The Unquiet (2 page)

I suck my straw, thrilled that Coke tastes the same in Ohio as it does in California, then splutter when Millie swoops down and yanks me out of the booth.

“Rinn!” She crushes me in a sweaty hug. “Oh my Lord, Mo’s baby girl. A spittin’ image, too. Oh, just look at that
bee-yoo-ti-ful face …
”

Opie snorts when Millie grabs my cheeks and whips my head back and forth. Trying not to aspirate on whatever cologne she marinated in, I peel off her fingers before she detaches my skull. “Hi, Millie,” I say, skipping the “aunt” nonsense. And no, I’m not a spittin’ image of my mom. I’m sorry to say I look nothing like her.

“Oh, wait’ll you meet my Tasha. Your ma and me, we had you two right around the same time. Of course, by then I had a ring on
my
finger.”

Unperturbed, Mom makes a yammering motion with her fingers and thumb. I hide a smile by wiping my runny nose. That cologne
stinks
.

“My Tasha’s a high-diving champ, the best in the county.” Millie gestures to a wall covered with pictures of a girl in a swimsuit: on diving boards, thrashing through water, or displaying her trophies. “She won the district title, and regionals are comin’
up. Come hell or high water, that girl’s bound for the Olympics. In fact—”

“Uh, Miss Millie?” Opie raises his hand like he’s in class, not in some refurbished boxcar reeking of grease and cologne. “My onion rings?”

“Oh, shoot. Well, they’re no good now. Hey, what’s keeping your dad?”

Reluctantly, the dude pushes himself up. “He said to bring ’em over whenever they got here.” To Mom he says, “The house you’re looking at is just a block from here, ma’am.” He extends a hand. “I’m Nate Brenner, by the way.”

Mom’s own hand halts midway. “Brenner?” She turns sharply toward Millie, but not before Millie’s wide rear end disappears into the kitchen. “Oh.
Now
I see.”

I slit my eyes at Mom, who heads for the door without another word, then at Nate. “Don’t look at me,” he protests, and takes the lead.

Outside in the blessedly fresh air, I jog to keep up with Nate’s long-legged stride. We catch up to Mom, whose blotchy face tells me she’s extremely ticked off at something. As we cross the windy square, I marvel at Nate’s choppy hair, wondering how much Clairol it’d take to transform my own black mop into that stunning shade.

“How old are you?” Nate asks.

“Sixteen.”

“Junior?” Nate points when I nod. “Well, there’s your new school.”

Redbrick, two stories tall, River Hills High sits at the north end of the square. Around the corner from the school, Nate
stops at the first house on the right: number 521 Cherry Street, a stone colonial with a gray slate roof and no front yard to speak of, only a strip of grass in front of the porch. A turret hugs one side of the house and a FOR RENT sign rattles on the porch railing.

Mom stiffens. “I know this house.”

“This ugly house, you mean.” Because it is.

“It’s the Gibbonses’ old place.”

“It’s still ugly.”

I wait for Mom to lose patience again. To demand to know why I can’t
pretend
to be excited and how long do I plan to keep this up, etc. Instead, she just stands there while Nate clatters up the steps and into the house.

“Mom?” Her spooked expression makes me nervous. “Who are the Gibbonses?”

“Mrs. Gibbons taught piano. I used to come here for lessons. Her granddaughter and I went to school together—” Abruptly, Mom shuts up, lips pursed either with thought or indecision. Then, springing to life, she trots up to the porch and stops at the door with its stained-glass window.

Bewildered, I join her. “Mom, look.” I tap the arm of an old wooden chair. The bowed rockers creak against the leaf-littered porch floor. Mom’s a sucker for antiques. “Isn’t this great? I bet it’s a hundred years—”

The door opens, cutting me off. A man appears. He stares at Mom. Mom stares back.

Then Mom, who reserves profanity for stolen parking spaces, whispers, “Oh, shit.”

The man replies grimly, “Got
that
right.”

It’s easy to see that this guy is Nate’s dad. He’s taller and heavier but with the same square, sexy chin and unruly chestnut hair.

What’s not easy to figure out is his reaction to Mom. Or her reaction to
him.

“Millie never told me this was your house,” Mom says after fifteen seconds of silence. “Or that it belonged to Mrs. Gibbons.”

“She also never told me the name of my new tenant,” Nate’s dad growls back.

“I’ll kill her.”

“Get in line.”

Nate shuffles uncomfortably. “Uh, you two know each other?”

“Yes,” Mom snaps.

“Not really,” his dad snaps back.

“Honey,” Mom says to me, “this is Luke Brenner. Luke, this is my daughter, Corinne.” She slides her eyes back toward Nate’s dad. “I thought you moved to New York.”

“I did. I came back.”

“Millie never told me.”

“We live across the street,” Nate adds.

“How nice.” Mom stares desperately at me, as if
I
have a clue what’s going on here. “Ah, what happened to Mrs. Gibbons?”

“She died last summer,” Mr. Brenner says. “Her niece sold the house to me.”

“Who are you, the local real estate mogul around here?”

“I have a few properties,” Luke says coolly.

Mom replies, equally chilly, “Well, thank you so much. But I think it’d be best if my daughter and I look for another place.”

He shrugs. “Suit yourself.”

I can’t keep quiet any longer. “Another place? We’re already here! Can’t we look at it at least?”

Mom shakes her head. “Absolutely not. Come on, let’s go.”

“You won’t find anything else in town,” Mr. Brenner calls as Mom heads back down the porch steps.

Nate confides to me, “He’s not just saying that, either. You can’t even rent a garage round these parts.”

Abandoning the Brenners, I bounce down after Mom. “Wait! Didn’t you hear what they said?”

“I heard.” She brakes when I dance in front of her. “Well, we’ll just have to drive around, then, till we—”

“Oh no. I am not spending another second in that car.”
Let alone sleeping in it tonight if we can’t find a place to stay.
Reading her mind, I say fiercely, “And we’re not crashing at Millie’s. I can’t even breathe around her.”

“Rinn, listen,” Mom begins wearily.

“You won’t even look at this house and you won’t say why. I mean, it’s not
that
grotesque, really. It’s just …” I peer up at the stone turret, the porthole window near the top staring down like a mirrored eye. “Old,” I finish lamely.

Mom vacillates. Luke, seemingly indifferent, waits on the porch with folded arms. Does
he
want us to leave, too? Nate, now settled on the porch railing, looks as clueless as me.

Finally, Mom sighs. “Fine. One look.”

Nate winks. I don’t wink back. As cute as he is, no point in cozying up if Mom plans to drag me off to the wild blue yonder again.

“It’s furnished,” Mom notes. “Millie never mentioned that.”

Millie never mentioned a lot of things
, I think. Never mentioned who used to live here—whatever
that’s
about. Never mentioned Luke. Boy, I’m glad I’m not Millie; I can tell Mom’s still seething under her courteous demeanor.

The living room’s small and smells funky, but is warm and pretty under the dust. A beat-up steamer trunk instead of a coffee table sits between a fireplace and a flowered sofa. My sneakers pad on the worn rug as I follow Mom, and then … I stop short.

A piano.

Mom stops, too, and trails her fingers across the chipped, yellowed keys. “It’s the same one I took lessons on.”

The keys tinkle softly. I draw a quick breath as it hits me: this is the first time since Nana died that Mom’s gone
near
a piano.

Weirdness descends. I can’t put a name to it. Now I’m sorry I insisted we see the inside of this place. No, I don’t want to traipse around looking for somewhere else to live. But do I really want to stay in a dead woman’s house? Eat off her dishes? Sleep in her bed?

Mom
doesn’t want to. She’s made that pretty clear.

Oddly, I’m kind of liking this house. But I want, I
need
, my mom to be happy. So I poke her. “Okay. Let’s go.”

Nate arches his brows. Luke drums his fingers on the mantel. Mom draws away from the piano but ignores my prod. “No. Let’s see the rest.”

Nothing downstairs, including the kitchen, has seen any remodeling since World War II. But, all in all, it’s basically livable. When we backtrack to the living room, Luke exits
through the front door with an abrupt, “Take your time. I’ll wait outside.”

Mom sighs when we catch a whiff of cigarette smoke. “Oh God. I want one.”

I scrunch my face, but not because of the cigarette. “I smell cat. Oh,
phew!
”

“Yeah, she had a bunch of them,” Nate throws back as he starts upstairs.

I sneer. “Ya think?”

Pinching my nose, I plod after Mom and Nate. Two bedrooms on the second floor, both sparsely furnished, one with a canopy bed. The bathroom reeks of leftover BENGAY. Even
that
beats cat pee.

Nate notices Mom aim her radar at the clawfoot tub. “Yeah, it needs cleaning. But my dad wasn’t planning on renting it out this soon.”

Mom smiles thinly. “Let’s see the attic.”

Again last in line, I climb to the third floor fighting a rush of exhaustion. My meds do this to me around two o’clock every day, which is one of the reasons I hate taking this stuff.

An antidepressant.

A mood stabilizer.

A mild antipsychotic.

Klonopin, to prevent panic attacks.

Oh, and birth control pills so I don’t present Mom with any deformed grandchildren. Not that I’ve had much sex lately. Or any.

I drag myself up by the wooden banister and stop in surprise. One
huuuge
room with newly painted white walls, one
with built-in bookshelves, and a hardwood floor. A row of dark beams cross the peaked ceiling. The room tapers off to a rounded recess, that funny old turret I noticed outside.

“Cool!” I spring toward it. With its stone walls and cozy porthole, it’s the perfect place to curl up with a book or play my guitar. As for the rest of the room, there’s no furniture, no bathroom, not even a closet, but—“I love it! I can’t even smell the cat pee up here.”

“It’s all fresh drywall,” Nate says proudly. “The walls were in pretty bad shape.”

“This is the best, best room!” I whirl back to Mom. “What? What’re you thinking?”

“I’m not sure.” Mom nibbles her lip. “It needs
so
much cleaning …”

“I’ll help,” Nate offers. “My dad and me, we can get it done in no time.”

I smile sweetly. “May we have some privacy?” I don’t have to ask twice. As soon as he’s gone, I face Mom. “Mom, I
saw
how you looked at that piano.”

“You can get a piano anywhere, honey.”

“But it’s like Nana’s piano.” Her name clings to my throat.

“No, it’s not. It’s only similar.”

I think of Nana’s, that old upright monstrosity with carved panels, scuffed pedals, and a scrolled music stand ingrained with gold. That piano swallowed up half of Nana’s living room. She kept houseplants on the top, and her favorite photos.
When I die, Rinn
, she said,
this piano will go to you.

Nana died too soon. Nobody inherited the piano.

“
Mm
, I don’t know,” Mom muses. “Do
you
like it?”

“Only if I get this room.”

“This is an attic, not a bedroom.”

“Mom, I
looove
this room. I can paint the walls myself, and there’s space for my posters, and all I really need is a bed and someplace to stick my clothes, and …” I stop at her funny expression. “What?”

“Rinn. Did I just hear you say you ‘love’ this room?”

“Yes! And if we can get that cat stink out, I’ll love the whole frickin’ house.” I bite my tongue to hold back the rest:
And since YOU’RE the one who dragged me away from my life, the least you can do is let me have it!
“Why don’t you want to stay here? Is it that Luke guy?” I delight when her face flames up. “Was he your boyfriend? Did he dump you? Omigod, he did! That creep!”