She thought of the way Dave had dipped the bride, the clear joy in his face every time he looked at her. Isabelle had glanced at the bridesmaids and seen how young they all were, how she was the oldest single woman there. Charlie was right here beside her, and she felt the most alone that she ever had.
“What else do you think about?” she asked.
“Oh, God, everything,” Charlie said, with real feeling. “I think about my parents getting old and how hard it is to watch. I think about their frosty marriage. I think about being able to protect Sam from every bad thing in the world. How I’d wrap him up in cotton batting if I could, but I know I can’t.”
“What else?” Isabelle said.
“Work, life. I just try to keep all the pieces in place.”
Isabelle stood up. The room was spinning, but she grabbed her shoes, buckling them tightly. In the back of her mind, she heard a drift of music from the wedding, a song the bride had written for the groom, corny and cloying, and so beautiful, so rich with love, that Isabelle couldn’t stop smiling when she heard it.
“What are you doing?” Charlie moved in front of her. “Look at me. What just happened that I’m missing?”
“You think about everything,” she said. “Everything that matters to you. But where am I in the conversation in your head? Where am I, Charlie? You won’t let me in there!”
He drew her to him and kissed her mouth. “You’re here,” he said, and then he kissed her harder. He kissed her neck and she felt something loosening in her chest. “And here,” he said, kissing her shoulder. “You’re right here with me.”
ISABELLE WAS SLEEPING when he woke up. Charlie watched her. What would it be like to come home every day and find her here? To wake up beside her, with her hair spread out across his shoulders and hers? This wasn’t just a Band-Aid against pain. This could be real, and the only way to find out would be to really test it. You could love many people in your life. Maybe love didn’t die even when a person did, but that didn’t mean there might not be room for someone else in your heart.
“Hey.” Isabelle stirred and stretched and then pulled the sheet up to her chin. “Was I snoring?” she asked.
“You were talking in your sleep,” he said.
“I was? What did I say?” She sat up, a little embarrassed.
“I don’t know exactly, but you said it with such passion.” He looked so grave.
“What’s wrong? Is something the matter?”
“I want us to be together more.”
She sat up. “Charlie, are you sure?”
“Are you?” he asked. “Is it really me you want?
She nodded and then he nodded, too. “Then, I need to talk to Sam,” he said.
That evening after dinner, Charlie ladled big glossy scoops of banana pudding into glass bowls. He watched Sam digging in, and then Charlie put a hand on the back of Sam’s head, ruffling his hair.
“I saw Isabelle today,” Charlie said casually. “She’s a lot of fun, isn’t she?”
Sam’s spoon stopped clattering. He nodded his head. “Uh-huh.”
“You like her, right?”
Sam nodded.
“Well, so do I.” Charlie struggled. What was he supposed to say next?
“You know no one can ever replace your mom.”
Sam frowned.
“You know how sad we’ve both been. Well, sometimes, when a really important relationship ends, people stay sad for too long. Sometimes, even though you don’t forget that person, it’s good to explore new relationships, to branch out. Especially when it’s with people you already know and like.”
Sam pushed the bowl away. “But relationships don’t end when people die.”
Charlie started. “Who told you that?”
“I read it in a book.” Sam dug his spoon to the bottom of the glass bowl, not looking at Charlie.
Helplessly, Charlie watched the tense way Sam’s shoulders were hunching. “Let’s talk about Isabelle for a second,” Charlie said.
Sam looked up, stitching his brows. “You said we could still see her! You said it was okay! You can’t go back on your promise! Not now!”
“And it is okay! And we can see her! I know you like her, and I do, too, and I thought—well, sometimes relationships can change.”
Sam pushed up from the table. His breath came in little pants. “No, no! I don’t want it to change! Please! Please! You can’t change it! Not now!”
Charlie reached for Sam and swept his hair from his eyes. “Okay,” he said quietly. “We don’t have to talk about it. Okay.”
Charlie couldn’t sleep that night. He thought of how upset Sam had become and luckily, Charlie had been able to pull back before he really said anything about how he felt about Isabelle. It was too soon for Sam and that was that.
He rubbed his eyes. Sam didn’t want anything to change, but Charlie, ah, that was a different story. He wanted the dull ache in his belly to change. He wanted his sleepless nights to change. He thought of how he felt when he walked up to Isabelle and there was that funny crook in her smile and all he wanted to do was kiss it. He didn’t expect blind happiness anymore, certainly not all the time, but to have it, to feel it, just for a few minutes a day, seemed like a paradise to him.
He shifted in the bed. Sam wasn’t ready, and maybe as much as he yearned to be, maybe the truth was that he himself wasn’t quite ready, either. If he was, would he still sometimes see April out of the corner of his eye? Would he still have dreams about the accident, where April walked away and came home to him as if nothing had happened?
Nothing stayed the same. That was scientific fact. He wouldn’t do anything to push things in a new direction, but he knew that one way or another, life eventually would.
FIFTEEN
“MY STOMACH HURTS,” Sam said. He and Teddy were standing in front of Isabelle’s building. The air had gone thick and dark and heavy, and Sam glanced anxiously at the sky. Even his toes felt clammy. Teddy was pressing all the buttons, flattening his thumb on buzzer after buzzer.
“It does not. Admit it, don’t you want to go inside? Look around her place? You wouldn’t have told me her address if you didn’t,” Teddy said.
“I’ve been inside Isabelle’s apartment lots of times,” Sam said. “Lots.”
“But not when she hasn’t been there. That’s totally different. My mom always hides the empty wine bottles when she knows people are coming over.”
“Who is it?” a voice scratched through the intercom.
“Delivery!” Teddy boomed, lowering his voice, and the buzzer rang. “There’s always a jerk who lets you in,” Teddy said, rolling his eyes and pulling the door open.
The whole way up the stairs, Sam wanted to turn right around and run back to Teddy’s. What if a door opened and someone asked them what they were doing there? What if a cop lived in the building and arrested them?
Reluctantly, Sam pointed to Isabelle’s door. Teddy took out a credit card. “One of my mom’s boyfriends showed me how to do this.”
The whole time Teddy was working on the door, Sam wanted to yell at him to stop, to turn back, but he couldn’t manage the words. Part of him wanted to know what they might find in her apartment, what secrets she would hide.
Teddy jiggered the credit card again, and then there was an odd click and the door swung open. “Bingo!” Teddy said, and ushered Sam in.
“What are we looking for?” Sam whispered.
“No one’s here, dummy, you don’t have to whisper,” Teddy said, but he was barely speaking above a hush himself.
Sam walked on tiptoes. As soon as they walked into her apartment, his mouth turned dry and sour and his body felt shaky. Isabelle’s apartment smelled like vanilla cookies, the way she did, and he suddenly didn’t want Teddy there. He saw Isabelle’s books, her table, the chairs, and he wanted to touch all of them, to rest his head on her couch, to pick up the flowers she had in the vase and smell them, just for a minute, but he didn’t like the way Teddy was staring at
things, the dark, greedy look in his eyes. “We should go,” Sam said. “There’s nothing here.”
“God, look at that!” Teddy said, noticing the big glass turtle tank on the dining room table. He tapped on the glass and the tortoise lifted his head, staring at Teddy. “It’s like a freaking dinosaur!”
“That’s Nelson,” Sam said. “And he bites, so be careful. Don’t even touch his shell.”
“You don’t touch the turtle?” Teddy looked at Sam askance. “You couldn’t feed him or nothing?”
“I told you, he bites.”
“Bullshit, she just didn’t want you touching her turtle.” Teddy laughed, but Sam didn’t see what was so funny. “Let’s take him out,” Teddy said. “I want to see him move.”
“He doesn’t move! He doesn’t do anything!” Sam said, but Teddy already was pulling up a chair out so he could reach into the tank. He thrust his hands in and lifted the tortoise up, so Nelson’s long legs swung back and forth as if they were boneless. “Wait!” Sam cried, “you’ll hurt him! Let me take him!” He reached out and then Nelson stretched his long neck around and bit at the air.
It felt funny holding Nelson. He was as light as a box of popcorn, cool and dry and leathery, and Sam made sure to keep him away from his body. He was about to put Nelson down when Teddy grabbed his sleeve.
“I bet she has something hidden in here,” Teddy said, pointing to the bedroom, and Sam crept up behind him, still holding Nelson carefully.
Teddy flung open the door. Sam didn’t know what to expect, but not this.
Isabelle’s room was spare and clean, the bed neatly made, the surface of her dresser shining. Teddy picked up one of the photographs nested on Isabelle’s night table. “Hey, that’s you,” he said, and Sam glanced over and there he was, standing beside Isabelle and there were Isabelle’s eyes looking out at him from the picture, as if she knew what he was doing. He turned away so abruptly that Nelson snapped at the air.
Sam wasn’t sure what he should be looking for, but Teddy was rummaging through Isabelle’s drawers. He put Nelson down on the floor, and the tortoise headed for the shadows under the dresser, his nails making small skittering sounds against the wood.
“Better go get that thing before he vanishes,” Teddy said.
Sam bent and picked up Nelson again, but Teddy grabbed his arm, making Sam lose his grip. Nelson hit the ground with a cracking sound. Sam flew back, his eyes wide with shock. Nelson wasn’t moving. “Why’d you do that!” Sam shouted.
“Oh, shit, now you did it! You freaking killed him!” Teddy said.
Terrified, Sam crouched beside the tortoise. “I was trying to put him back!” Sam cried. Nelson’s eyes were shut. His whole body was wedged deep into the shell so you could barely see it. Sam tried to touch the edge of Nelson’s leg. It felt cold and it didn’t move. “Nelson!” Sam cried. “Nelson!”
“We better get out of here,” Teddy said. “You’re really in trouble now.”
“You told me to come here!” Sam screamed. “You told me!”
Teddy’s mouth dropped open. “Get out!” Sam screamed, shoving Teddy, who shoved him back.
“Fine, I’m going. You stay here and deal with it!” Teddy said. And then, just like that, the front door slammed and Teddy was gone. Sam could hear his heart galloping in his chest. The apartment was so silent, his breathing seemed magnified. He crouched and gently picked Nelson up, placing him back in his tank, covering him with the hollow log. He’d killed Nelson. Killed him like he’d killed his mother. It was all his fault and no one would ever forgive him, and he wouldn’t blame them.
“I’m sorry!” Sam cried, and then he ran out of the apartment, too.
Outside the storm clouds were so thick that if he hadn’t known better, he would have thought it was nighttime. Teddy was long gone and the streets were empty. Sam didn’t know where to go or what to do, but he started walking home, and there at the end of the block, right before the intersection, was his father’s car and inside his dad and Isabelle were quietly talking.
Sam panicked. They were on the same side of the street! What if they saw him and wanted to know what he was doing here and then later, when they saw Nelson, when they saw how anxious Sam was, they put two and two together? His heart began that odd hammering in his chest, and he swayed on his feet, and then his father leaned over to Isabelle and kissed her on the mouth.
Something roared in Sam’s ears. His father and Isabelle continued to kiss and he suddenly knew just how much was wrong, just how much he had fooled himself. He thought of Teddy, the way he kept harping that something was going on and Sam was too dense to know it. He remembered his father always asking him, “You like Isabelle, don’t you?”
For a moment, he was dizzy with shock. Everything he had ever thought about Isabelle was a lie. She wasn’t bringing his mother back so he could talk to her. She wasn’t making things right again. She didn’t care about him and she wasn’t here for him—it was all about his dad! She was sitting there kissing his dad, and it was all his fault for bringing them together. He squeezed his eyes shut, but something was wrong with his senses. He couldn’t see clearly, he couldn’t hear. She wasn’t an angel!
“Mommy!” he screamed, and then he couldn’t stop the hot scald of his tears, the way all his bones had turned to ice. He bolted into the street, running into the intersection just as a car entered it. “Hey, kid!” the driver shouted, furiously beeping his horn, and then Sam saw his father and Isabelle look up. He saw the way they pulled apart, the way their faces changed, and then he heard their car doors fly open, his father calling, “Sam! Sam!”
Sam ran harder. Every step he took, the air seemed to thicken. He sucked in air, shuddering.
It felt as if no one was in the world but him right now. The streets were empty, and there were no lights in any of the houses. No cars traveled past him. He heard a crash of lightning, the sudden boom of thunder, and then the sky split open into a thousand jagged pieces and there was a shower of cold rain. His steps smacked against the pavement. A scrap of paper from the sidewalk caught in the wind and rose up in the sky like a giant bird.
Sam’s heart was beating too fast. His pants were already so wet that they were dragging on the ground, and he was shivering hard. Bits of something flew into his face, biting his skin, shooting into his eyes so he had to snap his lids shut.
“When you’re scared, think of the facts,” Charlie had told him, but every fact he knew frightened him even more. Lightning could strike you while you were in the shower. It could race through the pipes, lighting you up like a firecracker. People had been struck by lightning and some people had lived, but some people hadn’t. Sam ran faster, slipping on the sidewalk, skinning a hole in his pants. He was alone in the world. Isabelle wasn’t an angel. His mother was really dead.
“Mommy!” He screamed, but no one answered. No one would ever answer, not now. He thought of his mother’s face, her hands, the way she tickled him under the ribs, and every thought tore him in two. “Mommy!” The wind covered up his voice. Sam tugged himself up and ran again. The lightning seemed to be coming closer, following him, punctuating every step with a sonic boom of thunder. Yellow sizzled in the sky, and he felt his bones turn to water.
“Dad!” he screamed, but the wind gulped down his voice. Fear pinballed inside him. He sucked at the air and it felt like he was inhaling a wet washcloth. His lungs were crunching up. Sam felt for his inhaler, but it wasn’t there, and that made him panic even more.
His hair sluiced against his face. Running into the wind, he pushed on. There was a big tree up ahead, the branches like arms scratching at the sky. Then he heard a sound, like the world splitting open.
The cracking sound grew louder and then he heard a whooshing, and there was a bolt of lightning tearing across the sky, zigzagging and connecting with the tree. He craned his head, staring, frozen in place and the whole tree seemed to light up. One of the branches shimmied with light as it broke off. Sam felt something crash again
st his side, toppling him to the ground. A hot sting zoomed through him.
He glanced down and saw a flash of red streaming down his arm. Blood. There was blood. He bolted up, his arm throbbing, and it was then that he saw the tree branch, like an extra arm, fallen beside him, and a huge open gash in the tree. He ran, not thinking, grabbing his arm, stopping the blood with his fingers. Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t look. He ran with his eyes closed. He told himself not to think about the pain, not to think about his mom or his dad or Isabelle. All he had to do was get to someplace safe and he had to do it fast. I can’t breathe! he thought. I can’t breathe! He gulped at air.
The school loomed in front of him. He had an extra inhaler there, locked in the nurse’s office. He banged on the door, screaming. “It’s Sam! It’s Sam!” The pain made him shake and wheeze so that he couldn’t shout anymore. He couldn’t bang on the door as hard. “It’s Sam!” he tried to scream again, but the world suddenly began to suck him down until everything narrowed into black.
SIXTEEN
They screamed Sam’s name, all the windows of the car open, the rain pelting in and soaking them as they drove. How had he run so fast? Before she had seen him, Isabelle had felt something, like a charge in the air, and then she had pulled free of Charlie and there was Sam, standing there with his mouth open, and her heart had broken.
“We should have told him,” Isabelle said. “We should never have kept things so secret.”
“He wasn’t ready!” Charlie said.
“But this makes it worse! How can we explain it to him now?”
Helpless, Charlie turned another corner. “He’s nine years old.”
Pictures of You Page 23
