Perfect Glass (A Young Adult Novel (sequel to Glass Girl)) (12 page)

“Raf and I had a little altercation one morning. I got…angry. I guess I wasn’t thinking straight when I made him ride along with me into Managua. I didn’t tell John that I had him. If I had, I would’ve saved us all a lot of trouble.”

“In what way?”

I shrugged. “John would’ve pulled Raf out of the truck. It turns out he wasn’t supposed to go near Managua; it was a condition of his placement with Quiet Waters. I would’ve ordered my supplies and come home to a quiet dinner of beans and rice and gone to bed.”

“But the dominoes fell in a different direction.” He patted my shoulder and I met his gaze.

“A kid got hurt and now there’s some unwelcome attention on the orphanage. I messed up.”

Dad was quiet for a minute, chewing on his toothpick. “You packed your bags and left because you couldn’t stand that you’d made a mistake.”

I winced a little with the deadly accuracy of that truth. I’d kind of built a reputation around doing the right thing, making solid decisions. I was his son, after all.

“It wasn’t that simple,” I argued. “I felt like if I got out of the country for a little while, things would go a little easier on them. Like they could pretend they’d sent home the troublemaker and all would be well again.”

Dad smirked.

“Plus, there’s no way now I can move around freely in Managua, the only place where I can buy building materials.”

“Did you leave before you really knew whether it was the right thing to do?” His voice had become gentler.

“I thought it was the right thing to do.”

“That’s not what I asked, Henry.”

I shook my head. “I was looking for a reason to come home.”

Dad hunched his shoulders over and put his hands in the pockets of his jacket. “That boy’s down there hurting because of something you did. He’s thinking he’s not worth your time and effort.”

My eyebrows shot up. He wasn’t angry that I hadn’t stayed to finish the work. Instead, he was confused about why I’d leave Raf in a bad way. I took a moment with that, rolling it around in my head.

“He’s dying for a clean start,” he said, “and you could help give it to him.”

The cold wind picked that moment to blow through, making our porch swing knock up against the railing behind it. I got behind it to protect the paint I’d put there, but also to distance myself from my dad’s words. Instead of suggesting we go in, out of the wind, he just spoke louder.

“Here’s what I’ve learned.” He walked toward the porch swing, making sure I was listening. “I am capable of working myself to death, taking care of my family and my land, helping out in my church and my town. In fact, I’m the hardest worker you’ll ever know and you’re just like me.” He poked a finger into my chest to emphasize his point. “Men like us, though, we sometimes blow right through the moments that matter most.”

“You’re probably right,” I said. In fact, I knew there was no probably to it.

“When I think of why I’m proud of you, Henry, two things rise to the top. One—the way you wrapped your arms around little Meg, loved her through her pain, and told her about things that matter.” He stopped here and smiled as he thought about it.

I smiled, too, because I remembered the night in the cave with Meg. The night she figured out what it meant to forgive and what it meant to accept mercy. And to offer it.

“What’s two, Dad?”

“Two is you made the decision all on your own to spend a valuable year of your life helping out some little people in Nicaragua—a year when you could’ve been enjoying your freedom in college. You accepted a calling. It was bigger than a construction project.”

He leaned over the swing and put both hands on my shoulders. “Don’t you feel the difference in your heart between changing a child’s life and finishing a building? They’re both good, but one blows the other out of the water.”

“I feel the difference,” I said.

“Quit worrying so much about the boards and nails of your life. Focus on the stuff that lasts.” He glanced through the window toward the glowing light of the kitchen where Meg and my mom were laughing about something.

“Relationships last, son. Buildings don’t even matter. You should go back and offer yourself up to those kids. If you get a building or two built, so be it.”

“Yes, sir.” Even as I said it, I felt my head turning so I could watch Meg moving through my house.

My dad chuckled. “Meg will be waiting.”

meg

H
enry fell asleep last night, midsentence, on the couch. “I’ll follow you home, Pittsburgh, just give me a minute….”

With his head in my lap and his arms, which must weigh twenty pounds each, wrapped like steel bands around my waist, I couldn’t move. I didn’t care.

His mom watched us from her chair. His dad came through to find boots and stopped. He smiled, pointing at Henry’s long legs sprawled over the armrest.

It took both of them and all of my own strength to loosen Henry’s hold so I could scoot out from under him. I put a pillow under his head and his mom wrapped him in a quilt. We turned out the lamp.

I drove home, fighting his gravitational pull the whole way.

He looked like a guy who had been lost on a mountain for weeks, with a beard and crazy hair. His eyes were red and puffy. His lips were chapped.

There was a strange part of me that knew what Henry felt the minute I saw him. I knew not just that he was sad, but I knew exactly how sad, and my heart broke. My mouth filled with the bitterness of what he’d gone through. My head rang with his frustration. I kept expecting him to crumple in front of me.

We’d made plans to ride horses today because the weather was supposed to be tolerable. When I parked at the stable, Henry was already on his horse, Ben. Dylan sat on the fence watching them run in a far pasture. He glanced at me and smiled, disappearing into the barn to bring Trouble out.

I rode out toward Henry and Ben and, when I got close, he smiled. “Stay close, Pittsburgh.”

***

Trouble and I followed Ben and Henry through pasture after pasture, then up a steep hill where there was no trail. When we finally reached a flat section of land, Henry reined Ben in and turned him around. I did the same.

“What do you think?” he said.

“It’s beautiful. Are we still on Whitmire land?”

He nodded. “This is as far back as the ranch goes. The view’s the best, but this land is mostly worthless for farming or livestock.”

“Good grief, this ranch is enormous.”

He scanned the horizon. “I loved it here when I was a kid.”

We tied the horses to a couple of trees. The forest of pines created shadows on the moss-covered boulders and made this hilltop much colder than the pastureland. Henry stepped behind me, blocking the wind and stretching his arms around to warm me.

“A few years ago, I stood right here and looked around, really looked at this view for the first time. I rode back home and asked my dad why he hadn’t built our house right here.”

“What’d he say?” I leaned back so I could see Henry’s eyes.

“He said it just hadn’t occurred to him to put a house so far away from the business of the ranch.”

“Seems like the farther away, the better,” I said.

Henry was quiet for a few long moments. When he turned me around to face him, he was smiling. “I think so, too. That’s why I want to build a house for you right here one day. I know exactly what it will look like—a stone house with big old windows all around. I’m going to put a screened-in porch on this side so you can watch the sun going down.”

“Do it,” I whispered, completely serious. “Start tomorrow.”

He laughed. “Not tomorrow, Meg—one day, after college.”

“Okay, the day after graduation.”

We spread a blanket out on the ground under the pines. For ten minutes, we said nothing. We burrowed into our coats and into each other, listening to the wind in the trees.

“Will you tell me why you’re home so early?” I whispered.

He sighed and rubbed my knuckles through my gloves. “I just needed a break. I would’ve been home in a month for the holidays, anyway.”

“But you said things weren’t good and now you’re here.”

I felt the tension vibrating in his body.

“It’s just after everything you’ve been through, Meg, I sort of made a vow to myself I’d be strong around you.”

“Don’t do that, Henry.” I shook my head and tried to get some distance between us so he could see how serious I was.

“I want to tell you how hopeless I’ve been feeling,” he said. “But just saying that much feels wrong.”

“We’re done with that,” I said. “No hiding things.”

He touched my cheek. “No hiding things, then.”

“Tell me something you haven’t told anyone else,” I said. “Give me a simple, declarative sentence—the truest statement you know about what’s going on in your head. Like a Hemingway sentence.”

He looked at me like I amused him. “Seriously? A Hemingway sentence?”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” he said. “I might cut bait and stay home.”

His frustration level rose quickly telling me that there was a storm just under the surface.

“I’m a liar,” he said. “Is that simple enough? I don’t want to be in Nicaragua anymore.”

“You don’t want to be there because…?”

“Because.” He leaned his forehead onto my shoulder. “Because I miss you. I miss home.”

“That’s okay.”

“I didn’t get anything done except for one roof.”

“Not a big deal.”

“Here’re some more Hemingways. I screwed up when I took Raf to Managua. I created a legal nightmare. I think Kate might be having problems with her pregnancy. I don’t think John’s telling me everything I need to know. He expects all this crap from me and then he calls me a ‘temporary volunteer.’ I can’t get my head wrapped around what I’m supposed to do. I can’t speak enough Spanish to make anyone hear me.”

“Okay.” I rubbed the back of his head. “Okay.”

He moaned. “It’s not simple.”

“No, it’s not. Of course your emotions are going to go haywire down there. You’re working with kids who were abandoned. You’re dealing with family members who are just as tired and frustrated as you. But you can’t tell me it’s hopeless or that you haven’t made a difference.”

I felt him shifting as he pulled his phone from his pocket. He held it close to our faces so we could both see. For a while, he scrolled through the pictures of kids and scenery without telling me anything about them. Then he began adding captions.

“Equis,” he whispered. It was a picture of a little boy leaning over a tree house railing. “Brisa. Aidia. Rio.” He pointed to groups of kids and named them all. He pointed to buildings and painted the scene until I had the orphanage mapped in my mind. He kissed my shoulder when I smiled. And he shared the stories that sat nearest his heart.

“They look happy,” I said.

“They are, but….”

“But?”

“But I wasn’t prepared for the way it feels to see things through your eyes. You’re sad and I feel like a jerk.”

I went still, trying to figure out what was really going on in his head. “I am sad for them,” I said. “But that really has nothing to do with you. I’m sad for
them
. And I know you miss them.”

His laugh was sharp. “That’s not it at all. What you’re seeing is me wanting to kick myself for being happy about being home.”

I turned and held his face close, so I could see into his eyes and feel his lips near mine. “It’s going to be okay.” I wanted to let him off this hook he dangled from, but I could tell the hook was barbed, deep, and self-inflicted.

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

He held me close and kissed me until I felt it down to my toes. Every time he paused to let me breathe, he whispered words that made no sense to anyone but us and the sweetness of that made me crazy.

henry

“D
id Meg tell you about her new friend, Quinn O’Neill?” Dylan leaned back against a tree and watched me. After Meg left, I stayed at the stables to get some work done and the day had dissolved. Evening colors streaked the sky.

“She mentioned him. The whole car tag thing.”

“Yeah, there’s that, too,” he said, scrubbing his hand over his face. “She didn’t say anything about him helping her with the video?”

“What video?”

“Man, do you guys talk to each other at all?” He laughed, but I didn’t. “She got screwed over the Jo Russell volunteer deal, so she made a public service video to send to Wyoming. This dude, Quinn, helped out.”

I sat up and listened closely, trying to figure out why Meg hadn’t mentioned any of this.

“According to Tennyson, he’s supposed to go to her house soon to help her ‘edit.’” Dylan smirked and rolled his eyes.

I pushed off the wall I’d been leaning against. “Maybe I’ll get the thing ‘edited’ while I’m home.”

“Yeah,” Dylan said, laughing. “Why don’t you brush up on your Mac skills and do that. ’Cause this Quinn kid likes Meg. He shoved Nate Murray into a wall for her.”

I stopped collecting the trash that had built up since I’d left and turned to look at Dylan. “What in the world?”

“Murray made some wisecrack about Meg and Jo Russell, and Quinn ended it,” Dylan said.

My laugh sounded full of venom. “Now I don’t know whether to hurt him or thank him.”

Meg and Tennyson parked and sat in the car, finishing a conversation. Dylan and I watched them silently.

“Don’t tell her I said anything,” Dylan said.

“Nah,” I said, but there was no way I’d be able to leave this Quinn worry alone.

They’d brought dinner and we huddled in the back room around an old furnace, balancing plastic containers in our laps. The girls laughed about things at school while Dylan and I listened, both of us barely removed from high school but already over it.

When we finished eating, Tennyson and Dylan left to see a movie. Meg curled up next to me on the ratty couch. She held my hand and leaned her head on my shoulder. I’d missed that.

“Hey, sleepyhead,” I said. “I’ve told you all my secrets and now you owe me some.”

“I have no secrets,” she said. “Not with you.”

I rubbed her hand in mine. “Who is Quinn to you?”