What Happens Now(79)

It wasn’t like I hadn’t prepared for this. I’d played the scene over and over in my head for days now, letting it go one way, then another. Trying out different things to say and a range of reactions to feel. In this little mental theater of mine, Mom was always the same: Angry. Indignant. Unreasonable. (Also, Wrong. Eternally Wrong.)

Problem was, right now she was not any of these things. All I could see in her face was pain, unfiltered and stripped of pretense.

Her pain triggered my pain. There and then and always, for as long as I could remember.

It was different now because I knew I was the cause of it. None of my rehearsed imaginary reactions applied here.

I ran down the hall to my room and slammed the door.

Ten minutes later, Richard rapped softly on my door. I knew he’d just come out of Danielle’s room after reading to her. “She wants you,” he said.

Danielle was already tangled up in her covers, like she’d purposely thrashed around to create the effect. Her still-damp hair spread out on the pillow and I winced to think of how badly it would be knotted in the morning, and how much she’d scream when we tried to brush it.

“Hi, kiddo,” I said, sinking onto the bed next to her.

Dani was staring out the window. “I wrote a note to Jasmine the other day. She took it but she hasn’t answered me yet. Do you think I should write another?”

In my resentment, I’d stopped checking the windowsill for fairy mail every night. Maybe my mother had collected the note, or maybe it had simply fallen between the wall and the bed. I’d have to check in the morning when Dani wasn’t around.

“I guess it depends,” I said. “What did your letter say?”

“I know it’s silly,” whispered Dani, her eyes following something on the ceiling. “But I asked her how to tell when people have stopped being in love with each other.”

The Biggest Fight Ever must have been exactly that.

“What were Mom and Richard fighting about?”

Dani looked at me guiltily.

“I need to know so I can apologize to them,” I lied.

Danielle grabbed two items from her windowsill: a figurine of a fantasy wolf-creature with wings, and some miniature creepy Barbie that had come from a Happy Meal.

She made the wolf speak in a low, deep voice that actually sounded nothing like her father’s: “‘Kate, what’s the big deal? She got a babysitter and prepaid her, for chrissake.’”

“‘But honey,’” said Dani as my mom in a dead-on imitation, “‘she’s never gone against the rules before and it scares me.’”

“‘You can’t control everything.’”

“‘But I’m so busy with my great new job and I have to support us now and I’m so great and me me me! Mememememe!’”

Danielle looked up at me. “Okay, she didn’t say that last part.” She put her toys down. “They have stopped loving each other, haven’t they?”

Who knew. Not us. Probably not them, either.

“I’ll be interested to see what Jasmine has to say on the topic,” I said by way of an answer. “Will you show me her letter, when it comes?”

Danielle smiled. “Sure,” she said. “Are you confused about that stuff, too? Like with Camden?”

I lay my head down on the pillow next to hers and looked into her clear, clear eyes.

“Everyone’s confused about that stuff. Always.”

“Except the fairies.”

“Well, obviously.”

Dani’s hand found my left wrist and she tried to circle it with her small fingers.

“Will you stay until I fall asleep?”

“Sure,” I said, “but you know my rule. No talking.”

She nodded, and we lay like that for a while, staring at each other until her eyelids or my eyelids shut first. It was probably a draw.

When I woke up a little while later, the light had gone completely from the room. All I could see above me was the cracked ceiling of my sister’s room. If I unfocused my eyes, I could pretend it was the sky above Camden’s patio. But that exact sky during our exact moment would never happen again.

Without it, it was easy to feel like the Possible had closed itself off to me. I hadn’t known what to do with it. I’d mishandled it somehow and lost my privileges.

I sneaked out of Dani’s room and once I was back in my own room, I did the only thing that seemed like a solution anymore. I called the boy I loved. Who now knew I loved him but hadn’t said it back.

It rang and rang and rang, until his voice mail picked up.

I didn’t leave a message.

When I walked into the family room the next morning, Mom was pulling a blanket off the couch. There were folded sheets and a pillow on an ottoman nearby.

“Did Richard sleep in here?” I asked.

“No,” she said, shaking out the blanket so it made a curt snapping noise. “I did.” She checked her watch. “Richard’s leaving for the store in about fifteen minutes, so you should get ready. With the Ribfest out at the fairgrounds, it could get busy today.”

“Okay,” I said, then leaned against the wall. She was speaking to me. That was something. “And then what?”

“Dinner at Moose’s,” she said. “Like always.”