my mom had married someone, maybe I would have forgotten about my biological dad completely. There was only one person I ever wanted for the role of stepdad. When I was little, there was this man named Adesh, and my mom loved him in a way that made her a different person after he left, and I loved him, too, because he was handsome and so unbelievably kind. If he had ever yelled, I think I would have burst out laughing because his accent made everything sound beautiful. But he would never yell—no, never; he was too busy singing and introducing me to new music and making my favorite meal called makki paneer pakora. He moved back to India to take care of his aging parents, and I remember overhearing a conversation in which my mom said, Let me just come with you. He wouldn’t let her uproot her life and me, is what he said. What is meant to be will find a way, is what he said. They wrote letters back and forth for so long, real letters, and she keeps all his words bundled at the back of her underwear drawer.