The Secret of Everything (33 page)

Vince frowned. “What …?”

Natalie bent her head and opened her backpack, which she’d been wearing slung over one shoulder. She pulled out a hexagonal jar of jam or honey or something. It had a black label. She
flashed her dad one single, pointed glance, a glance that managed to be both accusatory and guilty, then she handed the jar over to the manager.

“Well, what do you have to say for yourself?” the manager asked. “You can’t just steal things, young lady.”

“Sorry,” Natalie said, but she wasn’t. She was furious, shoulders rigid, chin tilted at that arrogant angle.

“Natalie!” Jade said in a sharp whisper. She grabbed her sister’s arm. “Why did you do that?”

Nat shook her off. “Because.” She didn’t look at any of them, only off in the distance.

Vince frowned and gripped Natalie’s shoulder. Not hard, but enough to get her attention. When she looked up, he gave her his sternest look. “You don’t sound sorry,” he said.

And finally she looked as if she might cry, as if the situation was sinking in. “I am.” She turned to the manager and said, “I’m really, really sorry, sir. I know it was wrong.”

He said, “I will let you go this time, but next time you will be in serious trouble, do you understand me?”

“Yes.”

Vince felt nine hundred million years old. He could hear the buzz of a fluorescent light high above and the faraway flush of a toilet. A cold breeze blew over his ankles. A clock on the wall pointed to 7:45. “Thank you,” he said. “I need to get these girls home, if that’s okay. They have school tomorrow.”

The manager nodded, lips pressed severely together. Vince knew he was being unfair, but, really, it was an eight-year-old girl and a jar of honey, not a seventeen-year-old with a stolen car.

But one, he supposed, led to the other. As they headed back down the aisle, Vince said, “Why didn’t you ask for honey?”

“Lemon curd,” Natalie said. “It was lemon curd.”

“Why didn’t you ask for lemon curd, then?”

She shrugged.

“You know you’re in trouble.”

She nodded, chewing the inside of her cheek.

“Let’s just get home right now.”

Natalie didn’t trust herself to say a single word on the way home. She didn’t feel bad, actually. It was more like she’d drunk bubbles and they were rising up through her chest, into her head, making her dizzy.

In her imagination, she could see the jar. Beautiful lemon curd, which she knew was made in England. You put it on cakes or things like that, and it looked so elegant in its jar with many sides, with a black label. She
wanted
it. It was so easy, to pick it up and pretend that she was looking at it, that she was going to carry it down to her dad. Then she put it in her backpack. She didn’t think anybody saw her.

When they got in the kitchen, their dad went upstairs with Hannah, who was asleep, and told Natalie and Jade to stay there and he’d get them a yogurt before bed.

Jade gave Natalie the devil look, with her eyes all narrow and slitty, like a snake, her mouth squeezed up so the edges turned white.

Natalie slammed her pack on the table and glared at her. “What?”

“You know what! You’re a thief! I can’t believe you did that! What if somebody from our school saw?”

“I don’t care.”

Jade shoved her. “Just because you’re a big oinker and nobody likes you doesn’t mean the rest of us don’t have friends!”

“Don’t call me that!” The stuff that had been building up in
her belly all day suddenly exploded. She shoved Jade, hard, and felt happy when she fell on the floor. “Mind your own business.”

“I
hate
you!” Jade screamed, and jumped up, grabbing Natalie’s hair and yanking so hard it brought tears to Nat’s eyes. “I don’t even want anybody to know you’re my sister!”

Natalie slammed her back, and they fell into a chair. “I hate you more!”

Natalie tried to pull away, but Jade yanked her hair again, super, super hard, and Nat stumbled and felt the top of her head go right into Jade’s tooth. They both howled and let go, then Jade screeched, “You broke my tooth!” and punched Natalie right in the eye. Her glasses broke, smashing into her temple.

It
hurt
. A lot. Sparks flew across her vision, and circles of pain went around her eye and eyebrow and cheek for what seemed like a long time. She started to cry and wanted to stop fighting, but Jade was so mad, so so so mad, that she came after Natalie again.

“Quit it!” she screeched, and pulled away. But Jade held on to her sleeve and yanked, and the fabric of her brand-new shirt tore away, right along the shoulder.

Sasha started barking and barking. Pedro ran out of the kitchen, and Natalie went blind mad. She roared and dove at her sister, and they went down on the floor, scratching and biting and hitting, until there was a big deep roar—a Daddy roar. He hauled Jade into the air, holding her hard against his side. “What the
hell
is going on here?”

Natalie sat up and looked at her sleeve, which was torn but also now had blood on it from Jade’s mouth. “She ruined my brand-new beautiful shirt!”

“She broke my tooth!”

“She called me an oinker!”

“STOP
it!” Daddy yelled.

They stopped. He shifted and put Jade on the ground, then looked at her mouth. “It’s broken, all right. What did you hit her with?”

Natalie bent her head to show him the bleeding place. “She pulled my hair.”

“Sit at the table, both of you. Don’t move.” He took a couple of sandwich bags out of the cabinet and put ice into each one. Then he got a wet cloth and wiped Jade’s mouth. Natalie felt sick to her stomach, looking at the big gash on Jade’s lip and the broken tooth inside. It made Jade look snaggletoothed, and she would never have made her beautiful sister look ugly, not ever.

But Jade could be
so
mean!

“Your lip won’t need any stitches, but I’m going to have to take you to a dentist tomorrow to get your tooth fixed up.” He filled a glass with water and salt and put a bag of ice in her hand. “Go upstairs and get ready for bed, and don’t brush your teeth. Swish this around in your mouth; then, when you get in bed, put the ice on your lip so it doesn’t get more swollen.”

“Don’t you want to know what happened?” Jade said.

“I want you to go to bed, Jade,” he said in his don’t-mess-with-me voice. “I’ll be up in a few minutes to tuck you in.”

She huffed, but nobody back-talked him when he used that voice. Natalie felt him look at her, but her face hurt and her head hurt and her blouse was wrecked, and all of it came pouring out of her eyes.

He didn’t say anything, just knelt down in front of her and used a cloth to wash the top of her head, then her face. “You’re going to have one big shiner tomorrow,” he said.

Natalie nodded, pursing her lips. Hot tears poured out of
her eyes as if somebody had turned on the bathtub. “S-or-r-y,” she hiccuped.

He sat down on the floor in front of her. “What’s going on with you, baby girl?”

She couldn’t stop crying. Couldn’t stop. It wasn’t loud, but she couldn’t get the tears to quit. They just kept pouring and pouring and pouring. “I … don’t … know.”

He put the ice on her face, and it felt so good Natalie caught her breath. She looked at him. “Am I in big trouble?”

“I don’t know right now what your punishment is, baby.” He pushed hair off her face, looked at the cut in her part. “I’m worried about you.”

She looked down.

“Why did you steal the jam? Why didn’t you ask for it?”

She shrugged.

“Was it because I didn’t get the whole-wheat pasta?”

“No.” The ice started to burn and she moved it to her eyelid, which hurt a lot. “It wasn’t jam. It was lemon curd, and I wanted to try it.”

“And you couldn’t just ask?”

“You guys all think I’m too young to want this stuff. Grandma gets mad at me all the time and won’t buy me anything I like; she always wants me to be somebody else and wear different stuff and eat her stupid food, which is horrible. And when I ask for an apple, she won’t let me have it, and there’s this boy at school who is so mean to me that it makes me scared to go to school, and now my beautiful shirt is ruined, and I …”

“Oh, honey,” he said, and picked her up like she was a tiny girl. Natalie put her head on his shoulder and let go. She cried and cried and cried and cried, until her eyes were all swollen
and she couldn’t breathe because her nose was all stuffed up. But the lava flowed out of her with the tears, and she didn’t feel so furious. Her daddy held her, rocking back and forth, back and forth, rubbing her back as if she was a baby, and Natalie didn’t care that she wasn’t a baby. It felt good.

After a long time, he took her upstairs and helped her get undressed and put her in a cool shower, which made her face feel better. “You’re going to stay home from school tomorrow and we’ll talk everything out.”

“Can we fix my shirt?”

“I’ll do my best, honey, I promise.” He gave her some children’s Advil, then Natalie got into bed. Pedro jumped up on her feet and looked over his shoulder at her daddy, but he didn’t say anything. Natalie put her hand in Pedro’s thick fur and fell asleep so fast she hardly had time to say her prayers.

   T
essa’s cell phone rang at ten p.m., which seemed late. She gave an exasperated sigh, thinking it was Sam again. She looked at the screen, and she saw it was Vince instead. “Hey,” she said, and it was such a relief to talk to someone that she wanted to double over.

“Hi. Is this a bad time?” He sounded absolutely exhausted, his voice rough and craggy. “I could use a little female advice about something.”

“No, it’s fine. I’m sitting here in the dark, listening to the crickets sing and the river swish.”

“You can hear the river?”

She took a breath. “I can. It’s a little cottage I rented. Don’t worry, though, I’m not the kind of girl to cramp your style. I’m not going to start ringing you twelve times a day to see what you’re up to.”

“Yeah, I’ve noticed you’re the really needy type.”

His voice sounded so good. So good. And yet, just this moment she had so much crap in her head it would hardly be fair to lean on a man who had as much on his own plate.

Rescue me
.

“You needed advice with something?”

“Yeah, my daughters had a big fight. Natalie was wearing a brand-new shirt that she’s in love with—”

“The peasant blouse?”

“Yeah, yeah. You saw it, I forgot. Well, it got torn at the arm, which I think is fixable, but she also got blood all over it.”

“Must have been some fight.”

He took a breath and let it go. “It was horrible. But I’m worried about the shirt. What can I do to get the blood out before it sets?”

Everything in her softened, and for a moment she closed her eyes. Thought of his big hands, the delicate blouse. “Put it in a sinkful of cold water right now,” she said. “Then while it’s soaking, mix some dishwashing liquid with a little peroxide and rub it into the blood spots before you wash it.”

“Will that work?”

“It should. Don’t put it in a dryer or let it dry until you know you’ve got the blood out. If the blood is on the white part of the shirt, you can bleach it, but that’s pretty delicate fabric and it might not be good for it.”

“Thanks,” he said. His voice sounded squashed.

“You all right?” Tessa asked. “You sound kind of strung out.”

“I don’t know what’s going on with her. She—” He stopped. “It’s a long story. She got in trouble today and then this fight, and she just seems so furious all the time. I don’t know how to fix it.”

She thought of the way the priest had absorbed her long string of words this afternoon at the church, and said only, “That’s hard.”

“My mother means well, and I’d be up a creek without her help, but she’s making the situation with Natalie worse.”

“How so?”

“She doesn’t know how to let Natalie be herself. She’s always
nagging her about something or other. She loves her, don’t get me wrong, but it hasn’t been easy for my mom to be this big strong person. She never has a man in her life, and, I don’t know, maybe she doesn’t want one, but she wants Natalie to be thin and pretty, like Jade.” He paused. “I don’t know that pretty is what Nat is supposed to be, though. Does that make any sense?”

If she’d been holding on to any illusions about how much she liked Vince Grasso—not lusted for him, which she also did, but
liked
him—that last speech would have clinched it. “It makes perfect sense. She’s beautiful in her own way, but pretty is something … else. And I’ve had friends who were really pretty—it didn’t always help them all that much.”

“Yeah,” he said. “My wife was pretty, and she was miserable her whole life. I just want my girls to be happy. Be themselves, you know, whatever that is.”

“That’s terrific.”

“By the way, I wasn’t saying that you aren’t pretty. Or, I mean—” He halted. “Shit. Sorry.”

Tessa laughed softly. “‘Pretty’ isn’t a word people use to describe me. Hot, yes. Devastating, perhaps. Alluring, even.” She shook her head. “Not pretty.”

She had met her goal: It shook loose a chuckle. “Definitely hot,” he agreed. “Devastating? Hmmm. I don’t know.”