The Truth About Forever(62)

I smiled, taking a sip of my water. The lump was going away now. "Isn't it weird," I said, "the way you remember things, when someone's gone?"

"What do you mean?"

I ate another piece of waffle. "When my dad first died, all I could think about was that day. It's taken me so long to be able to think back to before that, to everything else."

Wes was nodding before I even finished. "It's even worse when someone's sick for a long time," he said. "You forget they were ever healthy, ever okay. It's like there was never a time when you weren't waiting for something awful to happen."

"But there was," I said. "I mean, it's only been in the last few months that I've started remembering all this good stuff, funny stuff about my dad. I can't believe I ever forgot it in the first place."

"You didn't forget," Wes said, taking a sip of his water. "You just couldn't remember right then. But now you're ready to, so you can."

I thought about this as I finished off my waffle. "It was hard, too, I think, because after my dad died my mom kind of freaked and cleaned out all his stuff. I mean, she threw out just about everything. So in a way it was like he'd never been there at all."

"At my house," Wes said, "it's the total opposite. My mom is, like, everywhere. Delia packed a lot of her stuff into boxes, but she got so emotional she couldn't do it all. One of her coats is still in the hall closet. A pair of her shoes is still in the garage, beside the lawn mower. And I'm always finding her lists. They're everywhere."

"Lists?" I said.

"Yeah." He looked down at the table, smiling slightly. "She was a total control freak. She made lists for everything: what she had to do the next day, goals for the year, shopping, calls she had to return. Then she'd just stuff them somewhere and forget about them. They'll probably be turning up for years."

"That must be sort of weird," I said, and then, realizing this didn't sound right, added, "or, you know, good. Maybe."

"It's a little of both." He sat back in the booth, tossing his napkin on his now empty plate. "It freaks Bert out, but I kind of like it. I went through this thing where I was sure they meant something, you know? If I found one, I'd sit down with it and try to decipher it. Like picking up dry cleaning or calling Aunt Sylvia is some sort of message from beyond." He shrugged, embarrassed.

"I know," I said. "I did the same thing."

He raised his eyebrows. "Really."

I couldn't believe I was about to tell him this. But then the words were just coming. "My dad was, like, addicted to those gadgets they sell on late-night TV. He was always ordering them, things like that doormat with the sensor that lets you know when someone's about to—"

"The Welcome Helper," he finished for me.

"You know it?"

"No." He smiled. "Yes, of course. Everyone's seen that freaking commercial, right?"

"My dad bought all that stuff," I told him. "He couldn't help himself. It was like an addiction."

"I've always wanted to order that coin machine that sorts things automatically," he said wistfully.

"Got it," I told him.

"No way."

I nodded. "Anyway, after he died, the company kept sending them. I mean, every month a new one shows up. But for awhile, I was convinced it meant something. Like my dad was somehow getting them to me, like they were supposed to mean something."

"Well," Wes said now, "you never know. Maybe they do."

I looked at him. "Do what?"

"Mean something," he said.

I looked out the window, where car lights were blurring past distantly on the highway. It was after midnight, and I wondered where so many people were going. "I keep them," I said softly, "just in case. I can't bear to throw them out. You know?"

"Yeah," he said. "I know."

We stayed there for another hour. In that time, customers came and went all around us. We saw families with sleeping babies, truckers stopping in before the next leg, one young couple who sat in the booth across from us with a map spread out between them, tracing with their fingers the route that would take them to wherever they were going next. All the while, Wes and I just sat there, talking about anything and everything. I couldn't remember the last time I'd talked so much, really talked. Maybe I never had.

Still, I beat Kristy to Stella's by about ten minutes. I'd just waved good-bye to Wes and slipped inside, past where Stella was still sleeping, when the guys dropped her and Monica off in the driveway. By the time she got to her room, carrying her shoes, I'd already spread the sleeping bag she'd pulled out for me earlier on the floor next to her bed and changed into my pajamas. She looked entirely unsurprised to see me.

"Good night?" I asked, as she pulled off her skirt and top, exchanging them for a T-shirt and a pair of boxer shorts.

"No." She sat down on the bed, pulled a container of cold cream out of the bedside table, and began smearing it all over her face. When it was half covered, she said, "Let me just say this: Sherman, even though he was passed out the entire time, was the best of the lot."

"Ouch."