Authors: Kristin Hannah
Back then, she’d still believed that someday she’d bring her own children here.…
With a sigh, she carried her luggage into the house. The downstairs was one big room—a kitchen off to the left, with butter yellow cabinets and white tile counter-tops; a small dining area tucked into the corner (somehow all five of them had eaten at that tiny table); and a living room that took up the rest of the space. A giant river rock fireplace dominated the north-facing wall. Around it were clustered a pair of overstuffed blue sofas, a battered pine coffee table, and Papa’s worn leather chair. There was no television at the cottage. Never had been.
We talk,
Papa had always said when his daughters complained.
“Hey, Papa,” she whispered.
The only answer was wind on the windowpanes.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
It was the sound a rocking chair made, on a hardwood floor, in an unused room.…
She tried to outrun the memories, but they were too fast. She felt her control slipping away. With every breath she took, it seemed that time marched on, moved away from her. Her youth was leaving her, as impossible to grasp as the air she breathed in her lonely bed at night.
She let out a heavy breath. She’d been a fool to think things would be different here. Why would they? Memories didn’t live on streets or in cities. They flowed in the blood, pulsed with your heartbeat. She’d brought it all with her, every loss and heartache. The weight of it bowed her back, exhausted her.
She climbed the stairs and went into her parents’ old bedroom. The sheets and blankets were off the bed, of course, no doubt stored in a box in the closet, and the mattress was dusty, but Angie didn’t care. She crawled up onto the bed and curled into a ball.
This hadn’t been a good idea, after all, coming home. She closed her eyes, listening to the bees buzzing outside her window, and tried to fall asleep.
The next morning, Angie woke with the sun. She stared up at the ceiling, watching a fat black wolf spider spinning its web.
Her eyes felt gritty and swollen.
Once again she’d watered her mattress with memories.
Enough was enough.
It was a decision she’d made hundreds of times in the last year. This time she was determined to mean it.
She opened the suitcase, found a change of clothes, and headed for the bathroom. After a hot shower, she felt human again. She brushed her hair into a ponytail, dressed in a pair of faded jeans and a red turtleneck sweater, and grabbed her purse off the kitchen table. She was just about to leave for town when she happened to glance out the window.
Outside, Mama sat on a fallen log at the edge of the property. She was talking to someone, moving her hands in those wild gestures that had so embarrassed Angie in her youth.
No doubt the whole family was arguing about whether Angie could be of any use at the restaurant. After last night, she questioned it herself.
She knew that when she stepped out onto the porch, all those voices raised in disagreement would sound like a lawn mower. They would spend an hour arguing over the pros and cons of Angie’s return.
Her opinion would hardly matter.
She paused at the back door, gathering courage. Forcing a smile, she opened the door and went outside, looking for the crowd.
There was no one here except Mama.
Angie crossed the yard and sat down on the log.
“We knew you’d come out sooner or later,” Mama said.
“We?”
“Your papa and me.”
Angie sighed. So her mother was still talking to Papa. Grief was something Angie knew well. She could hardly blame her mother for refusing to let go. Still, she couldn’t help wondering if this was something to worry about. She touched her mother’s hand. The skin was loose and soft. “So what does he have to say about my being home?”
Mama sighed in obvious relief. “Your sisters ask me to see a doctor. You ask me what Papa has to say. Oh, Angela, I’m glad you’re home.” She pulled Angie into a hug.
For the first time, Mama wasn’t dressed to the nines and layered in clothes. She wore only a cable-knit sweater and an old pair of Jordache jeans. Angie could feel how thin she’d gotten and it worried her. “You’ve lost more weight,” she said, drawing back.
“Of course. For forty-seven years I eat dinner with my husband. Alone is hard.”
“Then you and I will eat together. I’m alone, too.”
“Are you staying?”
“What do you mean?”
“Mira thinks you need someone to take care of you and a place to hide out for a few days. Running a restaurant in trouble is not easy. She thinks you’ll be gone in a day or two.”
Angie could tell that Mira spoke for others in the family, and she wasn’t surprised. Her sister didn’t understand the kind of dreams that sent a girl in search of a different life … or the heartache that could turn her around and send her home again. The family had always worried that Angie’s ambition was too sharp somehow, that it would cut her. “What do you think?”
Mama bit down on her lip, worried it in a gesture as familiar as the sound of the sea. “Papa says he’s waited twenty years for you to take over his baby—his restaurant—and he doesn’t want anyone to get in your way.”
Angie smiled. That sounded so much like Papa. For a second, she almost believed he was here with them, standing in the shadows of his beloved trees.
She sighed, wishing she could hear his voice again,
but there was only the sound of the ocean, roaring up to the sand. She couldn’t help thinking about last night and all the tears she’d shed. “I don’t know if I’m strong enough yet to help you.”
“He loved to sit here and watch the ocean,” Mama said, leaning against her. “
We have to fix those stairs, Maria.
That’s what he said first thing every summer.”
“Did you hear me? Last night … was hard.”
“We made a lot of changes every summer. This place never looked the same two years in a row.”
“I know, but—”
“It always started with the one thing. Just fixing the stairs.”
“Just the stairs, huh?” Angie said, finally smiling. “The longest journey begins with a single step and all that.”
“Some sayings are simply true.”
“But what if I don’t know where to start?”
“You will.”
Mama put an arm around her. They sat that way a long time, leaning against each other, staring out to sea. Finally, Angie said, “How did you know I was here, by the way?”
“Mr. Peterson saw you drive through town.”
“And so it begins.” Angie smiled, remembering the web that connected the residents in this town. Once, at the homecoming dance, she’d let Tommy Matucci put his hands on her butt; the news had reached Mama before the dance was over. As a girl, Angie had hated that small town feeling. Now, it felt good to know that people were looking out for her.
She heard a car drive up. She glanced back at the house. A forest green minivan pulled into the yard.
Mira got out of the car. She was wearing a faded pair of denim overalls and an old Metallica T-shirt. In her
arms were a pile of account books. “No time like the present to get started,” she said. “But you better read ’em fast—before Livvy realizes they’re gone.”
“You see?” Mama said, smiling at Angie. “Family will always show you where to begin.”
A drizzly rain fell on the brick courtyard of Fircrest Academy, giving everything a shiny, lacquered appearance.
Standing beneath the flagpole, Lauren Ribido looked at her watch for at least the tenth time in as many minutes.
It was six-fifteen.
Her mother had promised to be here for the college fair by five-thirty.
She couldn’t believe she’d fallen for the pretty promises again. She knew better. Happy hour at the Tides tavern didn’t end until six-thirty.
So why did it still hurt, after all these years? You’d think a heart would grow calluses at some point.
She turned away from the empty road and headed toward the gymnasium. She was almost to the doors when she heard a male voice call her name.
David.
She spun around, already smiling. He got out of the passenger side of a new black Cadillac Escalade and slammed the door shut with his hip. He was dressed up, wearing blue Dockers and a yellow cashmere sweater. Even with his blond hair plastered wetly to his head, he
was the best-looking guy in school. “I thought you’d be inside already,” he said, running up to her.
“My mom didn’t show.”
“Again?”
She hated the tears that burned her eyes. “It’s no big deal.”
He pulled her into a bear hug, and for those few moments, her world was okay.
“How about your dad?” she asked gently, hoping just this once Mr. Haynes had come through for David.
“Nope. Someone has to denude the rainforest.”
She heard the bitterness in his voice and started to say
I love you;
the sound of high heels on concrete stopped her.
“Hello, Lauren.”
She eased out of David’s arms and looked up at his mother, who was trying not to frown. “Hello, Mrs. Haynes.”
“Where is your mother?” she asked, settling an expensive brown handbag over her shoulder as she glanced around.
Lauren flashed on an image of her mother’s most likely location: slumped on a barstool in the Tides, smoking a bummed cigarette. “She had to work late.”
“On college fair night?”
Lauren hated the way Mrs. Haynes looked at her then. It was the
poor Lauren, so pathetic
look. She’d seen it her whole life. Adults—especially women—were always wanting to mother her. In the beginning, at least; sooner or later they moved on to their own lives, their own families, leaving Lauren somehow more alone than she’d been before. “She can’t help it,” Lauren said.
“That’s more than I can say for Dad,” David said to his mother.
“Now, David,” Mrs. Haynes said with a heavy sigh, “you know your father would be here if he could.”
“Yeah, right.” He hooked an arm around Lauren’s shoulders and drew her close. She let herself be swept across the wet courtyard and into the gymnasium. Every step of the way she focused on positive thoughts. She refused to let her mother’s absence impact her self-confidence. Tonight of all nights she had to keep her eye on the goalpost, and a college scholarship to the same school David chose was the touchdown. A field goal was a school nearby.
She was committed to achieving this goal, and when she was committed, she could move mountains. She was here, wasn’t she? A senior at one of the best private schools in Washington state, and on a full scholarship, to boot. She’d made her choice in fourth grade when she moved to West End from Los Angeles. Back then, she’d been a shy girl, too embarrassed by her horn-rimmed charity eyeglasses and secondhand clothes to say much. Once, long ago, she’d made the mistake of asking her mother for help.
I can’t wear these shoes anymore, Mommy. Rain is getting in the holes.
If you’re like me, you’ll get used to it
had been Mom’s response. Those four words—
if you’re like me
—had been enough to change the course of Lauren’s life.
The next day she set about changing herself and her life. Project Geek No More had begun. She did chores for all the neighbors in the rundown apartment complex in which she and her mother lived. Feeding the cats for old Mrs. Teabody in 4A, cleaning the kitchen for Mrs. Mauk, carrying packages upstairs for Mrs. Parmeter in 6C. One dollar at a time, she saved up money for contact lenses and new clothes.
My,
the optometrist had said on the big day,
you have the most gorgeous brown
eyes I’ve ever seen.
Once she looked like everyone else, Lauren set about acting correctly. She started with smiles, and then graduated to waves and finally hellos. She volunteered for everything, as long as a parent contact wasn’t required. By the time she started junior high, her hard work had begun to pay off. She’d earned her full ride to Fircrest Academy—a Catholic school with a strict uniform code. There, she worked even harder. She was voted class secretary in ninth grade and had retained an office every year since. In high school, she organized every school dance, took photos for the annual, ran the student body as senior class president, and lettered in both gymnastics and volleyball. She’d fallen in love with David on their first date, almost four years ago now. They’d been inseparable ever since.
She stared into the gym, which was packed with people.
To Lauren, it looked as if she were the only student here without a parent. It was a feeling she was used to; nonetheless, it made her smile falter. She couldn’t help looking back at the flagpole. Her mother still wasn’t there.
David squeezed her hand. “Well, Trixie, are we ready?”
It made her smile, that little nickname. He knew how nervous she was right now. She leaned into him. “Let’s go, Speed Racer.”
Mrs. Haynes came up beside them. “Do you have a pen, Lauren, and some paper?”
“Yes, ma’am,” she answered. It embarrassed her, how much that simple question meant to her.
“I don’t have a pen,” David said, grinning.
Mrs. Haynes handed him a pen and led the way forward. They merged into the stream of traffic. As always, the crowd parted for them. They were the senior couple,
the pair voted most likely to stay in love. Dozens of friends waved or said hi.
They went from booth to booth, picking up literature and talking to the representatives. As always, David did everything he could to help Lauren. He told everyone he saw about her stellar grades and achievements. He was certain she’d be offered countless scholarships. In his world, things came easily, and in that world, it was easy to believe in happy endings.
He stopped at the Ivy League schools.
When Lauren looked at pictures of those venerable campuses, she felt queasy. She prayed he didn’t decide to go to Harvard or Princeton. She could never fit in there, even if she
could
get accepted; not there, in those halls where the girls were named after food products and everyone had parents who believed in education. Still, she smiled her prettiest smile and took the brochures. A girl like her needed to make a good impression at all times. There was no room for error in her life.