See You at Harry's(56)

“I’m too hyper to go to bed. Want to take the truck for a spin?” Holden gets up, as if he’s seriously ready to go.

“I think Dad swallowed the keys,” I say.

“Was it that bad?”

Sara shrugs. “He’ll get over it. You know he really is just worried about you.”

Holden shakes his head. “You know it’s more than that.”

“Maybe,” she says. “But it’s only because he loves you.”

“Whatever.”

“No,” I say. “It’s true.”

“You’ve got to cut him some slack. He’ll get over it. You know Dad. I think right now he’s just hurting so much, he doesn’t know how to handle anything.”

Holden falls back into the chair. “Do you think we’ll ever be OK? I mean, obviously I have these moments where I can feel happy. But then something will remind me of Charlie, and I get so overwhelmed. And Mom . . .”

We all look toward the stairs.

“She’ll get better,” Sara says. “It’s just going to take time.”

She looks over at me. I realize that Sara has been more of a mom to me in the past twenty-four hours — in the past few weeks, even — than my mom has since I can remember. She’s been a mom to Holden, too. It seems like she’s aged so much so fast. Like she was forced to. It doesn’t seem fair.

“Mom will be OK,” Sara says. “Dad, too. All of us. It’s like the minister said. We all grieve differently. We’ll all miss him in our own way.”

Her words make me think of my secret, and I know it’s not fair to keep it anymore. “There’s something I have to show you guys,” I say. I hadn’t been meaning to tell anyone, but suddenly the moment feels right. “Stay here.” I go upstairs and come back down with the answering machine.

“Klepto!” Holden says. “I wondered where that went.”

I set it on the coffee table. “I couldn’t change the message. I couldn’t bear to erase his voice.”

Holden reaches out to touch the machine.

“I want to save it,” I say. “I know Dad has the ‘See You at Harry’s’ ad on disc somewhere, or we could watch it on YouTube. But this is different. That day I helped Charlie make the message, well, I just remember it so clearly. It was a day I was nice to him.”

“You were always nice to him,” Sara says.

“No, I wasn’t. Anyway, I wanted you to know I have it. In case you ever need to hear him.”

“I don’t think I could bear listening,” Sara says. “But I’m glad you saved it, Fern. Really glad.”

“Me, too,” Holden says.

We all lean back and watch the answering machine as it sits there on the coffee table. Like it’s a treasure that holds a secret only the three of us will ever know. I guess that’s exactly what it is.





THE FOLLOWING SUNDAY, we all go to the restaurant to help work the Sunday brunch. The restaurant is even more packed than usual. My mom pulls Sara and me aside and reminds us to watch for Silver Purses. This is her code word for the little old ladies who like to put the silverware in their purses. You would be surprised at how many sticky-fingered little old ladies there are in the world. Sometimes they even take the salt and pepper shakers. It’s been a family joke forever to come up with the best reason they steal the silverware. Holden’s theory is that they take the silverware to their church bazaars to sell and impress the priests. Sara thinks they hoard the utensils, and once they have a set, give them away as wedding gifts to their grandchildren. I think maybe there’s some silverware club where there’s a contest to see who can gather the most silverware, and you get different points for spoons, knives, and forks. There is a whole underground club throughout the country, and they have these big super-secret conventions where they display their goods. Charlie always liked my theory best. Unfortunately, he believed it. One day he actually caught a lady in the act and marched over to her.

“Mine!” he yelled. Then he reached into her purse and pulled out a fork.

The poor lady looked like she was going to have a heart attack. “I don’t know how that got in there!” she kept saying in a shaky voice. The other old ladies she was sitting with looked horrified, but we all thought they probably had a spoon or two in their own purses.

My mom gives us each a quick hug before she rushes off to help Mona wait tables. Sara smiles at me as we watch my mom greet customers in her old, happy voice. It’s a start.

“Hey, Fern!” Holden says in a loud whisper, coming up to me with a rubber bin for dirty dishes. “Check out those three guys over there. Do you know them?”

I look to where he’s gesturing. There are three cute boys at a booth. They look about college age. What is it with Holden and older men?

“No,” I say.

“What do you think?”

“They’re kind of good-looking, I guess. But they’re too old for you.”

“Noooo. You know. What do you think?”

“I thought this was Gray’s job. To help you. I don’t know how to tell.”

He rolls his eyes. “You’re useless. Go wait on them and see if you can figure it out.”

“I’m not a waitress!”