Here So Far Away(27)

“Are we satisfied?” he said.

“Not exactly. You been drawing on our savings.”

“I sent a little Joanna’s way. To help with the new grandkid.”

“Mortgage payment’s higher than I thought.”

“You thought wrong. Happens.”

Mum tried to smile, but now her lips were pressed together so tightly they’d disappeared, like they always did whenever she was nervous or mad at Matthew and me.

“Dad, don’t you have whatchacallits? Benefits?”

“I’m still bringing home the bacon. Course, we don’t know what job I’ll be going back to, if any.”

“When will you find out?”

“How about you give me a minute to learn how to walk on the prosthetic before you make me run?”

“Right. Sorry.”

My parents had never really talked about money in front of us kids before. We didn’t waste it, but no one seemed to seriously worry about it either. Mum cut out coupons, like everyone else’s mother did, bought new clothes for herself about as often as we updated our furniture, which was when something wore out completely, but I’d always thought that came from having grown up in a big family in a cabin on the south mountain. Dad once told me that the pipes sometimes froze and if my granddad couldn’t afford to get them fixed for a while, which was usually the case, Mum and her brothers would have to cut a hole in the ice to collect drinking water from the river.

The dryer timer buzzed. Mum pushed back her chair and rose stiffly, taking small, urgent steps across the kitchen like she was trying—well, like she was trying not to crap her pants. Had I ever seen Mum look that worried before?

“Don’t let her get you worked up about this,” Dad said as she went down the basement stairs. “This is exactly why you have savings, so the money is there if you need it.”

I sat in Mum’s chair and took a big gulp of the lukewarm coffee she’d left behind, wiping my mouth on the collar of my damp T-shirt and wishing I could peek inside the blue bank books with their silver embossed logos. I wasn’t sure how much was in my university fund or how much I needed, but since my parents had been matching every dollar I handed over to them since I’d started working at the lighthouse, I assumed we’d have at least the first year or two covered before I even stepped foot on a campus. “Dad, if you can’t go back to work, will we have to live off my school money?”

“It’s not like I’d retire. I’m footless, not brainless. But no, we’re not touching that.”

“Will it be enough?”

“You’ll be fine for tuition, and for books, student fees, and all that. I just don’t know how exactly we’ll manage residence. Unless you go to Noel and live at home.”

“Dad, I don’t want to be a jerk—”

“Never a promising start to a sentence—”

“But it doesn’t seem right to choose a school because it’s the closest.”

That was a big fat reason not to choose it.

“It would be different if there was some special program you wanted to do and you had the grades to get in and it was a hike from here. Then we could talk about getting a loan, though you know how your mother feels about debt. You don’t need a fancy college if we’re talking about a run-of-the-mill degree.”

“There is a special program that I want to get into.”

There was no special program; I just didn’t want the idea of Noel too fixed in my father’s mind. What let you see the world? I zip-lined through the possibilities like I was taking a word association test: explorer—tour guide—flight attendant—pilot—air force—soldier—war correspondent— “Journalism,” I said. And conveniently: “They offer it at Aurora.”

“So you’ll apply to Aurora.”

“Yeah?”

“I’ll say it again: I don’t want you to worry, kiddo. But let’s think before you send out applications willy-nilly. You could spend money on fees that won’t amount to anything.”

“Maybe if you did your physical therapy,” Matthew said quietly, “you could be back to work sooner than you think.”

I hadn’t noticed him hanging on the swinging door between the kitchen and the dining room.

“I do it when you’re at school,” Dad said, gathering up the paperwork. “Perhaps you two might deign to head that way before the next millennium, so I can get on with it.”

Since we didn’t have much homework that afternoon, I decided to take the Bickersons back to Pierre’s with me to finish my clothes shopping.

“Aargh,” Nat said, kicking the car door closed as a strong breeze whipped half of her hair out of its bun. Another gust brought the whole thing down. Now she was windmilling her arms like she was trying to punch everything in the universe.

“Are you fighting the wind?” Bill said.

“You go to all this trouble to get yourself put together and then it has to mess it up every time.”

“Your hair was already falling out of its thingy.”

Only because Nat had spent twenty minutes pulling out selected strands one by one so that they framed her face just so. She swatted her bangs out of her eyes. “Stop defending it!”

Bill gave me an exasperated look. Nat had been especially Natty for the past week, partly because of my fight with Lisa, partly because of what’d happened with Doug, who she was avoiding. And when Nat got to cranking, she tended to crank on Bill, who was Teflon enough to take it.