“What do you mean, you broke up with Maddie?” Dad asks. He’s trying to get me out of bed now that noon has rolled around, even though he should be sleeping—he has to work tonight. But he has that sixth sense for when something’s up with me, so here he is. It makes me feel guilty, but then I remember the diamond ring in the shoe box and the lies (or at least half-truths) he’s been telling me, and I decide I don’t care. I try hiding under the covers so I won’t have to talk, but that rarely works and it doesn’t work now; he yanks them off and frowns when he sees I’m wearing yesterday’s clothes.
“Preemptive strike,” I say. “She was going to dump me at the end of the summer, before college, so I beat her to it.” I pull the comforter back over me and turn to face the wall, hoping he’ll just go away.
No such luck. Dad rolls me and the comforter off the bed. He hasn’t used that move since grade school. “Get your ass in the shower, then come have breakfast. Brunch. Whatever. You’ll tell me everything then.”
It’s not a request. I untangle myself from the blankets and go into the bathroom. I turn the heat of the shower up so high my skin turns bright red, but it feels good. By the time I towel off and throw on shorts and a T-shirt, Dad’s finished cooking. Breakfast is the only meal he’s really mastered, and it’s kind of nice having him take care of everything.
Dad doesn’t even pretend he’s really interested in the food, though. “Tell me what happened,” he says as soon as we sit down on the couch.
I’m surprised to find myself hungry, so I’ve already started crunching away on a slice of bacon. Extra crispy, just like I like it. “I told you,” I say, still chewing, “she was going to break up with me, so I broke up with her first.”
“Did she tell you that?”
“She didn’t have to. She’s going to college, and I’m some loser who’s going to stay home and live with my dad—no offense.”
“None taken,” Dad says with a smirk. “Making some assumptions there, though, aren’t you?”
Now he’s making me nervous. “Wait, can I not stay here? I thought—”
“Not the assumption I was talking about. Don’t worry, bud, as long as I’ve got a place to live, you do too. You know that. But unless you haven’t been telling me everything, you haven’t exactly settled on your future plans, have you?”
He’s right I haven’t been telling him everything, but he’s wrong about the topic. “To say I haven’t settled on my future plans is a serious understatement.”
“Well, who knows what could happen between now and the fall? You’ve got that job at the gym, and you know I’m hoping you’ll take some classes and consider college.”
Eye roll. “Consider, yes. That’s all I said I’d do.”
“Enough for me. And enough for you to stop thinking of yourself as a loser without a plan. You’re just in between plans right now. And I think you know that already.” He still hasn’t eaten anything, which tells me he’s taking this more seriously than I realized. It’s hard to stay annoyed at him when he’s trying so hard to help.
“Yeah, I guess.”
“So if I know that, and you know that, don’t you think Maddie knows that too?”
I shrug. “I don’t know what she knows.”
“Don’t get all stubborn with me,” he says. “Just trying to make you see reason here is all. Why did you ruin your last summer with Maddie when you didn’t have to?”
How am I supposed to answer that? He’s making me sound so stupid. “It was ruined already. I thought we were going to stay together when she left. I thought I’d go see her every weekend and it would be almost the same as now. It’s not like we saw each other so much during the week anyway. I didn’t think everything had to change. But she did. And she was going to wait until the fall to tell me so I could have one last clueless summer before she told me what an idiot I was, but I figured it out early and it wrecked everything. So I just beat her to the punch. I guess I’m not an idiot after all.” Except I am, of course. Maybe I’d be better off with a fun, clueless summer. It would be better than how I feel right now.
Dad and I sit quietly for a while. He starts eating his food, but I push mine away. I’m not hungry anymore. The weight of what I did hits me hard, and it makes me feel kind of nauseated. Yeah, it would have sucked to get left behind when Maddie went to college, but she’d find a way to make it sound okay. We wouldn’t have gotten into the kind of fight I started, we wouldn’t leave mad at each other, and our whole relationship wouldn’t be retroactively ruined.
I blew it.
“You’re not dumb,” Dad says. “Don’t know where you got that idea, but you’re a whole lot smarter than you think. Always have been. Why do you think I ride you so hard about going to school?”
Funny, he sounds just like Maddie. “I don’t know about that.”
“Come on, I’ll test you,” Dad says. “See if you can figure this one out.” He turns on the TV and pulls up Netflix. Which means he’s going to dig up some suspense thriller movie he’s already watched and see how long it takes me to determine who did it. Pretty much the perfect way to spend a crappy afternoon. The guilt kicks back in at the thought of him basically pulling an all-nighter to take care of me, but Dad’s stubborn, and I know nothing I can say will change his mind. I lean all the way back and settle in.
Dad leaves for work, and I’m alone in the apartment. That’s not unusual; I’m alone in the apartment all the time. But now I feel alone in a completely different way. Dad’s been his usual helpful dad self, and I put aside all the questions and doubts and let him take care of me, like he did when I was little. But when he left, they all came rushing back, along with the constant gutted feeling of remembering that Maddie’s gone too. It’s like I keep forgetting and have to relive the breakup over and over again. When I figure out the bad guy in the movie I immediately go to text Maddie that Dad couldn’t stump me, and I’m halfway through typing before I remember I don’t get to text her anymore, and our fight replays in my head. In the empty apartment I keep thinking about my mother, and the lying, and I want to talk to Maddie about it, but all I can hear is her voice reminding me how afraid of change I am. I stare at my phone wondering if I should call her, apologize, tell her I want our summer back, but the anger of her leaving outweighs the loneliness and I put the phone down again.
I’m alone in the apartment, and now I’m alone in the world, too.
But in a weird way, the anger helps. I’m still mad at Maddie for wanting to leave, for being right about me not wanting things to change. I’m angry at Dad for whatever lies he told me, even if he thinks he’s being helpful. And I’m angry with my mother, for sending me that letter and making me question everything about my stupid life. How could she not leave me a way to get in touch? Why does she want some inroad back into my life when she’d been fine leaving me and never looking back?
The more I think about everything, the angrier I get. But I’m not an angry person by nature, and I can’t live like this. There has to be something I can do to make myself feel better. I’m not ready to talk to Maddie or Dad about what I’m really feeling, and I can’t talk to my mother because I don’t know where she is. Though maybe that can change.
I go to the desktop computer I share with Dad and pick up where I left off at the school library. It was just a few days ago, but it feels like months. I go through the archives of the Brooksby Gazette, looking for an obituary for Natalie Russo, to see if there’s some chance Dad was telling the truth, that she really is dead, that I was right about the letter being some kind of fake. I’m not shocked that I don’t find anything. Maybe I’ve convinced myself the letter is real. Or maybe I just want it to be.
Then I run the search for her name again. There are still a gazillion results, but I narrow the search as many ways as I can. I look for her name and Dad’s; her name plus Brooksby; all the social media sites I’ve ever heard of and a few that are new to me. She’s nowhere to be found.
I’m not sure what to do nex
t until I remember Regina Russo, who may or may not be related to her. I type her name into Google, hoping I’ll get lucky—it seems like a less common name than Natalie. Of course, I’m totally wrong about that, and Google spits back like eight million sites for me to check. Whole lot of nope there.
I try searching for Natalie and Regina together, but still nothing. It’s not until I get on Facebook that I have any luck. There are still lots of people named Regina Russo, and even more if you use it as a middle or maiden name. How am I supposed to figure out which is the right one? Then I scroll through the names that pop up, and I see one with a photo that might be an older version of the girl I saw in the yearbook. Her full name is Regina Russo Lombardi, so if it’s her, she’s married. I click on her picture to look at the page, but it’s locked down. I keep staring to see if there’s any way I can be sure, but it’s like the image gets less and less distinct the more I look at it. I try clicking on her friends list to see if there’s some Brooksby connection I can find, but that’s blocked too. Literally the only thing I can see is that photo.
I have to go at it another way. Since Regina went to high school just a couple of years ahead of Dad, it’s possible some of his friends might be connected to her. Just for kicks I check Dad’s page first, but he’s hardly friends with anyone, let alone anyone with the last name Russo. He mostly uses it to keep track of the pictures he takes on his phone. I look for Manny, but he’s not on there—he probably spends all his time on dating sites, given how he talks at the gym. I know Tom’s on it, though—we always joke about how Facebook is for old people. I barely check my own page myself.
Tom isn’t friends with anyone named Regina Russo either, but he’s a member of a reunion page for their class at Brooksby High, which gives me the idea to check whether Regina Russo’s class has a page, too. That’s when I hit pay dirt: there’s a page, and Regina Russo Lombardi is on it. Confirmation.
More than that: I have a relative. I think. She’s got to be at least a cousin, but more likely, she’s my aunt.
Having her full name gives me something to search, so I click over to Google and look her up. This time finding information is much easier. She lives in a town just outside of New Haven, Connecticut; I even find an address. I search as hard as I can for a phone number, but no one has land lines anymore, and cell phones are nearly impossible to track down. Email would be useful, but I strike out there, too. The address and Facebook page are all I have.
Now I have to decide what to do next. As far as I can see, I have three choices: I can go old-school like my mother and send a letter, I can send a Facebook friend request, or I can jump in the car and show up at Regina Russo Lombardi’s door.
A letter could take months; it could get lost in the mail or thrown out. A Facebook request is too easy to ignore, and if Regina Russo Lombardi is like me, she never checks her page anyway. I know what I want to do.
But showing up at a stranger’s house with no plan is not a good idea. It’s impulsive and reckless and risky, and if Maddie’s right about anything, it’s that impulsive and reckless and risky are not exactly my trademarks.
Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe it’s time to be brave. To prove Maddie’s wrong about me. If I leave tomorrow morning I won’t have to face another day alone in the apartment, and I can avoid dealing with Dad for a while, too. I’ve got nothing to do before I start work except sit around and be miserable, and that’s not a great option.
The more I think about it, the more it feels like the right thing to do. I can show Maddie that I really can change, and then we’ll have something to talk about when I get back. I can get some answers, and then Dad and I can have an honest conversation about my mother for once. And, most important, I can confirm that this letter is real, that I actually have a mother out there somewhere. I still don’t know whether I want to find her, but I don’t have to decide that now. I worry a little about leaving without talking to Dad, but I can leave him a note telling him I’m doing a beach road trip with some of the guys before work starts. It might not keep him from freaking out, but it should buy me time. Besides, it’s only a white lie; it’s not any worse than what he’s been telling me. He’ll get over it, like I’m trying to.
That settles it. In the morning, I’ll put in one good, hard workout, and then I’ll get in my car and drive away.
Part II
10
I’ve never been this far from home before. Sure, I’ve driven into Boston a few times, and I’ve gone to some nearby towns to take Maddie shopping or to the movies, but as best as I can remember, I’ve never traveled more than an hour from Brooksby. The only times I’ve even been out of state are to go get booze in New Hampshire once in a while, where it’s cheaper. The lie I left in the note to my dad—that I’m going to the beach in Maine for a few days—would have taken me farther away than I’ve ever been. With Dad’s work schedule we never really took any vacations, and to be honest, I’ve never cared much about seeing the world outside where I lived. The news makes it seem like bad things can happen anywhere—girls get murdered on island vacations, tourists get blown up in terrorist attacks, families get wiped out in car accidents on the Autobahn. I’m safer at home.
At first, I don’t think much about any of this. The early part of the trip is on familiar highway, Route 128 to the Mass Pike, and even when I move farther away from Boston, all I notice is that there are more trees. Otherwise? Dullsville. I make it to Hartford before I have to dig out some almonds and beef jerky to keep from getting too hungry—I was so eager to get on the road that I just had a smoothie after the workout instead of a real breakfast. I stop at a gas station to fill up the tank and eat my snacks outside, leaning on the car. The day is perfect—sunny, warm, blue skies, no clouds. I could be at the beach, accidentally-on-purpose nailing Colin in the nose with an errant volleyball spike. Except hardly anyone will be at the beach today; almost everyone’s started their summer jobs.
No looking back, though. I get in the car and crank Nas, but my nerves are starting to twitch. It’s not just leaving Brooksby; the reality of my decision is kicking in. I’m about to show up on the doorstep of someone I’ve never met, someone I haven’t called, someone who may be part of a family I never knew I had and that I’m not sure I want. Who wouldn’t be nervous about that?
My racing thoughts carry me all the way to New Haven. I exit the highway and enter a part of town that looks more like a suburb than a city, and a nicer suburb than Brooksby at that. I made good time—the trip only took a few hours, even with the stop—so it’s not even noon yet when my GPS leads me through the back streets to my final destination: a big white house with one car in the driveway, a lawn that someone obviously cares about, with a sign for some political candidate I’ve never heard of.
This is it. I check my phone one more time to make sure I have the right address. It feels like I’ve already been gone for days, and for a minute I’m tempted to turn around and go home. I can apologize to Maddie, pretend I never got the letter, and, for one last summer, ignore the fact that my world is changing. What’s the point of all this, anyway? But I’m here, so I steel myself and walk up to the front door, hesitating only briefly before ringing the bell.
Then I wait for a while, long enough that I’m almost convinced no one’s home despite the car in the driveway. Just as I’m about to turn around, the door opens. It’s not Regina Russo who opens it, though; it’s a boy, about my age, about my height. He has shaggy dark brown hair, a lot like what mine looked like before I buzzed it down. Dark brown eyes, like mine. He’s dressed for working out, in a faded gray T-shirt, track pants, and regular sneakers.
We could be brothers.
“Whatever you’re selling, we’re not interested,” he says. He doesn’t sound mean or anything, but he’s definitely hoping to get me off his front steps as soon as possible.
“Um,” I say, wishing I’d prepared some sort of script, wishing I’d even considered the possibility that someone other than the woman who I’m i
ncreasingly certain is my aunt would open the door. “Is your mom here?”
“She’s at work.” The boy stares at me, waiting for an explanation, which makes total sense. Except I have no idea what that explanation might be.
“I’m Patrick. Pack,” I say. Maybe he knows about me, even if I didn’t know about him.
He keeps staring. Nope.
“I think I’m your cousin.”
He draws back his head in surprise. “You think? Why?” Clearly he’s a pretty chill guy; he still doesn’t sound rude. Just curious.
“It’s kind of a long story.” I’m not sure what to say, really. “Can you tell me when your mom will be back?”
He thinks for a moment, trying to decide whether to give his mother’s schedule to a complete stranger, most likely. “Give me a sec, okay?”
“Sure.” What else can I do?
The boy goes back in the house, leaving the door cracked open behind him but not in a way that makes me feel like I can follow. It doesn’t take him long to come back, his phone pressed to his ear. He’s already started the call, and I can hear the tinny sound of ringing through the speakers. What if she doesn’t pick up? What will I do then?
Then there’s the muffled sound of a woman’s voice, though I can’t tell what she’s saying. “Hey, Ma,” the boy says. “There’s someone here who says he’s my cousin. His name is—” He glances at me. He’s already forgotten.
“Patrick,” I say.
“Patrick . . .”
“Walsh.”
“Last name’s Walsh,” he says. I wait for more mumbling, but there’s silence on the other end of the line. I’m not sure what to make of that.
“Natalie’s son,” I say.
“He says Natalie’s his mother,” he says. “Who’s Natalie?”
So he doesn’t know who Natalie is. Which means either Regina Lombardi hasn’t told him about her, or I’ve got the wrong person.
Questions I Want to Ask You Page 8
