The Secrets We Keep(51)

“I know,” he said. “But it’s only November. You have a couple more weeks to figure things out. Besides, it’s not like you have a choice, and it’s not like you’ll be alone. I’ll be there to help you. Our friends will, too.”





32

It was past six when I got home. I expected Mom to be worried, maybe angry. I hadn’t talked to her since Monday when I ran out and left her crying on her bedroom floor.

The house was dark and the driveway was empty except for Mom’s SUV. I opened the front door and was greeted by the dog. No smell of dinner cooking, no TV blaring the news. Only darkness surrounded by silence.

I flipped on a light and dropped my backpack to the floor. The kitchen looked exactly the same as this morning—coffeepot still filled with sludge, dishes still in the sink, dog still covered with day-old soup. I turned off the coffee, dumped the grounds into the trash, and gave Bailey a quick paper towel and water bath. I thought about doing the dishes, but the dishwasher was full and clean. That meant I’d have to empty it first, which I didn’t want to do.

“Mom,” I called, but I got no answer. I wondered if she was out with Dad. Maybe she had gone with him to pick up dinner or something.

Turning on lights as I went, I made my way upstairs. Bailey had made it up ahead of me and was lying on my old bed. I stopped and stared at him, waited for him to jump down and come to me. He didn’t budge, didn’t so much as lift his head to acknowledge my presence. My own dog was turning on me.

With a silent vow to feed him nothing more than dry food until he changed his attitude, I turned around and headed for Maddy’s room. I had to find a brown dress somewhere in her closet or find the time to buy one in the next few weeks. Alex wasn’t letting me out of going to the dance, and until I came up with an amazing reason why I couldn’t go, I had to play along.

There was a flicker of light coming from underneath my parents’ door. I listened for a moment before pushing it open. Mom was there, sound asleep in the overstuffed chair in the corner. The TV was muted. She’d showered—her hair was damp, her face free of makeup, and she was already in her pajamas. I watched her for a minute. I hadn’t seen her this quiet or this peaceful in weeks, and I wondered if it was sheer exhaustion or the help of a few sleeping pills that had stilled her mind.

She had my old baby blanket tucked around her, and I couldn’t help but walk over and touch it, let the tattered softness calm me as well. I saw a cell phone in her hand. I quickly pulled mine out of my pocket and searched through the call list. Alex, Dad, and Alex again. Nothing from Mom. Nothing from Josh.

I carefully took the phone from her hand and dialed the last number she called. It was mine … Ella’s. It went to voice mail, my less-than-enthusiastic directions telling whoever was looking for me to leave a message. From the call log on Mom’s phone, she’d dialed my number fifteen times in the last day, probably so she could hear the distant echo of my voice.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered before I laid the phone on the floor beside her and left the room. Waking her now was pointless. I wasn’t ready to deal with her tears.

I was pretty familiar with Maddy’s closet by now, knew she kept shirts on the left-hand side, organized by season, then color. Jeans hung in the middle followed by skirts and dresses. Her shoes and boots were in their original boxes stacked neatly in the back. And on the far right, tucked behind her jackets, were her formal gowns.

I started there, sorted through three short black dresses, one long shiny-looking red thing, and a top that I would barely classify as a shirt before I found something that would work. It was a dark cream, not brown or tan, but I figured muddy cream was in the same color spectrum so I could talk my way out of that minor discrepancy.

Shoes were a different story. The dress wasn’t new, so I figured whatever shoes she’d bought to go with it would be at the back of the stack. Maddy was never one for recycling clothing. I sat down cross-legged in front of her closet and started sorting through boxes. Red heels, black sparkly flats, some sort of wedge-sandal-type thing. None of them would work. I needed cream shoes, or so I thought. Honestly, I would be fine wearing flip-flops.

I pulled out another box, totally expecting to find an expensive pair of the-wrong-color heels wrapped in tissue paper. I opened the lid, reached in, and came up not with a shoe but a stack of paper. I recognized the first sheet—it was a picture I’d drawn a few years ago, back while we were in middle school. Nothing but a simple rose, its thorny stem weaving around the finger of an anonymous hand. Beneath that was a birthday card I’d given Maddy last year. She hadn’t given me mine until three days later. She said she’d forgotten it at school or something like that. She had every test I’d ever taken for her, copies of the art awards I’d won, and twelve years’ worth of school pictures tucked into that one shoe box.

For as many papers and pictures as I pulled out, I didn’t find one thing that was hers. Not a note, a report card, a class picture, nothing that referenced her. This box was about me.

Wondering how long she had been keeping a box of my mementos, I dug through the papers, figuring the oldest things would be at the bottom of the pile. The last paper was thin, not enough weight to be a photo or another one of my drawings. Afraid that it would tear, I pulled it out and carefully unfolded it. It was an article from the local newspaper about Cranston High’s field hockey team. It was dated the day after they lost divisionals. According to the article, the reason they lost was simple—Molly Crahan, one of the best goalies in the state, hadn’t played.