“Like you’ll be seeing the sunrise after playing pool all night.” I’d been out with Ross enough times to know how the evening would go. He would play pool, gather an audience, and entertain everyone with epic stories from his two-day bender in Salvo. In the morning I’d wake up on Ocracoke, a forty-minute ferry ride away from Hatteras and my new job at Sandy’s.
The strange thing was that not so long ago, I would’ve been jumping at the chance, a giddy feeling fluttering up, my body warm with the fact that Ross didn’t want to leave home without me. Being his arm candy had been a confidence booster like crazy, and I’d craved that. But today, all I could think about were the issues with Iola’s house and the fact that Sandy needed me to show up in the morning. The Ocracoke ferry had been closed due to shoaling more often than it had been open lately. What if I got stuck down there?
I heard J.T. talking to Zoey as they crossed the salt meadow, and I pushed away from Ross. “The kids are coming.”
Ross listened a moment. Then his lashes fell to half-mast, and he leaned close to me. “Sounds like both of them, so we’re good to go. Tell Big Sister she’s got to stay home and babysit tonight. We’ll head out, catch the ferry, and hit happy hour at Rob and Roy’s —get a bite before the round-robin pool tournament. You can watch me work my magic.”
“Ross, I should . . .”
“C’mon,” he teased. “You can have all the money. Everything I win. You’re my good luck charm. They’re all too busy looking at you to pay any attention to the table. We’ll hit one of the shops on the way, get you something really . . . distracting to wear. You need some new clothes, Tandi. You’re way too hot for jeans and junk T-shirts.”
The pull of old habits tugged hard. He made the evening sound a whole lot more fun than I’d pictured it.
“I can’t,” I said finally. On top of everything else, the clouds were rumbling somewhere off over the water. If more storms blew in tonight, I’d have to do my best to make sure the drip buckets were in all the right places in Iola’s house. I thought about telling Ross the truth, but instead, I settled for “I have to work in the morning.”
“Work?” He drew back, flashing an eyetooth. “What?”
“The drywall thing at Sandy’s Seashell Shop?” Sometimes I wondered if he listened to me at all. “Remember, I told you about that?”
J.T. came through the hedge with Zoey behind him. I could tell from a distance that she wasn’t happy.
“I thought you were kidding. You’re hanging drywall? Really?” Ross was so clueless. “Well, let it wait a day, till after I’m gone. What’re they gonna do about it? It’s not like they can find somebody else. That’s why Dad’s chapping me about all the rental houses. He can’t get any construction help.”
“I can’t just . . . go off and leave the kids.”
Ross braced his hands on his belt. “You leave the kids all the time, Tandi.” He turned and started across the porch. “You know what? There’s something goin’ on with you lately, and whatever it is, I’m sick of it. You either want to be with me or you don’t.”
The panic place inside me cracked open. You need to be nicer, it warned. You need to do what people want, or they’ll leave. “Ross, I do . . . I just . . .” Silhouetted there on the porch, Ross looked so much like my father, walking out the door again, leaving us behind. I felt sick. “I just can’t this time, okay?”
“Yeah, fine, whatever.” He brushed by the kids on his way down the stairs. Zoey ignored him.
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” I yelled after him. “Ross!” But he didn’t answer.
“Why bother?” Zoey snapped as she skirted me. “He’s a jerk. All guys are jerks.” She continued through the door and dropped her backpack on the floor with a loud thump. J.T. slid in behind her and headed for his room. He didn’t even hit the kitchen for food.
Zoey grabbed something out of the refrigerator, then slammed the door.
“What’s the matter?” I wasn’t ready to deal with more problems, but there they were, waiting in the form of an angry fourteen-year-old. “Did something happen with Rowdy?”
“Like you care,” she shot back. “You just wish Rowdy would dump me. You’re jealous because Rowdy’s family has a lot more money than we do. Of course, everybody has more money than we do.”
As usual lately, her venom was a splash in the face at first, a shock. Acid on bare skin. “Listen, I’m just asking because you came home by yourself and you seem mad. I thought you might want to talk about it or something.”
“I don’t.” Tossing a waterfall of dark hair over her shoulder, she rounded the kitchen corner, her narrow hips swinging gracefully past it. She had on another shirt I didn’t recognize. An Aéropostale. Expensive. It looked new.
“Zoey, stop. I don’t have the energy for this, okay? What happened at school today? What’s wrong?”
She whipped around, her lips pressed together in a hard line. “I want to go home. I hate it here. I miss Karlie.” Karlie was Zoey’s best friend back in Dallas. She lived in the little groundskeeper’s house on Trammel’s place. She and Zoey had worn a path between the two homes. Anytime they could, Zoey and J.T. stayed the night at Karlie’s. More nights than they should have, definitely, but things were easier that way. When I knew I had to leave, Karlie’s mother had helped me get out. I hoped Trammel never discovered that she had anything to do with it.
“And Jake,” Zoey added, softening for a moment. Jake was the boyfriend Zoey had left behind —sort of a nerdy, quiet kid who adored her, liked novels about dragons, and was nice to J.T. because they both played video games.
“I’m sorry, Zoey.” I wished I could turn back the clock and give her a different life —not take the job showing Trammel’s horses, not let myself be coaxed into moving my eight-year-old daughter and three-year-old son onto Trammel’s place, not agree to ride exclusively for him. Not put myself in the position to be drawn in, completely dependent after the accident happened. There were so many things I’d do differently, if I could go back.
I wasn’t sure what to say to Zoey. Who was I to give advice? “Don’t worry, okay? Things are going to be better for us here. They are. I know it.”
“Yeah,” Zoey muttered, then turned and walked down the hall. Surprisingly she went into J.T.’s room instead of her own. I heard them in there talking. It sounded like she was trying to get him to share his video game box. Life couldn’t be too bad if she was doing that. Maybe after I left her alone awhile, she’d tell me what had happened with Rowdy and why she was suddenly homesick for Dallas.
While they were holed up in J.T.’s room, I slipped over to Iola’s house and made sure all the drip buckets were in place. The air smelled like rain, and judging by the weather radar on TV, it wouldn’t be just a sprinkle this time.
Back in the cottage, I rummaged through the boxes of food from Iola’s house and came up with something for dinner. It would be good for Zoey if we could all sit down together for once, do the things that normal families do. Talk. Laugh. Share secrets.
The meal ended up being pancakes, leftover banana beignets, and frozen hash browns. It wasn’t anything fancy, but I set the table with the old stoneware dishes from the cabinet. The colorful pattern of apples, leaves, and branches made the table look cheerful, despite the lack of meat or anything resembling a normal main course. The kids wouldn’t care. They were always happy with pancakes. Before Zoey was nine, she knew how to make almost any kind of breakfast food she wanted. Looking at our supper now, I remembered the two of them, still innocent enough to watch me with expectation-filled eyes. They’d made a pancake meal, and they wanted me to come eat with them, but I was too hazed out to move. I could imagine their disappointment now, though I hadn’t seen it then.
I hadn’t even really seen them, I guessed. Not in years. Perhaps not in all of our years together. I’d been too busy gazing into the holes in myself and trying to find a way to fill them.
J.T. answered when I called down the hall. He poked his head out the door, his hand still tethered to a video game controller.
“Hey, come on, I fixed dinner.”
His face squeezed around a confused frown. “I’m not real hungry, ’kay? I ate a doughnut at Bink’s.” A quick wince and then, “We didn’t hang around there or anything.” The video game was beeping behind him, demanding attention. “I gotta go. Snakefish wants me to fight him in the Hall of Doom.”
He was already pushing the door closed as I started down the hall. “J.T., I said I fixed dinner. Tell Snakefish that the Hall of Doom can wait until later, and tell Zoey to come on too. What’re you two doing in there?”
He fidgeted impatiently. “Zoey went someplace.”
“Someplace?” I looked past him into the bedroom. “Where?”
His thin shoulders rose, then fell. “I dunno. She just said she was goin’ someplace, then she gave me my PS3 back.”
“Great.” So much for my big plan. While I was at Iola’s house, Zoey had flown the coop without saying a word. “She didn’t say where? Or when she’d be back?”