*
NEXT, MY PARENTS showed up at the door—with a top-of-the-line wheelchair with a bow on it. Literally: a bow. Like I’d just turned sixteen and they’d bought me a convertible.
I just stared. “This is the worst best present ever.”
My dad came over for one of his signature hugs. “The titanium was developed by NASA,” he said. “It has razor-thin inverted wheels, like all the basketball players use.”
“Dammit,” I said. “Now I have to join a basketball team.” I thought about Pop-A-Shot with Ian, and wondered if I just might.
My dad wanted to walk me through all its features and do a little demo, but I shut that right down.
“He loves that thing,” my mother said. “Spent all day yesterday scooting around in it.”
My dad rubbed one of his shoulders and confirmed, “Arms are a little sore.”
They were both so excited. My mother loved its compactness—how trim it was. “From just the right angle,” she said, “you can barely tell there’s a chair there at all.”
“So I’ll just look like I’m weirdly floating down the street with my legs bent?”
But she pooh-poohed me. “You know what I mean.”
Everyone was civil. Everyone was elegantly polite. You’d never even know that we’d all just bounced back from being estranged. And then something weird happened: Just before Kit headed to the airport with my dad, she stepped in to hug my mom good-bye.
And my mom just didn’t let go.
How long does a normal hug last? Five seconds? This one went on for five minutes. So long that Kit wound up opening her eyes to look at me like, What the heck?
Nobody said anything, either. We just stood there, in silence, and let it happen.
It was the first hug my mom and Kit had shared in years.
When my mom finally let go, there were tears on her cheeks. She wiped them away and turned to my dad. “She’s going to need something to eat in the airport.”
My dad sensed what was coming. He looked at his watch. “You’re sending me to the sandwich shop?”
This was becoming her signature thing. Sending him for sandwiches. Especially when she wanted to have girl talks.
My dad shook his head. “We don’t have time.”
“We do!” my mother said.
Kit nodded then. “Actually, we have plenty of time.”
My dad looked at my mother like, Really? Then he sighed, set down Kit’s suitcase, and headed out—while Kit and I frowned at each other.
My mother watched him go, and only after he’d boarded the elevator at the end of the hall did she turn around to face us. Her expression was solemn. She took a deep breath and swallowed. Then she closed the door and took a step toward Kit.
“His name,” she said, “was Derin Buruk.”
Kit held her breath. She glanced at me, then back at my mother, who glanced back at the door, as if confirming the coast was clear.
“He was Turkish. An exchange student. Devastatingly handsome. Black hair and green eyes rimmed with black lashes. He showed up on our first day of senior year, and he was all any girl could talk about for months. I didn’t talk about him. I ignored him. I was dating your dad—since ninth grade—and I wasn’t looking for dates, but I couldn’t help but notice him. He had a movie star quality. He was magnetic. And for some reason, he fixated on me. He passed me notes, flirted with me in the hallways, snuck flowers into my locker. I told him over and over to knock it off, but he said he couldn’t. He stared at me constantly in the cafeteria and at football games. He called me almost daily. He professed love—obsessive love—and begged me to break up with your dad and go out with him.”
I looked at my mother’s hands. They were trembling.
“Turkish men are famously persistent,” she went on, “did you know that? They are very determined about love. Your dad—your wonderful dad, the love of my life—he’s not really like that. That steadiness, that easygoing nature—they don’t lend themselves to mad passion. He was kind, he was good-hearted, but he was also a high school boy. He got a lot wrong. He knew next to nothing about romance, or wooing, or how to make a woman flutter. We were the best of friends. But I had never come up against a force like Derin. I had no defenses. I did my best. I pushed him away and pushed him away, but he just kept coming back—harder and stronger. The truth was, I liked it. I liked that he noticed me. I liked that of all the girls in love with him, I was the one he chose. I never understood why he picked me. I still don’t know why.”
My mom looked very shaky. I patted the bed down by my knees. “Come sit down.”
Absentmindedly, she did. “That year,” she went on, “over Christmas vacation, your father went away to visit family. He was gone for a week. Somehow, Derin heard that he was gone, and he started climbing the tree outside my window at night and tapping on the pane. I turned him away two times, but on the third night, he said he was leaving to go home soon, and he had to tell me something before he left.” She closed her eyes. “God forgive me. I let him in.
“For the rest of the week, I let him in every time he knocked. He would stay until just before dawn, and then sneak away. The night before your father returned to town, I forbade Derin to ever come back—and he never did.”
“What did he need to tell you?” I asked.
My mom frowned. “You know what? I don’t remember.”
Kit let out a long sigh.
“When school started up again,” my mom went on, “Derin had gone back to Istanbul. I never saw him again. By spring break, I had figured out that I was pregnant, and by summer your dad had figured it out, too. He assumed the baby was his, and I didn’t correct him. It could have been. He was so happy about it. He proposed, and I accepted, and I pretended that Derin Buruk never existed.”
“Until I had my blood tested,” Kitty said.
My mom shook her head. “Until the moment I first saw you. Right then, I knew.”
“Do you hate him? The guy?” Kit asked then.
“No,” my mom said. “I don’t hate him. Not anymore.”
“Do you hate me?”
“No!” my mother said.
“But when you look at me, do you see him?”
“Sometimes. You got his eyelashes.”
“You always said they were Huron.”
My mom gave a little sorry shrug.
“Does it make you feel guilty?”
“Sometimes. Or afraid.”
Kitty nodded. “That Dad might find out and not love me anymore.”
My mom shook her head. “That he might find out and not love me anymore.”
I nodded at Kit. “You never did anything wrong.”
My mom agreed. “He’s adored you from day one.”
“Mom is a little trickier.”
My mom let out a nervous laugh.
“Well, he’s not going to find out,” Kit said then, looking at me.
Was it morally wrong to collude against him? I didn’t really care right then. “I’ll never tell.”
“Neither will I.”
My mom looked physically deflated now, as if releasing all those secrets had emptied her out. She kept her eyes on Kit.
“You’re kind of his favorite, you know,” I said.
“I know,” Kit said. “Just barely.”
“He always took your side over Mom’s.”
“I know.”
“I’m glad for that,” our mom said. “I’m glad you had each other.”
Then, in the little pause that followed, we heard a voice out in the hallway, just outside the room.
“Can I help you with something, sir?” a voice asked.
At first, there was no reply, but then a man cleared his throat. “No,” he said. “No. I just … forgot my keys.”
My mom’s eyes went wide. Because it was Dad.
The nurse bustled on past him into the room, leaving the door open behind her, and all three of us turned to see my dad, frozen still at the threshold of the door, eyes not quite focused, gazing uncomprehendingly in our direction.
“I’m so sorry,” he said after a minute, a little breathless, his face blank with shock. “I came back to get the car keys. But I found myself eavesdropping instead.”
Twenty-four
MY MOTHER RAN to him, a sob like I’d never heard escaping her throat, but he blocked her and stepped back.