She was smiling, but she kept twisting those rings, like maybe if she spun them around enough she’d be magically transported to another world. I understood the desire. I had it about ten times a day, myself.
Something was familiar about her, but I couldn’t place it. A heavy, musky perfume enveloped the little apartment, making it stuffy even though it was cold. I breathed in the scent, and it reminded me of something, of someone. It reminded me of—
“Suze, you remember Caroline, don’t you?” Dad asked, his jaw clenched so tightly the words could barely get through his teeth.
Chapter 3
Caroline was here in our living room.
Seriously?
The woman’s eyes travelled between Jessica and I, and it occurred to me she didn’t know which one of us was her daughter. But then she locked her gaze on me and smiled. “Hello, Susan,” she said, standing.
“Umm…hi.”
She held her arms open like she wanted to hug me, and I couldn’t help thinking Yeah, right even as some invisible force propelled me into them. Her embrace felt a lot like she looked, fake and brittle and sort of cold. She patted my back and then released me. So much for the way I’d always imagined our reunion when I was a kid—me flinging myself into my mother’s arms, her holding me tightly, even if I was soaking wet, both of us never wanting to let go.
I stepped back and stood next to Jessica, and Caroline sat down, perching on the edge of her seat and wiping her damp hands on her skirt. No one said anything for a beat, and then Caroline asked me who my friend was, and I introduced Jess. Another minute of silence passed while we all looked everywhere but at each other, and then Dad said he had to get back to work because his lunch hour was almost over, but Caroline didn’t move, and so he didn’t either. I guess he didn’t want to leave me alone with her.
“Caroline stopped by the store,” Dad said. “She wanted to meet you and Tracie.”
That seemed kind of weird. After all this time, why didn’t she call ahead or something? Dad sat on our ratty couch, his uniform shirt bunched up around his waist because he’d untucked it from his khakis. His normally dark face was chalky and I tried to tell myself it was the gray October light and our cheap lamps making him appear ill. Honestly, he looked like he wanted to hurl. I kind of felt the same way. Of course, I had eaten a lot of Starbursts and Smarties, so maybe that was why the contents of my stomach were unsettled and swishing around.
Caroline fiddled with her rings again, and I couldn’t help but notice how large the stones were. And how sparkly. I’d never seen anything quite like them in person—only on the Home Shopping Network.
“Pretty, aren’t they?” she asked, when she noticed me staring. She held her hands up so I could examine them closer. I felt stupid checking them out like some gawker, but I pretended to care and leaned in a little.
On her left hand she had two rings, one with a huge single diamond—what I thought was called a solitaire—and the other with a band with diamonds all the way around it. On her right hand was a ring with a humungous green stone surrounded by tiny diamonds, all shimmering, even in the low lamplight. They had to be real to shine like that.
“Yeah, nice,” I said, because what else was I supposed to say? What I was thinking was: This woman is loaded.
A flash of annoyance pulsed inside me because there are store-brand corn flakes in our cupboard, and she was wearing a year’s rent on her hands. Who was I kidding? Those rings could be five years of rent for all I knew. It’s not like I was a jewel expert or anything. The diamond studs in her ears could probably pay for Tracie’s university tuition. Hard to believe she was related to us. And why hadn’t we benefitted from some of her good fortune?
Oh, God. Tracie. The thought of her sent a wave of nausea through me. I looked around, but I knew she couldn’t be here because there was no way she’d be calmly standing around admiring Caroline’s jewelry like I was. She’s no traitor.
I shivered. Dad noticed, but thought it was because I was so wet. He tossed me his stadium blanket. “What happened to you two?”
“Rain. Duh.”
“Grab a towel from the washroom,” he told Jessica. “You guys better make some hot chocolate or something.”
Caroline stood and brushed invisible dirt off her tailored skirt. “I should probably go,” she said. “I have a ferry to catch.”
She was leaving town and—what? That was it? Would I ever see her again? Would it be another ten years? Did I even care? She wrapped an elegant-looking cape around her shoulders and pulled up the hood against the rain.
“So…you’re going back to Vancouver?” I finally blurted out, when it appeared she was going to leave without saying anything else.
“Yes,” she replied. “But I’ll be back with the moving truck on Saturday. I was here to check on the house, and I was going to call once I was settled, but I just…” She smiled. “I couldn’t wait, so I dropped by the store, and it was time for your dad’s dinner break—”
“And I’m already late getting back. We should go,” Dad cut in. “I’ll walk you to your car.”
“Right. Of course,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
Caroline is moving back to Victoria? “You’re going to live here?”
“Well…not here, with all of you….”
“Yeah, I knew that.” What does she think I am? A moron?
“But I’m moving back to Oak Bay,” she said. “We’ll finally have a chance to get to know each other.” She swooped in for another fake hug, but I took a step back, and she stopped, her arms outstretched. “And I’ve wanted that for so long, Susan.”
Really? ’Cause I’ve been here the whole time. I obviously wasn’t that hard to find. You could’ve known me all along. Of course, I didn’t say that. Instead, I clamped my jaw shut and forced myself to smile like: That’s fine. Whatever. The last thing I wanted was her thinking I needed her. As if.
^^^
I shut the door behind Dad and Caroline and turned the deadbolt.
“Well, that was awkward,” I said, as casually as I could manage.
“A little,” Jessica agreed.
I’d been so busy staring at Caroline’s jewelry that I’d forgotten to get a good look at her face. For some reason, we didn’t have any pictures of her. When I was little I used to fantasize that someday I’d be walking down the street and see a woman who looked like me, and we’d both stop and stare and she’d say “Susan? Can that really be you? My darling!” And then we’d hug for real. But now she was gone, and I hadn’t even checked out her eyes to see what color they were. “I would’ve walked right by her in the grocery store.”
Jess half-laughed. “It’s so weird, because we were just talking about her.”
“Totally freaky. Maybe you have magic powers. Being a fairy and all.”
She smiled at my lame joke and followed me into the kitchen, where I made two mugs of hot chocolate.
While I didn’t think about Caroline a lot, I did have a few imaginary scenes I sometimes ran like movies in my head before I fell asleep at night. But in them, I’d usually just won a Best New Artist Juno, and she was a reporter who was trying to get an exclusive, or I’d picked up the Nobel Peace Prize for my work with…well, troubled countries. I never once imagined seeing her for the first time as I walked into the room drenched to the bone, shivering, and wearing wet pajamas with a drowned fairy at my side.
“Do you think Caroline showing up is a trick or a treat?” I asked Jessica.
“You really haven’t seen her in ten years?”
“Nope.” I spotted the familiar brown envelope on the counter. “At least she brought the support check.”
“You’re very calm,” Jessica said, sipping her cocoa.
I mopped up some I had spilled. “Yeah….”
“I would totally freak out.”
I was hiding it well.
Apparently Jessica couldn’t see my heart banging around in my chest like a Mexican jumping bean. Somehow, I doubt a kid too stupid to carry an umbrella in October was the daughter Caroline had been expecting. Or wanting. We’d probably never see her again.
The buzzer went off. “Oh, God. Do you think she’s back?”
“Trick-or-treaters,” Jessica said. “I’ll get the door, you find the candy.”
“I forgot to buy any.” I rummaged around the cupboards to see if Dad had remembered, but all I found was a bag of mini Cadbury bars with only three left. “Give them the gross stuff from our pillowcase.”
“Okay.”
I stood slumped against the kitchen counter. Jessica’s voice floated down the hall to me: “Oh, aren’t you cute?” she cooed to some kids.
This whole Caroline thing couldn’t really be happening. I told myself that after dropping in like that, she’d probably decide it was a big mistake and disappear for another ten years. Part of me wanted it to be true—didn’t want to see her again—but a tiny little ache in the corner of my heart hoped it wasn’t.
“I have to change,” I called out to Jess on the way to my bedroom. “I’ll find something for you too. You must be frozen.”
“That’d be great,” she yelled back.
Something made me stop to watch her, standing in the doorway and giving out the candy. The dim landing light illuminated a couple of tiny witches and a Frankenstein with a grinning mother standing behind them, her umbrella protecting them from the rain. A pain stabbed me deep in my gut. Jealousy, I guess.
I turned my back on them and went into my room. Happy Halloween. Thrilling. I bet none of those little kids had gotten the heart-stopping fright I’d had. I pulled black sweats and a black pullover out of the old-fashioned wardrobe Dad had bought me (because Tracie hogs the only closet), and peeled off the soaked socks. My frozen feet were all wrinkly and dead-looking.
“Overall, not a very good costume,” I said to Sammy, who was now curled up in a damp ball on my pillow. “I’ll be lucky if all I get for it is a detention. I’m expecting pneumonia, actually.”
One golden eye opened a slit, but she didn’t move. Yuck. She’d gotten my pillowcase wet and muddy. I made a three-pointer into the laundry hamper with the shorts, and the muddy knee-highs sailed in right behind them. I threw the now-gray Keds over onto Tracie’s pigsty side of the room to confuse her.
“Back to normal,” Jessica said, when I went into the living room with another set of sweats and a towel.
“I guess.”
She was certainly an optimist. Things could never be “normal” again with Caroline around. What was my mother playing at, anyway? It didn’t matter to me if she’d moved back to Victoria from Vancouver. Unless it meant we’d have to have regular visits or something. That didn’t seem very likely, based on her interest in our lives so far. She’d only been a ferry ride away and we hadn’t seen her at all.
The buzzer sounded again. “I’ll get it. You chill,” Jessica said.
Chill? I knew I’d never be able to relax until Tracie came home and I found out if she remembered the contract we’d signed when Caroline left us. She might’ve forgotten about it, but I doubted it. That piece of red construction paper was seared onto my brain, and it wasn’t likely to have slipped her mind either. She was going to freak over Caroline’s sudden reappearance—and somehow, I knew I’d be the one to suffer the most.
Chapter 4
After he got back from work, Dad drove Jessica home, and I have to say, I was glad to see her go. I mean, she’d been cool about Caroline, not bringing it up again, but not talking about it was almost as awkward. The whole thing was too weird to think about.
I had a mountain of math to do, but instead, I collapsed onto my bed with a book I’d found on the bus. It was the second book in The Testing trilogy, which was a little confusing since I hadn’t read the first one, but it didn’t really matter, because the words were mostly swimming in front of my eyes, anyway.
After dropping off Jess, Dad had gone to Uncle Bill’s to tie fishing flies for next year’s camping trip, so when the apartment door slammed, I knew it was my sister. My stomach tightened as I waited for Tracie to come into our room. Part of me hoped she knew about Caroline already, that Dad had sent her a text or even called her. Unlike me, she always has minutes on her phone. The other part of me was scared of how mad she’d be if she’d already heard.
The door to our bedroom banged open and she came in, tossing all her school stuff on top of the dirty clothes on her side of the room. “Hey Suzie-suze-suze!” she said. “Man, am I beat.” She flopped onto her bed.
Obviously Dad hadn’t manned up and told her about Caroline’s reappearance. I wondered if I should—or was it better to play dumb? If I didn’t say anything, though, she’d find out eventually. That wouldn’t be good, either. “What’s up?” she asked, and I realized I hadn’t answered her greeting.
I kept the book in front of my face. “Nothing. Just reading.”
“Did you get in trouble at school again?”
“No.” Actually, I had, but Caroline’s appearance had driven Farbinger’s detention right out of my mind.
I slid my eyes over to see what she was doing. Tracie was sitting on the edge of her bed, staring at me. I pretended not to notice.
“Farbinger didn’t bust you for wearing pajamas?”
“Uh-uh,” I lied, my eyes glued to the page.
She crossed the space between her bed and mine and pounced on me, tossing my book aside. She straddled me and pinned my hands above my head. Leaning over me and laughing, she let her long straight hair tickle my face. “You look guilty. What gives?”
“Get off!”
“Not until you tell me.”
I tried to shove her, but she’s really strong from all the hockey she plays, and I couldn’t budge her. “I didn’t do anything…it wasn’t me,” I said, squirming. Should I tell her? “It was…well…”
She swung her head so her hair grazed my nose, making it tickle even worse—a favorite torture trick of hers.
“Stop it!”
“Spill it!”
“Fine, but you’re not going to like it.”
Why did I say that? Not a great way to start this conversation.
Her eyes narrowed, but she didn’t let me go.
“It’s about…Caroline,” I said.
She let go of my wrists and sat up, crossing her arms. She was still straddling me, so I was pinned to my bed, which was another mistake. I should’ve negotiated my freedom first. Sometimes I’m too stupid for my own good.
“What about her?” Tracie asked, glaring.
No point in dragging it out now. I took a deep breath. “She was here. Today. When I got home from school. With Dad.”
Tracie jumped off of me like I’d burned her. “Here? In our apartment?” Her voice had gone all screechy, which scared me even more.
Might as well tell her what I knew. “She’s moving back to Victoria.” I waited a couple of heartbeats, and when she didn’t say anything, I added, “She wants to see us.”
Tracie made a sound like she was blowing out a lungful of disgust. She tossed her hair and snorted. “Like that’s gonna happen.”
I considered my options…let it go, or say what I wanted to say. On her side of the room Tracie moved some stuff around, so she’d have a place to sleep. I closed my eyes, screwing up my nerve. “I wouldn’t mind,” I said, going for broke. “I mean, you know…just to see what she’s like.”
Tracie spun around. “What she’s like? What she’s like? I’ll tell you what she’s like! She’s a traitor and a liar and an a…and a…an abandoner!”
“Well, it’s been a long time—”
“Not long enough!” When I didn’t say anything, she came back to my side of the room and stood over me. “You do remember that we have a pac
t, don’t you?”
This time I decided to play dumb. I’m really good at that. “A pact?”
“Yes, a pact to never talk to her again?”
Here we go. This is what I was hoping she’d forget. Maybe if I acted casual. I picked up my book like the conversation was boring me, and I had no idea what she was talking about.
“You don’t remember, do you?” she accused. I focused on the words on some random page. “Suze?” Tracie said. “I know you can hear me.”
“Of course, I can hear you.”
“Well, do you remember or don’t you?”
Telling Tracie about Caroline had been a big mistake. I decided coming clean wouldn’t be any smarter, and to stick with the “innocent bystander” routine.
“Sorry. Don’t have a clue. Just tell me, and get it over with already.”
“We signed a pact saying we’d never speak to Caroline again,” Tracie told me. “Ever. In our whole lives.”
“We did?” I sounded pretty convincing, even to myself. Maybe I should be the actress instead of Jessica.
“Yes! We did!”
Like always, Tracie was so sure of herself, so certain she was right. But I’d seen Caroline, and, I couldn’t help it, I wanted to know more about her. My sister was starting to make me mad, actually. I was kind of sick of her trying to rule my life. I closed my book and sat up. “You know, I was only three years old when Caroline took off. I don’t think I could even write my name then.”
“Not then,” she said. “You know what I’m talking about. When I was twelve and you were seven.”
“Whatever.”
“We signed it, and I’ve got it around here somewhere. I’ll prove it to you.”
Man, I knew it. She kept everything. She jumped up and pulled boxes out from under her bed. Oh, great—as if her side of the room wasn’t a big enough disaster area. She lugged out stuff that hadn’t seen the light of day for years. I should’ve just admitted I knew, but it was too late for that now. While I pretended to read, she dug through the mess, moving us closer to the threat of our room being condemned. I secretly watched over the top of my page.
A Month of Mondays Page 2
