Along for the Ride

by Sarah Dessen

  My dad took a deep breath as we stepped outside. ‘Gotta love that sea air!’ he said to me, patting his hands on his chest. ‘It’s great for the soul.’

  ‘You’re in a good mood,’ I said as Heidi, still talking, eased the stroller down the front steps, and we started toward the street.

  ‘Ah, well, that’s what a breakthrough can do for you,’ he replied, reaching over Heidi’s hands and taking the stroller handles from her. She smiled at him, stepping aside as he began to push Thisbe along. ‘I’d been really struggling with this middle chapter, just couldn’t find my groove. But then, today, suddenly… it came together.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Just like that! It’s going to make all the ones to follow that much easier.’

  I glanced at Heidi, who was now saying something about bank fees, a worried look on her face. ‘I thought you were mostly tightening,’ I said to my dad.

  ‘What?’ he said, nodding at a man who was jogging past, plugged into his iPod. ‘Oh, right. Well, it’s all just a matter of fitting things together. A few more days like today, and I’ll have this draft done by midsummer. At the latest.’

  ‘Wow,’ I said as Heidi shut her phone, then ran a hand through her hair. My dad reached over, grabbing her by the waist and pulling her closer, then planted a kiss on her cheek.

  ‘Isn’t this great?’ he said, smiling. ‘All of us together, going for Thisbe’s first trip to the Last Chance.’

  ‘It’s wonderful,’ Heidi agreed. ‘But I actually need to stop at the shop on the way. There’s apparently some problem with the payroll checks…’

  ‘It’s Friday night, honey!’ my dad said. ‘Just let it go. All that work stuff will still be there on Monday.’

  ‘Yes, but –’ Heidi replied as her phone rang again. She glanced at it, then put it to her ear. ‘Hello? Leah, yes, what’s… oh. No, I’m aware of it. Look, are you at the branch just down from the shop? Okay, then just walk over and I’ll meet you there. I’m remedying it as we speak.’

  ‘These girls she hires,’ my dad said, nodding at Heidi. ‘Typical teenagers. It’s always something.’

  I nodded, as if I were not, in fact, a teenager myself. Then again, to my dad, I wasn’t.

  ‘Their paychecks bounced,’ Heidi told him. ‘It’s kind of a serious situation.’

  ‘Then call your accountant, let him deal with it,’ he replied, making a goofy face down at Thisbe, who was drifting off to sleep. ‘We’re having family time.’

  ‘He doesn’t do payroll, I do,’ Heidi said.

  ‘Well, then tell them to wait until we’ve finished dinner.’

  ‘I can’t do that, Robert. They deserve to be paid, and –’

  ‘Look,’ my dad said, annoyed, ‘weren’t you the one who said I wasn’t spending enough time with you and the baby and Auden? Who insisted that I stop working, and have a family dinner out?’

  ‘Yes,’ Heidi said as her phone rang again. ‘But –’

  ‘So I knock off early. On my best day yet, I might add,’ he continued as we rolled up onto the boardwalk, ‘and now you’re not willing to do the same thing.’

  ‘Robert, this is my business.’

  ‘And writing isn’t mine?’

  Oh, boy, I thought. Change a few details – professorship for business, committees for employees – and this was the same fight he’d had with my mom all those years ago. I glanced at Heidi: her face was stressed, as Clementine’s now came into view, Esther and Leah standing outside together. ‘Look,’ she said to my dad, ‘why don’t you and Auden take the baby and get a table and I’ll meet you there. This will only take a few minutes. Okay?’

  ‘Fine,’ my dad said, although clearly, it wasn’t.

  He wasn’t the only one not happy. Twenty minutes later, just as we were about to be seated at Last Chance, Thisbe woke up and started fussing. At first, it was a low, rumbling sort of crying, but then it began to escalate. By the time the hostess arrived and began to grab menus for us, she was pretty much screaming.

  ‘Oh,’ my dad said, moving the stroller forward and back. Thisbe kept wailing. ‘Well. Auden, can you… ?’

  This was not followed by a verb, so I had no idea what he was asking. As Thisbe kept crying, though, now attracting the attention of pretty much everyone around us, he shot me another, more panicked look, and I realized he wanted me to jump in. Which was ridiculous. Even worse? I did it.

  ‘I’ll take her,’ I said, grabbing the stroller from him and backing it up to the door. ‘Why don’t you –’

  ‘I’ll sit down and order for us,’ he said. ‘Just bring her back in when she’s calmed down, all right?’

  Of course. Because that was going to happen anytime soon.

  I wheeled her out onto the boardwalk, where at least the noise wasn’t enclosed, then sat down on a bench beside her. I watched her face for a while, scrunched up and reddening, before glancing back into the restaurant. Past the hostess station, down a narrow aisle, I could see my dad, at a table for four, a menu spread out in front of him. I swallowed, then ran a hand over my face, closing my eyes.

  People don’t change, my mother had said, and of course she was right. My dad was still selfish and inconsiderate, and I was still not wanting to believe it, even when the proof was right in front of me. Maybe we were all destined to just keep doing the same stupid things, over and over again, never really learning a single thing. Beside me, Thisbe was now screaming, and I wanted to join in, sit back and open my mouth and let the years of frustration and sadness and everything else just spill forth into the world once and for all. But instead, I just sat there, silent, until I suddenly felt someone looking at me.

  I opened my eyes, and there, standing next to the stroller in jeans, beat-up sneakers, and a faded T-shirt that said LOVE SHOVE across the front, was the guy I’d seen at the Tip and the boardwalk. It was like he’d appeared from nowhere and now was suddenly right there, studying Thisbe. As he did, I took the opportunity to do the same to him, taking in his tanned skin and green eyes, shoulder-length dark hair pulled back messily at the back of his neck, the thick, raised scar that ran up one forearm, forking at the elbow like a river on a map.

  I had no idea why he was here, especially considering how he’d blown me off the last time we’d met, in this same place. But at that moment, I didn’t have the energy to overthink. I said, ‘She just started screaming.’

  He considered this but said nothing. Which for some reason, God only knew why, made me feel like I needed to keep talking.

  ‘She’s always crying, actually,’ I told him. ‘It’s colic, or just… I don’t know what to do.’

  Still, he was silent. Just like he’d been that night at the Tip, and on the boardwalk. The sick part was that I knew he wouldn’t answer, but still insisted on talking to him anyway. Which was so not like me, as I was the one who usually –

  ‘Well,’ he said suddenly, taking me by surprise yet again, ‘there’s always the elevator.’

  I just looked at him. ‘The elevator?’

  In response, he bent down and unhitched Thisbe from the stroller. Before I could stop him – and I was pretty sure I should stop him – he’d taken her out, lifting her up into his arms. My first thought was that this was the last thing I’d expected him to do. The second was how amazingly at ease he seemed with her, more than me and my dad and even Heidi, combined.

  ‘This,’ he said, turning her so she was facing out (still screaming, of course), his hands wrapped around her midsection, legs dangling down and kicking wildly, ‘is the elevator.’ And then he bent his legs, easing down, and straightened them, then repeated it, once, twice, three times. By the fourth, she abruptly stopped her protests, a weird look of calm spreading over her face.

  I just stood there, looking at him. Who was this guy? Sullen stranger? Trick biker? Baby whisperer? Or –

  ‘Eli!’ Heidi said, suddenly appearing behind him. ‘I thought that was you.’

  The guy glanced at her, then flushed, but only barely, and briefly. ‘H
ey,’ he said, stopping the elevator. Thisbe blinked, then burst into tears.

  ‘Oh, dear,’ Heidi said, reaching out to take her from him. To me she said, ‘Where’s your father?’

  ‘He got a table,’ I told her. ‘We were about to sit down when she started to freak out.’

  ‘She’s probably hungry,’ Heidi said, glancing at her watch. Thisbe wailed louder, over her shoulder, while I glanced at the guy – Eli – trying to process what I’d just seen. ‘What a day! You would not believe the mess I have to deal with at work. The checkbook is all out of order, somehow I missed a deposit or something, thank God the girls are so understanding. I mean, it’s not like their paychecks are for huge amounts, but still, they work hard, and…’

  Between this soliloquy and the baby melting down, not to mention Eli witnessing it all, I could literally feel my temperature rising. Why did she have to make everything such a big deal?

  ‘I better get back to the shop,’ he said to Heidi. ‘Congratulations, by the way.’

  ‘Oh, Eli, you’re so sweet, thank you,’ she replied, jiggling the baby. ‘And I’m so glad you met Auden! She’s new here, hardly knows a soul, and I was hoping she’d find someone to introduce her around.’

  I felt my face flush even hotter; of course she had to make it sound like I was desperate for company. Which was why I barely responded as Eli nodded at me before crossing the boardwalk and pushing the door open to the bike shop, disappearing inside.

  ‘Thisbe, sweetheart, it’s okay,’ Heidi was saying, oblivious to all this as she strapped the baby back into the stroller. To me she added, ‘It’s so great you and Eli are friends!’

  ‘We’re not,’ I said. ‘We don’t even really know each other.’

  ‘Oh.’ She looked over at the bike shop, as if it would confirm this, then back at me. ‘Well, he is really sweet. His brother, Jake, is about your age, I think. He went out with Maggie until just recently. Awful breakup, that was. She’s still reeling from it.’

  His brother? I thought, my face flushing. How small was this freaking town, anyway? And Heidi was still talking.

  ‘Should we go back to the restaurant?’ she asked me. ‘Or maybe I should take Thisbe home, she’s so upset. What do you think? I mean, I’d love a dinner out, but I wonder –’

  ‘I don’t,’ I said, the words coming even as I knew I should bite them back, ‘I don’t know what you should do. Okay? All I know is that I’m hungry, and I want to go eat with my father. So that’s what I’m going to do, if it’s all right with you.’

  I could see her draw in a breath as a hurt look spread across her face. ‘Oh,’ she said after a moment. ‘Well, sure. Of course.’

  I knew I’d been mean. I knew it, and yet I still turned and walked away, leaving her and the baby, still crying, behind me. But I could have sworn the sound followed me, hanging on, filling my ears even through the crowd on the boardwalk, into the restaurant, all the way down the narrow aisle to the table where my dad was already eating. He took a look at my face, then pushed a menu over to me as I slid into the booth across from him.

  ‘Just relax,’ he said. ‘It’s Friday night.’

  Right, I thought. Of course. And when the onion rings arrived a few minutes later, I tried to do just that. But for some reason, they didn’t taste the same this time. Still good. But not great like before.

  I knew from experience when a fight was over and when it had only just begun. So I stayed gone after dinner, taking a walk on the beach and the longest way home. Not long enough, though: as I climbed the porch steps two hours later, I could hear them.

  ‘– understand what you want from me. You asked me to stop working and come to dinner. I did that. And you’re still not happy.’

  ‘I wanted us to all have dinner together!’

  ‘And we would have, if you hadn’t left to go to the store. That was your choice.’

  I dropped my hand from the doorknob, stepping back out of the porch light. From the sound of it, this was happening just inside, and the last thing I wanted was to walk into the middle of it.

  ‘I just wish…’ Heidi said, her voice cracking.

  Then, nothing. The silence was almost unbearable, broken only when my dad said, ‘You just wish what.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I just… I thought you’d want to spend more time with us.’

  ‘I’m here all the time, Heidi,’ my dad said, his voice flat.

  ‘Yes, but you’re in your office. You’re not with Thisbe, interacting with her. You don’t rock her or get up with her…’

  ‘We discussed this as soon as you got pregnant,’ my dad told her, his voice rising. ‘I told you I cannot function on broken sleep, that I have to get my nine hours. You knew that.’

  ‘Okay, but you could take her during the day, or in the morning so I could deal with work stuff. Or even –’

  ‘Have we not discussed,’ my dad said, ‘how important it is that I finish the book this summer? That I can’t do the work I need to do during the academic year, and this is my only chance to work uninterrupted?’

  ‘Yes, of course, but –’

  ‘Which is why,’ he continued, talking over her, ‘I said let’s hire a nanny. Or a babysitter. But you didn’t want to.’

  ‘I don’t need a nanny. I just need an hour here or there.’

  ‘So ask Auden! Isn’t that why you wanted her to come visit?’

  I literally felt like I’d been slapped: my reaction was that visceral, blood rushing to my face.

  ‘I didn’t invite Auden so she’d babysit,’ she said.

  ‘Then why is she here?’

  Another silence followed. This one I welcomed, though, as sometimes a question can hurt more than an answer. Finally Heidi said, ‘For the same reason I want you to spend time with the baby. Because she’s your daughter, and you should want to be with her.’

  ‘Oh, Jesus,’ my dad said. ‘Do you really think –’

  There was more coming, of course there was. My dad never said a sentence when he could go on for a paragraph. But this time, I couldn’t stand to hear it. So I dug my keys out of my pocket and got into my car.

  I stayed gone for three hours, driving up and down the streets of Colby, circling up to the college, down to the pier, then back again. It was too small a place to really get lost in, but I did my best. And when I pulled back into the driveway, I made sure all the lights were out in the house before I even thought about going inside.

  It was quiet as I stepped into the foyer, shutting the door behind me. At least there was no sign of major disturbances: the stroller was parked by the stairs, a burp cloth folded over the banister, my dad’s keys sitting on the table by the door. The only thing different was the kitchen table, which was now piled with Heidi’s business checkbook, various stacks of paper, and a couple of legal pads. On one of them, she’d clearly been trying to figure out what had happened with accounts. ‘WITHHOLDING?’ she’d written, as well as ‘DEPOSIT 6-11?’ and ‘CHECK ALL DEBITS SINCE APRIL, ERRORS?’ From the looks of it – messy, sort of desperate – she hadn’t gotten very far.

  Looking down at the mess of papers, I had a flash of her hurt face after I’d snapped at her, as well as what she’d said later to my dad about me. It was so unexpected to have her in my corner, defending me. Even more shocking was how grateful I’d felt, if only fleetingly, to find her there.

  I glanced at my watch: it was twelve fifteen, early by my clock, with a full night still ahead of me. And the coffeemaker was right there on the counter, already filled for the morning and ready to go. It wasn’t Ray’s, but it would do. So I turned, hitting the button, and as it began to brew, I sat down with Heidi’s checkbook, flipping it open, and went looking for what she’d lost.

  Chapter

  FIVE

  ‘Hey, Aud. It’s me! What’s going on?’

  My brother’s voice, loud and cheerful, boomed through my cell phone, a loud bass beat behind it. I was sure that Hollis did spend some of his time in place
s other than bars, but he never seemed to call me from any of them.

  ‘Not much,’ I said, glancing at my watch. It was eight thirty P.M. my time, which meant well past midnight at his. ‘Just getting ready to go to work.’

  ‘Work?’ he said, saying the word like it was from another language. Which, to him, it sort of was. ‘I thought you were supposed to be having a lazy summer, just hanging out at the beach.’

  I was sure it was no coincidence he’d put it like this, almost verbatim the way my mother had described it during our last conversation: if Hollis was able to spin my mom’s thinking any way he wanted, she had similar influence over his own. Their connection was almost eerie, really, a bond that was so strong you could almost feel it, like a tidal pull, when they were together. My mother claimed it was the result of all those nights they spent together when he was a baby, but I wondered if it was just that Hollis had a way with women, starting with the first one he’d ever known.

  ‘Well,’ I said now, as the music grew louder, then dropped off again behind him, ‘I didn’t plan on working, actually. It just sort of happened.’

  ‘That sucks!’ he said. ‘Drop your guard, and stuff like that will sneak up on you. You gotta stay vigilant, you know?’

  I knew. In truth, though, this latest situation was no surprise. If anything, I’d walked right into it, eyes wide open. I had no one to blame but myself.

  ‘I can’t believe it!’ Heidi had said when I came down the day after I’d worked on her books. As always, she was in the kitchen, lying in wait, the baby strapped to her in the Baby-Björn. ‘When I went to bed last night, this was all such a mess, and then this morning, it’s… it’s fixed. You’re a miracle worker! How did you even know how to do all that?’