Dad called that he would bring some things from the car, so Mom led me into the house, her right arm wrapped around my shoulders. “You’ll be upstairs in my old room,” she said, her squeeze tight and strange. My left arm hung awkwardly at her waist, not sure where to go.
“Where will you sleep?” I asked.
“I’ve been sleeping in your grandparents’ room, which I’ve finally got looking somewhat decent. You can use that bathroom in the morning—it’s got one of those rain forest shower heads.” Mom smiled at me, and I realized that she was nervous, maybe even as nervous as I was.
Dad came through the door behind us, a suitcase in each hand.
“What about Dad? Where’s he going to sleep?”
Mom looked apologetically at Dad. “I’ve been using the guest room as a workshop, and I didn’t have time to clear out Jeff’s room. Somehow he hasn’t managed to reclaim any of his five dozen basketball trophies, even though I’ve asked him a hundred times. So I guess the best place would be...”
“The basement,” Dad finished. “Wouldn’t have it any other way.”
I followed the glance that went between them, the hesitant smile. They hadn’t hugged or kissed a hello; there hadn’t been so much as a handshake. I remembered the basement, where Daniel and I had snuck away to mess around with piles of old furniture and boxes of yellowed papers. It was a step or two above a dog crate in the garage, but that was it.
“Let me grab a few more things,” Dad said, heading back outside.
Mom turned to me again, smiling brightly. “Well! I know you must be tired, but I made a pizza earlier and popped it into the oven when you called....”
“Great, I’m starving,” I said.
Dad came back with the stack of textbooks I’d packed nearly a week ago and promptly forgotten about.
“It’s not like I’m going to need those tonight,” I protested.
“Well, I don’t know what you’re going to need when. I’m just grabbing everything while I’m at it.”
“In that case, don’t forget the box of tampons in the glove box.”
Dad and Mom rolled their eyes simultaneously, and Mom laughed. It was a nice moment, our puppet strings relaxed just for a second, to give us a little room to improvise.
It was nearly one-thirty by the time I slid beneath the covers in Mom’s old room, exhausted even though I’d slept through most of our long drive. It was a relief to have our clumsy reunion out of the way. Mom had tried to kiss me good-night, which would have been fine, but it took me so completely off guard that she ended up brushing my shoulder with her lips instead. She’d mentioned school a few times, too, and Dad and I, by mutual consent, had changed the subject. Mom could find out about my failing P.E. grade later—or, hopefully, never.
Her room was the same as I remembered it from our previous visits, and probably the same as it had been when she was a girl. It was a relief to turn out the overhead light, blocking out the explosion of pale yellow and white, the curtains with eyelet trim, the ruffled bed skirt, the vanity with the attached curved mirror and a fancy three-piece comb set, better suited to girls in fairy tales who wanted to know who was the fairest of them all. “Ignore all that junk,” Mom had said, indicating a stack of boxes along one wall, each labeled in her block handwriting: BOOKS, DOLLS, GAMES, CLOTHES.
I leaned against the headboard, the bedside lamp on, my journal open in my lap. We’d made it, we’d somehow survived the whole crazy trip despite approximately seven million things that could have gone wrong, and here we were. Why did it feel so anticlimactic? Had I expected my parents to take one look at each other and fall into each other’s arms with declarations of love? Did I think the romance would be instantly rekindled when they had spent the past three years not even speaking to each other? No—I hadn’t expected it, but I’d allowed myself to hope. Stupid, stupid girl. They had been about as passionate as two acquaintances bumping into each other at a Costco. Oh, hello. Didn’t we used to know each other?
And then Dad, lugging in every single thing from the Explorer as if he couldn’t sleep easy with my empty Sprite can in the console. While I devoured half the pizza and listened to Mom ramble on about all the changes she’d made to the house—the old wallpaper steamed off, the new chair rail in the dining room, the repainted cabinets, the butcher block countertops—Dad had wandered back and forth, carting my suitcase upstairs and his downstairs. Sit down! Talk to us! I wanted to command him, but he seemed restless, like he couldn’t find a comfortable place to relax. After the twelve hours of driving he’d done that day, I felt a little guilty relegating him to the basement on that ancient pull-out couch with the flimsy mattress.
I’d left them sitting at the kitchen table with the few remaining slices of pizza. With any luck, Dad would come clean all on his own about his rooftop crack-up, and I’d be spared the task of telling anything to Mom.
If not, I’d have to get her alone tomorrow for a serious talk, the one I’d refused to have over the phone. I had to tell her about Dad on the roof of the Rio cafeteria, and how I’d seen my whole life flash before my eyes—or if not my life, then his. I would tell her how scared I’d been, how scared I still was, and how she needed to fix things, because it was completely out of my control, and I was sick of doing the worrying for all of us.
And of course, I’d have to tell her about the bullets, too.
Tomorrow, I promised myself. Tomorrow everything would get figured out.