“Dad—” I began to say, hating that he was blaming himself for being a loving father and a devoted husband, but he just put his hand up.
“Just let me get all this out, okay? I’m not trying to excuse your mom, and I know you’ll still hate her when I’m done talking, but . . . she really did love you, Dee. She just didn’t know how to love you. She tried and tried to be who she thought she should be, but over the years I think she just . . . she just lost herself.”
“There’s no excuse for walking out on your eleven-year-old child, Dad,” I said, stern in my convictions in spite of everything he said.
“No, there’s not,” he agreed. “And I guess that’s why I can’t hate her. I feel sorry for her, Dee.” His almond eyes became glassy, and he stared across the counter at me. “Because look at the beautiful woman you’ve become, and she missed it.”
When we met each other at the side of the bar and hugged, I wasn’t sure who was being strong for who. Maybe we were being strong for each other. Like we’ve always been.
“You alive over there?” Rowan asks, pulling me from the memory.
“Yeah.”
“Sure you don’t want IHOP?”
“Yeah . . . I just want to go home.”
Over the entire week, I spend my days wanting to ask her a single question that dare not be spoken: Is this how you felt when you broke up with Brady?
I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I make T-shirts for the band’s website, but I don’t enjoy it. I’m a robot—I go to classes, I suffer through homework, and all of it hurts.
I don’t hear from Joel, but neither does anyone else. He’s a ghost, haunting me with his absence through a phone that never rings. On Friday, after he skips out on the the band’s first practice with Kit, Rowan threatens to file a Missing Persons Report and he finally texts her back. But all he says is that he’s fine, and he refuses to say where he is. I spend my nights imagining the girls he’s with, the ways they might look, the ways he might touch them. I wonder how long it will take him to forget me, but then on Saturday afternoon, my phone rings and Rowan is on the other end. “They think he might be at his mom’s.”
“His mom’s?” I ask, the memory of my own voice echoing in my ears.
Go home, Joel.
“Yeah. The guys are leaving to go check.”
“Stall them,” I say, already grabbing my keys and heading for the front door of my apartment.
“Why?”
“Because I’m coming.”
It’s my fault that Joel is there, and it’s my responsibility to bring him back. I pull my car into the parking lot of Adam’s apartment complex just as he and the rest of the guys are walking out of the building. I park next to his topless Camaro and hurry out of my car. “I’m coming with you.”
Shawn, who doesn’t look at all surprised to see me, just shakes his head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“It might be . . .” Adam offers. He puts his cigarette out under the toe of his shoe and climbs into the driver’s seat, waiting for Shawn and me to figure out what we’re doing.
I climb into the back with Mike, challenging Shawn to try to remove me.
“Dee,” he sighs, “you don’t know Joel’s mom.”
“I know enough.” I give him a meaningful look, and something passes between us. I’m trying to tell him I know about Joel’s mom. Even if I don’t know her, I know all I need to know. I know we need to bring him home.
Shawn hesitates, hearing my unspoken words, and then climbs into the passenger seat beside Adam.
An hour later, we turn onto the derelict road of Sunny Meadows trailer park.
If I were in my own car, I’d roll up my windows and lock my doors. But Adam rolls onto Dandelion Drive with his roof down and his radio blasting. People on porches turn their heads to follow us as we drive by, and I flip my shades down, sinking lower in my seat.
We park next to Joel’s brown clunker in the stony driveway of a rusted brown trailer with wind chimes hanging on the porch. Tulips hide in a neglected garden, choked out by overgrown grass and weeds.
“How is that dog not dead yet?” Adam asks of a one-eared mutt barking at us from the next yard. He picks a stick off the ground and throws it over the chain-link fence, frowning when the dog doesn’t chase it. I slide out of the car on Mike’s side to stay as far away from the dog as possible.
“Maybe you should wait in the car,” Shawn tells me, and I give him a look that asks if he seriously wants me to get murdered.
“Yeah, I don’t think so,” I say, and he rubs his eyebrow like a serious pain has taken root there. Then, without another word, he climbs the stairs to the trailer’s porch and knocks on the broken screen door. It clangs against the frame as I climb up behind him, each stair creaking under my weight.