Sara looked at him, those green eyes of hers cutting him like a laser. “‘Of course’? You make it sound so easy. So obvious. But I was eight. I wasn’t so sure. When you’re eight, all you have are questions. What if she left because of something I did? What if she left because I didn’t love her enough? What if she left because she didn’t love
me
enough?”
“I’m sure that’s not why she left,” Sam started, but his words faltered under the heat of her stare.
“I know that,” she said. “Now.” She took a deep breath. “She left because Dad told her to. And what’s more, he told her never to come back.”
Chapter 33
Sara
I couldn’t believe I had been able to say the words. Tonight, when Dad had finally,
finally,
explained to me the truth behind why Mom had left, it felt like all the words in the world had turned to dust and ash and bone. The lights from Times Square burned my eyes like fire. The noise roared in my ears like a train. My throat closed up and I feared I might never be able to speak or breathe again.
“What?” Sam said, the lines of his face moving and shifting through horror to fear to disbelief.
“I know,” I said. “I spent my whole life thinking that it was my mom’s choice to leave, and it wasn’t. She left because Dad told her to.” The idea still rattled through me, as if a rock had been tossed into a well but hadn’t hit bottom yet. I looked down the long slide of the building at the small flickers of lights below as cars and busses buzzed along the dark streets. It made me dizzy, but the spinning felt good, almost as though if I turned around long enough, or fast enough, I’d be able to change what was around me. Or, better yet, return to where I started, back before all of this happened.
“Did he say why? I mean, he must have had a reason.”
I looked at Sam, whose forehead was buckled with worry, and pulled back from the edge. I sat down and leaned against the stone wall. Pulling my knees to my chest, I locked my hands around my wrists. I hadn’t realized how much my fingers had been trembling until they stopped.
Sam sank down next to me, folding his long legs under him, tailor-style. He swung his bag across his hips, tucking it low behind the small of his back so he could lean against the wall with me, side by side. But that left his hands unoccupied, and Sam, never one to stay still for long, tapped his fingers on his knee. I found his familiar fidgeting calming.
I leaned my head down. Sam’s profile slanted in my vision, his image distorted where my eye pressed against my knee.
“Dad’s reason for sending her away was so obvious, I probably should have guessed it a long time ago. She was cheating on him.”
Sam’s eyebrows rose, but he didn’t say anything.
“The summer before my seventh birthday, Mom stopped going to work. I thought it was because she wanted to spend more time at home with me—she even told me that was the reason—but tonight I found out that she was home because she’d been laid off from her job.”
I closed my eyes, trying to remember what she had looked like the day she came home from work for the last time. Had she been crying? Was she mad? The only memory I had was how she’d sat down at the kitchen table and taken off her shoe, only to find the heel had split clean in half. I remembered how she had sat at the table for hours, the broken heel in her hand, crying.
“Mom loved her job. She loved working and being a part of something important. Dad said he tried to tell her that being part of a family was important too, but I guess there was something in her that wasn’t happy at the thought of settling down, of being a stay-at-home mom.”
Sam scratched at the side of his neck, but he didn’t interrupt.
“Dad said he encouraged Mom to look for another job. He said he wanted her to be happy, and if working—even part-time—could give her that happiness, then that was a good thing.” I shook my head, remembering the look in Dad’s eyes when he told me this part of the story. The sorrow. The guilt. “So Mom started looking, checking the job listings online, signing up for networking sites. But I guess she had a hard time finding anything that was a good fit. The pay was too low, the commute was too far. There was always something. And then . . .” I trailed off. I didn’t want to say it. I couldn’t.
“She found what she was looking for?” Sam offered, his voice hesitant, laced with fear.
The knot in my stomach moved into my throat. “More like
who
she was looking for.”
“The guy? The one she cheated on your dad with?”
I unraveled the knot enough to speak. “I guess she met him on one of those online networking sites. They were both looking for the same kind of job and they would share tips and review each other’s resumes. I guess it got pretty serious pretty fast.” I swallowed. “The more time Mom spent looking for a job, the worse things got between her and Dad. And the worse things got between them, the more time Mom spent on the computer, looking for a job. And I guess, at some point, Mom stopped looking for a job and started looking for something else.”
“A way out?” Sam suggested quietly. His hand reached for the dog tags around his neck, but he bypassed the chain and rubbed the back of his neck instead.
“Something like that. I guess the relationship was mostly online, but Dad thinks she met the guy at least twice in person.”
“He’s not sure?”
“Mom
said
she was going out with friends, but by then Dad had his suspicions. And then he found the proof, and that’s when they started fighting about it. A lot.”
“What kind of proof?”
“Internet history logs. Messages. E-mails. Dad knows everything there is to know about computers, but I guess, there at the end, Mom wasn’t trying very hard to keep it a secret anymore.”
Sam looked down at his hands which were suddenly still on his legs. “Maybe she wanted to be found out. Secrets can be hard to hold on to.”
“It’s hard to hold on to a family too.” I felt a small rock of rage harden in my chest, and I sat up straight. “But Dad didn’t even try. When he found out the truth, he didn’t fight for his wife, or his marriage, or for
me
—he just told her to go, and she left.” The rock turned jagged around the edges. The laugh that escaped my lips was bitter. “Of course, she didn’t fight either. Most divorces end with some kind of custody case, but she didn’t fight to keep me with her. I haven’t had any contact with her for more than
eight years.
The last thing she said to me was
good-bye,
and then she left, and she never came back. We’ve never talked about her until tonight. Not really. Dad doesn’t even know where she is anymore. It’s like she just vanished. It’s almost like she never existed.”
Tears burned the rims of my eyes, the hot salt stinging like needles. My fingers dug into my wrists. The pain felt good, clean and honest.
“I don’t know if I’m madder at my mom for being stupid and selfish and for cheating on my dad or at my dad for not trying to save our family. I always knew he was weak, but I didn’t know he was
that
weak. He just gave up and watched her walk away.”
If I’d known what kind of man you really were, I’d have left with Mom. And I wouldn’t have come back either.
The memory of my last words to my dad filled my mind like tar—hot and sticky and suffocating. But I wasn’t sorry I’d said them.
My dad’s last words to me were “Then go.” I had a hard time imagining that he was sorry for those words either.
“This guy,” Sam said after the initial heat of my anger had dissipated into the atmosphere, leaving me cold and trembling, “did he have a name?”
I nodded, my breath choking me now just as it had hours ago when I’d heard this story for the first time. “Thomas Templeton.” I shuddered. I’d thought it was a horrible name when I’d heard it; saying it out loud was worse. “One day, she was Kathryn Nolan, and the next, she . . . wasn’t. She was back to being who she was before she married my dad. Before she was my mom.”
“Did she marry the Templeton guy?” Sam asked, his eyes narrowing as though I had presented him with an unexpected puzzle.
I shrugged, a headache beginning to throb at the back of my skull. “If she did, I never got an invitation.”
Silence fell between us. I was tired. I had hoped that by saying the words, by sharing my story, I would feel better. But all I felt was tired. Tired of hearing the words that had torn me apart; tired of saying them out loud. But they were branded into my bones now, and I would carry them with me like scars for the rest of my life. The thought pushed me past tired and all the way into exhaustion.
“I think I get it now,” I said quietly.
“Get what?” Sam looked at me, confused.
“Why you said the accident was all your fault.”
He tensed up next to me, his fingers falling flat against his knee.
“Maybe if you hadn’t done what you did, the outcome would have been different, but maybe not. You said the driver was drunk. Maybe he would have hit you anyway. Or maybe he would have hit the car in a different spot and Alice would have lived but one of your other friends wouldn’t have. There’s no way to know.” I closed my eyes. “And maybe if Mom hadn’t done what she did, the outcome would have been different, but maybe not. No matter how many
maybes
you dream up, you still always feel like it was your fault. Like somehow, you could have changed things before . . . before they couldn’t be changed anymore.”
Sam was quiet, and after the moment had stretched into minutes, I leaned my head against his shoulder.
“You want to know the strangest thing?” I asked.
Sam’s head barely tilted down. It could have been yes; it could have been no.
“As I was walking away from my dad that last time, all I could think about was those pink sugar packets in your bag and how much I wished I had one.”
“Why?” Surprise filled Sam’s voice.
“Because I knew you could turn one of those sugar packets into the desire of someone’s heart. You did it for Jess. And I wanted you to do that for me. I wanted you to take a packet and trade it and change it and somehow turn it into my mother.”
I closed my eyes, feeling a weariness all the way down to my soul.
“I hate it,” I whispered, “but as mad as I am at her, at my dad, at
everything,
there’s still a part of me that wants to see her again.”
Chapter 34
Sam
Sam didn’t know how long Sara slept on his shoulder.
She leaned into him. Her skin was chilled where the back of her hand touched the back of his. He could almost feel the warmth of his body flowing into her as she slept. Her breath was soft against the side of his neck. It was enough to keep him warm too. He considered it a good trade.
As his legs tingled into sleep and his back stiffened, he listened to the murmur of hushed voices and the shuffling of quiet feet. The crowds had thinned on Top of the Rock; it must be close to closing time. The wind curled over the stone barriers, dipping down to ruffle his hair.
For a moment, he thought he wouldn’t mind sitting like that forever.
When he’d moved to New York, he’d been running away. He had known it then and he knew it now. But it felt like he’d been running ever since. Always moving. Never stopping. He’d always believed that stagnation killed, and maybe that was still true, but stagnation wasn’t the same as stillness.
And, tonight, it was nice to sit and be still.
A guard strolled past, flashlight in hand. He stopped in front of Sam and Sara. “Last elevator leaves in ten minutes. Make sure you’re on it,” he ordered, but quietly.
Sam nodded in understanding, then turned his head slightly to look at Sara. She might be sleeping in peace, but Sam suspected her dad was still awake, still beyond worried about her. This might be his best chance to help ease his fears.
He carefully reached over and picked up her bag from where it sat on the far side of her hip.
Sara stirred, but didn’t wake.
With fingers well trained from months of delving into his own bag of secret treasures, he withdrew her phone. He pressed the text message icon on the phone and found the entry marked DAD. With one eye still on Sara, he typed in a short but—he hoped—reassuring message:
This is Sam—Sara’s friend. She’s with me. I’ll bring her home as soon as she’ll let me.
Almost immediately after he pressed SEND, the phone buzzed quietly and a reply appeared.
Where’s my daughter?!
Sam hesitated.
Safe. Don’t worry, and maybe don’t call. She’s still pretty mad about things.
Let me talk to her.
She’s sleeping.
But she’s okay?
Yes.
You’ll bring her home?
Promise.
This time the reply took a minute to appear.
Will you tell her I love her?
Before Sam could reply, a second message arrived.
And that I’m sorry for what I said?
Yes.
When he returned the phone to the bag, his fingers landed on her camera. The small rectangle fit nicely in his palm. He could see why Sara liked it. It felt comfortable, familiar. Setting her bag down again, he powered on the camera and trained the lens on Sara’s face.
A faint pink had brightened her cheeks. Her eyes moved under closed lids; her eyelashes curled down and away. Her lips parted slightly with a sigh.
A touch of a button and a quick flash of light, and he’d snatched the picture, saving it automatically on the memory card.
He smiled, imagining her face when she scrolled back through her photos from today and saw this one.
On impulse, he held out the camera at arm’s length and pointed it back at both of them. He couldn’t see to frame up the shot, but he pressed the shutter anyway, trusting to luck that he was at least kind of close.
The flash fired once again, but this time Sara’s eyes blinked open.
“Hmm?” she mumbled. “What’s going on?”