Where the Stars Still Shine (27 page)

“I, um—yeah,” I say. “I was wondering—if you were going to go to the worst bar in town, where would you go?”

Her eyebrows hitch up. “Okay,
not
what I was expecting you to ask, but there’s this place on the river that’s—hang on, let me get my keys. I’ll drive you.”

She grabs her purse from behind the checkout counter and flips the open sign to closed. I’m kind of relieved she’s just willing to agree to this and not ask a lot of questions.

“You’re just going to leave the shop?” I ask, as Ariel locks the front door.

She shrugs. “It’s too far to walk, especially with that albatross of crap you’re dragging around, and besides, the store’s dead. And you might need backup.”

“Is it that bad?”

“I went there once on a dare.” Ariel unlocks the doors of an ancient Porsche that’s faded to near pink, with gray primer spots dotting the hood. “It’s kind of like the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney World. Only not fun. The people who hang out there are the undesirables. Drug dealers. Criminals. Shrimpers in town for the day while their boats are being off-loaded.”

Ten minutes later, she pulls into the parking lot of a place called the Boat House. The name seems jaunty and nautical, but the bar is built on a pier that looks as if it’s one wrong footstep away from toppling into the river. Ariel’s car is surrounded by motorcycles and I feel fairly certain the two grubby guys hunched beside a dented pickup aren’t exchanging phone numbers. This bar kicks up an unidentifiable dread in my stomach and I don’t want to go inside. I don’t want my mother to be in there, but there’s a better-than-average chance she is. This is her kind of place.

“Remind me again why we’re doing this,” Ariel says, as we approach the front door. I can already smell the stale cigarette smoke and soaked-in beer.

“I think my mom is here.”

She grabs the door handle. “Couldn’t you just call her and ask?”

I shake my head as Ariel pulls open the door. Sun-blinded, I blink until my vision returns to normal. Nearly everyone in the bar is staring at us, and none of them seem particularly friendly. Except my mother, who smiles at me from behind the bar as if she’s been expecting me all along. “Look what the cat dragged in.” She closes the tap on the pitcher of beer she’s pouring. “Guys, this is my baby girl.”

Some of the men are missing teeth, and their eyes are hungry. I am a drop of honey in a room of ants. An eight-year-old girl in a room of Franks. The undercurrent of menace pushes me backward against Ariel. I wonder if it’s just my imagination until I realize that she’s trembling, too.

Mom comes out from behind the bar. “Surprised to see you,” she says, smoothing my hair away from my face as if it’s just us. Over her shoulder a man with a dirty-blond ponytail shot through with gray leers at us as he talks to the guy at the bar beside him. “But nice. I’ve missed you.”

“Can we, um—can we go outside?” I ask.

Her dark eyebrows lift—maybe because I don’t tell her I’ve missed her, too—but she calls out to the giant of a man behind the bar that she’s going out for a smoke
break. Back outside, the Florida sunshine floods my dark corners, making me feel more at ease.

“In the car if you need me.” The parking-lot gravel crunches beneath Ariel’s sneakers as she leaves us to talk.

“So my court date is coming up.” Mom props herself against an older red Hyundai and taps a cigarette from the pack in her hip pocket. “I’m going to be honest, Callie. I don’t want to go to jail. I’ve been laying low, but once I miss my date—” She takes a drag off her Marlboro.

“I’m ready,” I say. “We can go now.”

“Really?” Her face is luminous and in it I catch a glimpse of the Veronica Quinn she used to be. Her excitement bubbles out of her in a happy laugh and I feel lighter than I have in days. “Okay, we’ve got a car.” She pats the Elantra. “Got a good deal on it from Tony, but it’s left me cash-strapped.”

I show her the roll of bills. “I’ve got my savings from the gift shop.”

“That’s my girl. Think it’s enough to get us to Oregon?”

A knot creeps into my throat. “Oregon?”

“Yeah.” She paces and smokes. “I was thinking about how beautiful it was there, remember? And there are so many little hideaway towns tucked along the coastline.”

I only have one outstanding memory of Oregon. “What about Colorado?”

“Well, you’re never going to believe it, but I caught up with Frank,” she says. “Remember him? I found him on the Internet and gave him a call. So I was thinking if we were in Oregon maybe—”

“No.” The word comes out more forcefully than I anticipated and her eyes reduce to slits. Except for my stray complaint the last time, when we were packing to leave Illinois, I’ve never offered an opinion. Never disagreed. But no matter how messed up things are here in Tarpon Springs, they’re infinitely better than going back to Frank.

“We’re going to Oregon,” she says with a familiar note of finality. “We had it good there, Callie. You loved Frank.”

“No, Mom, I didn’t.”

“Of course you did. You were young, so maybe you don’t remember—”

“I remember everything.” I press the rubber-banded roll of money into her hand. “You can have it all, but I’m not going.”

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Frank molested me.”

Her laugh is short, sharp, and dismissive. I can hear the echo of his voice in my head, reminding me that she won’t believe. “Now you’re just talking crazy. I get it.
You don’t want to go to Oregon, but you don’t have to make up—”

“I’m not.”

The smile slips from her lips. “Callie—”

“It’s true, Mom. Sometimes when you were asleep or at work, he would come to my room—”

“No.” She shakes her head and I hear Frank whisper
I told you so
. “That can’t be right.”

“He would take off my nightgown.” My voice is shaking. My hands are shaking. I close my eyes and think of Alex, pacing angrily at the side of the highway as I told him this truth. It gives me the courage I need to keep talking. Tears stream down my cheeks and curl under the edge of my chin, trickling down my neck. “You remember the one with Hello Kitty on the front? And he would put his fingers—”

“Callie, stop it!” She clamps her hands over her ears, as if silencing me will block out the truth. Frank is laughing his phlegmy laugh.
I told you so
.

I wipe my face on the bottom of my T-shirt. “You know what? You’re never going to change. You’ll spend the rest of your life running away from reality and making one bad decision after another. Believe me or don’t, but Frank hurt me, Mom, in a way no little girl should ever be hurt. And you let him.”

“I didn’t know.” Her eyes are glazed with tears, her
voice husky with remorse. “Callie, you have to believe me. I didn’t know.”

“Yeah, but you should have.”

I look over at the primer-freckled Porsche where Ariel is waiting and watching. Even from a distance I can see the concern on her face. For me. Someone she barely knows. This is what good people do for each other. Unless she gets help, my mother will never be that kind of good.

“We won’t go to Oregon.” There’s desperation in the way she clutches at my hands. As if a change in destination will solve everything. “You can pick the place this time.”

“I love you, Mom.” I give her hands a gentle squeeze and then I let go. “But I’m going home.”

I don’t look back as I walk to Ariel’s car because I’m afraid if I do, the guilt will send me running back to my mother. Or, worse, I’ll turn around and she’ll already be gone. I don’t look back because if I never see her again, I want to remember her with tears in her eyes. Feeling something for me.

Sadness spreads inside me, organ to organ, cell to cell, until it feels as if I’m made of pain. It hurts to think. It hurts to breathe. Ariel asks only where I want her to take me and even giving her Greg’s address—my address—is painful. But I don’t cry anymore. I’m finished.

The driveway is still empty when she drops me off, and at first I wonder why Greg and Phoebe have been away so long, but then I realize I’ve only been gone a little more than an hour. Not long enough for anyone to notice I was missing. Not long enough to even
be
missing.

Ariel lifts my baggage from the truck. “Are you going to be okay?”

“I don’t know.” I was so certain I’d be leaving Tarpon Springs today that I have no backup plan. “I’d have been lost without you today. Thank you.”

“No problem.” She gets in the Porsche and rolls down the window. “Hey, have you thought anymore about the job?”

Only now do I realize that I walked away from the gift shop in the middle of my shift. Even though I’m pretty sure Theo secretly wants to fire me, he’ll probably take me back if I show up for work tomorrow morning. I think it’s time to let us both off the hook. “I’ll take it.”

“Yes!” Ariel’s grin is huge as she reaches up for a high five. “Stop by after the holidays and I’ll teach you everything you need to know about selling books, okay?”

When she’s gone, I return everything to where it belongs—Phoebe’s suitcase included—until there’s no evidence that I ever left, and get in my bed. A second later, I nearly jump out of my skin when the screen door slams.

“Oh, thank God.” Kat is standing beside me. The grit in my eyes and the alarm clock on the dresser behind her tell me I’ve been in bed longer than a second. She crawls in beside me. “I’ve texted you eleven billion times and you didn’t answer. I’ve been crazy worried.”

“I’m sorry. I just—there was something I needed to do.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really.” Right away I feel bad because I know Kat wants me to be the kind of friend who confides in her. “I mean, I
do
, but right now it’s too hard. Give me some time?”

She rests her head on my shoulder, her hair tickling my nose. “Sure.”

“You’re a space invader, you know that?” There’s no unkindness when I say it. Kat might not be the person I imagined having as my best friend, but now I can’t imagine anyone else.

“Does it bother you?” she asks.

“Not at all.”

We lie quietly for a minute or two, the afternoon sun sending a shaft of gold across the comforter, making it sparkle. I find my thoughts drifting to Alex. Wondering what he’s doing right now.

“Stop thinking about him.” Kat breaks the silence.

“I’m not.”

“Liar.” She props herself up on her elbows. “It’s
classic breakup behavior to think about him, but Callie, he’s an idiot. I mean, he’s pissed off because you made him do something he didn’t want to do?
So what?
”

“Isn’t he an idiot for not liking you back?”

“Please.” She rolls her eyes. “I’ve always known it was just a stupid crush, but you—you mean something to him. And if he can’t get over this, then he doesn’t deserve you.”

“I’ve never thought of myself like that.”

“What? Someone to be deserved? Of course you are,” Kat says. “And
any
guy who can’t see that is an idiot.”

“Hey, Kat?”

“Yeah?”

“Would you hate me if I quit the shop to go work at the bookstore downtown?”

“Can I still come over and invade your space?”

I nod. “Absolutely.”

A devious smile dimples her face. “Do I get a discount on books?”

I laugh. “I don’t know. Maybe?”

“Good enough.”

There’s a knock on the door. “Callie, may I come in?”

It’s Phoebe.

“Sure.”

Kat stands and hauls me into a hug. “I’m going to take off, but I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Nope.” She laughs as she passes Phoebe in the doorway. “You’re stuck with me now.”

My stepmother and I share an awkward pause until she clears her throat. “So, um—I stopped by my parents’ house this evening to check in on Mom and found her sitting at the kitchen table with my brother.”

I look at the floor. I want Alex to make peace with his family, but hearing about it feels like salt in the wound.

“She was—” Phoebe’s voice cracks. “He’d been there most of the day, and she was just so happy.” She wipes a tear away with the back of her hand. “Thank you.”

“I really didn’t do anything,” I say. “I just had a stupid idea. Yiayoúla did all the work and I chickened out at the last minute.”

“For the first time in years, our family feels whole again,” she says. “Georgia didn’t make it happen, Callie. You did. I’d call that a miracle.”

A miracle?

Saint Michael Taxiarchis must have misunderstood.

This was not the miracle I wanted.

On Christmas Eve, the house looks as if it was torn from the pages of a decorating magazine, with fresh wreaths on every window and a Christmas tree that stretches toward the high living-room ceiling. There’s no indication of the sweat we put into getting everything moved. Everything decorated. There’s no evidence that the only words that Greg and I have had time to say to each other were things like: Grab an end? Or, have you seen the screwdriver? We haven’t said anything meaningful. We haven’t apologized.

The house fills quickly as Greg’s brothers arrive with their wives, then Yiayoúla with a towel-wrapped casserole dish of cranberry-apple stuffing, and finally the Kosta family.

Kat declared my cream-colored Christmas dress to
be “smoking hot” when she helped me pick it out, but there’s little consolation in that when Alex comes in the front door with his tanned face shaved clean and his tattoo peeking out from the pale-blue cuff of his shirt. He is beautiful and there’s nothing Kat could have done to prepare me for it. He hands Phoebe a bottle of wine and Greg takes a shopping bag filled with gifts, nestling it among the mounds of brightly wrapped presents surrounding the Christmas tree.

“Merry Christmas.” Alex’s voice is low as he greets me, but there’s no trace of his usual warmth. We are strangers, even though my body wants to lean into him. By the time I say “Merry Christmas” back, he’s walking away.

I retreat to the kitchen to pour a glass of sparkling cider, but the kitchen is part of the great room, so there’s nowhere to hide. My grandma comes up alongside me and ruffles one of the tiers on the hem of my dress. “You look like the Christmas angel,” she says.