Chapter 15

I visited Mom again over the weekend. It started out okay, but it didn’t end that way. We drove up into the mountains to see the leaves. That part was okay, beautiful but sort of boring. Maybe Mom thought so, too. She started yawning, these really huge jaw breakers. Then I started. “It’s catching,” I said.

“I didn’t have that much sleep last night,” Mom said.

“How come?”

“Oh, I went to a movie with a friend.”

I waited, but she didn’t say anything else. It was strange thinking that my mother had friends I didn’t know. Was it that Danny who called her the last time I visited? “Late movie?” I said.

“No, not that so much. Just, we got into this big argument about one of the characters in the movie, and—” She yawned again. “Oh, my! I better get some coffee in the next place we come to.”

That was a little mountain village called High Bridge. It was hardly even a village, about a dozen houses, plus a church and a general store. No coffee, so Mom bought a candy bar. “A quick sugar fix.” I bought a candy bar, too, and an ice cream sandwich.

“So how’s Flower?” Mom said when we got back in the car.

“Who?”

“Your father’s little girlfriend.”

“Mom. Her name is Forrest. And she’s just a friend friend.”

“Okay.”

“Plus, she’s not little. She’s taller than Dad. Like you.” I don’t know why, but my voice went squeaky and weird.

“Ami? Are you feeling sort of worried about your dad and, uh, Forrest?”

I shrugged and bit into the ice cream bar. My throat felt so tight, I didn’t think the ice cream would go down.

“Sweetie,” Mom said. I was sure she was going to give me a lecture, tell me stuff like I shouldn’t panic just because she and Dad had new friends. But all she did was squeeze my hand.

In the next little town, Mom got her coffee and we toured the Fletcher Museum. It cost fifty cents to go in. It was really somebody’s house with all the original Fletcher family’s things still in it. There was a cast iron stove in the kitchen and a hole in the floor where they drew up water from the cistern in the cellar.

We went up a narrow staircase. There were three bedrooms with little pine chests and old brass beds covered with quilts. There were old-fashioned dresses hanging on the wall and cracked bowls on the pine chests. Little cards were attached to everything. SOLID CHERRY WOOD DESK, HAND HEWN AND HAND CARVED FOR ABIGAIL FLETCHER, AN ELEVENTH BIRTHDAY PRESENT FROM HER PARENTS.… THIS QUILT WAS HANDMADE FOR ABIGAIL FLETCHER BY HER MOTHER, NANCY MONROE FLETCHER.

It was sad to think of all the people who had lived here and were dead now. Downstairs, in the hall, there were pictures of the Fletcher family. I looked at Abigail Fletcher’s picture for a long time. She was wearing old-fashioned clothes and her hair was in long braids tied with white ribbons but, otherwise, she was almost Mia’s double. She looked more like Mia than Stacey did. I called my mother. “Mom, look at this. Who does this remind you of?”

She put on her glasses. “Who?”

“It’s Mia,” I said. “Abigail looks exactly like Mia.”

“Does she?” She looked again. “Maybe I’ve forgotten what Mia looks like.”

How could she say that? How could Mom forget what Mia looked like? Was she going to forget what I looked like next?

All the way back to New Castle, going down the twisting mountain roads, I thought about the Fletchers and how their house and all their furniture was still the same, still right where it had always been. If somebody could bring Abigail and her parents back to life today, they could walk into their house, know where everything was, and have everything the way they’d always had it. Then I thought, Mom could do that, too, if she wanted to. We hadn’t changed anything. The only thing different in the house was that she wasn’t there.

“Mom. When are you going to come home?”

She looked at me, then back at the road. “Ami, it’s not my home anymore.” When she said that, I wished I hadn’t said anything.

That night, right after we ate, Mom opened the couch and made up the bed. “You go ahead and watch TV,” she said. “I’m really wiped out, I’m going to sleep, hon.”

I sat up late. I’d watch the screen for a while, then I’d fade out, thinking about Abigail Fletcher living in that little house with her parents, writing at a desk her father made for her, sleeping under a quilt her mother made for her. Then I’d remember how Mom said, It’s not my home anymore.

I must have fallen asleep, sitting on the edge of the bed. When I opened my eyes, there was a horror movie on TV. A woman was being chased by a mad strangler.

Mom woke up. “Ami, what are you watching?” She looked at it for a few minutes, yawning and rubbing her eyes. “What a disgusting movie! I hate these movies where women are always being shown as the victims. What can people be thinking of when they make this trash?” Then she lay down and went back to sleep. I sat up, watching right to the end, even though I hated it. Then, all night, I had terrifying nightmares.

The next morning it was raining, but we couldn’t go out, anyway, because Mom had work to do. She sat cross-legged on the couch with a pile of papers next to her.

I read for a while, then just hung around, looking out the window, wishing it would stop raining and that the time would pass, so I could go home. I was tired, but there was no place to take a nap. I yawned all the way to the bus station.

“Did you get enough sleep, hon?” Mom said.

“I didn’t get any sleep.” As soon as I said it, I really felt like crying. “I had horrible nightmares all night.”

Mom pulled into a parking space. “Was it that awful movie?”

“Yes.” I got out of the car and put on my knapsack. “Why did you let me watch it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Just what I said.” I walked over to my bus.

Mom came up behind me. “Ami.” She grabbed me by the shoulder. “Why did you let yourself watch it?” She pulled me around, right out of the line. “You watched it, I didn’t.”

“You should have stopped me.”

“Why?” she said. “Don’t you have any responsibility for yourself?”

“You know why. Because you’re my mother! Or have you forgotten that, too?” I pulled away and ran up the steps into the bus.