Something must’ve been really, horribly wrong. I took off down the block faster than I’d ever run in my life. When I banged through the front door, my breath was caught in my throat and my heart was pounding in my chest. “Mom!” I screamed. “MOM!”
An unfamiliar man’s voice came from the living room: “She’s here.”
Mom ran out. She said my name, “Chloe,” so soft like it was part of her breath. She pulled me toward her and clutched me tight. I had to push her away a little, because I couldn’t really breathe.
“Give her some air,” another voice said, a woman’s this time. When Mom released me, there were two officers standing in the front hall with us. Mom was crying. She wiped her nose with the back of her hand, something I’d never seen her do. She used to hate when I did that, when I was little. She always said, “That’s what tissues are for, sweetheart.”
“Where have you been?” Mom asked. Her eyes were glowing with anger, and when I glanced over at the police officers, they were looking at me sternly, too. I realized when the officer had said “she’s here,” he hadn’t been talking to me about Mom; he’d been talking to Mom about me.
There was a beep of a walkie-talkie, and the woman officer lifted it to her mouth and said, “The subject is home. We’re coming back in.”
“Oh my God, Mom,” I said. “I forgot to call you.”
“You sure did.” Her voice had taken on a low tone I’d never heard before. “I was in a meeting with Regan, and I called Mrs. Wallace as soon as I realized you hadn’t called. She came over here, and didn’t find you. So I called school. I called your friends. Lucy said you’d gone home upset.”
“Did you call Monroe’s? I was there for a while.”
“There was no answer at Monroe’s house, or on her cell. I raced home.”
“You left work early?”
“What do you expect me to do when you’re missing?” Mom asked rhetorically. “The kitchen was a mess.”
“I was going to clean it up.”
“I worried someone had burst in here and taken you. I’ve just been here, waiting and imagining every awful thing that could possibly have happened to you.” Her voice cracked, and that brought tears back to my own eyes. I wiped my own nose with my hand.
“Mom, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” I said. I turned to the officers. “I’m sorry,” I whispered to them.
“I trust you won’t forget to call your mother again,” the man said.
“I won’t,” I said, sniffling. “Not ever. I promise.”
“Call your father,” Mom told me. “He’s been worried sick.”
“Is he home?”
She shook her head. “Call his cell.”
“I guess he’s not that worried then,” I said, more to myself than to Mom.
“What?” she asked.
“I just mean, if he’s on his cell then he’s out somewhere, probably with Gloria—I mean, probably with his friends.”
“He’s been driving all over town looking for you,” Mom said. “Go to your room and call him. I’ll be up when . . . I’ll be up when I can breathe again.”
I went upstairs and dialed Dad’s number. He answered with an anxious, “Any word?”
“Dad,” I said. “It’s me.”
There was a choking sound, and silence for a couple seconds. Then Dad said, “Chloe. My God. Where have you been?”
“I was at my friend Monroe’s,” I said. “I swear I’ll never go anywhere without calling you or Mom ever again.”
“You bet you won’t,” Dad said.
“Did you have to leave work, too?”
“I left as soon as your mom called,” he said. “I have two patients who have to wait another day, in pain, for their root canals.”
“When you see them tomorrow will you tell them I said sorry?”
“I will,” Dad said. “And when I see you tomorrow, we’ll discuss your punishment.”
“I didn’t mean to do it,” I said.
“I know,” he told me.
The line clicked. “Jim?” Mom said.
“Hi, Emily,” Dad said.
“Chloe, say good-bye to your father and do your homework,” Mom told me.
“’Bye, Dad,” I said.
I hung up and pulled my math and English notebooks out of my backpack and sat at my desk. But knowing you scared your parents so much that they cried doesn’t exactly put you in the mood to do any work. After a while I stood up and lifted Captain Carrot out of his cage. I sat on the floor and held him close as I imagined Mom imagining all the awful things that could have happened. My tears fell on his soft head.
Eventually, Mom knocked on the door, and peeked her head in. “All right,” she said. “I think I’m ready to talk now.”
“I’m sorry,” I told her again. “It will never happen again.”
“I know it won’t. But just to make sure, Dad and I are grounding you.”
I’d never been grounded before. But I’d never done anything to deserve it. Mom sat on the floor next to me. Our backs were against my bed. I set Captain Carrot on the floor. We watched him hop around the carpet for a few minutes, and then Mom shifted and put her arm around me. I leaned my head against her shoulder. If I were any smaller, I probably would’ve climbed into her lap. But being next to her, this close, was almost as good. I was still crying a little bit, but it was a good kind of cry, the kind where you’re relieved that everything is going to be all right.
Mom had her other hand on my hand, and she squeezed. “Are you okay?” I asked her.
“I am now,” she said, squeezing my hand again. “Those couple of hours of not knowing where you were—those were probably the hardest parenting hours I’ve ever had.”
“Harder than when I split my chin ice-skating and needed nine stitches?”
“I hated seeing you in pain,” Mom said. “But I knew a bad cut wouldn’t kill you.”
“Harder than when you and Dad told me about the split?”
“That was a hard day,” she said. “This was worse.”
“And when we moved away from Dorr Road?”
“We always had each other, you and me,” she said.
“And Captain Carrot, too.”
“Of course, Captain Carrot,” she said, and she reached out a hand to pat his back. “I know the last few months haven’t been easy for you, Chloe. You’ve been so good about it.”
“Except today,” I said.
“Today was not your finest hour,” Mom agreed. “And it just wasn’t like you. Did something happen?”
I shook my head. But then I said, “Actually, yeah, a bunch of things did.”
“Do you want to tell me about it?”
I hadn’t wanted to, but now suddenly I did. I told her about the Kindness Club patches, and Monroe and the It Girls, and how it was impossible to be kind to everyone, but I’d made cookies because I’d wanted to try. “I didn’t tell you everything when it was happening, because I didn’t want to make you upset,” I told her. “I wanted to be perfect.”
“Oh, Chloe,” Mom said. “I’m sorry you felt like you couldn’t talk to me. You can. You always can. You don’t need to be perfect. But you have to let me know what’s going on.”
“It’s not like you could change anything,” I said.
“That’s true,” Mom said. “But sometimes it feels better to talk things out, don’t you think?”
“It feels better to talk things out with you,” I said. “I’m so lucky you’re my mom. I’m sorry about today.”
“So you’ve said. A few times.”
“Well, I’m sorry a million more times. I’m sorry that you worried so much, and I’m sorry you had to talk to Dad. You guys can go back to not speaking again.”
“We were never not speaking.”
“Sure you were.”
“Chloe, you’re our child. We’re your parents together. We’ll always be on speaking terms.”
“But you made me ask Dad for the check.”
Mom gave a hard nod. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
“It’s okay. I knew you didn’t want to,” I said. “And I want to be kind to you.”
Mom let go of my hand to rub out an invisible stain on her slacks. “Is that why Dad thought you were angry at him? Because you had to ask him for the check?”
“Dad said I was angry with him?”
“He said you’d gotten upset at dinner last night, and you hadn’t spoken to him on the ride home. He worried that had something to do with you making cookies and disappearing.”
“Dad was here? Inside the house?”
“Chloe, you were missing. Of course he was here. The only reason he wasn’t here when you got home was because he was looking for you. I would’ve been out looking, too. But the police felt it was important for one of us to stay home.”
“Oh.”
“So why were you angry at your dad?”
“He was angry at me.”
“I got that much from him,” Mom said. “Are you going to tell me why?”
Captain Carrot was nibbling the sole of my shoe, and I pulled him back into my lap. “Dad has a new girlfriend,” I mumbled into the rabbit’s fur.
“What?”
I lifted my head. “He has a girlfriend,” I repeated.
“Gloria,” Mom said.
“Yes,” I said. “How did you know?”
“I’ve known your dad a long time,” she said. “It wasn’t hard to figure out.”
“But did you figure out that Gloria’s daughter Sage has a dad that lives a few thousand miles away, and that my dad has kind of stepped in and he just loves her.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“It’s true,” I said. “But I hate her. Gloria, too.”
“I’ve never heard you say you hated anyone,” Mom said.
“There are people I hate,” I told her. “Like, I hate Hitler, and I hate the guy who was the dictator in Russia that Uncle Russell once told me about.”
“Stalin?” Mom asked.
“Yeah, him.”
“I’ve never met Gloria or Sage,” Mom said. “So I’m not speaking from personal experience here. But I do suspect it’s probably not fair to lump them in with Hitler or Stalin.”
“Okay, so they never killed anyone,” I said. “At least not that I know of. It’s just . . .”
“What?”
“It seems dumb now,” I said. “But Gloria sits in your old seat. Well, not really your old seat because it’s a new table. But it’s exactly where you would sit. And Sage sits in my seat, and she’s always bragging about everything she can do, like her perfect dives, and being in the school play. So I was mean to her about how she can’t eat bread.”
“Sage is the one with celiac?” Mom asked.
I nodded. “It’s not that I actually care so much about what we eat at Dad’s,” I said. “But sometimes I think he forgets what it was like when we were all together.” I paused, and took a long breath. “Sometimes I think I’m forgetting it myself.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” Mom said. “I understand exactly what you’re saying. Yesterday I noticed the lightbulb in the upstairs hall was out, and I climbed up on a chair to replace it, and it didn’t occur to me until afterward that I hadn’t changed a lightbulb since before I married your dad, because he was the tall one.”
“That’s what I mean,” I said. “He reached the high things, and cooked dinner, and you knew everyone’s schedule, and made sure I cleaned my room. Now it’s all mixed up.”
“I think it’s a sign that we’re growing,” Mom said. “I felt good about changing that lightbulb.”
“I still wish Dad were here to do it,” I said.
“I know it’s harder now, Chloe. Maybe it’ll always feel a little bit that way. But what you were saying before, about forgetting. I think that means it’s starting to be okay. I think that means that this new life is feeling normal. And I want that for you. I want it for me too.”
“I do, too,” I said.
“I’m glad we’re talking about this,” Mom said. “I think you should talk to Dad, too.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. It all just feels . . . I don’t know. Do you think he’d still be married to you if you liked the way he sang?”
“No one likes the way your father sings,” Mom said.
“But what about if you cooked with him, like Gloria does?”
“No, I don’t,” Mom said. “Honestly I don’t. The thing about being married—it’s much bigger than what anyone makes for dinner. It’s more than I could ever describe. Being married to your dad, well, it was like taking a really big trip—parts were magical, and parts were tough, but I wouldn’t change it. Especially since I came home with the best souvenir.”
“What was that?” I asked.
She pulled her arm back from behind me and twisted around to face me, and put her arms on my shoulders. “You,” Mom said. “You.”
I smiled. “Kind of like a bright side?”
“Kind of like all the stars in the sky put together,” she told me. “I’ll never make you ask for the check again. Not that your dad minds paying for these things. He doesn’t, and I don’t, either. It’s a pleasure for us to share expenses for you, because we love you so much and there’s no one else in the world we’d rather spend our money on. But it’s not your job to be kind to me that way, and I’ll be better about what I ask of you from now on, okay?”
“Okay.”
“And I hope you feel better about telling me what you’re thinking.”
“I do,” I said.
“Good. Now. Is there anything else you want to talk about?”
“Do you know if there are cookies that people with celiac can eat?”
“There sure are,” Mom said. “I can get a recipe from Lori in Dad’s office.”
“You’re still in touch with her?”
“Occasionally.”
“Could you get the recipe now, then?” I asked. “And can we go to the supermarket? I know I’m grounded, but couldn’t this be an exception?”
“Well,” Mom started.
“And can I borrow money?” I added. “I used it up on the ingredients for the cookies I made today.”
“You spent all your money from Grandma on cookie ingredients? What did you put in them—gold?”
“The pants I bought with Monroe were pretty expensive,” I admitted. “Ninety-nine dollars. Plus tax.”
“Oh, Chloe,” Mom said. “You’re ten years old. You know I don’t want to tell you what to do with your own money, but you certainly don’t need hundred-dollar pants. I’m forty-two, and I don’t need pants that expensive.”
“I know,” I said. “But it was important to Monroe. She wanted us to be pants twins.”
“You shouldn’t have to pay your way into friendships, sweetheart.”
“I don’t have to pay for anything else,” I told her. “I’m in the It Girls now. And if you loan me the money for the gluten-free ingredients, I’ll pay you back, I promise. You don’t have to give me an allowance until I do. Please?”
Mom glanced at the books on my desk. “Did you finish your homework?”
“Not exactly,” I said. “I’ve been, you know, pretty distracted.”
“Do your homework,” Mom told me. “I’ll loan you money, and we can go on the way to Dad’s house tomorrow night.”